Let me just pray again briefly as we enter into our time of study today. Father, we do thank you. We thank you for the gift of your word. We thank you that your word has become yes and amen in Jesus, our Lord. Not just that it is true in him, but that it is actually embodied in him. He is the word become flesh. And in him, we see the truth of all things, the truth of your purposes, the truth of your goal for your creation, the truth of our own human existence and the reason for our existence, what it is to be truly human, even the truth of who you are, that the way in which we can truly and exhaustively know our God is to know the Lord Jesus Christ in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. And so, Father, make us a Christ-centered people. Make us a people who not only center our lives in Him, but who find in Him even the truth of our own beings, the truth of our own existence, the truth of what it is to walk as the people that you've created us to be. To see even Him as our individual destiny and our corporate destiny, and ultimately the destiny of the whole created order. as you intend and are working towards summing up everything in the creation in him. Oh, that we would be Christians indeed, defined by manifesting and glorying in the Lord Jesus Christ in all things. So in his name and with his spirit, Father, meet us in this time and lead us and build each one up according to his faith and cause Christ to be revealed in each one according to the truth as it is in him, and help us to be faithful stewards of that life in all that we are, all that we do. And it's in his name that we ask all these things. Amen. Well, the last time we considered Israel's arrival at Sinai and kind of the circumstances that prepared for the giving of the law of Moses, the giving of the covenant, And a couple things that I tried to emphasize last time, first of all and primarily, just how do we think about this concept of law? It's obviously very much a part of our Christian vocabulary and it's very much a part of our theological systems and how they're constructed, how they even apply a hermeneutical grid to the scriptures. And certainly in a kind of more particular way, the law of Moses. It has its own place in dispensationalism, viewed as a covenant of works and, you know, in relation to covenants of grace and promise and this sort of thing. It's also very much at the center of Reformed theology, at least in terms of, you know, the centrality of the Decalogue and the so-called eternal moral law. So this principle of law and even understanding the law of Moses is very, very important, crucially important in our understanding of the Scriptures. and ultimately even as we understand the relevance of these things to the person and the work of Christ himself. So that was kind of the heart of what we were trying to get at and then also just recognizing that that law of Moses was in fact the covenant by which the relationship between God and Israel was formalized. Israel as it is the Abrahamic people. So the law of Moses is the covenant at Sinai, and that covenant was not a new and distinct covenant apart from what God had done. It was really the carrying forward of God's purposes in the sense that it represented the formalizing of that relationship between God and Abraham's descendants. So we saw that as Moses went to Egypt, he was sent there under the guise that the God of of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has sent me to you. He's remembered his covenant. Now is the time for him to liberate you, bring you out, gather you to himself. So the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Abrahamic covenant, has remembered you as the Abrahamic descendants. And he's gathering you to himself to enter into that formal relationship with you as a nation, as the Abrahamic people. And that's what the law of Moses was all about. That's how we have to view it back through the lens of the Abrahamic covenant. So that kind of hints then at where at the lens, more than hints, it gives us a sense into the lens through which we need to view the actual covenant itself and the specifics of it. And that's what we're going to do today is look at the two main components of the covenant, which is the Ten Words, the Decalogue, and then the list or the collection of ordinances, the Mishpatim, the principles of justice or governance that were to define Israel's life as God's covenant people. So as I say, the Sinai Covenant formalized the father-son relationship between Yahweh as he gave that name, his covenant name, to Israel. And we've talked about the significance of that and how that name was to inform their understanding of this God and their relationship with him. But the Sinai covenant formalized that father-son relationship between him and Abraham's descendants, as God had pledged. And so as we also talked about last week, Israel's obligation of sonship, summarized in the 10 words, was the response of love to the Father and to one another. And those are the two main partitions even of the Ten Words or the Decalogue. The obligation of love to God and the obligation of love to one another as the Abrahamic people. And we talked about how both through Jesus and through Paul later, it was very clear in the New Testament that whatever commandment God had ever given to his people, it really had its ultimate meaning, its true significance and fulfillment in this obligation of love. People can dot I's, they can cross T's, they can jump through hoops of behavior, but that's something entirely different than a life of love. And Israel as son of God was to see its obligation to God through that lens. It was to be a son to the father, even as God would be a father to them and a husband, a covenant husband to the nation as covenant bride. It was a relationship of father, son, husband, wife, and therefore the obligation was an obligation of love. Well, the second thing that I note here is what I'm calling the salvation historical function of the 10 words or the Decalogue. Salvation historical significance or function, meaning what role did the covenant at Sinai play in God's larger purposes? See, we tend to look at things kind of atomistically or in a vacuum or in isolation. and we try to even interact with the Law of Moses or the Decalogue or whatever, kind of in a vacuum in that way. But these things were given and played out on the stage of history in God's dealings with the people of Israel unto the goal and the purpose that he had for Israel. They had a larger purpose than simply God issuing a bunch of commandments to a people at a certain point in time. That's what I'm trying to get at here. The reason why it matters is because if God is consistent and if his purposes are being worked out through the whole of the history from creation to the coming of Christ and Jesus himself comes on the scene and he says, all of these things recorded in the scriptures testify of me, and were building the case for me and the work that I came to do, then obviously the law of Moses has to be looked at through that same lens. Somehow it played a role in the outworking of this purpose of God that was introduced in Eden and was bound up in Abraham and the people descended from Abraham. It doesn't just sit off there by itself And ultimately, and I mentioned Galatians chapter 3 here, this is the way in which Paul talks about the law of Moses as he says, okay, really, if God's purposes for the world were given and bound up in Abraham and the covenant with Abraham, if the promises to Abraham were the issue, then why did the law of Moses enter in? What was its purpose? And basically he says it wasn't to introduce something new, it wasn't to set aside the promise, it wasn't to alter the promise, it was to serve the cause of the promise. Just even the fact that the law of Moses ratified the Abrahamic relationship with Israel shows that the law served the promise, right? It served that Abrahamic purpose that God had bound up in that covenant with Abraham. That's the sense in which Paul says the law, the law of Moses, is a pedagogue to lead us to Christ. He's not talking about personal evangelism and how people get saved. He's saying this was the role of the law of Moses on the stage of the salvation history. Its role in the process was to be a pedagogue until the fullness of the times when the Messiah would come, who would be born under that structure, fulfill that structure, and ultimately give it its ultimate meaning, its ultimate realization. So it's critical if we're going to talk about issues of law or the law of Moses, are we still under the Decalogue? Did the Ten Commandments still apply? If we're going to talk about those things, and those are important things to talk about, we have to look at them through the lens of, again, the scriptural purpose and meaning the role of the Law of Moses, and even more narrowly, the Ten Commandments is kind of the center point of the Law of Moses. And often people don't do that. Again, they just argue, which commandments do we still have to keep? None of them, all of them, whatever, you know, all of the Ten Commandments for sure. Well, why? Well, because they're God's eternal moral law. Well, is that the way we're supposed to think about them? And I would argue, no. That doesn't mean they don't apply. But again, everything has to be seen through the lens of what role did they play in the salvation history as they ultimately found their significance in Christ himself. And Jesus said, the law prophesied until the coming of John. The law finds its own fulfillment, its meaning in these times, in me. I am the one who embodies in myself what this law was all about as it identified and defined Israel's sonship, its obligation as son, servant, disciple, witness. That's the big lens through which we need to look at the law of Moses. So that's the reason I ask this question here. And ultimately, the Sinai covenant, to kind of boil all this down, showed Israel what it meant to be Yisrael, the elect son of God who had prevailed because God had caused it to prevail and would continue to cause it to prevail. Israel was God's image son chosen by God to reflect and manifest him in the world and administer his dominion. In that way, then, Israel's own life under the covenant—we can say the covenant of Sinai itself—revealed what it is for man to be truly man. If it really defined and prescribed Israel's sonship as son, servant, witness, and disciple, as Abrahamic people, it ultimately spoke in that way to what it is to live an authentically human life. And that's the primary sense in which the Law of Moses prophesied of the Messiah, and Jesus said it did prophesy. It's a prophetic instrument. It's not just a legal prescription, it's another aspect of God's prophetic witness, building the case for the Messiah. He would embody the Mosaic Covenant as Yahweh's true Israel and so God's true man, the last Adam. Notice I say embody the Mosaic Covenant. That's the way in which he fulfilled it. It wasn't keeping all the commandments per se. He fulfilled the covenant by embodying in himself the truth of what the covenant was expressing. And you see in Isaiah 42, 49, that this messianic figure is spoken of as himself being, becoming, God making him the covenant of the peoples. The covenant reality of God's plan for the world bound up in the Abrahamic people would be embodied in this messianic figure as the son of Abraham. Ultimately, that's the way that Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians. It's the way that the Gospels present him. I give you a citation here from both Matthew and Luke. So the Christ-centeredness then of the Law of Moses, the Law of Moses meaning the Sinai Covenant, the Christ-centeredness of the Law of Moses isn't that Jesus kept all the rules perfectly. The Christ-centeredness of the Law of Moses focuses on the Law's relationship with God's covenant with Abraham. The Sinai Covenant served the Abrahamic Covenant and its outworking and fulfillment even as that Abrahamic Covenant had its own focal point in the unique seed who would come. And again, this is Galatians 3. And I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but it's important that when we think about even Jesus' own words, I came to fulfill the law. I didn't come to abrogate it. I came to fulfill it. What does he mean by that? We tend to think that he simply meant, oh, I came to make sure that I fulfilled all of the moral obligations. I dotted every I and crossed every T. And I'm not saying that Jesus did not keep the law in that way. But the real way in which he kept the law was he embodied in himself all of what the law was getting at. He was the son of God who loved Father with heart, soul, mind, strength, and loved his neighbor as himself, who gave himself in that way so that the world would come to know God according to the promise to Abraham. That's the way in which he fulfilled the law. That's the way in which he could say, when you see me, you see the Father. If you would know God, you know him by seeing me, the faithful son. The son is of the father. Well, that then hopefully gives us a sense of why this idea of Sabbath is at the heart of the Decalogue. And we'll go ahead and read this beginning section in chapter 20. And you can see this, and then we'll talk about it. Chapter 20 of Exodus, verse one, then God spoke all these words saying, I am Yahweh, your God. This again is the preamble that we talked about last week, where the covenant as a contract, a relational contract, first of all defines the two parties, the covenanting parties. I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, Yahweh, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness, covenant integrity, faithfulness, covenant devotion to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. In other words, keep my covenant. You shall not take the name of Yahweh, your God, in vain. For the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes, and the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled, and they stood at a distance. And then they said to Moses, You, Moses, speak to us yourself, and we will listen. But let not God speak to us, lest we die. And Moses said to the people, Do not be afraid, for God has come in order to test you, in order that the fear of him may remain with you, so that you may not sin. So the people stood at a distance while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was. And the Lord said to Moses, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, you yourselves have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make other gods besides me, gods of silver, gods of gold. You shall not make them for yourselves. You shall make an altar of earth for me and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings, 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. That's where you're to build an altar. And if you make an altar of stone for me, you shall not build it of cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to this altar that you build, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it. So that's the first part of the giving of the covenant that has its centerpiece in the 10 words. And I'm not going to go through each of these 10 commandments. My goal is to give us a framework for thinking about them, as opposed to going into detail with each one of them. But I wanted to at least mention the Sabbath obligation, which sits at the very center, and why that is important, why it's so important. Well, as I said, the Sinai covenant looks all the way back to God's pledge in Eden. If it is ratifying the Abrahamic relationship with Abraham's descendants, the Abrahamic covenant itself was the outworking of the pledge in Eden. God would put all things right in Abraham. He would be the seed of the woman in the initial outworking of that through whom God would accomplish this work. Well, that being the case, then we can see why the Sabbath is central in this idea of the covenant. And the text wants you to see that because it gives more space to the Sabbath commandment than the other nine pieces of the Decalogue. There's more explanation, more content given to it. It's also the hinge between the two tables of the covenant referring to the commandments that speak to Israel's obligation to God, and then the commandments that speak to Israel's obligation to one another. The Sabbath sits in between, and it really functions both in terms of their relationship to God, but ultimately even their obligation to one another. So here are some considerations then. Again, the original creation, if the Sinai Covenant looks back to creation, and it does, and God's intent for creation, The original creation was defined by Sabbath in a perpetual seventh day, with that state of rest attesting that God had taken up his own rule over his creation after fully and perfectly completing his work of ordering and filling it. And you can go back to those early messages if you miss those or whatever. but the idea of the Sabbath, Shabbat, or God's rest is not inactivity. It's a regal idea of a king taking his throne after completing his conquest, establishing his kingdom, laying out his dominion. He takes his throne to begin to administer his rule. That's why it's a perpetual seventh day. All of the other days, it was evening and it was morning, day one. Evening and morning, day two. Evening and morning, day three. And then the seventh day is a perpetual state. Now, it gets undermined by the thing we call the Fall. But God's creation was to be a Sabbath creation. God administering his Lordship over his completed, very good creation in and through man, the image Son. So the creation account itself emphasizes the sabbatical nature of the creation, or the sabbatical nature of sacred space, as sacred space speaks to God's place and relationship of interaction with his creation. Sacred space is a Sabbath reality. And that state of rest was to also characterize Canaan as well. because Canaan was to be a prototypical recovery of sacred space, right? God gathering a people back to himself to dwell with him in his sanctuary land. We saw that in Exodus 15. God brought us out to bring us to be with him in his sanctuary on his holy mountain. We'll see that in chapter 25, where God tells the people of Israel, after ratifying the covenant, take up a contribution to build me a sanctuary that I can dwell in your midst." Israel's relationship with God in Canaan is to be a prototypical recovery of sacred space and therefore it's to be a Sabbath, a Sabbath dynamic, a Sabbath relationship. That's why Sabbath is at the center of this covenant that defines Israel's relationship with God. There's three things then in which we can see the centrality of Shabbat or Sabbath to Israel's life with God in Canaan. First of all, as we saw last time, God introduced the Sabbath concept prior to Israel's arrival at Sinai. He did it through the vehicle of the manna, right? Why is there no manna on the seventh day? Why is there twice as much on the sixth day? This is what the Lord has said. The seventh day is to you to be a day of rest. What is this? What's going on? This is how you're to think about it. This is preparing you for what your relationship with God will be as you enter into Canaan and dwell together with him in his holy habitation. Secondly, the prominence of the weekly Sabbath within the Ten Words. As I said, it has the place of prominence, the centerpiece place, within the Ten Words. It pertains primarily to Israel's relationship to God. but also to their relationship with one another. If this is a prototypical recovery of sacred space, the human race, as it were, coming back—remember, Israel is a kind of picture of what man is intended to be—man's relationship with God is to be a Sabbath relationship. And thirdly, related to that, the entirety of Israel's life in relationship with God was to be ordered around the principle of Shabbat, Sabbath. Yes, a weekly Sabbath, but we tend to think when we hear Sabbath, we think, okay, that's the one day in seven. Well, that was just one small piece of the Sabbath principle in Israel's life. There were the Festal Sabbaths, there was the Seventh Year Sabbath, there was the Jubilee Sabbath, In all of these ways, God was teaching Israel that their sonship meant that they would administer his own lordship. over his kingdom on behalf of the world that through that faithful sonship the world would come to know the God of Israel who is the God of all creation and in that way his blessing would flow out to all the families of the earth. And in that way the Edenic mandate of be fruitful multiply and fill the earth that God's in a sense, sacred space. As we saw, God's dwelling place will fill the whole earth. How so? In the human beings who are his image and likeness. God would be present in all the world in that way. These are the ideas that were introduced in the creation account that are now, in a sense, being brought back in Israel's relationship with God, ratified through this covenant and its definition. My point once again is that we can't look at the Law of Moses, or even more particularly the Decalogue, and see just a list of discrete moral commandments. This is the way in which God is fleshing out what it would look like for a people to actually be the imaged children that he intended mankind to be. In that sense, Israel is the beginning of God's new creation. Ultimately, all of this Israel as God's image son on behalf of the world, the one in whom we see what human existence ought to be, that gets localized in Jesus himself. He's the embodiment of Israel and that's the sense in which he says that he is the fulfillment of the law. It's not about keeping commandments, it's about embodying in himself what that covenant was all about. ultimately as the son of Abraham, ultimately as the last Adam, the mediator of the knowledge of God to all the families of the earth. So the Sabbath sits at the center in that way. And Israel was to understand itself as a Sabbath people. And clearly, if you go back and you listen, or you remember the Hebrew series that we did, Sabbath sits at the center of the restorative work of Jesus. We enter a perpetual Sabbath rest. in the Messiah. Just another quick point to bring out about this context is the role of Moses in this, his mediation. The ten words, Israel is, remember, back from the mountain. They drew close to it, but there were boundaries put around that for them. They couldn't touch the mountain. They basically hear Yahweh giving these words in the form of thunder and rumblings and all of this kind of physical manifestation on the mountain. And they're so terrified that they say to Moses, we can't hear God. If we do, we'll die. You go. You hear him. Then you bring these words to us. And that becomes important, even as Moses will remind them later on, 40 years later, when they're poised to go into the land. Moses will say, remember back at Horeb when you said, we cannot bear to hear God. You go. You listen to him. And you come and you speak to us. And Moses said, at that time, God said, the people have spoken well. And Moses said, God will raise up for you a prophet like me, and you must listen to him. And whoever will not listen to him will be cut off from the people. And it's in a context where Moses is reminding them, you have to listen to the voice of the Lord your God. This is, again, on the plains of Moab as they're preparing to enter the land, the end of Deuteronomy. You have to listen to the voice of God. Don't listen to the voice of diviners. Don't listen to the voice of men who claim to be prophets from God. Don't listen to, you know, all of these voices that you're going to be hearing when you come into the land. Listen and learn how to discern the voice of the Lord your God. And ultimately, as I was that voice to you, so God will raise up from among the people a prophet and you must listen to him. And ultimately, the New Testament tells us that that prophet, like Moses, is Jesus himself. And Jesus said, I am the word incarnate. You must listen to me. And that means more than just hearing him speak or reading the Bible. It means having his own life and the truth that is embodied in him communicated to us and made real and effectual in our own existence. That's the work of the Spirit in speaking of Jesus to us. He's the Spirit of Christ. But anyway, Moses serves in that mediatorial role, and again that emphasizes the fact of this relational distance between Israel and God. Even though God's going to dwell in the midst of the people, it's going to be at a distance, and they're not going to be able to approach him directly. It's going to be a mediated relationship. It's going to come through priestly representatives, through sacred structures, through sacraments, all of these things established by the law itself. The law establishes Israel's sonship in a formal way, but also at a distance. It puts barriers in there. This is the way you will approach. This is the definition of your worship. And that's what kind of comes out at the end of chapter 20. Yahweh had taken Israel to himself, and his relationship with his son was entirely unilateral. That meant that even the distance between him and them, he was the one who defined how that distance would be broached. He would establish the point of mediation. He chose Moses. He chose Aaron. He established the tabernacle system. He established the means of worship. He established all the ways in which the distance between him and the people would be broached. They were to worship him according to the definition that he provided. It was a unilateral relationship. Part of the dynamic of sons and fathers is that nothing goes from the son to the father except for faithful devotion. Everything goes from the father to the sons, right? And you see this even at the end of Isaiah's prophecy, right? What are you going to give to me? What are you going to do for me? Heaven is my throne, the earth is my footstool. Where's the house you're going to build for me? What are you going to give to me? Has not my hand made all these things, thus they came into being? This is the one for whom I will have regard with favor, the one who is broken, humble, contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word. The one who yields to me, the one who trusts me, the one who's devoted to me, the one who believes me. You can't do anything for me except love me, serve me, be devoted to me, be grateful, be humble, be dependent. That's what I want. That's your reasonable act of service. And that's what he's in a sense getting at here when he says, what's the whole thing with images and idols and all those ideas? The thing is that man in his natural state forms conceptions of deity out of his own mind. In other words, gods are the work of men's hands, men's minds. And even if they're not fashioning a statue or, you know, whatever, a wooden idol that they fall down and worship in front of, and sometimes they do do that, and in the ancient world they would do that, but people always fashion gods in their own image. Man is the image of God. God isn't the image of man in that sense. But in our fallen state, we conceive of God through our own minds. And that's what the Decalogue is getting at. It's not the fact that you can't look at a Rembrandt painting that has Jesus in it because that's a graven image. That's not the idea. It's that you would construct tangible things that are the work of your own mind and your own thought as a way in which to imagine and conceive deity for the sake of a point of encounter in worship. And we're going to see that even with Israel and the golden calf. The golden calf is not going to be Israel abandoning Yahweh. It's going to be fashioning a new point of contact and mediation between them and Yahweh in the absence of Moses. And we'll see that when we get there. But that's what this is all about is God says, I tell you who I am. I tell you how to approach me. I tell you how to worship me. if you put anything into this conception, devising, forming, and administering of your worship of me, it's idolatry. Ultimately, that will be localized in the person of Jesus himself. If God can't be conceived under the image of anything created, then we have to have a problem with the incarnation. How can Jesus, a man, be the image of God if God can't be conceived in creaturely form? Well, that again is God's own defining of himself. It's not people making an image to arrive at who God is. But that's what this last part of Exodus is underscoring in this idea of no graven images, nothing under heaven, nothing under earth. And what he says is, when you build an altar to me, up until things are localized, if Israel builds an altar to him, and they're going to do it right now at this point in time, as soon as the covenant is ratified, they will offer sacrifices to God. But he says, just mound up dirt. Or if you build an altar with stones, don't cut it. Don't, again, bring your own contribution, your own sense of what you think or what you conceive or what you contribute to your worship. And I think the last part of don't ascend steps up to the altar, if a worshipper were to go up steps up high like that, you would actually see up under his garment. And so in the very literal sense, his nakedness would be exposed. And God will later say, the priests, make them these linen garments that they're undergarments so that their nakedness is not exposed. But it has a spiritual significance, too, because the nakedness idea now speaks to human shame, human defilement, right? After the fall, they're ashamed, they cover. And covering is this, again, recognizing and securing from God's condemnation this uncleanness. And so don't take your uncleanness up to God. You approach him in the way that he devises, the way that he intends. And then the last piece, and I'll get at this very quickly, I'm not going to go through these obviously one by one, but then beginning in chapter 21 through 23, we have the Mishpatim. Moses now goes up the mountain and God gives him these ordinances. is what it says in chapter 21. These are the ordinances which you are to set before the people of Israel. Mishpatim. It means a governing principle of justice. What is right? And I would argue that in a sense these particular commandments just point to principles. They're not the sum and the substance. They point to a definition of what it is for Israel to execute its life faithfully. These pertain particularly to Israel's corporate existence. Israel is corporately, collectively son of God. They're not just a bunch of individual people. They are collectively son of God. But living out that corporate identity and calling requires faithfulness on the part of the individual members. And so I just give you this example here, and we don't have to look at this for the sake of time. but it's the obligation of the eye for eye, tooth for tooth. We all know that, right? Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Well, it's given in a couple of different ways, but it speaks to, again, the solidarity of the people. And on the one hand, the way that we tend to think about it is you don't want to go too far, right? It's eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The retribution the punishment has to match the crime. The actual nature of the offense defines the punishment. Not what you like, not what you think, not how angry you are about it, but the other side of it is true as well, which is that you are not to relent. You are not to relent. You are not to say, oh well, it doesn't matter, it's okay. So if you flip back to Deuteronomy, we'll just look at this part in chapter 15, or chapter 19 rather, verse 15. This is drawing on that same eye for eye tooth idea. And what I'm trying to get at here is that all of these ordinances spoke to Israel's obligation to one another as the people of God. They were to view their brothers and sisters as covenant children, as fellow members of the household of Israel. They weren't to see themselves as a collection of individuals, but as a corporate entity. God was going to deal with them corporately. So in Deuteronomy 19 verse 15, it says, A single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity, any crookedness, or corruption, or any particular violation in which he has committed. On the evidence of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be confirmed. And if a malicious witness, the idea is someone who is a witness who's seeking some sort of malicious outcome through his testimony, rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing, then both of the men who have the dispute shall stand before Yahweh. How do they stand before Yahweh? Well, before the priests and the judges who God will have appointed, who will represent Yahweh on behalf of the people. And then you shall do to him this witness, malicious witness, just as he had intended to do to his brother. In that way you will purge the evil from among you. And the rest, who? The rest of the sons of Israel will hear and be afraid and will never again do such an evil thing among you. Thus you shall not show pity. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. And so there's a tendency, on the one hand, to try to use the law to get even with somebody that I'm upset with, right? Unjust retribution. But the other side of it, too, is that I can say, oh, well, it's not a big deal. The truth has come out. So in the case of an instance like this, a false witness arises, brings a charge against a person. When it's been adjudicated and this person's been found to be a false witness, It's not, gee, you shouldn't have lied about your brother. Don't do it again. No, if you even accuse this person of something that was a capital crime, you, the accuser, are put to death. You're not to spare. Your eye is not to spare. For what reason? Is it just to get even with this one person? No, it's to preserve the harmony and the well-being, the truthfulness, the love within the body. If you allow that kind of evil to prevail where a person can rise up as a false witness and bring about some unjust outcome against his brother, you undermine the integrity and the well-being of the people. And so you can't permit a cancer to grow within the covenant household. You can't let this stand. You can't punish someone unjustly, but you also can't allow that sort of evil use of the law to prevail as well. This is about the good of the people. That's why I picked this example. The rest will fear. The rest will fear. Paul draws on this on even the idea of bringing an accusation against an elder, right? Let every matter be established by two or three witnesses. because it's very easy for people to rise up against someone who is a leader and bring things down and destroy everything. God's jealous for his household. He's jealous for his church. He was jealous for the people of Israel, and he dealt with them corporately. And that's what these ordinances are about. So even this thing of slavery that you see, it's about if your Hebrew brother becomes an indentured servant. If a person was found guilty of theft and couldn't repay, he would become the slave of the person he had stolen from. But it was for a time period. And then the Sabbath principle meant in the seventh year he was released. But all of the prescriptions regarding slaves here pertain to your Israelite brother, who through some causality becomes your servant, and how you're to treat him, and how you're to treat his wife and his children. And it all, again, is seeing the solidarity of the people. You can't look at this person as not your Israelite brother. So that's enough about all of that. We can talk about that more if you want. But these ordinances are attesting and holding tightly to the solidarity of the people together. And as I said, God will deal with them in that way. Ache and sin will bring calamity on the whole nation, right? And then lastly, in 23, in concluding the Law of Moses, it began with the preamble that defined the two covenant parties, Yahweh and Israel. It ends then with a series of personal promises and sanctions that pertain to, again, both father and son. So as you read the end of 23, for his part, Yahweh would fulfill his oath, bound up in his covenant with Abraham to bring Israel safely through the wilderness, and into the sanctuary land. If you look back again at chapter 23, I'll just read this one verse. Verse 20, behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you all along the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Now here's your obligation. Be on your guard before him. Obey his voice. He is me to you. Do not be rebellious against him for he will not pardon your transgression because my name is in him. This is this thing of hearing God, hearing God, hearing his voice, being faithful to him, not hearing other voices, not being led astray. And then he goes on to say what the blessing that will come to them if they will obey him. the fruitfulness, the preservation. If you will obey his voice, do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies, an adversary to your adversaries. He will bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and I will completely destroy them. But guard yourself. You should not worship their gods or serve them or do according to their deeds. You shall utterly overthrow them. You shall serve Yahweh, your God, and he will bless your bread, your water, I will remove sickness from your midst, no one miscarrying or bearing in the land, I will fulfill the number of your days. So this promise of blessing, if you will be faithful to the covenant, if they will fulfill their obligation of sonship, as Yahweh is a father to them, he will protect them and provide, and then they will enter into his blessing. So that's what the law of Moses did. It now formally, covenantally, related together, bound together, Yahweh and his firstborn son, the Abrahamic people. And it established Israel's obligation to fulfill that Abrahamic calling as elect son, servant, disciple, hearing God, and ministering the knowledge of him to all the families of the earth. So if Israel would be faithful to the covenant, it would actually fulfill the human vocation of being image son. Israel was to be a prototypical new Adam created by covenant ordination to extend sacred space from God's new garden sanctuary in Canaan to the ends of the earth. See, this is all building on the story, the principles that God laid in Genesis 1 and have been carrying all along. This is the way the story moves. This is the way we have to understand what happened at Sinai. Sinai pressed Israel backward all the way to the Garden, certainly back to Abraham, but also forward in its own self-understanding, its sense of who it was and its vocation. Not just its obligation to obey God, that obedience seen as its sonship for the sake of the world, for the sake of God's purposes for the world. That's the lens through which we look at the Law of Moses. That's the lens through which we understand how it was fulfilled in Christ. That's the lens through which we understand what it means to us as those who are in Christ. That doesn't mean that we have all easy answers to every little detail, but this is the lens through which we have to think about these things if we're really going to do it biblically. Well, with that, let me close us in prayer. Father, I know even in this few minutes and these few chapters, there's a lot there. And we've only just scratched the surface. We didn't even really look at much in the way of specifics, but I pray that this attempt to establish principles of understanding, a pair of glasses through which to read and think about the particulars. I pray that you would make that attempt effectual, that you would make it fruitful. Again, Father, each one here, each one who will hear these words, even in the days and the weeks and perhaps the years ahead, I pray that you will Meet each one according to his need, according to his understanding, according to his insight, according to his faith. And Father, particularly I pray for the children who are with us today, that I know these things are over their head. I know that they're probably even confusing in some sense, but I pray that you would allow them, these things to be a foundation, to be planted as a seed in their minds and in their hearts. And that each of us, and certainly their parents and the grandparents would, water these seeds until the ground in which these seeds are planted be stewards of that planting in the hope and the prayer and the diligence to see these seeds spring forth and bear fruit in good time. What a marvelous thing it is when children can begin their faith with a clear and a truly scriptural understanding of the living God who is known and who accomplishes all of his loving kindness in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I pray for each one here and Father particularly for these children that you would lay a sound foundation of truth in their lives, that there wouldn't be a lot for them to disassemble and to have to cast away, but that they would be built on a sound foundation and that they would grow in a true and living knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that for each one of us and that we would labor together according to your spirit's own intent, that we would grow up in all things into Christ who is the head. attaining to the full measure of the stature that belongs to him, becoming complete in him, and that we would be stewards and ministers of that completeness to those whose lives we touch in whatever way, in whatever arena. What a high and holy calling. Help us to be good stewards of it. And Father, continue to bless our time together, and I pray for your blessing upon each one, even as we go our separate ways today. For the sake of Christ, for the sake of the integrity of his testimony in the world, for the sake of your glory in summing up all things in him, we ask these things in his name, amen.