Deuteronomy 15:12-18 Bible Study | Episode 901

March 24, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy 15:12-18  Bible Study | Episode #901

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible study. We are in Deuteronomy, chapter 15, verses 12 through 18, and we're on a section that is,

well, really, really important for the New Testament.

It is the idea of the bondservant in the Jewish understanding of bond servant. In all actuality,

being a bondservant is something that many cultures have had.

It is an idea that, by the way, many of you would fall in that category in some way form or fash,

and maybe have fallen in this category as a bond servant.

The bond is the whole idea of you owing something to somebody and that being the form of the debt, it is a bond. You're bound to someone,

you're bonded to them because they have given you an asset, usually money. But it could be all kinds of things. It could be land,

it could be a promise to give you, you a daughter in marriage.

It can be all kinds of things. And remember, when we think about money or cash or currency, that's just a medium of exchange. It is exchanging energy or in regard to human beings, life itself,

we're exchanging the things that we expend our life on for something someone else has expended their life on.

In many ways, it's a trade, it's a barter. And what h. How we function and use that it make. Make it. Make it work more efficiently is we use money because you may have apples and I may have onions, and we both want bananas.

So we exchange, we sell our apples and onions for money and then we both get. Go and buy bananas. Notice there's a medium of exchange because we have something that we don't want to.

We don't. We don't really want from each other, but we have something of value that we spend our lives, spend our time and energy, our efforts are expended our. Our livelihood, our life to.

To attain. And then we Use that for our best. We might use it to nerd nourish us. We might use it to house us. We might use it to quench our thirst.

We might use it for making our lives better. That's what it's all about. Well, a bond servant is a person who has been given something of value in order to serve someone else.

Meaning work for them and live with them. Now it was, it was a intimate, it was an intimate relationship in that they actually lived together. But there are in many ways the same that happens,

that happens in our modern society. It's, it's a little bit of an offshoot of it. But there are many jobs where,

where they pay you a sign in bonus. You go and work for them.

Especially with the military, you go work for them, but you also live with them and you serve them and you're at their, you, you have to follow their instructions or in the military terms, their orders.

And you do that for a number of years and at the end of those years they may actually give you another bonus and,

or another lump sum of money for you to continue on to work for them. Now you say, I don't believe that's not the same. Yes it is. Yes it is.

In fact, in a very loose sense of the word, you are a bond servant if you take a loan from anyone because you've agreed to pay them back over time and you've agreed to certain terms of things that you will and will not do because of the, because of that contract,

because of that agreement. Now you don't live with the bank or you don't live with the credit union,

but you do follow certain instructions. You are subject to certain rules and regulations of the contract.

You are a bond slave to them.

They can come in and take what is yours from you out of your hands because you've not lived up to that contract. And that's what bond being a bond slave is.

Now we all want for that to be something that is a mutual decision between two parties. And that's what makes what we call the slave trade or slavery. That is not bond bond servants or bond servitude.

That, that kind of slavery where you were owned by someone forever is antithetical to really the biblical idea of slavery.

It would be very reminiscent of what happened to the children of Israel in Egypt. They were owned by the Egyptians and they couldn't leave and they couldn't do anything other than do exactly what the Egyptians said.

They couldn't move out of their status. They were always perpetuity slaves to The Egyptian, that type of slavery,

which is a type of slavery that's pretty prevalent around the world and by the way still exists in many, many places around the world. That type of slavery is not the scriptural understanding of what a bond slave is.

Bond servitude is an agreement between two parties that one party will benefit at the first and receive something that they badly need. And then they will serv the other party for a period of time to pay off that debt.

And we many, many, many of us are bond slaves. Many, many of us are. And it might be in a very small way, might be a credit card debt that you can't pay every month.

And the small thing that cost you is a 30% interest rate which is not small at all.

Some may be a bond slave. As far as your mortgage, you go, well that's just. I get a house out of that. I'm not a slave. Yeah you are. You have to pay that mortgage every month.

And by the way,

you gotta keep certain things going on, especially insurance.

You're mandated to actually keep your house up. There's only certain things you can do as far as selling it or as far as its use usually spelled out in the contract.

Sometimes you say, well I do, I don't do that. Well, you might not, but you've also, by not doing it, you've given your mortgage company the right to foreclose on your mortgage because you're not doing what you agreed to.

That's a bond slave. You're paying them a monthly amount for a benefit that they've given you and that slavery for 30 years. Most of the time if you get a 15 year note or a 10 year note,

you're doing really well. It means you likely could have done it on your own eventually.

It says here in verse 12, if your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman is sold to you, notice it. Sold to you. He's using words of commerce. That means somebody else owns you and serves you six years, then the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.

Meaning bond, slavery or bond servitude was not meant in the Hebrew culture to be more than six years. You couldn't have a loan for any more than six years. You couldn't sign up for military service any more than six years.

And by the way, you don't do that anyway.

You couldn't do anything other than six years. More than six years. And when you send him away, free him from you,

you shall not let him go away empty handed. Meaning when the time of service is over. You're not only supposed to let him go, but you're supposed to let them go.

And you're not supposed to leave them destitute. You're supposed to give them something. You shall supply him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor, from your winepress, from what the Lord your God has blessed you with, you shall give to him.

Now you're going. Well, I thought he already gave him something. Well, remember, some bond servitude would have been based off of a contract because the person who is selling themselves into that servitude may have nothing, maybe totally destitute, no chance for them nor their family to have any life and maybe not even be able to survive.

And they're selling themselves as a bond servant in order that they would be taken care of by their master,

by the owner of their servitude,

by the person who they've entered into this bond slavery agreement with,

and that they would be fed and that they would be housed and that they'd be clothed. And that's what they're getting out of that. They're getting six years of work and six years of life.

And by the way, that kind of stuff happened a lot, especially during the start of the industrial revolution. You go work for a company, you live in a company house, you buy company food, you buy company clothes, you go to the company, the church that the company built, it was a company town and you in many ways were a servant to the company.

Now, you know, national laws and labor laws have changed that. But for some people, that was a great deal. That was a great deal because they didn't really have a chance to make it any other way.

And especially, you know, during some of the worst times in our economic history, it was just terrible for those things to be going on. And so he says, when the servitude's over, don't leave them empty handed.

Don't leave them the way they were before, destitute. You're to provide for them. You're to provide for them as they leave because they served you well.

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Now you are a real slave. He's saying, remember what kind of slave you were in Egypt. You couldn't leave,

you couldn't progress, you. There was no, you didn't gain value for your labor. By the way, these bond slaves are not only gaining value in that they're having a chance to have life, have shelter, have food, have clothing, all those kind of things.

But when they Leave. What are they getting? Well, they're going to benefit. He says, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. The Lord your God redeemed you.

Therefore I can command you these. This thing today. And if it happens that he says to you, I will not go away from you because he loves you and your house, since he prospers with you.

Notice, he says, if they want to stay. Now,

nobody who thinks about,

you know, slave trade, the slavery in the United States, but by the way, was all over the world, nobody thinks of that as something that somebody would want to stay in.

But the power of a relationship and the power of goodness, people being good to each other could easily make somebody, if you were serving them, if you were working for them, could easily make somebody want to stay and stay with you for the rest of their lives.

Because in many ways, you've not just become a servant to them, you've become family to them. And so he says, if they don't want to leave ever, and they want to stay with you as a part of your family.

And by the way, even that happened during the slave trade. That happened even during slavery in the United States. Many, many slaves in, In.

In the south and parts of the north did not leave the families that they were with.

And it wasn't because they didn't have anywhere to go. It was because they wanted to stay where they were. They were. They were a part of the community and they were part of the family.

That's. That's not any kind of relationship. Where there is.

Where there's love and the desire to be together and a desire to live life together is a good relationship. Now, was its formation good? No, not necessarily. But God finds his way to work, work his way through a lot of things.

He says.

He says, if. If they want to stay with you, then you shall take an all and thrust it. And the best way for me to describe what it all is is think of a splinter that you get in your finger and make it really, really big.

It's a piece of wood that would have been sharp on one end, wider on the other, and it would have been far larger than a splinter. If you get one of those in, in your finger in your foot, you'd be.

You'd be devastated by it. Might have to actually have surgery to go remove it. And they take that, all that piece of wood, and they would go to the door of the house, which is a picture of the heart.

The doorpost is a picture of the entryway to the very inside of the person, it's the entryway to life. That's why when they left Egypt, they painted the doorpost of each house with the blood of the lamb.

The doorpost is a picture of the entry point to the heart of human beings. So they're going to the heart of the family, the entry point of the house.

And there to drive that awl, thrust it through his ear to the door and he shall be your servant forever. Meaning that awl would,

it's basically a piercing of the ear and they would keep an awl there in their ear to identify them as not bond servants to be released, but as a part of the family.

And you would think, well, that's a horrible thing to have to walk around with and what a shameful thing. But they didn't see it as that. They didn't. If they had an all, that meant they moved from being a bond servant that was going to leave the family at some point in time to being a part of the family.

And that's what the Apostle Paul talks about. He talks about, I'm a bond servant of Christ. He's not the bond servant that's going to leave in six years. He's the bond servants got the all in his ear.

He's the bond servant that is going to stay forever.

And, and so he says also the female servants, you shall do likewise. It shall not seem hard to you when you send him away free from you, for he has been worth a double hired servant in your serving for six years.

Then the Lord your God will bless you and all that you do. And what he's saying is it's not going to seem hard to do this. It's not going to be, it's not going to seem difficult when you send him away if, if, if, if the person wants to leave.

Why? Because they're going to be a value to you. They're going to, they're going to serve you well. And, and these things, these things are, were an important part of people who had nothing to take care of themselves.

It was, it was a, it's a way of making it. And by the way, we do that today.

We do it in a contract form. You, you rarely live with the people that you serve. But we even have people do do that. Do they go and live with a family and take care of the children and get paid a salary and get housed and fed and clothed?

That happens still today. Bond servitude is, is, is in its broadest meaning, is prevalent in our society today. And by the way, it's Not a bad thing. It's not a terrible thing for, for you to take out a loan in order to allow you to have some resources to advance yourself or at a minimum,

to take care of your family. And then you pay it back over time so that your family does not suffer because you don't have any resources at the moment. Now, as we go through that, that's just very, very hard to, to, to reconcile what we do today to, to these old Hebrew ideas.

But the truth is easy to reconcile if you think about it.

Any of you've got a card in your wallet or in your purse that your balance on, well, you're a bond slave. If you owe money on your car,

well, you're a bond slave. If you're bond servant,

you have a bond,

you have a loan.

And if you've got a contract with your employer, you're very likely bond slave. Okay? And you go, well, I get paid really good. I know, because you're worth it. And that's why you got the good contract and that's why you got to live up to the contract.

Why? Because you were giving your employer something of value and he's giving you a promise of value and you have to promise you'll stay because he's going to feed into you even more and make you better.

And, and she may be wanting you to become president of their company and you just have to.

You're signing these contracts saying, I'm going to continue to work here and continue to grow. And they're saying, you're of value to us. And that's really what bond servitude is about.

And it is a huge idea in the New Testament because God says, Apostle Paul calls himself a bond slave to Christ over and over and over again.

And in many ways we are He. He gave us a great value in, in the life that he's given us. And we serve him because of his great love for us.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.

You, that he'll make his face to.

Shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.