Absolutely astonishing! What shall we, soaked in sin, say to such blood-stained passionate pursuit? If God is for us, who can be against us? Christian and those who will yet trust him, Father God would give up his only Son before he’d give up on you! And, Jesus would betray himself before he would betray you! Christian, as betrayed Jesus’ hands opened for the nails, heaven opened for you.

In the jungles of Irian Jaya, the Sawi people warred with their enemies. The Sawi honored treachery, duplicity and betrayal. Their greatest success? “Befriending” a person and then, when he trusted them, cannibalizing him.
In 1962, Don Richardson and his wife Carol became novice missionaries among the headhunting Sawi, taking their seven-month-old baby with them and adding three more children over the next 15 years.
Don, devoted 8-10 hours each day to learning their language. He reproduced the New Testament in Sawi, teaching the people to read in their native tongue. Carol, a nurse, labored faithfully as “the woman who keeps all the people well.”
However, the Sawi constantly made war with nearby tribes. Finally, for safety, the Richardsons considered moving.
Missionary historian Ruth A. Tucker writes: “As (Don) learned the language and lived with the people, he became more aware of the gulf that separated his Christian worldview from the worldview of the Sawi: ‘In their eyes, Judas, not Jesus, was the hero of the Gospels, Jesus was just the dupe to be laughed at.’”
Friend, is it shocking for you to discover Judas hailed as the hero? Multifaceted betrayal shone like a gem for the Sawi. And for how many others does it subliminally/subconsciously shine? Friend, what if our valuing truth, faithfulness, and relationships is due to the pervasive influence of Christ we have grown to expect? Otherwise, what if “Et tu, Brute” defines reality? Stabbed 60 times, Caesar’s betrayal was a Roman norm. Consider treachery and the history of any nation, say from Vanuatu to Venezuela.
Note, even for us “betrayal” is multi-faceted. We define it as: “unintentionally to show one’s true character” – “to indicate what is not obvious” – “to reveal or disclose in violation of confidence” – “to prove false or violate by unfaithfulness” – “to mislead, delude, or deceive in order to deliver or expose someone to an enemy’s power.”
In “betrayal,” “be” intensifies “tray.” “Tray” is like “trans” – “on the other side of,” “to go across, over, beyond.” “Betrayal” proves a “dear” (“be”) friend to be “very distant” (“trans/tray”) – an “enemy.” The distance of an “enemy” is unveiled by the origin of our word “enemy,” “the opposite of one who loves.” Ruthless!
Now, consider a Greek New Testament word, “paradidómi.”
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Wycliffe called indulgences one of the “Luciferian seductions of the church” and a “fiction of the Prince of Darkness,” and called upon Christians to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ…and teach the people that they should trust in Christ alone, and in his law, and in his members…”

George Housman Thomas’ illustration, “Wycliffe on His Sick-Bed Assailed By the Friars at Oxford,” is a striking depiction of one of the many trials endured by the noble English priest and reformer, and a testimony to his courage in the face of stringent opposition. The illustration depicts an encounter from 1378, when Wycliffe was suffering from a severe illness, perhaps the aftereffects of a stroke. Supposing Wycliffe to be near death, the begging friars and four Oxford eminents came to his bedchamber and pleaded with him to retract the fulminations he had published against the mendicants–that is, itinerant friars and preachers who relied on alms for their living. After the friars made their statement, a servant raised Wycliffe in bed so he could respond. It is this moment that is depicted in Thomas’ work. The mendicants linger about the room, not with looks of compassion, but rather countenances of contempt. One corpulent friar sets his back to Wycliffe, even as he turns his head and glares at the reformer with bulging eyes. Wycliffe appears gaunt and sickly–eyes hollow, hair matted. Within reach at his bedside is a thick book, likely meant to represent the Scriptures. Steadied in bed by his servant, he raises his hand and replies, “I shall not die, but live to declare the evil deeds of the friars,” before driving his detractors from the room. Thomas’ illustration is imaginative, but emblematic of the battles faced by Wycliffe as he sought the purification of Christ’s church from the licentiousness and bombast that had come to characterize it.[1]
Remarkably, though Wycliffe died a century before Martin Luther’s birth, he anticipated multiple of the doctrines that would eventually characterize mature Protestantism. This reality finds modest recognition in Wycliffe’s honorifics, “Evangelical Doctor” and “Morning Star of the Reformation.” But Wycliffe was more direct in his proto-Protestant convictions than is usually recognized. His opposition to the begging friars was founded upon a Gospel rooted in Scripture, and shorn of the ceremonialism and muddled soteriology of the Roman church.
When Wycliffe was born in Yorkshire around 1330, no complete English Bible yet existed. In fact, the church magisterium was hostile to vernacular translations of the Scriptures. When Wycliffe matriculated at Oxford around 1345, he followed in the wake of such distinguished Oxford affiliates as John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Thomas Bradwardine. He was accordingly tutored in scholastic philosophy.
Wycliffe established himself in the field of law—both civil and canon. It was in the legal arena that various controversies of the age presented themselves, specifically with regard to the prerogatives of sovereigns and subjects over against the church magisterium. Wycliffe was committed to resisting the unwelcome intrusions of the pope and the mendicants in English affairs. The term “mendicants” comes from the Latin mendicans, “begging”, and is interchangeable with “friars”, taken from the Latin frater, “brother.” The mendicants that Wycliffe encountered predominantly belonged to two new orders founded in the early 1200s around the time of the Fourth Lateran Council: the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Much distinguished these new friars from older Western monastics, not least of all their status as itinerant preachers, traveling throughout Christendom and relying upon alms as they did so, rather than doing their ministry and earning their keep in stable monastic communities. Whilst the founders of these orders, such as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic, were doubtless sincere reformers in their own way, they usefully served the ends of the papacy, since their calls to itinerancy afforded opportunities to impose piety and belief upon the laity.[2] By Wycliffe’s day, this facet of the mendicant life had only increased, and their once well-intentioned ascetic poverty had morphed into a leeching mendicancy which exploited both the purses and the souls of Christians across Europe. Wycliffe’s understandable mistrust of these foreign influences grew as he came to see Scripture as the supreme authority over Christian faith and practice. He found no authorization for these offices or their practices in the Bible.[3]
The Black Death reached England in June 1348, and over the following 18 months killed approximately half of the English population. The student body at Oxford, where Wycliffe was likely studying at the time, was decimated. Wycliffe was deeply affected by this catastrophe and came to see it as a judgment sent by God upon a wayward church, at whose head were debauched clergy and mendicants who exploited the people under their care.[4]
Wycliffe remained an affiliate of the university in various capacities after the plague subsided. His dispute with the mendicants began in earnest in 1360. The begging friars had established themselves in various cities across England (including Oxford) by the middle of the 13th century, taking their solemn vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The original Rule of St. Francis read, “Those brothers whom the Lord favors with the gift of working should do so faithfully and devotedly, so that idleness, the enemy of the soul, is excluded yet the spirit of holy prayer and devotion, which all other temporal things should serve, is not extinguished.” Suffice to say, this ideal had not been maintained: the orders had succumbed to moral corruption and idleness.[5]
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When people think of the Book of Exodus, they often think of the 10 plagues upon Egypt or Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Yet as important as these events were, they do not dominate the Book of Exodus like the themes of slavery and Sabbath.
Deliverance from Slavery unto Sabbath Rest
After Israel had settled in Egypt under Joseph’s leadership, a new Pharaoh arose who enslaved them (Exodus 1:8-10). Pharaoh “set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens,” and the Egyptians “ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves,” which made “their lives bitter” (Exodus 1:11, 13-14). This slavery included Egyptians beating Israelites, which led to Moses killing an Egyptian (2:11). But God saw the “oppression” and “afflictions” of His people and “heard their cry.” As the Lord said, “I know their sufferings.” And He promised to deliver them from slavery and into a good land of milk and honey (3:7-9).
God “heard the groaning” of the Israelites who had been made “slaves,” and thus He would “remember” His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is, He would act upon that covenant by delivering Israel unto the land of Canaan (Exodus 6:3-5). God declared:

I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD. (Exodus 6:6-7; cf. 16:12; 29:46)

So God’s promise to Israel was to take them to be His “people” and deliver them to the land of Canaan, as He “swore” to the patriarchs—“your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years… To your offspring I give this land” (Genesis 15:13, 18; cf. 17:8). But the fulfillment of this promise first required that God deliver Israel from slavery, from under the “burdens” of Egypt. God would not only deliver Israel unto the Promised Land, but He would also deliver them unto Sabbath rest. However, entrance into the Promised Land would take some time, and although Moses and that generation would not even experience it, they would all still experience God’s Sabbath.
The Sabbath stands in stark contrast to the “burdens” of Egyptian slavery (Exodus 2:23; 6:6-7; 21:2-11). Instead of oppressive work, Israel would now have a weekly day of rest, along with seasons of rest (16:23, 30; 20:8-11; 23:10-19). This theme of slavery to Sabbath is seen even in the Ten Commandments, which begin with God proclaiming, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (20:2). This point should not be missed. The foundation of the law of God—the Ten Commandments—begins with God’s proclamation of deliverance from slavery.
Notice God specifically says He delivered Israel from the “house of slavery.” Instead of dwelling in the “house of slavery,” Israel was to build a “house of Yahweh” (Exodus 23:19; 34:26, LSB). Thus, God not only delivered Israel from “slavery” to Sabbath rest (seen in the Fourth Commandment), but He also gave them a new “house” (tabernacle) in which He would dwell with them—“And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst” (25:8). The deliverance from the “house of slavery” to the “house of Yahweh” is seen in a clear division in the Book of Exodus, as the Ten Commandments are given in the very middle (Exodus 20). Israel had been in Egyptian slavery from the beginning of the book until the Passover and exodus in chapter 12, followed by the crossing the Red Sea and time in the wilderness. But after this deliverance from the “house of slavery,” God gave extensive instructions for His “house.” The second half of the Book of Exodus is dominated by the law (Exodus 19–24) and the tabernacle, as instructions for the tabernacle were given in Exodus 25–31 and then the tabernacle was built in Exodus 35–40.
Slavery in Exodus and Beyond
Exodus shows that Yahweh is the God who redeems slaves who cry out to Him. Yet God also protects slaves, seen in His provision of laws regulating slavery and freeing slaves. Modern men and women are often appalled at the practice of slavery, which makes the Bible’s teaching on it difficult to address today. Yet slavery was a common practice in ancient world, often serving as a last resort when a man had to sell himself into slavery because of debt or when a man sold his daughter in hope of a better life for her. The modern West has abolished such slavery but ironically still practices a form of slavery by locking criminals in prison for extended time or even life, a practice foreign to the Mosaic law. Contrary to modern imprisonment, God’s law implemented the death penalty for severe crimes and restitution for lesser crimes. While God did not abolish slavery but permitted it as part of this fallen world, He also placed important restrictions on its practice.
After the Ten Commandments, God gave mishpatim that Moses was to set before Israel, a term that can be translated “rules,” “ordinances” or “judgments” (Exodus 21:1). These “rules” were circumstantial case laws deriving from the foundational Ten Commandments. They are found in Exodus 21:1–23:19 and as a whole are called the “Book of the Covenant” (24:7).
The rules of the Book of the Covenant include 10 laws on slavery—five laws for male slaves (Exodus 21:2-6) and five laws for female slaves (21:7-11). Of the subsequent laws concerning violence (21:12-36), many also concern slaves (21:16, 20, 26, 32). While man-stealing was a capital crime, the purchasing of slaves was lawful (Exodus 12:44; 21:2; Leviticus 22:11; Deuteronomy 15:12). Hebrew slaves could be purchased because a man voluntarily sold himself into slavery for debt or he was involuntarily sold because he was a thief who was unable to pay restitution (Exodus 22:3). Non-Hebrew slaves could be purchased from traders or taken from war (Leviticus 25:44-45; Numbers 31:26-47; Deuteronomy 21:10-14).
As for redemption from slavery, Hebrew slaves were required to be freed after six years, on the seventh Sabbath year (Exodus 21:2; Deuteronomy 15:12), unless the slave wanted to remain with his master and the wife that his master acquired for him (Exodus 21:4-6). However, this was not the case for a non-Hebrew (foreign) slave (Leviticus 25:46), though he was still to be circumcised (Exodus 12:44; Genesis 17:12-13). The non-Hebrew slave had the right to purchase his freedom (Leviticus 25:49). Otherwise, he with his children were to be freed every 50 years in the Year of Jubilee, which was a Sabbath of Sabbath years (7 x 7 = 49) (Leviticus 25:54). Severe injury to a slave required freeing him (Exodus 21:26-27), while the murder of a slave required punishment (21:20). (Exodus 21:21 teaches the delayed death of the slave assumes the master did not intend to kill him, and thus the loss of the slave was its own penalty.) If an ox gored a person to death, the ox was to be stoned to death itself, and the death of a slave was to be compensated financially (21:28-32). The stealing of a man and selling him as a slave, and even possessing the stolen man, warranted the death penalty (21:16).
If a man sold his own daughter as a “female servant,” there were additional protections upon her that were not placed on male “slaves” (Exodus 21:7). This “female servant” (amah) is different from the word for a male “slave” (avad), as the woman was purchased to become a wife or concubine (unlike the “Hebrew woman” sold only for labor in Deuteronomy 15:12). If she displeased her master, she was not to be sold to foreigners but given the right to redemption (Exodus 21:8). If she were married to the master’s son, then she was to be treated like the master’s daughter (21:9). And if the master (or his son) married her and took other wives along with her, he was still to provide for the wife, including meat (“flesh” in Hebrew, not “food”), meaning she was sold to a wealthy family and to eat meat like they ate (21:10). The woman purchased as a wife was not to be demoted in marriage and doing so required her freedom (21:11).
When we come to the New Testament, we see that there were Christians who were slaves—“For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Corinthians 12:13). Paul did not tell them to flee, but rather they were to obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5; Colossians 3:22; 1 Timothy 6:1). Christians could also be slave masters, but they were to treat their slaves with fairness—“Masters, show to your slaves what is right and fair, knowing that you too have a Master in heaven” (Colossians 4:1, LSB). Thus, there will be slave masters in Christ’s kingdom, and we cannot condemn them as doing evil when God did not do so. The Bible does not condemn slave masters so long as they treated their slaves “justly and fairly” (Colossians 4:1, ESV). Yet the Bible also provided the framework for the regulation of slavery and its eventual demise. Earthly slavery points to the spiritual slavery that humans are born into (John 8:34). But like God’s deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery, He redeems those who are enslaved to sin and makes them instead “slaves of righteousness” and “slaves of God” (Romans 6:16-22).
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