Exodus Chapters 19-21

19:5 - Throughout these three chapters we see God setting humankind up for His future plan. We start to see what He is working towards. The problem with humanity up to this point is that they were all sinful and rebellious and cannot truly be in relationship with God. So God has called out a people that He is going to offer a chance to save themselves. He is going to be their God and they are going to be His people. He implicitly states here that as long as they keep up their end of the deal, He will keep up His end - that's how covenants work. Unfortunately as we will see throughout the OT...the Israelites have a hard time keeping up their end of the deal. And although God allows them from time to time to be taken back into captivity and slavery...we know behind the scenes that He is working out a plan to bring about an undeserved salvation for all of humankind. That's the real big picture that we see coming together here.

19:12 - God is holy...to approach the Lord you must be absolutely holy, which poses a problem for us, huh? How beautiful is it now that through the blood of Jesus Christ we have been made holy and we can approach the throne of glory?

20:20 - God allows His people to try to save themselves. He wants everybody to know definitively if that is possible. He calls a special people. He gives them a special code of laws and a sacrificial system. He allows them to glimpse some of His awesome glory so that they will be so fearful they will want to obey His commands. He does all these things, yet they cannot save themselves. They always fall away. WE always fall away. So God came to earth not in fire and in cloud, but int he form of a man and died for our sins.

21:1-11 - Okay, I know this still sounds really harsh as you read through these passages and you are wondering, "Why didn't God just abolish slavery?" Well, I believe He is meeting the people where they are...He starts small and moves them from a world of seeing slaves as less than human to seeing slaves as people who deserve rights. In the NT Jesus and the apostles move people even further towards a worldview of human quality. From our current-day perspective this passage seems barbaric, but this was revolutionary, world-changing teaching. Offering rights to slaves is something unheard of in this world.

21:23 - This is what black and white...absolute justice looks like. Wouldn't be very pretty would it? Good thing for us, God showed us how brutally this form of justice is before He threw out the book and offered the merciful sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ.