Breaking and Broken (Exodus 20:22-23:19)

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A good morning remnant of the church, I think I need to look at the camera and say good morning to those of you joining us online as well. Since about half of you aren’t here, it will not be the last snow we have this winter. Little bit of challenge to those you online. If Amazon can still deliver your packages in the snow. You can make it to church in the snow as well. Yeah, preaching to the choir here. Go ahead. Grab your Bibles. Open up to Exodus. You can actually open up to Exodus 21 we’re going to start in Exodus 21 as you’re turning there, what was your most difficult roommate situation? I think we got some options, right? Some of you on the younger side, you might think the only roommate I’ve ever had is a sibling, but that can be a real one. Of course, a sibling, you know, who makes too much noise when he goes to bed you’re already asleep and wakes you up, that kind of thing. Or maybe it’s a spouse who snores, that’s a possibility. I think, though for a lot of us, it would have been in our 20s. You know that college age? That’s when some of the tough ones show up, right? That was mine, anyway. So I had my first roommate in college was an aspiring sportscaster and kind of a weird dude Not gonna lie. Okay, and so he failed out of college after his first semester because he would stay up all night playing video games, which is not unusual. I know that happens a lot of guys, but he was announcing the video games as he was playing them in the middle of the night four feet from where I’m trying to sleep. So that was a difficult one for me. At least Living together is tough, is the point. And so if you’re living with people, you need rules. Probably need to set some expectations, and the more people you got, the more rules you need. And that’s what God gives us here in our lengthy passage this morning. So we’ve just gotten the 10 Commandments right. He brings his 10 words, which are these big principles for living. He takes these 10 Commandments and he brings them down to the level of the mundane like the daily. What does it look like practically for you to live out these principles, and what do you do when people don’t live them out like You shall not steal, okay, but somebody stole, so what happens now? What do we do? Does it matter the motivation? Does it matter? How much all these kinds of questions, how exactly do I love the Lord my God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and love my neighbor as myself, like show it to me practically. And I think what we’re going to see here, as we look at these varied laws, which are really like case laws, case studies, almost, we’re going to see is that trust in God, like, if we really believe in God, that should affect every area of our lives, how we live is going to look different every area of our lives. Our faith is going to work its way into every nook and cranny of our lives, like water filling every crevice in a basin. So we’re going to see laws about the household, work like finance and business, sex, animals, rest, property. There is no area where he is not Lord, including a lot of the areas, by the way that people fight about today, we’re going to see laws today about things like the death penalty, premarital sex, slavery, lawsuits, how to care for orphans and the poor. These are big issues, which is a good reminder, since these are still live issues for us today, that’s a good reminder, because we’re starting what is, for some people, the boring part of Exodus. Boring very much in scare quotes there actually, from here to the rest of the book, we’ve only got really one more story, and that’s the golden calf, which is a famous story. But the rest of it is going to be rules and regulations in a lot of ways, but it shouldn’t be boring to us. We should be riveted and excited to study it in part because it’s in God’s Word. We know that all God’s word is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, but also just because it shows us how to live day by day, and as we keep going in the rest of the book, How to live day by day in the very presence of the Lord, which is why we’re going to get lots of rules and regulations about the tabernacle, priesthood, etc. So let’s dive in. We’re going to cover these laws, and they are varied laws. We’re going to cover them in five big categories, and I’m not going to read all of them, because it’s like four chapters. So we’re going to take. Representative examples of what are themselves representative examples, and they’re not going to feel immediately applicable always. But as Paul tells us in First Corinthians, they are written for us, and it’s a direct quote. These are written for you, so even if it’s not immediately applicable, there will be principles that we can draw out. In fact, Paul gives an example in First Corinthians nine. He’s talking about the Old Testament law that you shouldn’t muzzle the ox while it’s treading the grain. And you’re thinking to yourself, I don’t want an ox, so I don’t need to know this law. And Paul says, actually, actually, there’s a principle there that you shouldn’t keep somebody from enjoying the benefit of their labor. And so he says the worker is worthy of the wage, including an ox, who should be able to eat as it’s treading and so this is a law for all sorts of different things. So that’s what we’re going to see as we go. All right, so five big categories. First category is work. Let me read Exodus 21 one to 11. Exodus 21 one to 11. These are the laws you are to set before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, He is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year he shall go free without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone. But if he has the wife, when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free. But if the servant declares, I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the door post and pierce his ear with an awl, and then he will be his servant for life, the man sells his daughter as a servant. She is not to go free as male servants do. She does not please the master who has selected her for himself. He must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free without any payment of money. Now I called this work instead of like servitude or even slavery, which I’m sure is how it’s translated in some versions, but I called it work because these are more like contract employees that are being talked about here. This isn’t slavery the way we think of slavery today in the West, and it raises the issue that we have to address quite a bit. Does the Bible condone slavery? And the answer is yes and no, yes and no, the Bible explicitly condemns the transatlantic slave trade, like what happened in the United States, the Bible explicitly condemns, even in our passage today, we’ll see it in just a little bit, but this kind of indentured servitude The Bible does condone, because the Bible understands the hard reality of economic hardship. I mean, these are laws meant to govern a broken world. These are not for the ideal. These are for the real, for the gritty. And so the Bible is recognizing here that debt itself is slavery, which it is. This is why we run our Christians against poverty debt center to help those who are enslaved in debt. But what do you do if you’re enslaved in debt in a culture that doesn’t have a massive social safety net or bankruptcy laws? What do you do then? Well, you sell yourself into a sort of slavery, indentured servitude. It’s this opportunity for those who are in debt to get themselves out of it through hard work. It is very different from 19th century United States. It was voluntary. So that’s a big difference. It was temporary. You’ll notice it’s six years, and then you go free in the seventh, and then you are not allowed to abuse your slaves, which we’ll see in verses 26 and 27 later. It’s also not race based, plus the law preserves the family in a way that slave traders did not care about here centuries ago. You can see that in verse three, he has a wife. When he comes, the wife goes with him. But what about verse four? That one rankles us a bit, doesn’t it? When you look at that, well, remember, this woman is under contract also, and so she’s got to keep her word. She signed up for six years. She’s got to finish her six years. But there are still options here. The husband could wait around for a little bit. The husband could work hard to redeem her from slavery, of course, or he could stay as we’ll look back in a moment. But that whole piercing his. Ear thing. By the way, there is something to be said here in both this section and the next paragraph as well, talking about the women. A lot of ways these laws are protecting vulnerable women from irresponsible men. I think that’s part of what’s happening here, women and children from irresponsible men, like if he can’t purchase their freedom, why not? This is a guy who got himself into debt to begin with, and now he is not, even after six years, learned what he needs to learn in order to get them out of debt again. So it may be better for his wife and children to stay almost like in a foster situation in some ways, I think that’s what we’re seeing here as well. Whatever we may think of these laws, this is shocking generosity for this time, if you compare it to other ancient, Near Eastern laws, and even more so when we look at the female servants here and some of the protections that they are given now again, why would dad sell a daughter into servitude? That’s one question. The answer is to improve her prospects. Remember, he’s not doing well, so they’re from a poor family, but he’s placing her in a rich family, which is a new network of people. So she’s going to meet potential husbands, including, in fact, the son, as we see. So we get these three protections that are offered. If she fails her probationary period, she gets sent back to her family, and that’s important. He doesn’t get to sell her on to foreigners or something like that. And in fact, it actually blames the master, because he broke faith with her. You know, he kind of had brought her in and then was like, actually, no, so it’s his fault, according to scripture. Second, if they do like her, the master can pledge her to his son, and then she becomes part of the family. She’s given the rights of a daughter like she is adopted, which is key. And then if the engagement ends or the marriage fails, she’s free to go without having to pay off that debt or anything like that, because, again, we see it as the Master’s fault. Now we got to see again, and I know that this like doesn’t sound right to us today. We live in a very different culture, of course, but we must see that this sort of indentured servitude was good for some people, providing structure they need the way some people join the military because they know they need that discipline to get their lives in order. There it says training to be responsible, and this was so good for some people that they would actually voluntarily choose to stay on with the family again, it’s got that social safety net feel and ensures justice. So plenty of principles to glean here, how to be a good employee, certainly, but also how to be a good employer. I think if you got people underneath you, one of the questions you should be asking yourself is, do they want to stay with you? And if not, why not? But there are also some good gospel principles here too. Did you notice that? I mean, here we’re looking at a servant with a bad master. Could be redeemed and then go home, or you get a slave, female slave without prospects, could actually marry the son. That’s the gospel. Isn’t that both of those, we are freed from a bad master, sin, redeemed, and then get to go home to our Father, to God. And when we were without prospects, unlovely, we were betrothed to the son and adopted into God’s family. So how do we respond? Of course, we respond to God the way this servant responds to his master. In Verse six, we become willing servants for life. In Psalm 40, David actually uses this language to describe his devotion to the Lord. He says, at one point, you know my ears, you have opened. And almost certainly, that’s talking about the all going through the earlobe there. And then he says, just a verse later, my desire is to do your will. I am your willing servant for life. All right, so that’s work. Let’s move on to the next one life. And here we’re talking about like physical life in particular. This is verses 12 to 36 I’m only going to read through verse 27 here, though, anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death. However, if it is not done intentionally, but God lets it happen. They are to flee to a place I will designate. But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death. Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death. Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnappers. Session, anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. People quarrel, and one person hits another with a stone or with their fist, and the victim does not die, but is confined to bed. The one who struck the bowl will not be held liable if the other can get up and walk around outside with the staff. However, the guilty party must pay the injured person for any loss of time and see that the victim is completely healed. Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished. If the slave dies as a direct result, they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two since the slave is their property. If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows, but there is serious injury here to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye. And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth. So we see here this clear moral hierarchy, which we saw in the 10 Commandments. Also they’re given in order in the two tables, the moral hierarchy is that life is more important than property. This was also radical in the ancient Near Eastern context, where people were frequently put to death simply for stealing, like if you were looting at a fire, you were killed for it. But there is still capital punishment. When someone does murder someone else, capital punishment is grounded in the idea of the image of God. It’s set up in Genesis nine. Whoever sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed. So capital punishment is there not because life is cheap, but because life is so valuable, and that’s why Great care must be taken with capital punishment, which is the shift from verse 12 verses 13 and 14, if it’s done, if it isn’t done intentionally, then then something else happens. It’s not time for capital punishment. We got to have this, these levels in place. And the idea of capital punishment is a tricky one. Christians come down on on both sides of the issue. I just think it’s important if you are pro capital punishment, that you are so biblically first of all, but second of all, you need to make sure that you take great, great care that no one is killed unjustly. It would be better for the guilty to escape punishment in this life than for an innocent person to be put to death. But other crimes do merit capital punishment here because they cause the breakdown of society and in many ways, steal life. Excuse me, I won’t be the last time that happens. Kidnapping, for example, is mentioned there in verse 16. Again, this would be the transatlantic slave trade, right here. I told you it was condemned in Scripture, but also attacking parents, so let’s talk about them. I mean, this whole kidnapping, slavery, human trafficking thing is a very real problem today. There are an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today, far more than in the 19th century. And approximately 2 million kids have been trafficked in the commercial sex industry. So what’s our responsibility as Christians? In light of that, in light of these principles here, our responsibility, of course, is to do what we can. We must act somehow. It’s like Isaiah one, verse 17, when the Lord says, learn to do right, seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Christians are to act for the sake of the most vulnerable in society. We also see in this section just how important the fifth commandment to honor your mother and father is now when it talks about attacking their father and mother in verse 15, this is more than a slap or something like that. The word there really gets at the idea of an intent to kill, or at least to injure or maim, but we see later even sustained verbal assaults like this repudiation of parental authority and the refusal to care for parents, which was actually really important, because back then, you didn’t have assisted living facilities, so parents were your responsibility, and if you neglected them, I mean, you are consigning them to death in many ways, plus, to reject your parents’ authority is to reject God’s authority, because you’re Therefore to cut yourself off from the source of life. Then, as we keep going in this section, we get to that famed principle of lex talionis, the law of retribution, an eye for an eye, which is badly misunderstood today. You can see the misunderstanding in Gandhi’s famous. Quip An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Clever, certainly, and would be accurate, but not at all. What the Bible is teaching here in this section, it’s an important principle of justice, namely, that the punishment must fit the crime. You’ll notice that it was not actually applied literally even, I mean, look at verses 18 and 19. Somebody’s injured. What happens to the person who injured them? You know, go kick them in the knee so they’re out of work for a few No, they gotta pay for the amount of work that was missed. Or if a slave has a loses an eye or a tooth or something, they’re given their freedom. They don’t pluck out their master’s eye. So it’s just saying the punishment must fit the crime. This was a major step forward in this world, in this culture, like a major step forward in terms of justice, because in most of the ancient near east at this time, everything was a fine. So you stole something, you pay this much money, you kill somebody, you pay this much money, knock on somebody’s tooth, you pay this much money. Well, guess who can then commit crimes with impunity? The rich, whereas the poor, even the smallest infraction might be absolutely devastating for them. We also have to see that this is for the courts, right? This is not talking about personal relationships. This is talking about like national laws. So there is absolutely a problem when we pay them back for what they did to us. And that’s what Jesus is talking about when he says, You’ve heard that it was said An eye for an eye. But I tell you, love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you. Turn the other cheek because he’s talking there about personal relationships. Did you notice? By the way? I think this is just worth pointing out, as we talk about hot button issues today in verses 22 and 23 that we’re talking about a baby being harmed in utero, even at that point. So the child in utero is considered a life so that if the child in the womb is injured. The lex talionis comes into effect the law of retribution, Life for life even, which certainly gives us plenty to think about when it comes to an issue like abortion. But when we look at Justice, when we look at laws like these, we can very quickly forget the gospel, of course, and so there’s this good reminder of what we deserve when we read the punishments in contrast to what we’ve been given by grace, what God offers us instead. I didn’t read it, but look at verse 30, for example, when it says, However, If payment is demanded, the owner may redeem his life by the payment of whatever is demanded. I don’t mention this because the law itself, but because those are two really big, important words for the gospel, payment and redemption, what we owe. I mean, that’s the payment, right? What we owe, and we know what we owe because Paul tells us, from Romans six, the wages of sin, the payment that is owed is death. But Jesus gave Himself as a ransom. The word that’s used for ransom is that the same word that’s used here for payment, he gave himself as a payment to redeem us, to purchase our pardon, so that we could escape paying what is owed by our misdeeds. So that’s life. Let’s keep going. Chapter 22 property, the next big category. I’m just gonna read verses one to five here. Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it. Must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. The thief is a thief is caught breaking in at night and has struck a fatal blow. The Defender is not guilty of bloodshed, but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed. Anyone who steals must certainly make restitution, but they have nothing. They must be sold to pay for their theft. The Stolen animal is found alive in their possession, whether ox or donkey or sheep, they must pay back double. If anyone grazes their livestock in a field or vineyard, lets them stray and they graze in someone else’s field, the offender must make restitution from the best of their own field or vineyard. So here we just get the principle of justice, of fairness again, and so we reveal God’s justice in these sorts of laws, there’s this desire to see all treated equitably, and to consider all factors, even in situations like these, like how much was the thing worth that was being stolen? So anyone who causes anyone else loss, must make restitution, taking into account things like intention and negligence, Even so, it is clear that we have a responsibility to protect one another’s belongings. I mean, we need to be careful like you didn’t think this was in Scripture, but here it is right. Right? We need to be careful when we borrow things from other people, like you borrow their snow blower yesterday, okay? You gotta make sure you return it in the same condition. That’s what it looks like to love your neighbor. Surely, these principles also affect how we do business. Like, are we doing anything in our business that deprives others financially, that’s a no go. Scripturally speaking, I know we’ve got this saying in culture, buyer beware. That’s not a scriptural idea, right? It’s actually seller beware, because you’re going to stand before the living God one day and give an account for what you did critically, though, we are reminded here that life is more important than property. Did you notice that? So if you got somebody who’s breaking and entering and they’re killed at night, that’s not murder, the homeowner isn’t guilty. Why? Because it’s dark, and so he can’t tell what the guy is up to. He doesn’t know if he’s just trying to steal the silver, or if he’s trying to murder everyone in their beds. But once the sun comes up, you catch a thief breaking and entering during the day, then you can tell that they’re only there to steal, and it’s better that he lives and you lose mere stuff. And that bothers some of us who got a sense of justice, but it shouldn’t, right? I mean, property is less important than life. I remember hearing a story this was down when I was on the mission field, but I remember reading it, and couldn’t possibly find it, but it was a group of kids, you know, teenagers who are messing around in somebody’s car on their property, bigger piece of property, and stuff like that, and the owner just started shooting at them and killed one of the kids, and everyone kind of went, well, that’s why you don’t trespass. No, no. Scripturally speaking, that’s not it at all. It was during the day. Wasn’t even in the home. That’s wrong, and we got to see that here. But there is a gospel motivation that’s that’s here at the same time. I mean, can you think of someone who went from thief to generous servant after meeting Jesus? I’ll give you a hint. He was a wee little man, Zacchaeus, right? He is our model here, because what happens when he meets Jesus is he changes from wanting more for himself to wanting what’s best for others. Because that’s what the gospel does in us, and I love too, that the aim in all of this is restitution and even restoration, like the whole reason you make restitution is that the relationship can be restored. The aim isn’t punitive, which is very different from how all our culture addresses this, which is why our culture has mass incarceration at a rate just unheard of anywhere else in the world. So T des Alexander and his commentary on Exodus shares the story of a man named Greg Vaughn and what this looks like. So a couple of boys, middle school boys, had stolen one of the golf carts that belong to this business and wrecked it and whatnot. And they actually got a chance to sit down. So Greg Vaughn actually talked to the boys who stole the golf cart. They both spoke about the situation, what it meant. The boys saw how it affected others and apologized, and then spent the summer working for free for the company to pay back what they had done. Like, that’s it. That’s what being talked about here, restitution and even restoration. All right. Next big section then is religion, and it is a big section, Imma pick up in verse 16. Read 16 to 20, and then I’ll drop down a little bit. So here’s 2216 to 20. If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married, and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride price, and she shall be his wife. Her father absolutely refuses to give her to him. He must still pay the bride price for virgins. Do not allow a sorceress to live. Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal to be put to death. Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed. Alright, drop down and read chapter 23 verses six to 12. Now, do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge, and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. Do not accept a bribe for a bribe blinds those who see and twist the words of the innocent. Do not oppress a foreigner. You yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners. Because you were foreigners. In Egypt for six years, you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year, let the land lie unplowed and unused, then the poor among you, or your people, may get food from it. The wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. Six days, do your work, but on the seventh day, do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be. Be refreshed. And then verse 14, three times a year you are to celebrate a festival. To me, and these are festivals that we covered a little bit earlier. So scattered verses right there. I understand it, but I put them all under the heading, religion. Why? Because here’s how scripture defines religion, and it’s also the best way to understand this section. James one, verse 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. That’s what we see in this section. To live in light of grace, in light of God’s character, in light of His Holiness, is to live distinctly differently, and that’s what religion is. And so what’s a little confusing here is, biblically speaking, there’s no difference between crime and sin, like in the eyes of the state, absolutely, but in God’s eyes, no, there’s no difference between crime and sin, and so that’s why they kind of get blended together in this section. It’s a little bit like Joseph. You remember Potiphar, his wife is trying to seduce him, and he refuses her advances. Why? He says this? How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against Potiphar. But he doesn’t say Potiphar. He says God, right? He said, Yes, this would be a crime against Potiphar, absolutely, but it really would be sin against God. So this section begins with personal piety in the in the words of James, keeping yourself from being polluted by the world, and that begins with our sex lives. And so here we are dealing with fornication, seduction. This is consensual. What we’re talking about here. There still is an issue. I mean, this guy is stealing from the woman, for sure. That’s where the bride price comes in. This is what was paid so that if the husband dies. I mean, this is basically life insurance, like, that’s what it is. It’s her money that she then has to live on. So he needs to make sure that she’s taken care of. Still, maybe they get married, but then maybe not, because otherwise, if your dad said no, you could just and, boom, you get to get married. So No, Dad can still say no, but the bride price is still paid, because she’s probably not going to get that otherwise at this point. Now look, this kind of personal piety and stance against pre mortal sex like this is not our culture’s strength. I just read recently that we spend more money on porn than we do on pro baseball, basketball and football, that’s telling. Isn’t it probably going to change, because we’re all gambling on sports now, because our culture is really healthy so but anyway, that’s where we are now. Premarital sex, cohabitation are just norm, right? Just par for the course. This is what it looks like. Apparently, I got news for you guys. The Seventh Commandment is still in effect, but you shall not commit adultery. And then, even worse, Jesus said, and here’s what that means, by the way, not even supposed to look lustfully at other people. Never mind all these other ways to sin sexually. God still calls us to personal purity. And so here’s this bold stand that we can take, cutting off our hand if it causes us to sin, but if the bold stand for our good, that we know that we’ve got all those statistics in place as well, that God calls us not to say a difficult No, but to say a better yes to sexual purity. Now, sexual immorality is a form of idolatry, of course, because you’re trying to find fullness elsewhere, apart from God, not resting in his love. And so that leads into this section on spiritual purity. Now sorcery and bestiality are both condemned because they’re both associated with pagan religions. And so again, we’ll be drawing us away from the source of life, which means the harsh punishments that are warned against here are a form of grace keeping you out of this danger zone. It’s like an electric fence that zaps you when you’re about to go somewhere you shouldn’t be because it’s going to kill you. But then we see that personal piety is inseparable from Social Justice back to James, right. So keep yourself from being polluted by the world, but also you got to look after widows and orphans in their distress. How we treat others reveals our heart, reveals our religion. So for example, how could they mistreat immigrants when they themselves had been mistreated immigrants like a couple weeks ago, as slaves in Egypt. And yet God saw, God cared. God had compassion, because that’s who he is. It’s interesting. Tim Keller, you. Use this illustration, I’ll modify it slightly, but you frequently have to introduce yourself. And what information do you give when you introduce yourself? It depends a little bit on the context. Of course, when I’m at soccer practice or something, usually it’s I’m Ceely’s dad or Brielle’s Dad, because that’s the important information about me, right? Then normally, though, something more like, I’m one of the pastors at Cityview, or whatever. Well, so the Lord introduces himself in all sorts of different ways. We’ve actually gone through a lot of His Names in this series already, but look at this one in Psalm 68, verse five. This is one way God introduces himself when we think about justice. His name is the Lord, a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows. Is God in his holy dwelling. When you were fatherless, he adopted you when you were a widow. He wed you to himself when you were a stranger. He welcomed you because he has compassion on the vulnerable, if that’s who God is, and we are striving to be godly, what implications do you see? And this is significant, right? Because now we’re touching on issues that get debated in the public sphere regularly. Like the reminder I want to give us here is that when you’re entering the arena of politics, you have to think biblically, not politically. Most of us come at politics going, What does my team think about this issue? And since the other team is the spawn of Satan, I’m going to go with my team on this one. I wish I were exaggerating. That’s not how we approach this, especially because even just reading this section, like these four chapters, like I was reading this this week, going okay, so I probably can’t be a good Republican or Democrat, based on what I see of God’s heart in this passage. So we start biblically. What does God say about this issue? And then maybe we can start to look at politics and most likely, as I said many, many times before, and we’ll say until I die, right here in this pulpit, that means we’re going to be a prophetic minority within whatever party we associate ourselves with. We’re going to call out the places where the party we support is not biblical, but we see this special care for societies vulnerable, which is why we then get starting In Chapter 23 so many laws about the judicial system, because this is how you protect the weakest. It’s necessary for godly society. Isn’t this why justice has scales after all, right, balancing the evidence. Justice also has a sword, which is meant to symbolize reason, but also, of course, the power to punish, and then justice is blindfolded. Why? Because justice needs to be impartial. Otherwise, the rich and the powerful are always going to be the ones who get off and the poor are always going to be the ones who suffer. So once again, we can’t separate personal piety from social justice. And you see that even when we get to the religious festivals, I mean, look, we were talking about the Sabbath. We’ve already talked about the Sabbath. Why are we going back over the Sabbath? We know we’re supposed to rest, except that even the Sabbath isn’t just for you, like here, the Sabbath is for your animals and the poor, those who work for you. Like, here’s a thought, a biblical thought, when you think about work life balance, do you think about the work life balance of those under you also, like, I’ve seen this. I got somebody who’s missed journey group recently because his bosses are making him work so many hours during the holiday season. It’s cruel and it’s unbiblical and it’s wrong. Now we’ve already said before, so I won’t say a lot here, but just quick reminder all of this. We get the need to establish weekly and yearly rhythms so that we remember remember the gospel, including rest. Now I just skimmed across a handful of specific case laws in this sermon. And even there, we just did behavior. We didn’t even address the heart stuff. How you feeling after reading all this? Not good, right? It was a heavy sermon, burdensome. Which is not good, not my aim as a preacher, usually, but we are living in a broken world, broken by injustice, and it’s broken because we broke it, and then we go on breaking his laws. Outwardly, sure, but certainly inwardly, even after we experience grace, what hope do we have? We gotta go back to the part I skipped, what happens right before we get all these laws. So flip back Exodus 20. Let me read verses 22 to 26 Then the Lord said to Moses, tell the Israelites this you have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven. Do not make any gods to be alongside me. Do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold. Make an altar of Earth for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, your sheep and goats and your cattle wherever I cause my name to be honored, I will come to you and bless you. If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dress stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it and do not go up to my altar on steps, so your private parts may be exposed. So here we get laws for the construction of the altar. They are primarily focused. You can see there, even in the context on worshiping God alone, no other gods. That’s probably why we get some of the restrictions we get, because in pagan rituals, they used fancy altars and it was lewd at the same time. So that’s why those parts are in there. But what’s the most important part of the altar? What was offered on it, right? It’s whole perfect, like what happens on the altar. So before we even get the laws, God is pointing out you’re going to need sacrifice to atone for sin and to offer your thanks, because you have been set right with God. So there’s this implicit recognition that Israel would go on breaking laws, and so God says, here’s how you’re going to deal with that. There’s this reminder right here at the beginning, we need grace and not law. What happens at the altar in a sin offering, the sinner would lay his or her hands on the animal’s head. This wasn’t magic, like transference or something like this, just an implicit identification with the animal, everything that was mine I’m now putting on you. Then the sinner would slit the animal’s throat, splash the blood against the sides the altar, and burn the animal on the altar. Every part of this reminded the sinner that animal is dying in place of you, like God accepts this sacrifice as atonement for sin for a time, and we don’t do this any longer. We got no Altar here. Why? Because all of this points forward to Jesus, the sacrifice who was offered once for all time, every broken law punished in his broken body, and that’s what I want you guys to remember today, like our big idea, our takeaway is this, the only hope for the broken and breaking, like the broken and law breaking is the one broken for your sin. God knew we would go on breaking laws, so right after the 10 Commandments, even before he gets to the specific regulations, he makes a way to make atonement. And make no mistake, when Jesus goes to the cross, every sinner who trusts in him places, as it were, our hands on his head, because he is identified with our sin. We trade places. So as Luther points out, Jesus, then at that point, as he goes to the cross, He is no longer the spotless Lamb of God. He is, at that point, the greatest murderer and adulterer and thief and blasphemer. Whoever lived, he broke every verse in our passage today. Luther says he bears the sin of Paul, the former blasphemer, persecutor and assaulter of Peter, who denied Christ of David, an adulterer and murderer who caused the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord. He bears all the sins of all men in his body, not in the sense that he committed them, but in the sense that he took these sins upon his own body to make satisfaction for us. That’s why we don’t need an altar any longer. It’s not because we don’t sin, but because he already made atonement, and that’s why we’re no longer under the law, not because we can’t learn from it we can we saw that this morning, but because he kept it perfectly in our place. The only hope for the broken and law breaking is the one broken for your sin. In we remember that we strive to live holy, godly, just, compassionate lives for his sake, for the sake of the image bearers He died to save. Let’s pray. Father, we come before you, broken. And as law breakers, we freely confess that we have broken your good purposes for our lives, that we have transgressed your laws and sinned against you and against those around us. We know what our sins deserve. We have seen it in our passage this morning. We know that we deserve to die and to die eternally, but thanks be to God that you made a way for us to be made right with you by sending your son, the only perfect law keeper, to keep the law in our place and then bear our punishment, Lord, as we remember the gospel, as we are strengthened by the reminder of your great love and mercy And Grace, would you empower us to go from here zealous to keep your laws, to obey you as best we can in the strength of your spirit, for the glory of your name and the good of the world we’re seeking to reach, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.