“Altars, Slaves, Immigrants & the Death Penalty” (Exodus 20:22-22:31) | 2/16/20
Exodus 20:22-22:31 | 2/16/20 | Will DuVal
As we gear up for “trivia season” here in St. Louis, I wanna give y’all a little quiz. And I’ll warn you this is a LEGAL quiz. So, no copying off of Steve M or Bryan W. Ready?
In which country are you required by law to let someone in your home to use your restroom if they knock and ask? [SCOTLAND; Graham - now you know, when you go home to visit, JIC :-) ]
In which STATE is the Encyclopedia Britannica banned because it contains a recipe for making beer? [TEXAS; it’s also illegal to drink more than 3 sips of beer at a time while standing up. True story.]
Last one: in which state is it still law to tax extra any city whose mayor plays the piccolo? [MISSOURI! Fun fact.]
We humans can think up some pretty BIZARRE laws, can’t we? But as we’re going to see this morning, we’re in good company! Because if we’re honest, those of us at West Hills working our way through the Bible in a year together, just wrapping up Exodus and transitioning to Leviticus, have probably been left scratching our heads more than once in our recent quiet times.
But it’s not just the UNUSUAL OT laws that trouble us; we actually find all FOUR of our categories of tough texts we’ve been examining these past 7 weeks now within the OT law. We’ve identified 4 reasons WHY we might consider a passage of Scripture difficult: it might seem IRRELEVANT, out of touch with modern society, it may appear to be INCONSISTENT, with what we find elsewhere in Scripture; perhaps it’s PERSONALLY problematic; it unsettles or challenges us to the point of seeming unrealistic or untenable. Or lastly, a passage can be THEOLOGICALLY problematic: if this is really God’s word, I’m not sure how to feel about this kind of God. All FOUR of those categories show up, in Exodus 20-22 this morning. That’s where we’re gonna camp out. And as you turn there, let me provide some context:
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Israel is coming off the CLIMAX of their redemptive history, as a people, in ch.14 - the exodus from their slavery in Egypt, for which the book is named, when God parted the Red Sea. The single most important, defining moment in OT history. Then in ch.19 they have a literal “mountain top” experience with God - “Israel encamped before the mountain [Sinai] 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying... “‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’” (vv2-6) And the very next chapter, in probably the SECOND most famous passage in the OT: God delivers to them the 10 Commandments. This moment is SO weighty, SO holy, that even the MOUNTAIN can’t keep still; Mt. Sinai starts shaking, it’s on FIRE, there’s lightning, thunder, God’s voice booming like a trumpet; the people are down below in the fetal position, convinced they’re gonna DIE in the presence of such a holy God. But in v21, we hear that Moses DARED to “draw near to the thick darkness where God was”; we hear later that “the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” (33:11) This is UNPRECEDENTED, uncharted territory. Moses climbs the mountain, and this is what God has to say -
Would you stand… SCRIPTURE: Exodus 20:22-26; 21:1-6; 21:15-17; 22:16-27
20:22-26 -- “And the Lord said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. 23 You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. 24 An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. 25 If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. 26 And you shall not go up by steps to my altar, that your nakedness be not exposed on it.’
21:15-17 -- “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.
16 “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.
17 “Whoever curses[c] his father or his mother shall be put to death.
22:16-27 -- 21 “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. 22 You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, 24 and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.
25 “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. 26 If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, 27 for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body; in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.”
21:1-6 -- Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. 2 When you buy a Hebrew slave,[a] he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. 3 If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. 5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever. This is the word of the Lord.
Now before we dive in, one quick prefatory note: It bears mentioning that MUCH of the OT law we would NOT consider “tough” or controversial today. There are PLENTY of laws couched in between the excerpts we just read, that would universally be considered fair and important by even the most skeptical modern-day Bible critic. For example...
(21:18-19) -- Stipulates that in the case of assault, a man’s worker’s comp must be paid by his attacker. Good law.
(21:33-34) -- Mandates that a person must make restitution for accidentally killing his neighbor’s livestock. Sounds fair to me.
In fact, according to 22:1 -- If you’re caught stealing another person’s ox, you’ve gotta pay him back FIVE-fold, five oxen. That is a great theft deterrent!
(23:1) -- Don’t lie; (23:8) -- don’t take bribes
(23:4-5) -- If your neighbor’s donkey is lost or suffering, help it out. Even if you HATE your neighbor! These are undisputedly GOOD laws.
BUT OTHERS?! If we’re honest, leave us asking 2 questions:
1) Why was a law that THAT written in the FIRST place? Altars, slaves, the death penalty.... and
2) Why are they STILL in my Bible today? Even if it’s the OLD Testament, doesn’t 2 Timothy 3:16 claim ALL Scripture is God-breathed, “useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness”; how should I think and live and worship DIFFERENTLY, because of Exodus chs.20-22? Let’s find out...
Category #1 of tough text: Some OT laws seem IRRELEVANT. With EACH of these, we’ll examine an example or two from the text, I’ll attempt to EXPLAIN by answering the question “why is this in the Bible?”, and then we’ll EMPLOY it; apply this text to our lives today.
For an Example of the seemingly irrelevant, consider the altars of ch.20, vv22-26. There are LOTS of fun examples of laws in this category:
Exodus 23:19 - “You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk”;
Leviticus 19:19 - “You shall not wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.”
And of course, everyone’s favorite, Deuteronomy 25:11-12 - “When men fight with one another and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, 12 then you shall cut off her hand. Your eye shall have no pity.” Which begs the question: how often was this happening?! That it merited 2 verses in the BIBLE?! This is PRIME real estate! Not a WORD about dating… technology. But we know what to do, if 2 men are fighting, and one’s wife intervenes…
Well, unfortunately, we don’t have time to unpack ALL the various examples, but I do want to give you two explanatory principles that apply equally to them all: 1) THE BIBLE WAS WRITTEN FOR US, BUT NOT TO US. These laws were written 3,500 years ago. Dating didn’t exist because your parents had arranged your marriage by the time you hit puberty. They DID have technology, though - the wheel was becoming VERY popular. This was a VERY different time, place, people; so we should EXPECT the laws to seem… DIFFERENT. Strange.
But secondly, as we stressed in the first sermon of this series, on genealogies and tabernacle measurements, everything God included in the Bible is here for a reason, and therefore it really is important. Just consider our example from Exodus 20: altars.
Today, we read “An altar of earth you shall make for me... don’t build an altar of hewn stones… with steps...” and our eyes start to glaze over. But let me give you FOUR reasons why these laws concerning altars are so significant, and how YOU can “EMPLOY” these principles today.
1) MOST importantly, as OT scholar Douglas Stuart points out: “Altars were necessary for sacrifices, which were in turn necessary for worship.” And “Worship is the first and most basic response of any believer to his or her God.” (Douglas Stuart, NAC: Exodus, p474). If God was writing laws like this today, he might include sections on what constitutes appropriate worship in our churches. Finally settle some of our age-old in-fighting: drums vs. organ. Jeans vs. suits. The “frozen chosen” vs. spirit dancing in the aisles. And guess what, if God DID, I bet we wouldn’t consider those passages irrelevant, would we? So my application question for YOU here is: do YOU know what constitutes God-honoring worship today? Do you know how God wants to be worshipped? And do you DO it?
There’s a similar point being made in v26, with the priest’s “nakedness”: “In ancient times most people didn’t wear underwear… Stuart says, There was the risk that a worshiper's or a priest's genitals would be “exposed” to the altar, insulting God.” (Stuart, p475) And today, there is still a kind of “worship” that insults God. In short, friends, it is MAN-centered worship. Worship where WE are in the spotlight. I wish I could preach from the closet, to diminish this risk. We can debate styles and preferences, but there’s NO debating that many churches today have obscured the gospel somewhere under the cloud of smoke coming from their fog machine. If it feels like the Sunday morning experience was designed JUST for you, for your entertainment pleasure, it probably WAS. If the pastor glides to the stage on a ZIP-line; I am not making this stuff up! I wish I was. You are at a man-centered church. And there are far too many churches today figuratively flashing their genitals at God in their “worship”.
2) And yet there’s a SECOND way we can interpret the prohibition against STEPS leading up to the altar. It’s not JUST about preventing an insult of God; it’s about protecting the worshipper from SHAME. There’s a practical dimension here: if I was preaching commando in a knee-length robe, I’d stick to the floor too. God doesn’t want these priests to be distracted from their all-important task, because they’re afraid the front row has got a good view. He wants their minds and hearts UNDIVIDED, in attention and focus on HIM alone. How do we employ this? We examine ourselves. Ask yourselves this morning - “what am I thinking about, during the sermon? Do I let my mind wander?” WHO am I thinking about, during worship? Am I too self-conscious to raise my hands? Too worried about what the row behind me will think? “Woah, when did SHE become so charismatic?” Friends, King David danced naked through the streets of Jerusalem. Now, I’m not necessarily SUGGESTING THAT. Let’s all keep our clothes on. But ask yourself: “Who am I here for?” Not just in church. In LIFE - Who am I HERE for? Gal 1:10 - “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant[b] of Christ.”
3) Altars with elaborate craftsmanship and elevated platforms were common in the worship of false deities in antiquity. So these laws served to make Israel DISTINCTIVE. Application: Does YOUR worship cause YOU to stand out today? There is every bit as much difference, there SHOULD be, between biblical Christianity and our surrounding 21st c. American culture, as there was between OT Israelite worship and 15th c. BC Canaanite paganism. If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence, from your everyday life, to convict you?
4) Why does God specify that the altar stones must be “uncut” in v25. It’s to emphasize that NOTHING WE DO can bring us into right relationship with God; “the altar must be God’s and God’s alone.” (Stuart, p475) Application: do you trust that nothing you do is what brings YOU into right relationship with God, friend? We are THRILLED you’re here. But please know your church attendance does not put you right with God. Attending church is a great thing to do. But it doesn’t IMPRESS God. Let’s be honest, this is like, the very LEAST we can do, isn’t it? There aren’t enough “Hail Mary’s” in the world to atone for all your sins, all MY sins. There aren’t enough goats and sheep and bulls in the world. Hebrews ch10: “Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God… For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (vv11-14) Is Christ enough for you? Or are you still hewing your stones? Here’s a take-home activity for you: make a list of all your hewn stones. Everything that fills in this blank: “God will accept me when I ____ .” Friends, Jesus said, “It is FINISHED.” Accomplished. Christ has fulfilled the Law FOR you. You don’t have to try and hew the stones any more.
Category #2: Some OT laws seem INCONSISTENT.
The Example we read was the death penalty. It was prescribed in ch.21, vv15 and 17, for children who dishonored their parents. In v16: for human traffickers. In ch.22, vv18-20 - for sorcerers, for polytheists, in cases of bestiality. Deut 19:21 in cases of murder: - “It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” But doesn’t all this contradict Jesus, who says, ““You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matt 5:38-39)
And there are TONS of other examples we could point to - the OT Law’s prohibition against shellfish and pork, while Jesus pronounces all foods clean in Mark 7...
The simple Explanation here is JESUS CHANGES EVERYTHING. JESUS CHANGES EVERYTHING.
You’ve probably heard unbelievers criticize Christians for being hypocritical, following SOME of the Bible’s laws, but not ALL of them. We pick and choose. We’ll quote Leviticus 18:22 to prove that homosexuality is an “abomination”, but ignore the very next chapter that forbids a man to trim his beard. What that skeptic fails to understand is that NONE of the OT laws are in fact binding anymore. Why?
I’ve used the illustration before, but I think it’s fair and helpful. God is our FATHER. We had certain rules in our house, when my daughter was 2 years old, that are already obsolete now that she’s 4. Don’t try and change your own diaper. Hopefully, many of our rules in place TODAY will be irrelevant in another 2 years. Don’t ride the dog. Which will be different from the rules when she’s 8, 10, 12. So on.
Likewise, the Bible must be understood in context of its narrative development. It’s not that these OT laws were BAD; they served an important function for thousands of years, as God’s people were growing up, or actually, this is where the analogy breaks down, because in ISRAEL’S case, it wasn’t that they graduated from the Law, by keeping it so well; just the OPPOSITE. In fact, the apostle Paul would explain in Romans 5 that the very PURPOSE of the Law was to show people their SIN; their inability to keep the Law. And yet, even at their LOWEST point as a nation, in exile, suffering God’s righteous judgment for breaking His Law - Jer 31; Ezek 36 - God promises his people a NEW covenant, a new HEART, a new SPIRIT. A Savior from their sin. And in the new TESTAMENT, Jesus explains that he saves us NOT by “abolishing the law”; NO! - not one jot or tittle of the Law will pass away until all is FULFILLED, he says. THAT’s what Jesus did, he FULFILLED the Law’s righteous demands that we couldn’t. And then voluntarily traded HIS perfect righteousness for our unrighteousness in his substitutionary death in our place on the cross.
So now we hear in the NEW testament, the NEW covenant, that:
Rom 7:6 - “now we are released from the law”; that:
Heb 8:13 - “In speaking of a new covenant, [God] makes the first one obsolete.”; that:
Gal 3:24-25 “the law was our guardian until Christ came… but now we are no longer under a guardian”
So Tom Schreiner explains: “None of the commands in the Old Testament are binding, because that whole covenant has passed away. So really the question is, why do we keep ANY of the commands of the Old Testament.” (“Do Christians have to obey the Old Testament Laws?”, Honest Answers, Dec 13, 2017)
And Schreiner answers: “We are now under the “law of Christ” (Gal 6:2; 1 Cor 9:20-21). The law of Christ is the law of love (Gal 5:14; Matt 22:37-40). What does love look like? Well, if you love, you honor your father and mother. If you love, you don’t steal. If you love, you don’t murder… So some of those commands from the Old Testament continue. They’re required today because the New Testament indicates that they’re part of the law of Christ. So we’re not being arbitrary and picking out the commands we want to obey. We’re being faithful.”
Employ: But here’s your application point to employ: you need to go home, and immerse yourself in these OT laws, and let it lead you to a profound sense of awe, and gratitude, and WORSHIP, both that Jesus was actually able to pull it off - 100% human, and he never sinned once. 613 OT laws, and the scoreboard was Jesus: 613; sin: 0. But even more than that, revel in the truth that a guy like that would trade his righteous standing with God to bear the sins of pathetic screw ups like you and me. And that means we don’t HAVE to stress over the law anymore. Go home, read Leviticus, and praise GOD that your worship experience today didn’t have to involve sacrificing your pet on an altar. Because without Jesus, it WOULD have; that’s how serious your sin is, to a holy God, friend. Praise GOD we don’t have to march down to the kids wing with stones this morning, because let’s be honest, every single ONE of those kids has disrespected y’all, probably since they arrived in the BUILDING this morning! “I don’t WANT to go to church,” and he hits you; BOOM! Exodus 21:15 - he shall be put to DEATH. “You won’t let me have another donut?! I HATE you!” BOOM! Exodus 21:17 - put to DEATH. Praise God, that Christ has fulfilled the Law.
Category #3: Some OT laws seem PERSONALLY PROBLEMATIC.
Examples: protections for sojourners (22:21; 23:9), orphans/widows (22:22-24), and the poor (22:25-27; 23:6-7)
Stuart notes: “No government welfare system existed in Israel. It was the responsibility of the covenant community - each Israelite - to contribute his share of the welfare burden personally… to treat all those in need or of limited resources as brothers and sisters, as family members.” (p.518)
He continues: “each of these types of persons lacked one or more types of protections otherwise afforded within society. Aliens lacked the guarantees of citizenship, which included the right to permanent land ownership, the right to tribal backing in legal disputes, etc. Widows also lacked direct legal participatory rights, since women were represented by their husbands in legal matters… If too old to work, they would have no means of providing enough food to eat without other members of the family intervening on their behalf....” (p519-20) Orphans - you get the picture. Israel was commanded to collectively take care of those who couldn’t independently care for themselves. Those “at risk”.
The Explanation is pretty straight-forward here. This is CLEARLY a case where the new covenant “law of Christ” demands our continued intervention, on behalf of our needy brothers and sisters.
James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction”
Don’t forget James 2, from 2 Sundays back: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good[b] is that? 17 So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Jesus, in Matthew 25:40 “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers - [ feeding them, clothing them, caring for them] you did it to me.”
So the REAL question is simply: will we Employ it?
Will we, Isaiah 1:17 ““Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow’s cause,””
Micah 6:8 “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?””
Amos 5:23-24 “Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
-So if you know someone in need this morning, and you haven’t done anything to help them yet, you should skip our last worship song at the end here in a few minutes, because God’s not gonna listen to your singing anyway, and go help that person instead. THAT is true worship.
God clearly says here, “If [the poor] cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.” (22:27) Do WE hear their cry today? And will we answer it?
Lastly, Category #4: Some OT laws seem THEOLOGICALLY PROBLEMATIC.
The must notable example from our reading this morning was slavery , in ch21, vv1-11; also in these chapters, 22:16 “If a man seduces a virgin[e] who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price[f] for her and make her his wife.”; I’ve also already alluded to what has become one of the most controversial OT laws in OUR day - Lev 18:22, God calls homosexual acts an abomination.
Listen: I could try and explain these controversies away. Take slavery - I could explain that the word used for “slave” can also simply mean “worker,” “employee,” “servant”. That forced slavery was prohibited in the Law, but an Israelite could sell himself and his wife into slavery due to poverty of debt (Lev 25:39; Deut 15:12; 2 Kgs 4:1; Neh 5:5), a term of servitude limited to six years (Ex 21:2). Thus it was more like indentured service. NOT like the old chattel slavery of the American South. Further, a master was obligated to provide for his servant upon his release (Deut 15:13-14).” (Walvoord and Zuck, TBKC: OT, p141) Indeed, the law reflects the fact that when obediently practiced, Israelite service could be so beneficial to a worker that he or she would choose to enlist for a lifetime with the same employer (21:5–6).” (Stuart, p477)
But at the end of the day, there’s no way of getting around the fact that God’s law allowed for human beings to OWN each other. And that’s pretty problematic, for most of us, in 21st c. America. Because FREEDOM and individual autonomy are our chief virtues, so their OPPOSITE, enslavement, becomes the worst sin imaginable. But Paul calls us “slaves to Christ” in Romans 6, so the question we have to ask ourselves, friends, is “Are we going to impose our 21st c. values on the BIBLE, or are we going to trust GOD when he says:
Explanation: “MY WAYS ARE HIGHER THAN YOUR WAYS, declares the Lord”. (Isa 55:8-9) That God had his reasons, he was SO condescending, and accommodating for our utter sinfulness, that God would even adapt his law to make room for things like slavery, polygamy, the death penalty. Because he knew we needed that, 3,500 years ago.
How do Employ this? We Trust Him
CONCLUSION:
What do we do with the OT Law? We let it drive us to the GOSPEL!! Impress 1) God’s holiness, 2) our sinfulness, 3) Christ’s sufficiency, and 4) the beauty of salvation by faith alone…