Pray the word with David Platt as a resource from Radical.net.

In Exodus chapter 21, you start to see a lot of mention of slaves and slavery.

There's a ton we could talk about here that we don't have time to go into and just a couple of

a minute podcast episode that's mainly prayer. But I do want to point out that whenever we see

the word slave or slavery in the Bible, we always need to make sure to look at the context

of what that slavery involved in the picture of Old Testament slavery among God's people.

So again, we don't have time to go into the details of it, but I would just suffice to say for

now that the picture of slavery in the Old Testament while not ideal and not according to God's

original design while it was a product of the fall in the world was still very different from

the picture of slavery in the history of the United States, which was more akin to what

God clearly speaks against down in verse 16, whoever steals a man and sells him and anyone

found in possession of him, this kind of trafficking of buying and purchasing people who you

steal in order to make a profit was clearly without question unequivocally commanded against

in the Old Testament and reiterated in the New Testament. This is after all one of the core

commands in Exodus chapter 20, you shall not steal. And that's any kind of property,

all the more so people. And so I read this because of the reality of stealing of people and

selling of people that is still happening today. That's not just a thing of the past and it's

horrible that it is a thing of the past, but it's also horrible that it's a thing of the present

that children, girls and boys are stolen from their homes and sold in different ways.

This happens in so many different places around the world and it happens in the United States,

I think of multiple stories of people I know who have experienced this kind of horror in this world.

And so I want to leave us to pray. In light of Matthew chapter 6 and Jesus how you taught us to

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