Slavery Under the Law

Understanding Sonship Today’s Focus: Slavery under the Law Scripture: Deuteronomy 5:1-5; Exodus 23:10,11; Daniel 9:2; Galatians 4:4-7 Greetings Kingdom Citizens Now I know I have made numerous statements over the past couple of messages of how the law made you a slave today we will look at how. Because there are some sons of God, or Kingdom citizens that are trying to put you back into slavery after Jesus set you free. First, slavery is indentured servitude where one is controlled by a master and you have no rights. Sounds harsh but this is what the law did. On Mt. Sinai the children of Israel was given the Covenant of Law because they rejected the covenant of sonship (Deuteronomy 5). Now the Law was a covenant between two parties. The first party was God Himself and party two was the children of Israel. Now as we can see already, God was going to keep his part of this covenant and the Israelites were not because no one at the time could keep all 640 laws (630+10 commandments). So because they could not possible keep this then they owe God because they were reaping the benefits without fulfilling their part of the deal. The question should be now then how do you repay God? Well there were three ways to make it right: 1. Somebody else pay the debt for you! But since Jesus had not come: Not available to Israel 2. Forgiveness: The power to forgive sins was only given to the saints (John 20:20) so this option was not available to Israel 3. Assets seized: Now if you did not own anything and it belonged to God then the only thing that was left was yourself and when you have to give up yourself and your rights as a citizen then you are a slave. In ancient Israel, and maybe today, I am not sure, they had cities of refuge for those who owed something and could not pay, they would have to go there and serve as a slave until the debt was paid. Even in some European countries this is the case. If you owed somebody something and could not pay it, you are put into slavery, or the good word is indentured servitude, until the debt was paid. This is how the law made you a slave because you could not possibly keep all 640 laws. So for those of us, and I will show you in scripture in a subsequent lesson, who are Kingdom citizens and want to live by the law and criticize those who do not keep the Sabbath or keep all of the sacred days that were in the Law, you are teaching people to leave the liberty that God gave them through Christ Jesus and put them back into slavery under the Law. Now we said that God always wanted sons, not slaves. Well in order to preserve this, even though the Law made them slaves, and we will explain shortly, it also saved their lives. How? Because, the Law gives them prescribed consequences for certain offenses. If God had not given them the law then they would be completely wipe out and that would end the program. But because of God’s love, righteousness and covenant with Himself, the Law was put in place to make them aware of what is right and wrong. It also made them a nation with various laws and statutes to live by. It gave them an economy, healthcare and protection. Now there were consequences to the nation and personal consequences for breaking the law. One example is when the children of Israel did not keep the Sabbath year (Let the land rest on the seventh year (Exodus 23:10,11). But when they did not keep this then 70 years were owed under the law and they were put into slavery to the Babylonians (Daniel 9:2). This was a national consequence. Personal sins result in a consequence to that person. In the next message we will look at the difference between one who lives under the law and one who lives in the freedom of Jesus Christ. Two separate things but very important because we have people who are openly criticizing people who do not live under the law and what they do not know they are denying their sonship for slavery. At Our Father’s Service, Elder Calvin Calhoun, Jr.