And then flip over to Exodus 21 verses 22 through 27. This brings us to the end of a section on offenses man against man. And you'll notice, if you look at verse 28, it begins talking about ox, if an ox gores a man. So we'll start that, Lord willing, not next Sunday evening, because Andrew will be preaching next Sunday evening. It'll be in the new year, Lord willing. So Exodus 21, verses 22 to 27. If men strive and hurt a woman with child so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow, he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, Stripe for stripe. If a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free for his eye's sake. If he smite out his man's servant's tooth, or his maid's servant's tooth, he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake. Amen. So why did I open with Jude? because I want to, at the beginning and the end of this sermon, bring you to something of a reminder of why we look at all of Scripture. Let's say somebody stumbled in here tonight and heard me preaching on Exodus 21, verses 22 to 27 on the Sunday evening before Christmas. They would probably think, what in the world? is going on with these people. But you notice in Jude's charge, where he tells why he wrote, that it was necessary to write to them concerning the fact that they need to earnestly contend for the faith. Now, what is the faith? If you look at Jude, and we'll come back to it at the end, but if you were to look at Jude, he doesn't give you a list of things that comprise the faith. He goes through various Old Testament incidences and also what they are to expect of people in their own age. So I think we can combine Jude's exhortation to think of the faith in the way that the Apostle Paul does. Right? Because the same spirit was behind Paul's writings that was behind Jude's writings. And Paul describes the faith or the work of the ministry as one that proclaims the whole counsel of God, the whole word of God, we might say, all the teaching of Scripture. Because, as Jude says, some creep in. unaware to distract us, to lead us astray. Yes, we know their condemnation was appointed a long time ago, before time began, but we still must be ready. We must be those who know how to think. And God gave us a whole book, so we're going to look at it from start to finish so we can be whole men and women of the faith. So, verses 22 to 27, as I said, this is the end of 10 crimes, starting back in verse 12, end of 10 crimes that are man-on-man, or human-on-human, you might say in a more modern sense, because you see women are also involved in these crimes as well. Well, what is the crime, or the two crimes, that we'll consider tonight? The first is the crime of When men brawl, fight, right, the fight or struggle is not condemned, it's the result itself, right? It's the result that happens if the fight leads to the woman giving birth prematurely. That's what the New King James says. It's clear that, I mean, just from a simple reading of the text, it's a pregnant woman who is harmed in some way through this altercation between two men. And it's also clear that it's unintentional, right? That there was no attempt by the man to harm the woman, because if it was, then the punishment would be differently. You can tell, I think, reading the context, and also if you read the commentators, they assume the same thing, that if men are brawling and they hurt a woman, that is unintentionally. If a man was fighting a woman, that would be a different story, different laws, different cases. But what happens if this issue occurs and she either gives birth or a more literal reading of the Hebrew, maybe you have a footnote that says this, it says, her children come out. The fruit comes forth, is the idea, like she's taken from being pregnant to no longer being pregnant because of this altercation between these two men. What happens? Well, the first, if there is no mischief, is what the King James calls it, the New King James calls it harm, If there's nothing that follows, it appears to be that the husband imposes something on the man himself, and he can get the judges involved if necessary, right? There is a punishment, and it's based upon what happens as a result of this brawl. That's why the famous law principle, lex talionis, is brought in in verse 10. 23 and 24 and 25 to show that the crime must be met by a just punishment. And the husband would be involved in this. Now there's debate over why that is. Is it because it assumes that the woman dies? Is it assumed that the baby dies? Is it assumed that both? Well, I don't think it's assuming anything. That's why it gives you the principle at the end that whatever the crime is, whether it be life, eye, tooth, burn, whatever the case may be, whatever the value is, then the husband is able to aid the judges, we'll get to that in a moment, in determining what this punishment would be and to prosecute it. The husband would not prosecute it himself. This is why the judges begin to be involved. But if the child is born prematurely, it seems that if something were to happen to the mother, some mischief, there would be punishment for that as well. This is not like the crime for the slave, where if he gets up and walks away, nothing happens, right? If the woman is caused to have the child prematurely, as the New King James says, even though no harm follows, there will still be a punishment. You think about it back then, premature birth is risky enough now. Think about it back then, right? It would have been even more risky. There would be punishment for that as well, even if it was not death, because if nobody died in this case, then you would not take a life for a life because there would be no life to take. But with the adult in mind, right? If you're talking about, as it just relates to the woman who gave birth to the child, there would be other laws that would be brought to bear as well. Now, Think of this as it relates to crime today, and we have something like this that occurs. Think of like a car wreck or something where a woman is killed who's pregnant. He's gonna be tried based on her and the baby she was carrying, right? It's a double crime, if you will. If the child suffers in any way, there's to be punishment on behalf of both. And that's what the idea is here behind this, this judgment. It's not a law, it's a judgment to be rendered based upon a case that might come up. Now the judges are also to get involved. This is another disputed term at the end of verse 22. It could also be translated something like judgments. It's just a plural noun and it's very similar, almost identical to that same word that you have when the word judgment is used. There are certain commentators who use it as a referent to Jethro. Remember in Exodus 18, when Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, came down from Midian, and he helped Moses establish these councils of elders, if you will, in order to help Moses with all these judgments he's rendering. It's the same idea, the same words are used in several of the places. And these judges were to be assistants to the husband in determining, or not just determining, but executing, or seeing to it that the punishment would fit the crime and that it would be done. Because let's say a powerful man gets into a fight with a less powerful man in society. or the less powerful man is the one whose wife is harmed, what can he do to ensure that the powerful man keeps his word or pays this man back? Well, probably nothing. That's why the judges have to be involved. It's possible that this word behind judges is one that refers to this common law tradition or other judicial authority. It wouldn't necessarily be, it doesn't have to be a council of judges. It would just be some kind of appeal that they made to a higher authority that would have helped them decide on the case, helped them to decide what is just. That is, if somebody didn't die, right? If they die, it's life for life. The referent back to Jethro, though, I think makes it the clearest. Historical note, the Code of Hammurabi is also equally concerned about liability for induced miscarriages. They had a crime or a punishment for that as well. But what they would do is there would be a determinant based on the person standing in society. It wouldn't be flat like it is here in Torah, but it would be based on the social standing of the injured Robert Alter is an Old Testament scholar, and he translates the end of verse 22, not he shall pay as the judge has determined, but he shall pay by the reckoning. That's just an interesting way of thinking of that. So what's a modern application of this? Abortion. Abortion. Now, it's by inference, not direct, verbiage, if you will. Let me see if I can get you there in your mind. What did the man deserve in the case if anything were to happen, even if it were an accident? Well, there's punishment rendered, right? Eye for an eye, life for life. There's an equal payment assumed in this, this lex talionis principle. What do you deserve if you intentionally Murder, another image bearer. A life for a life. You deserve death. If you unintentionally cause harm in this law, or this case, and just payment is required, how much more so can we say that if you enter into that sacred space of a pregnant woman and bring about death, do you deserve death, right? Abortion is, I don't think I have to convince you, murder. What do murderers deserve? Death, right? And this law connects it to this principle. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, et cetera, et cetera. The crime, the punishment must fit the crime. Any society who allows this to continue is, by definition, unjust, walking around with their eyes closed and asking the chief image bearer, if you will, or the image which we bear, God himself to bring down lex talionis on us, a just payment for the crime that we allow to be committed. As he, as Moses says in Leviticus 24, it's another reference that this law in verse 23, 24, and 25 is actually repeated in three places. in the Pentateuch throughout the first five books of the Bible. Leviticus 24.20 is one of those other places that says, as he has caused disfigurement of a man, so shall it be done to him. This eye for an eye principle. Deuteronomy 19.21 also says that this principle applies to be applied to false witnesses because being a false witness is a crime. One writer says, according to Numbers 35, 31, it is only from a willful murderer, and you're gonna be introduced to a new principle here, it's only from a willful murderer that it is forbidden to accept a ransom, a ransom. This implies that in all other instances, the taking of a ransom is permitted. Now, why do I bring that up? Because this assumption in verse 22 and 23 or verse 22 more specifically, is that even if something bad happens to the woman or the baby, it's unintentional. And there's debate over whether they could offer a ransom for their own life, right? It would be something like not just a life for a life, but the value of a life for a life. Because if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. And it's built into the Old Testament and other places where you could pay a ransom instead of being put to death or whatever the case may be, as long as it wasn't a willful murder. But if you knock out somebody's tooth, you see it even in the very next law. They don't turn around and knock your tooth out, right? It's an equal punishment, though it could be argued that losing a tooth for a tooth would be an equal punishment, or a hand for a hand. Now, that would be one good way if somebody chopped off somebody's hand, right, to turn around and chop theirs off too. You probably wouldn't do it again, would you? Or a burn for a burn. or a wound for a wound, whatever the case may be. It's not saying that it doesn't ever mean that, but that it doesn't only mean the exact words that it says, that it's also about the value of the thing that is lost. And you could, at times, pay your way out of it if you could afford it. But Numbers 35, 31 shows that if it's a willful murder, you cannot pay your way out of it because the death penalty, if you will, trumps this lex talionis principle. All right. Now, I've already hinted at verse 26 and 27. How might this apply to slave, this Lex Talionis principle, this equal punishment for the crime thing? All right, this is a safeguard given. You notice that if a man strikes the eye of one of his servants, male or female, and he destroys it, if he blinds them, more or less, then they would be let go free. Or if he causes one of their teeth to be knocked out, they were to be let go free. That is the punishment, right? The slave owner loses what he has paid for, all right? Well, what is this doing? Well, it's guarding the slave. It's protecting them from an abusive slave master, one who would beat their slaves ruthlessly. Jehovah himself actually determines the punishment, so we cannot, you know, say it's unjust. You might say, well, why doesn't the slave get to turn around and knock the tooth out? Well, the slave gets to go free. The slave gets to go free. You see in these laws a great, not just a recognition of slavery as a thing, but also a great concern for the slave, because his people had just been enslaved for so long under the Egyptians. But it's reflective of this principle laid out in 24 to 25, that the eye does not merely merit losing an eye. but there's an equal value, and God himself determines what that value will be if there is an abusive master beating his slaves. Now, as I said earlier, this section marks a completion of 10. If you were to go back at verse 12, you could count from 12 to 27, 10 different cases. That was also, in play, that number, if you will, with the Ten Commandments, and some would argue that God is giving these in sets of tens to help people remember. You know, if you looked at these all the time, these judgments would not be hard to memorize. God gave it to them in sets of ten. And if we're at the end of a section of judgments regarding man-on-man crime, Well, you might wonder, well, what's next, right? This is, let me take a side note real quick. This is one of the beauties of scripture to me. We can sometimes read scripture as if it's this random grocery list of things that God has thrown down, but it's written as a true work. It's literature. It's God himself pinning things in an organized way. So he used Moses to write these laws about man-on-man crime, and now he's going to move into the next section about when an animal, or we might say property, commits a crime against a man. And then the section after that will be crimes of property on property, or animals against animals, or whatever the case may be. And then lastly, at the end of this section of laws in the next chapter or so, there will be laws or judgments concerning humans against property. So you got man on man, and then property on man, and then property on property, and then humans or man on property. So how do you conclude or connect sermons like this in a way that makes them Christian, right? Because a Jew, more or less. Someone who holds to Torah or the Old Testament only rather than including the New Testament could stand up and teach you what these laws mean. Now, they may not do it in the right way, but they could read Exodus 21 and teach you at least what the surface level meaning of it is. How do we bring things like this together in a way that makes a sermon explicitly Christian, Spurgeon, I think it was Spurgeon, had a saying where he would say something like, if your sermon can be preached by a rabbi, then you are no pastor. That's a good, you know, a word of advice. You might shudder at the question when I ask, how can we make it Christian? But again, we can preach God's law in a way that makes us merely Jews or just people who treat the Bible as a book rather than God's holy word. Because the point is to bring us to the fullness of Christ. Now, this is one of the reasons I read Jude earlier. There aren't many truths under attack today more than one of the most basic of Christianity, the image of God. The image of God relates to so many things, right? The image of God has to do with man. It has to do with God. Whether it be laws in unbelieving society, perversions in the church, or confusion in the home, what it means to be made in the image of God is in need of recovery. judgments, I keep wanting to call them laws, but these judgments in these verses we've looked at, 12 to 27, deal with how God defends his image bearing people, if you will. His church in particular is going to bear his image to the world in a way that other people are not, because we're being restored to the image of God in a way that unbelievers, well, They absolutely are not being restored to the image of God. So when Jude wrote something like, I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith, did he have things like this in mind? The image of God seems very basic to Christianity. And as I said earlier, seeing that Jude did not give us a list of what the faith is, we'd be very well off, I think, to stick with the whole counsel of God. It's always worth defending. It's always worth studying. That's what Paul teaches us when he... says that the whole counsel of God is to be declared in the church. And I would encourage you tonight, like we read in Psalm 107, in the response of reading, we only read a portion of it, but that phrase, oh, that they would therefore praise the Lord for his goodness and declare the wonders that he does for the children men. It happens, I want to say, three times in that psalm. It may be more because that psalm is pretty long, but you see God laying these place markers in His Word. Do we notice these things, these teachings that aren't just, you know, always talked about? Or how we look at laws like this and we see the image of God being defended by God Himself, showing that He is unlike the gods of the other nations, caring for the slave in a way that that the other gods or kings or whatever the case may be, but even if you were to read Jude, you know, I think we all fight this tendency that we're kind of, our flesh wants us to be Marcians. where the Old Testament and the New Testament are separated, where it's not a full revelation of God, it's two separate revelations. And we struggle bringing the two together, right? It's a struggle we all have. Maybe it's just the culture we were raised in and the way the church has functioned for the last few generations in America. But if you were to pick through some places of Jude to show how the New Testament writers thought of the faith You'd be surprised, I think. I mean, because when he goes into defending the faith, he only spends 25 verses on it. He talks about the deliverance from Egypt, right? What does that have to do with the New Testament? Well, a whole lot. And we're talking about in our sermon series now, the deliverance from Egypt and what laws followed, how God established his people. And he talks about obscure things like angels who do not keep their proper domain. He talks about Sodom and Gomorrah, sexual immorality, eternal fire, rejecting authority. Michael, the archangel. Ooh, all right. Enoch, he talks about. He talks about, let's see, if you were to flip over to the end of Jude 1. I read this this afternoon and it, I mean, it literally made me shudder. It says, but you beloved, verse 17 of Jude, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their own godly lusts. ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, that is worldly or even soulish persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit. So you think the law of God is important? You think the whole teaching of Scripture is important, even the obscure places? I would say yes, yes. And I think we always need to be reminded of even the obscure places. We're going to, Lord willing, go through all of Exodus, verse by verse, as we've done from the beginning. Here we are, by the Lord's grace at chapter 21, verse 27, and by His grace, we'll continued at verse 28 in his appointed time. But this same teaching from Exodus is what filled the minds of the writers of the New Testament. They knew these things. They were up on them. They understood them. And when they wrote to the New Testament church, they did not neglect them. They had in mind all these old obscure teachings. and they lived in light of them. And we need and have the forgiveness of sins in the Lord Jesus Christ, just as they did in the ages past. The same Savior that Jesus presented himself to be is the same Savior who the Old Testament is meant to lead us to. It's so profound when you read the Gospels and you see Jesus' altercations with the Pharisees and the Sadducees, those who held to Moses' teaching. Jesus says, no, you don't. If you receive Moses, you would receive me. And proof positive that you don't receive me or that you don't receive Moses is that you don't receive me. We too are the bond servants of Jesus Christ, as Jude calls himself, the servants or the slaves of Jesus Christ, gladly indentured to his service, loving his law because he is our king. He's perfect. He's just, and we need to understand the whole counsel of God, if we would be whole men and women of God. Amen. Let's pray.