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| Law of Blind Servants Issue #146
March 2001 So
much may be said of each law--and indeed, each word in the Bible--that
we must of necessity limit our comments to only a portion of the "the
rest of the law." We will, therefore, skip some verses in Exodus
21, where we have been studying, and comment upon the Law of Blind Servants
in verse 26. . .
26 And if a man strikes the eye of his male or female
slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. We
saw in our last issue that in the Bible even slaves have certain rights.
No master has the right of life and death over slaves. Biblical slavery
is quite different from slavery as practiced by the world and, unfortunately,
even by Christians, due to their general ignorance of God's law. We stated
in Part 5 that biblical slave masters do not have the lawful right to
mistreat their slaves. God's law says that if a slave master destroys
the eye of his slave, that slave must be set free. His eye has purchased
his freedom. We
are only incidentally interested in the application of this law in the
world of labor and employees, servants and slaves. Our prime interest
is in the spiritual application of this law and how it affects us today
in our relationship with God and in prophecy. Blindness in Part The
Apostle Paul made an interesting statement in Romans 11:25 that "blindness in part is happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles
be come in." (KJV) In other words, partial blindness, or blindness
in one eye has come upon Israel until the fulness of the "gentiles"
(Gr. ethnos, "nations") have come into the knowledge
of Jesus Christ. It is not our purpose here to discuss who Israel is or
who the gentiles are, but rather to focus upon the single fact of Israel's
blindness. How
is it that Israel became partially blind? Did Israel blind itself? Perhaps,
but in the Scriptures God always takes the ultimate credit for all things
on the grounds that He is the Creator and holds the power of eminent domain.
Israel was blinded even as far back as the days of Moses when the people
refused to enter the land of Canaan (Num. 13, 14). However, 40 years later,
as Moses gave his speeches to the people just before he died, he told
them in Deut. 29:2-4,
2
And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them,
"You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in the land
of Egypt to Pharaoh and all his servants and all his land;
3 the
great trials which your eyes have seen, those great signs and wonders.
4 Yet to this day the LORD has not given you
a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear." We
will not argue the relatively nonessential point as to whether or not
Israel blinded themselves by their own deeds and attitudes. It makes little
difference. The point is that God took the ultimate credit and responsibility
for blinding the eyes of His servant people, Israel. If anyone disagrees,
let him disagree with Moses. If they believe not Moses, how will they
believe Jesus Christ (John 5:47)? Jesus said in John 6:44, 45,
44 No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent
Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.
45 It
is written in the prophets, "And they shall all be taught of God."
Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. Who
will come to Jesus? Those the Father "draws." The Greek word
used here is helkuo, which means "to drag." Jesus
qualified this in verse 45, saying that all whom the Father calls and
teaches will come to Jesus. In other words, the Father initiates the calling
and teaching, and this is what motivates the people to come to Jesus by
their own will voluntarily and "freely." Our
point is that Moses told Israel in Deut. 29 that it was GOD who had not
given them eyes to see. It was God who had, in effect, blinded the people.
It was not a passive action, but a direct act of God. One may speculate
as to the reasons for God doing this--perhaps He did so to judge
the people for refusing to enter Canaan. Even so, God did it. That is
the point. The
law says that if a man blinds the eye of his servant, he must be set free
for the sake of his eye. God blinded the eye of His servant people, Israel.
In doing so, God took upon Himself the liability of that act and became
responsible to set them free. That is, He was responsible first to bring
Israel into the land of Canaan--their land of freedom. But more than this,
God became responsible to open their eyes and "drag" them to
Himself, so that they would joyfully and willingly come to Jesus (Joshua). A Greater Prophetic Blindness After
Israel had been in Canaan for many centuries, they proved that they had
little knowledge of God. In other words, God had purposed in His heart
to teach and draw only certain ones called "the remnant of Grace."
As Paul tells us in Romans 11:7, "the rest were blinded." We
believe God's purpose in doing this was to raise up a firstfruits company
of people who would know God and be capable of manifesting His character
and presence to the rest of the world. The ages from Adam to now have
been the times where God has called and drawn this "remnant of grace,"
NOT so that they alone might be saved, but that they might do a greater
work in The Age that is to come in the times of the restoration of all
things. The
prophet Isaiah lived during the days when Assyria came and deported the
ten-tribed house of Israel from 745-721 B.C. This captivity greatly concerned
him, although he himself was not taken captive. We find him living in
Jerusalem a few years later in 2 Kings 19:2, where he was able to counsel
King Hezekiah, king of Judah. One
of Isaiah's main themes in his book deals with the blindness of Israel.
We read in Isaiah 6 of the prophet's vision of God and his call to preach
the Word. His call was not what one might expect. It is recorded in Isaiah
6:9, 10,
9
And He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep
on listening, but do not perceive; keep on looking, but do not understand.'
10 Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their
ears dull, and their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear
with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed." In
other words, Isaiah's call was not to convert the multitudes, but to minister
in a time when God would blind their eyes, stop their ears from hearing,
and prevent their hearts from understanding the word. I suppose Isaiah
found little need for an altar call after he was finished preaching! It
is implied in this passage that God was actively blinding the eyes of
His people, though the Scripture puts it in terms of Isaiah doing it.
I do not believe, however, that God expected Isaiah to deliberately veil
the truth from the people, except perhaps when he might speak parables,
as Jesus did later. Even so, Isaiah could not open the eyes of the people,
for this was the job of the Holy Spirit. And
so, in the days of Isaiah Israel experienced a blindness greater or broader
than that which Israel had experienced under Moses. Once again on a greater
scale, Israel was unable to enter the Kingdom of God and had to spend
a time of judgment in "the wilderness." God removed them from
the land, using the Assyrians to do it. It
seems unfair that God would blind the people so that they would not see--"lest
they see with their eyes…return, and be healed"--and then remove
them from their land in judgment. It is indeed unfair. But God is not
unjust. He will always abide by His law. The law says that if a man blinds
the eye of his servant, he shall be set free for the sake of his eye.
So God blinded the eye of His servant
people in order to obligate Himself by law to set them free. God's
actions in blinding Israel shows His true intent, once we understand the
provision that He made in the law. To those who have not studied the law,
God's intent looks rather ominous. Those who know the law, however, understand
that God does certain "unfair" things in order to bind Himself
by law to rectify the seeming injustice. Overcomers
are subjected to abuse, even as David was under Saul's persecution, in
order to perfect David. In general, the overcomers have long walked the
way of the Cross, following in Jesus' footsteps, even to martyrdom for
their faith. Why would God allow this? Because only victims of injustice
have the lawful right to forgive and thereby do their part to declare
a Jubilee in the earth. The abuse makes the overcomer a creditor of the
sinner. God is looking for people who have the character and maturity
to forgive sinners. That is the way of Christ. Calvin and Arminius: Two
Men Half Right The
Calvinists gathered under their wings those Christians who had the stomach
to believe that God deliberately chose only a few for salvation and chose
the rest to burn in hell. The Arminians gathered under their wings those
Christians who could not see how God could remain just and righteous by
doing this. Both
of them erred, because they only understood part of the truth. God's elect
are the remnant of grace that God has chosen and trained through many
hardships for ministry in The Age to come. They will bring the rest of
the people into the knowledge of God. But first, they must be raised in
the first resurrection, because this job requires a physical body in which
to relate to the rest of humanity. Calvin
was right in that God is sovereign and has chosen a few by the counsel
of His own will. He was wrong in thinking that those chosen few were the
only ones who would be saved. Arminius
was right in believing that God is not so unjust as to choose most of
humanity to burn in hell. Arminius was wrong in sacrificing the sovereignty
of God on the altar of free will. In
our view, God is both totally sovereign and totally just. We believe the
right half of Calvin and the right half of Arminius. God blinded not only
Israel, but the whole world by His sovereign will. But God is just and
will also set all creation free according to the law of Exodus 21:26. God Takes the Credit Again In
Isaiah 29:10 we read a prophecy about Jerusalem.
10 For the LORD has poured over you a spirit of deep
sleep, He has shut your eyes, the prophets; and He has covered
your heads, the seers. There
are those who would say that God is unjust in doing this. Others say that
the prophet did not really mean to give God all the credit for shutting
their eyes. In fact, the prophet anticipated those very objections, for
he wrote a few verses later,
15 Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the
LORD, and whose deeds are done in
a dark place, and they say, "Who sees us?" or "Who knows
us?"
16 You
turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the
clay, that what is made should say to its maker, "He did not make
me"; or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has no
understanding"? In
other words, in verse 15 God condemns the idea that man does things without
God's knowledge or direction. Such people have turned things around. They
have it all backwards and do not know it. God is the Potter, and we are
merely the clay. How can we think that God has no understanding, or learning?
Is God so incapable and so powerless to go against man's "free will"?
No, "you turn things around!" The opposite is true. The
Apostle Paul ran into the same problem when He taught the sovereignty
of God in Romans 9:11. First he shows that God chose Jacob and rejected
Esau before they were even born in order to prove "that
God's purpose according to His choice might stand, not because
of works, but because of Him who calls." Paul
also gives Pharaoh as an example. Quoting from Exodus 9:16 Paul says in
Romans 9:17,
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For
this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you,
and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth." If
God has really raised up Pharaoh and called him to oppose the Word through
Moses, and if God's purpose in doing this was to demonstrate His power
and glorify His name in the whole earth--we can rejoice in this, as long
as we are not Pharaoh. But what about Pharaoh? Is this not unfair to him?
Is it not unfair to reject Esau before he was even born, before he did
either good or evil?
14 What shall we say then? There is no injustice with
God, is there? May it never be! Paul
knew very well the objections that would come from those whose theology
had turned things around to make man sovereign. He knew the objections
that would come from the "clay" vessels who believed that the
Potter was incompetent and unlearned. Compare,
then, Isaiah's answer with that of Paul. Isaiah 29:16 says,
16 You turn things
around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the
clay, that what is made should say to its maker, "He did not
make me"; or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has
no understanding"? Paul
simply refers us to Isaiah . . .
19 You will say to me then, "Why does He still
find fault? For who resists His will?" 20 On
the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded
will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this,"
will it?
21 Or does not the potter have a RIGHT over
the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use,
and another for common use? God's Rights as Creator In
the mad scramble to establish one's personal rights, one detail that is
often missed is the rights of the
"Potter." As Creator,
God has the inherent RIGHT
to be sovereign over the clay. The idea that "God had to create man
with a free will" and that He had to relinquish His rights to direct
the affairs of mankind is an assumption not found anywhere in Scripture.
The Church got it from the pagan Greeks, who elevated the soul (mind and
will) of man to divine status. But
man did not create himself. He has no right of eminent domain and never
did. God created the earth, and then formed man of the dust of the very
earth that He created (Gen. 2:7). The law states plainly what God's rights
are in this matter. It is found in Leviticus 25:23,
23
The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently,
for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me. On
the basis of this law, God issues a host of laws telling Israel how they
are to manage God's land. This includes the laws of redemption and the
Jubilee. Each law is based upon God's right as Creator. No man owns any
land, for God created it and gave it to man only under certain conditions.
Man has no free will in the matter. God has eminent domain. If
God owns all the land, and man is formed of the dust of the ground, then
God owns all men as well. The law says that man does not have the right
to sell his land permanently. He must always go back to his inheritance
at the Jubilee at the latest. In other words, no man has the right to
sell his land permanently. Ultimately, this earthen body is his land inheritance.
More accurately, man's land inheritance is the glorified body that Adam
had before the advent of sin. No
man has the right or ability
to sell himself into the debt/slavery of sin permanently, because man
does not own himself (his "land"). God retained the Creator's
right of eminent domain, and God has therefore decreed that there shall
be a Jubilee at the end of time, wherein all men return to their inheritance
that God owns and has given them to tenant. This
is the Restoration of All Things. When we dig down to its foundation,
we discover that it is based upon the simple truth that God is the Creator.
Upon that is laid the truth that God owns all the land and therefore has
the right to limit man's choices and "free-will decisions" by
His own laws. One
such limitation is the truth that no man has the right or ability to go
so far into debt (sin) that he goes beyond the ability of God to set him
free in the great Jubilee of Creation. In other words, God has decreed
that even for the chief of sinners, who has built up the most enormous
"debt" of sin ever accumulated, the law of Jubilee is more powerful
than the law of sin. God
will indeed judge sin in the ages to come, and this is expressed figuratively
in Scripture as a "lake of fire," but this judgment is not permanent.
It is the process of redemption. In the law the time of redemption lasted
only until the year of Jubilee. The time of redemption was a period of
time in which the debtor (sinner) became a slave, or servant until either
he could purchase his own freedom or the trumpet of the Jubilee set him
free without money. Recently,
I did a teaching entitled, "Free
Will? Or God's Ownership?" It is available on tape
or in book form ($3.00
for either item). In this teaching I showed that the real underlying
question at stake here is whether or not God created all things. God did
create all things; therefore,
God owns all things. His ownership
makes Him also legally responsible for that which He created. Therefore,
whether man acts according to his own will or not--it really makes no
legal difference. If
my ox eats from your pasture, it makes no difference if I opened the gate
and pushed the ox into your pasture, or if the ox simply jumped over the
fence. Either way, I am liable for the actions of my ox. Why? Because
I own the ox. That is the only relevant issue in the divine court
of law. If
I light a fire and it gets out of control and burns your field, I am liable
whether I willfully burned your field or did so by accident or simply
allowed it to happen. The only relevant issue is whether or not I lit
the fire (Ex. 22:6). If I lit it, then I own it. This is the divine law,
the standard that He wrote to teach us His view of responsibility and
liability. God
has rights and responsibilities just because He is the Creator of all
things. He has the right to
direct man's will or to overrule it as He sees fit. But with every right
comes a responsibility, or liability. The Creator's right of ownership
also means that God is responsible ultimately for His creation. He is
responsible to bring all men into conformity to His will. He has chosen
to do so in steps, beginning in this present age with the remnant of grace. The Firstfruits of Creation These
are the firstfruits of creation, as James 1:18 says,
18 In the exercise of His will He brought us forth
by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits
among His creatures. In
other words, if we are part of the remnant of grace, then we are the firstfruits
of creation. Firstfruits are given to God in order to sanctify the entire
harvest. When the firstfruits of barley are given to God on the day of
the Wave-sheaf offering, ONLY THEN does the real barley harvest begin,
for no one was allowed to harvest their barley until the firstfruits had
been given to God. The
same is true with the firstfruits of the wheat which were given to God
at the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost). If
we are the firstfruits of creation, it means that we are given to God
FIRST, and then comes the real harvest of the rest of the creation. It is an
amazing truth that most evangelists would find difficult to believe: the
real work has not yet begun. God is still preparing the hearts of the
firstfruits, and when that number is complete, there will be a resurrection
(re-embodiment) of all the remnant of grace that have ever lived. They
will then teach the rest of creation the Good News of the Gospel of Christ. How
ironic! The remnant of grace is much smaller than most believers think,
and the number of those ultimately saved is much larger. God’s
Kingdom Ministries |