Redeeming Blood 5 - Robert Godfrey

So from the beginning of Israel's national history to the promise of its recovery, the language is the language of redemption, the language of ransom from the hand of God.  The hand of God will ransom my soul.  God not only wanted Israel to remember that history and that promise, but God wanted Israel to be embraced by that reality in every moment of its living, and so the law is full of this language as well, that law that so often we kind of skip over quickly when we read through the five books of Moses.

Come on now, be honest, not the most interesting stuff in the Bible.  Think, for example, of that helpful law in Exodus 21, about what happens when your ox gores a neighbor.  "When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall  not be liable.  But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in and it kills a man or woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner shall also be put to death unless a ransom is imposed on him.  Then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is imposed on him."  These are the kind of laws I like.  I have never violated this law. 

But you see how God reminds His people that when the law is violated, the only hope is that some ransom might be paid to deliver you from the penalty of the law.  For some crimes there was no ransom.  About murder, we read in Numbers 35, "If anyone kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses.  Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death, and you shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it except by the blood of the one who shed it.  For you shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel."

Again, in relative to slavery, in Deuteronomy 15, we read, "If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years and in the seventh year, you shall let him go free from you.   You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you, therefore, I command you this today."  You see, at every point, Israel had laws that spoke of redemption and ransom, and all of that speaking of redemption and ransom was intended to remind them that God had ransomed them from Egypt, that God had redeemed them.  They were never to forget that they were a redeemed people, a ransomed people.