Exodus 21-23: Case Law
The law at Sinai
Well I wonder if uv ever come across a law that just doesn’t make sense.
Here some of the strangest laws that are still being applied in the world today:
did you know its illegal in England to eat a mince pie on Christmas day?
I thought that’s when mince pies were supposed to be eaten!
England’s actually got a few strange ones. did you know that if you take a postage stamp with the queens head on it and you paste it on your envelope upside down, that’s a serious offence. That’s considered an act of treason?
America’s also got some very strange ones. I’ll just give you one:
Did you know that in the state of Iowa, in America, its illegal for a man with a moustache to kiss a woman in public?
And then justone more:
Did you know that in Samoa its illegal for you to forget your wife’s birthday?
I dunnowho that’s aimed to protect; the husband or the wife.
Well its easy for us to laugh at those laws and dismiss them as strange and irrelevant.
But we feel a bit more uncomfortable when it comes to laws in the Bible. How do we feel about laws like Exodus 23 verse 19: do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Or Leviticus 19:19 “do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Or verse 27: “do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.”
These laws sound just as strange and irrelevant to our lives today. And yet these are laws that are found in God’s Word.
And so as we come to the book of law that God gave to Moses in Exodus 20 – 23 I just wanna make a couple of introductory comments about how these laws apply to us today.
Number 1: we don’t need to obey God’s law in order to be justified before God. The Bible’s very clear that we are justified through Jesus and His death on the cross to take our punishment in our place. We cannot be justified through our own obedience to the law. This is very clear in Galatians 3 verse 10. All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who doesn’t continue to do everything written in the law.
If you wanna be justified by the law you’ve gotta obey everything in the law. No one can do that.
Clearly no one is justified by observing the law…”
And so you might be someone here this morning who’s just investigating Christianity. And as we work through these laws, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Please don’t think that by obeying these laws you can save yourself and earn acceptance with God. You’ve already failed. The Bible says: all have sinned and fall short of the glory and are justified freely by His grace.
Secondly, even for those of us who have already been justified by Jesus, still we are not required to obey all these laws. This is clear from Romans 7 verse 6. “By dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
And so that’s very clear we’ve been released from bondage to all these legalistic requirements of the law. We mustn’t go back to bondage under the law.
But then thirdly, for those of us who are already saved, we can use the law to guide us as we see to serve God. 2 Timothy 3 verse 16 says, “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
And that includes the law. You see, behind all these legalistic requirements, there are principles that reveal to us the rightesouness of God. And God’s righteousness doesn’t change. And so as we study these laws we can discern the principles behind them and use them as a guide as we seek to serve God.
So that’s what we going to be doing this morning. Last week we saw the motivations to obey the law. Today we gona be looking at the main principles in the law and how they apply to us. And the good news is you don’t need to trust in my discernment and my interpretation of these laws. God Himself has given us the summary of the law.
In fact that’s what Ntsiki read for us a few moments ago. The 10 commandments give us a summary of the 613 laws found in the book of the law. And then Jesus gives us an even briefer summary of the 2 main principles that lie behind the law.
I’ll just read it again: Matthew 22:36
“teacher what is the greatest commandment in the Law?
Jesus replied: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.
And so those are the two main headings for our sermon this morning. Firstly, Love God. Secondly, love your neighbor.
So firstly, love God.
This last week I was listening to a man named Vaughan Roberts who’s a well qualified scholar of the Bible. But he’s also a qualified law student.
And he was comparing this book of laws in Exodus with what he saw in other law codes (eg the ancient Roman law), and he was struckby the number of similarities and parallels that he found. But there was one key difference that jumped out at him. this is how he describes it:
“Most legal systems are effectively humanistic. They are invented by human beings to regulate behaviourbetween human beings….
“But God’s law is theocentric. It’s revealed by God and it’s concerned to regulate not just the horizontal plane (between us as humans), but also the vertical plane, our relationship with God.”
And so that’s the first thing we see about these laws. These are God-centred laws. And you can see that straight away even if you just glance through them.
One of the skills we got taught at Bible College was how to skim read a book. There so many books out there, you need to be able to skim read them to get the main argument. And this is one of the tips for skim reading a book: you must read the preface and the conclusion.Those are often sections we skip when reading a book. But those are the key sections to discover: what’s the heart of this book? What’s the main purpose? why was it written?
Well the same is true of this book of laws.
Just look at chapter 20 verse 22. This is the preface. Verse 22.
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.”
Now jump to the conclusion.
chapter 23 verse 13.
At the end of all these laws,here’s the conclusion. Chapter 23 verse 13: “Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.”
And then there’s instructions about the festivals Israel must celebrate to God.
Just jump down to verse 24. This is when they enter the land and dispossess the other nations. Verse 24.
“Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones . Worship the LORD your God…”
And soits not hard to see. at the beginning and the end you’ve got this focus on idolatry.
And in fact this isn’t something new.We’ve already seenit in the 10 commandments. what’s the first of the 10 commandments?
I don’t think that’s accidental.
The first command is “you shall have no other gods before me.”
You see, that’s the priority. It’s the first command and the greatest command.
No other gods. Only the LORD deserves our worship.
Now I doubt any of us have little gods of silver or gold that we bow down to or worship. But of course idolatry’s much more subtle than that.
Your idol can be good thing like family or work or a relationship or even gospel ministry. Those are good things. But they become idols when they take the place of God in your life.
Here some ways we can work out our idols.
Firstly, you can thinkwhat you love. Your idol is what you desire. It’s what you treasure. It’s what captures your excitement. Its what you live for.
It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning and motivates you for the day.
I confess for me, the idol I’ve often struggled with is sport.
It’s embarrassing to admit, but Ive sometimes been more passionate about watchinga sport’s gamethan about the glory of God and the beauty of His Word and the privilege of prayer. My cold and hardened heart has sometimes been more enamoured by the achievements of some sports star than by the wondrous deeds of the Lord.
May God have mercy on me. That’s idolatry.
Another way to work out your idol is to think about what you trust? Where are you looking for that sense of accomplishment? That feeling that you belong and that ur a somebody in the world.
Harold Abrahams was the British sprinter who won the 100 metresgold in the 1924 Olympics. And he’s more well-known because of his rivalry with Eric Liddel, made famous in the movie, Chariots of fire.
But listen to how he describes his attitude to sprinting. As he kneels down to start the race, this is what he says:
“I will raise my eyes and look down that corridor; 4 feet wide, with 10 lonely seconds to justify my existence.”
Well that’s a very honest confession. But isn’t it tragic? His whole life became about sprinting. That’s what he was trusting in: 10 seconds to justify his existence.
What are you trusting in to justify yourself.
I know for me it’s often my reputation: I want people to like me. I want people to praise me. That’s an idol.
Another way to work out your idol is to think about what devastates you. Or what makes you excessively anxious?
This is how Tim Keller puts it:
“A sure sign of the presence of idolatry is inordinate anxiety, anger or discouragement when our idols are thwarted. So if we lose a good thing, it makes us sad, but if we lose an idol, it devastates us.”
And so this calls for self-examination. I’ve just given a few tests. But each of us must examine our own hearts: are we unswerving in our devotion to God. That’s our chief duty as God’s people: to worship God and to keep ourselves from idols.
But now I want you to see: it’s not just the content of these laws that reveals a God-centredness. It’s not just that they command us to worship God. It’s also the manner in which they given. Just look at chapter 20 verse 22 again.
Notice how it starts. Verse 22.
“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 god’s to be alongside me…”
And so right at the start God emphasizes that these laws are coming from Him. He has spoken them.
And the reason why that’s important is because these laws are gonabe written down so that future generations can read them.
And there’s a big difference between receiving a command from a person and reading a law on a piece of paper
But right at the start God makes it clear: even though these laws have been written down. This isn’t just an impersonal list of rules. This is something personal. These laws comes from the very mouth of God.
And so this brings a God-centredness to all of these commands. Not just the ones about worshiping God. All of them.Even the ones about how you treat your neighbor and how you treat your slaves and how you treat your parents. At the heart of it, all of them are about God, because they are His personal words that come from Him?
And so this is the true definition of sin: it’s a personal rebellion against God.
You might have heard the story of Simon Wiesentauf, one of the few Jewish men who survived the German death camps during the 2nd world war.
And in the final moments of the war, the Russians were coming in and Wiesentauf was about to be released. But before that he was quickly rushed into aroom. And therewas a young German soldier who’d been injured and he was about to die. But before he died, he wanted to speak to a Jew.
And so Wiesentauf was rushed into the room and presented to this German. And this young German man pleaded with him for forgiveness. He wanted a Jewish man to forgive him for what he’d done to the Jewish people.
And Wiesentauf just looked at this young man. And he thought to himself. And he looked at him for a long time. But then he just turned around and without saying a word he left this man to diein his guilt.
And after the war Wiesentauf wrote a book and he described this experience and he explainedwhy he didn’t forgive.
And it raised a massive ethical debate.
But this wasWiesentauf’s argument. He didn’t feel he had the right to forgive this man. You see, this man had tortured and killed many other Jews. Only they had the right to forgive. And they were all dead. And so according to Wiesentauf, there was no forgiveness for this man.
And if you think about it, he’s got a good point.
Imagine going to a rape victim and saying: you know what I’ve decided to forgive the man who raped you.
No You can’t do that! You don’t have the right to forgive.
Only the one who’s been offended against has the right to forgive the offender.
And so Wiesentauf had a point. But here’s the thing Wiesentaufdidn’t realize: whatever sin or crime we might commit, the person who’sreallybeing offended is actually God.
It doesn’t matter what sin it is, at the heart of it, sin is always first and foremost an offense against God.
That’s why in Psalm 51 when David has committed adultery with Bathsheba. He’s murdered Bathsheba’s husband. He’s guilty of both adultery and murder. And yet in Psalm 51 verse 4 he confesses to God. And He says: Against You, You only have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.”
You see that’s a God-centredattitude to sin.
All the commands come from the mouth of God. And so ultimately any sin commit is first and foremost and offence against Him.
And so this is something we need to cultivate in our lives: a God centeredness in all that we do. Andthe reality is that our hearts are like the wheels of a car. As we drive through life and we faced with the busyness and the temptations and the distractions of life, its very easy to be knocked off balance and to lose our alignment. And so We need to book in for a regular checkup. Make sure our alignment is right.
That’s why you’ve got laws here about the Sabbath: a weekly day devoted to the LORD.
You’ve got these annual festivals where the people must appear before the LORD.
These are all included in the calendar to keep the people centered upon God.
And we don’t need to keep these laws legalistically.But surely in the busyness of life, we also need daily times where we draw near to God. We need weekly times where we gather as God’s people. We need annual times where we attend a Christian camp or conference.
Unless we haveregular habits built into our routinewe in great danger of swerving out of line and losing our balance and ourcenteredness upon God.
So that’s the first and greatest summary of the laws: Love the LORD your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.
But then secondly, these commands are also about loving your neighbor.
And we can only do a brief survey here but basically chapter 21 verse 1 to 23 verse 12 can be divided into 3 main sections.
Firstly you’ve got chapter 21 verses 1-12 which is all about the treatment of slaves. AndSolangadid an excellent sermon on slavery a couple of weeks ago, Andif you missed it I recommend that you go and download it off our website. It’s a much more thorough treatment of the subject.
But the important thing to remember here is that Slavery was a common practice in the ancient world. And the fact that God gives commands about it doesn’t mean that He commends it or that He prescribes it. Rather He gives these commands to regulate it. And Leviticus 25 verse 39 makes it clear: God is opposed to slavery and He forbids his people from enslaving one another. But the reality is that because of the hardness of the people’s hearts and practice at the time, the people will own slaves. And so he does need to give these rules, not to approve slavery, but to regulate it.