Exodus chapter 21. We come to the part of Exodus that you've no doubt all been waiting for. As it goes through many different kinds of case laws, it makes the reader say, why? What does this have to do with anything? How is this relevant to the Christian life? So we're going to take a sampling of these laws. You'll find them in the references that I have there on the back of the bulletin. Exodus 20 verse 22 through 23 verse 33. We're not going to read all three of those chapters, but we are going to read from each of those chapters. So we'll start in chapter 21 and take a sample there. 21 verses 1 and 2. Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years. And in the seventh, he shall go out free and pay nothing. Skip down to verse 12. He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait, but God delivered him into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place where he may flee. But if a man acts with premeditation against his neighbor to kill him with guile, you shall take him from my altar that he may die. He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death." And then verse 23, if any lasting harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Chapter 22, verse 1, if a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep. Chapter 22, verse 21, you shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. Chapter 23, verse 10. Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but in the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove. Verse 14, three times you shall keep a feast to me in the year. And then verse 20, Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for My name is in him." And then, verse 32, You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you. And then into chapter 24, let's just read the title here. 24 verse 3, Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words which the Lord has said, we will do. Down to verse 7, then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, all that the Lord has said, we will do. and will be obedient. And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold, the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words." Thus far, the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Father, give us the strength to listen to Your Word. Now, we have before us new ideas, new thoughts, things that are not familiar to most of us. Lord, give us the grace to understand and to benefit spiritually from what is in this section of your Word. Above all, show us your righteousness. Show us that we are to serve you with justice toward one another and with piety toward you. Help us to love you better and to love our neighbor better because of what we see about your character in this Book of the Covenant. We pray these things, Father. In the name of Jesus, Your Son, Our Lord. Amen. So we have a whole bunch of laws and regulations. I tried to give you a fair sampling of the contents of each section of this Book of the Covenant. As you can see, it is called the Book of the Covenant, right in the text in chapter 24. Moses got the contents of these chapters from God on Mount Sinai, and then he brought them down, read them out loud to the people, and said, the Book of the Covenant. If you are to be in covenant with God, if you are to be in a sovereignly administered relationship with God, here is how you must behave. These are the laws that govern the behavior of God's covenant people. And the people said, these are good laws. We will obey them. Now we, 3,600 years later, 3,400 years later, hear these words and we say, I don't get it. This is a hard slog. I'm going to start flipping pages. And I may not stop until I'm past Leviticus. Oh, that's numbers. I think I'll keep flipping. I don't think we should do that. God told his people these laws in order to reveal something about himself. Remember, Exodus is the book of the knowledge of God. We start at the beginning where Pharaoh says, I do not know the Lord. God says, oh, you don't know me. Let me introduce myself. Here are 10 plagues, Pharaoh. And now the people have heard God speak from Sinai with the Ten Commandments and said, yes, we want to be God's people. And God says, all right, if you want to be my people, here's how you have to live. To be the people of God requires a distinctive way of life, requires distinct moral precepts that guide our decision making, both in terms of how we relate to one another on the horizontal level and how we relate to God on the vertical level or the vertical plane. So if we look at the Book of the Covenant, which we're just about to do, we'll see that really the precepts orbit around two themes. The first is human justice. How to be just in our dealings with one another. The second theme is divine piety. How to worship God rightly. how to honor God as we approach him. These correlate exactly with what Jesus spoke of as the two great commandments, to love our neighbor, to love God. So justice on the human level is how we love our neighbor. Piety towards God is how we love God. The Book of the Covenant tells us how to do this. The Ten Commandments give the high level moral precepts. The Book of the Covenant takes those high-level moral precepts and gives us scenarios in which God's righteousness is displayed. It's easy to say, okay, the law demands perfection. I'm in a situation that is so screwed up, so far from perfect, that I have absolutely no idea how to even start in this situation. That's what the Book of the Covenant is about. That's why we have all of these scenarios in which things are already massively messed up. What do you do then? Right, God addresses, say for instance, in chapter 21, verse 7, if a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, we've got this scenario, which we would regard as a very, very messed up scenario. where a man has gone out and bought himself a wife and then decides that she's not the one and he buys himself a different wife. All right, how do we begin to keep the law of God in this scenario? Well, God presents a worked example to say here's the right thing to do in this scenario. What he ends up with is the woman still has to be provided for or set free for nothing. Those are your two options. If you buy a wife and then decide you don't want her, either you take care of her the rest of her life, or you let her go out for nothing. But you do not put her out in the back pasture to starve. That's not acceptable. And there's many, many other nitty gritty, less than perfect scenarios in these chapters where God says, this is how I want you to behave. I understand your life is screwed up. I get it. I know where you live. And I'm going to give you examples taken from everyday life to say, here is how to keep my law in a world that has gone mad. So the Book of the Covenant reveals the righteousness of God. And it does so by shaping the justice of God's people and the piety of God's people. The Book of the Covenant tells us how to love God, how to love neighbor. That's why it's worth our consideration. Let's look first at the structure of this Book of the Covenant. It's a pretty cool mirror structure, a chiasm as the scholars call it. after the letter chi, or x, whereby it starts and ends with the same topic. And then it addresses the same topic just before the ending and just after the beginning. And then it has another topic in the center. So what's the outer frame? Well, we talked about that last Sunday. The outer frame is the mediator and no other gods. That topic comes up right after the end of the Ten Commandments in chapter 20. God says, well, the people nominate Moses as their mediator. We talked about that last week. The people are afraid of the voice of God, and they say, Moses, you talk to God for us. We can't bear it. So Moses goes and talks to God, and what does God say? God says, you shall not make anything to be with me. Gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves. Mediator and no other gods. That's the topic with which the Book of the Covenant opens. It also closes with that same topic at the end of chapter 23, where God speaks of sending his angel in front of the people. That's the mediator, the angel of the covenant, otherwise known as the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have, it starts with the mediator and no other gods, and then God says, I'll send my angel before you, Chapter 23, verse 24, you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars. Mediator and no other gods. This book of the covenant is premised entirely on the idea that Jesus goes into the Father's presence for you. God doesn't come to you on Sinai and say, here's the law, keep it. You're on your own now. Yes, he comes on Sinai and says, here's the law, but then he says, I'm giving you my angel, a mediator. Someone who will teach you to keep this law. Someone who will intercede for you with me when you break this law. The law comes to us from the hand of Jesus. So where is Christ in these passages? Well we shouldn't look for him in the goring ox or some of the other things. He is the law giver who tells us how to behave. This law is the law of Christ. And so we can know Christ better by listening to the law that he gives us. The whole law, the whole book of the covenant is framed with references to the mediator. Major section is the judgments, starting at 21.1. Now these are the judgments which you shall set before them. These are rulings made by a judge. In Hebrew, mishpatim, made by a shafat. You can hear that shafat word in mishpat. That is judgments made by a judge, would be the closest English parallel. Different translations have ordinances, decisions, laws, judgments, regulations, case laws as translations. This is essentially what we would call common law, a body of court precedents that can be used in making decisions about new cases. And these judgments cover a lot of different things. But one of the most important things to notice is that they are written in the second person. Now, most of us don't read law books on a regular basis, but laws, in general, are written in third person. If anyone does this, he shall be put to death. These laws are written in the second person. Thus, chapter 21, verse 2, if you, by a Hebrew slave, It's all about God addressing his people. If you go and pick the revised statutes of Wyoming or the Code of Federal Regulations or the United States Code off the shelf at the courthouse, you will not find that it is Congress talking to you or the Wyoming legislature talking to you. If you, citizen, do X, then we will send our sheriff's deputies and do Y. It's not written in the second person, it's written in a third person. If he does this, he will suffer. But God speaks in the second person to say, this is all because you are my people. I am talking directly to you, Israelite. The law is not impersonal, it is personal. It is the Word of God addressed to His people. The inner frame, the center section, begins and ends with the same verse. Chapter 22, verse 21, You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Chapter 23, verse 9, You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. The whole middle of this section is about helping the oppressed. dealing with those who are strangers and sojourners. And God says, I brought you out of the land of Egypt. Thus, the first law in the collection is about slaves. Israel was a slave in Egypt. Slaves were not priority number one in the Near East. The Code of Hammurabi, which we'll talk about at various times, has the laws on slaves as the very last laws. in its ordering. But God makes the laws on slaves the first law and right at the center he puts these statements, you were strangers. Don't oppress strangers. And then he moves to days of worship in chapter 23 verse 10. Again, no longer speaking of justice toward human beings, but a piety toward God. Here's how you set up your week, your month, your year. Here are your holidays. Here are your Sabbath days. Here are the times you should take to worship the living God. God cares about how we spend our time. The calendar is organized around his works, the weekly cycle of creation, the yearly cycle of redemption. And that is what he tells his people. Here's the three holidays. Here's the Sabbath day. Keep these holidays to remember me as creator and to remember me as redeemer. This section ends with bring the first fruits into my house in verse 19, which brings up the question, how do we come into God's house? How can we bear to be in God's presence? The answer is the mediator. Behold, I send an angel before you. This angel of Yahweh is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the one who leads his people into the promised land. So the book of the covenant ends as it began, with the reminder of piety toward God through the mediator. That's a very brief overview of the structure of this book of the covenant. Let's talk about the meaning for a moment. What does this book mean? The first important point is that God's justice, God's righteousness is revealed in this book of the covenant. The book of the covenant says God takes care of his people. He provides a mediator. The book opens with the people saying, we can't bear the voice of God. God says, I will let you hear it from the lips of a man. Here's Moses, he'll be the mediator. Here's Jesus. He'll be the mediator. The voice of God is also a human voice. That's a pretty astonishing statement. But it's right here in Exodus. So God provides a mediator. And the other thing to notice is that God makes and keeps covenants. God enters a relationship with you and he doesn't say, I reserve the right to unilaterally leave this relationship whenever it's convenient for me. I reserve the right to stab you in the back because there is nothing you can do about it. I don't want to get too tangled up in foreign policy here, but our country and most other large and powerful countries have a very unfortunate habit of telling small weak countries, oh, we will definitely help you. And then when it looks like helping them might be too expensive, saying, never mind, we're out of here. God does not have that habit. God is large and powerful. He is the greatest of all beings. He is infinite, eternal, omnipotent. And he says, I will come to you and help you. But he never backs out. He never says, never mind, this is too much. This is too risky. This is too expensive. This is just plain tiresome. I'm out. When God makes a promise, He keeps that promise. When God says, I will enter a covenant with you, He stays in covenant with you. So, we can get so hung up on the details of the various laws in the book of the covenant that we forget the major point, which is that when God makes you His people, He keeps that promise. He never backs out. He never gives up. He never quits. He never says, never mind. He remains faithful because he cannot deny himself. We also see that God's justice applies to everyday things. Whose animals can graze where? How do you deal with a household servant who won't follow instructions? These things happen every day. But it also deals with cosmic things. Who can come into the presence of God? Who can dwell in the house of the Lord forever? God addresses that as well. The second thing we need to see is that being in covenant with God orients your whole life toward justice. The book of the covenant with its relentless focus on the everyday and less than perfect scenarios tells us that life is not about swinging everything to your own advantage. God's justice applies even in the most annoying of scenarios. Such as, there's a whole big section on when your neighbor asks you to store something. And then he comes to get it and it's gone. Right, that's never happened to any of us, surely. God cares about that. But God's justice also applies in that scenario. From celebrating holidays, to loaning out property, to accidental fires, God's justice has something to say about every part of human life. Domestic servants. This deals with domestic servants. How do you handle a cook or somebody who is in your employ living in your house? Law codes. Legislators and judges can't just make what they want to make. Say what they want to say. Their decisions are bound by God's justice. Animals and grazing. Your ox can't just roam where it wants and eat what it wants. It can't just gore people with its horns whenever it feels angry. God has something to say about that. Loaning property. God's justice applies when you loan and when you borrow. God's justice applies when you deal with immigrants. You're not allowed to just say, well, I feel this way about Mexicans, therefore my feelings are justified. No, your feelings are subject to the word of God. Holidays. There's an ungodly way to celebrate Thanksgiving, an ungodly way to celebrate Christmas, an ungodly way to celebrate Easter. And God cares about how you keep your holidays. So being in covenant with God orients the smallest parts of your life toward justice. Finally, being in covenant with God starts and ends with worship or piety. If you are in covenant with God, you have to keep God's day holy. Chapter 23, six years you shall sow your land and gather its produce, the seventh year you shall let it rest. Verse 12, six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest and the son of your maidservant and the stranger may be refreshed. Do your work, Then on the seventh day, take a break for the sake of the people and animals who work for you. Your ox, your donkey, the son of your maidservant, the stranger. Sabbath was made for man. God says you all need to stop running around like the chicken with its head cut off. Just stop. Rest. Take a break. The work will still be there on Monday. He's very forthright about that. Your life is framed by your relationship with God, and the Sabbath is a huge part of that. How is your time structured? Is your time all about you? Oh, today is another day where I serve me. And tomorrow is another day where I serve me. Or is there a day each week where you stop that cycle and say, today is a day where I serve God. Today is a day that's God's day, where I do God's thing, where I get to know God better, where I spend time with God. The book of the covenant insists that our time be set apart to the service of God and to the hearing of God's word. This whole book is something that God said to Moses and then Moses had to come down the mountain and read to the people to remind us Life is about hearing what God has to say. You need the voice of God. We've talked about this in Genesis 1. God created man in his own image and God blessed them and God said to them. It goes straight from creation to blessing to speaking. Man has never existed without the voice of God. We were not made to be on our own, to figure out on our own what we need to do. We were made to hear from the Almighty. Finally, the Book of the Covenant ends with the notion of sacrificing to God. And it also begins with the notion of sacrificing to God. Service to God is going to cost you. In those days, you offered a sheep or an ox. Some of you buy livestock on a regular basis. You know that you can't buy sheep or oxen for just five dollars. Sacrifices are expensive. Worship is expensive. Being in covenant with God costs you everything, but it also gives you everything. God gives you himself. But what he demands in return is yourself as exemplified by giving to him. In those days, you gave animals. Today, we give money to God. Either way, whether animal or money, it was just a substitute, a way of saying, God, I give you myself, and to show that, here's an ox. Here's a $100 bill. God is a righteous God. Our response to that needs to be justice toward one another, loving our neighbor, and needs to be worship towards him, loving our God. Love God, love your neighbor. That's what the people of God do. And they do it in situations that are far from perfect. And they do it by setting apart a due portion of their time, one day in seven, to the knowledge and service of God. We can love God and love neighbor because the mediator has come to us and brought God's love to us. In Christ, we can be worshipful. We can be just to one another. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you have sent your son to be the mediator. To stand between you and us. to speak your words to us that change our hearts and empower us to come into your presence and there as your people live lives of justice toward one another and piety towards you. Thank you for showing your righteousness to us in the book of the covenant. Help us to read and understand this book. Help us to be more just to one another and more pious towards you. as we come to know you better through your word. We pray that you would write these things on our hearts. Don't let us forget them. Help us to remember and obey them. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.