The sermons of Moses in Deuteronomy are full of instructions and commands. He does recollect with them a lot. They'll rehash some stories from earlier in the book of Exodus or stuff from Numbers. But Moses loves not only to recollect together what God has done in history, but to also direct the people in righteousness. And therefore there are a lot of instructions and a lot of laws. We've been in the thick of many of them. One profitable way for believers to read these laws is to reflect on the moral reasoning that undergirds them. It's not always spelled out with clear explanations, but in certain contexts of the passage, and sometimes with various warnings and themes within several laws, you can start to get a sense of what's important in what Moses is saying with the law expressing a deeper moral truth. A few weeks ago, when we were in one of these laws in Deuteronomy, I said that we could ask questions that sound like, what is this law guarding against? What is this law seeking to secure? What does this law teach us about man? What does this law teach us about God? Questions like that are helpful to meditate on the laws of Moses and ask such questions. And what we're noticing in our study of Deuteronomy is something I've tried to draw attention to consistently. So if I don't mention it every week, I am going to mention it tonight. And that is that we're in a section of laws that are based on ten commandments. And from Deuteronomy 5, when the Ten Commandments are listed, chapters 6 through about chapter 26, the dominant section of the book, are expansions of, applications of, moral reasoning that is present in the Ten Commandments. Now, the passage tonight Ending in verse 8, I believe draws to a close what have been expansions on and reflections on the 6th commandment or sometimes called the 6th word. The 6th word or the 6th commandment is you shall not murder. Commentators on Deuteronomy believe it goes through verse 12. Others think a new section begins in chapter 22, nine and extends into chapter 23, reflecting on the seventh commandment. I think that is correct. So I'm leaning toward seeing tonight's final verse, verse eight as bringing to a close these reflections on the sixth commandment, which have been a focus on the nature of life, the importance of preserving life, the importance of a righteous or lawful taking of life versus an unlawful or murderous seizing of life, and all kinds of things that have been extended from this sixth commandment, you shall not murder. It doesn't mean there aren't other commandments sometimes at play. We saw in chapter 21, for instance, concerns between parents and children, even children that are not young, but even grown children, such as verses 18 to 21 of that chapter would have in view. Rebellious children who are violating the fifth commandment. So I don't mean to imply that by highlighting a commandment in a major way under a section that no other commandment could possibly have any role or influence to play. Instead, there seems to be an emphasis on certain commandments as you go through Deuteronomy 6 to 26. And tonight, we draw to a close the sixth commandment, you shall not murder. And it has to do with this commandment here, focusing on the importance of life. And we notice in the passage tonight, various ways in which nature and life and God's order are being preserved. And that to ignore such things, whether it's your neighbor's property, or your neighbor's animal, or your neighbor's biological sex, or the very house that you build with a flat roof that needs a barrier, all of these things have some kind of implication with life. the preservation of life, the importance of God's design and order, and that to ignore any of these things puts one in violation of the spirit of the sixth commandment. All right, so we're seeing tonight, I think, further outworkings of the you shall love your neighbor principle. Nowhere in Deuteronomy is you shall love your neighbor so explicitly stated. That's from Leviticus 19, verse 18. But tonight's laws, just like all the commands, are aiming at loving God and loving neighbor in the ways that will be expressed tonight. I think we can identify several laws, and not all of these are one verse, several of these are a few, like this first one. And I'm going to state it in such a way that I think here's what the law is with several verses that unpack that. So, verses 1 to 3 seem to argue the following. Restore your neighbor's property when you find it. Okay, so we can take verses 1 to 3 under this idea. Restore your neighbor's property when you find it. And what seems to be at work here is that you're to love your neighbor, you're to care about what belongs to your neighbor, because what belongs to your neighbor is connected to the livelihood of your neighbor. such as an ox or a donkey that your neighbor possesses. So we don't want to look at something distinct from the image bearer and say, well, this has nothing to do with that person's life. It actually does have things to do with that person's life. And to violate what belongs to the neighbor and to ignore the boundaries of what somebody owns and what is that person's property is to mistreat your neighbor accordingly. And because you're to value the life of your neighbor, you're to value what's connected to the life. of your neighbor. Verses 1 to 3 seem to argue for the following idea. Restore your neighbor's property when you find it. And what they're envisioning here, that this moral reasoning is supporting, is what seems to be the kind of circumstance the Israelite community member might find himself or herself as part of. You shall not see your brother's ox or sheep going astray and ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. So this opening verse is setting this hypothetical scene, which wouldn't have remained abstract, because you have people who own oxen and people who own donkeys and people who own sheep. And here, oxen and sheep are in view. The oxen and the sheep would be of great economic value. And that means when you see the ox going astray, That's your neighbor's economic well-being that's connected to that ox. You see that sheep going astray? Well, the sheep and the ox represent something of value to your neighbor. And this is a commandment guarding against just turning a blind eye and saying, well, that obviously belongs to somebody. I think it might be, you know, neighbor such-and-such, neighbor so-and-so. You shall not see your brother's ox or sheep going astray and ignore them. The reason it's put that way is because Moses' sermon here seems to appeal to this instinct that somebody might have and is saying, don't do that. You might look at this and say, well, my oxen are fine. My sheep are in the fence. You know, that's not my problem. What if we understood ourselves to be our brother's keeper? Okay, so thinking about the opposite of Cain's attitude in Genesis 4, here's someone who says, that's not my ox, that's not my sheep, but it's my neighbor's oxen and sheep. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna see this as an opportunity to be of use and help to my neighbor. He says, you shall not ignore them. You shall take them back to your brother. Now, of course, that's assuming you know initially who it belongs to, all right? And he's going to deal with what if you don't in just a moment. But here, this going astray sheep and this going astray oxen is going to be something that you are able to identify in terms of ownership. You shall take it back to your brother. This is not the first time in the Torah something like this has been mentioned. In Exodus 23.4, It's even more specific, not just your brother's animals, but what about your enemy's animals? Listen to this in Exodus 23. In verse four, if you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it. You shall rescue it with him. So he's not allowing this attitude in Exodus or in Deuteronomy to say, but that's not my ox, so this is not my donkey. Nor should he say, well, but I don't like that guy. Or that guy hates me, that's my enemy. You don't get a pass at that. Loving your neighbor involves even showing care and mercy toward an enemy. And so this, beginning in verse one, begins to pull at the notion of what the sixth commandment aims at, the importance of life and the preservation of life. Let's imagine what might happen if you saw an ox going astray or a sheep going astray and you ignore them. What might happen to those animals of great value? Well, maybe, number one, they could be stolen. Somebody else sees an oxen and is like, I don't have one of those. I would like one of those. It's not like every Israelite household just had oxen. And therefore, seeing one that's going astray that you could do something about might deliver that oxen from the clutches of someone who sees an opportunity for greed and for thievery. Or you can imagine a predatory animal situation where this sheep is going astray and you can take it back to your, but you're ignoring it and therefore that animal's life is in jeopardy. So in the spirit of the sixth commandment, here is a way that we are outworking those notions of seeking active response, not just passively seeing things happen, but seeing how we might insert ourselves proactively in a situation where we can be of use and to love our neighbor. Therefore, we see in verse two, a little bit of building on this, what if you don't know who it belongs to? All right, so in verse two, and if he doesn't live near you, and you don't know who he is. So a couple possibilities. Say, I know where this oxen came from. Boy, this ox traveled a while. I know where this sheep probably goes because of the road that it's on right now, but my goodness, the neighbor's house is so far that way. So you're to take a kind of temporary stewardship. This is interesting to think through. Taking a temporary stewardship and it's also possible that you don't know who it is. Who owns these oxen or sheep. So you shall bring it into your house and it shall stay with you until your brother seeks it. The assumption is some neighbor at some point is going to realize, didn't we own an ox? Like, you're going to see here, like, there's an ox missing. And so you're not going to say, oh, well, you know, what were we doing? Back to, you're going to be like, we're going to look for this ox. This ox is so important for us to find immediately. And so you're going to do what somebody might do if you think in the area, in the region nearby, we're going to go and do some scouting. We're going to knock on some doors. We're going to scope out some land. And all of a sudden you hear a knock at your door. Well, because of what verses one and two have said, you've taken some temporary stewardship of this and you will be, to the delight of your neighbor, being able to restore that oxen to him. And what about something other than an ox or a sheep? In verse three, you shall do the same with the donkey, or with his garment, or with any lost thing of your brother's. You see, there's a principle at work here that the ox and the donkey and the sheep represent, and that is something belongs to your neighbor. Here's the principle that's not at work, finders keepers. Doesn't it sound a little different, actually, when you're reading Deuteronomy 22? It's like, I found that oxen. I found that sheep, that's gonna be my sheep. Or your neighbor's garment, or your neighbor's watch, or your neighbor's wallet. Thinking about things that belong to your neighbor, saying, well, you know what, I just happened to come upon this, I guess this is mine now. When the right response, is initially to say, how might I work to get this to the one it belongs to? Maybe you've had this situation where you've lost your wallet somewhere, or you've left your phone somewhere, and someone has taken the effort to get that restored to you. What a blessing that is. And we know in our human fallenness, that might not be the instinct somebody initially has. They just operate with a finder's keeper's mindset. Oh, look at there, seems like this person might have dropped that money, but I'm just gonna go ahead and grab it up before they notice. Or maybe you're at the store and somebody gives you too much change back and you say, well, you know, they don't realize what they did. I guess this is a happy moment for me. And so you're taking what doesn't rightfully belong to you and taking advantage of a situation and operating with a finders keepers mindset. when the neighbor-focused mindset is what the text is thinking on, right? So it's different to say self-focus versus neighbor-oriented thinking. This is behavior that is operating out of a neighbor-focused mindset. How can I make sure I get back to someone what belongs to them? You might imagine, hypothetically, a situation where you've come across something and there's simply no reasonable way that it could be restored to someone. And I think that there are matters of conscience in more gray areas that you might operate in such as that. In other words, I think if you walk down the road and you found a $10 bill laying on the ground, I don't think you have to take an ad out in the paper to say, okay, we gotta figure out, you see what I'm saying? Because how would you otherwise know? But as far as it can depend on you to be able to take what you know doesn't belong to you to whom it might rightfully be restored, that is a moral duty that we possess. And you might say, okay, well, I don't have an ox or a sheep that I'm thinking about. But see, the point in using those as illustrations is the issue in verse two, or I'm sorry, in verse three, whatever belongs to your neighbor that you find, you may not ignore it. You may not ignore it. All right, now these first three verses then, thinking about livelihood and neighbor's property, economic well-being, restore your neighbor's property when you find it. Verse four. At first, seems like it fits right with verses one to three. In a sense it does, because we're still bringing up animals. But the neighbor seems to be present here. So in verses one to three, neighbor's absence, sheep and donkey, or stuff, wallet, garment, whatever has been found, neighbor's not present yet. Verse four seems to operate with this law. Help your neighbor in a time of need. Help your neighbor in a time of need. Verse four, you shall not see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again. What might make an oxen unable to easily ride itself? What might make a donkey unable to rightfully stand? It's probably not the case that these animals, left to their own physical condition, couldn't operate. But a donkey that's traveling, or an ox that is traveling, might be bearing something on its back. Especially knowing how a donkey would be a much more commonly possessed animal, and an animal used for transit. And if you had something quite heavy, and this animal is very weighed down, all of a sudden it is carrying what's not its normal weight. It's got additional burden. And if it were to fall into something off the side of the road, into a ditch, whatever, your neighbor might not be able to do this on his own. And all of a sudden, you come across this situation and you see the donkey or the ox falling down, he says, you shall not ignore them. You don't say, oh, that's somebody's problem. You say, okay, how might I come to this situation and aid the situation? You shall help him to lift them again. You don't want to come across a situation where you know well-being and livelihood is actually the thing in view and think that you have no reasonable role to play, either you or someone that you can call upon to help. Maybe you've thought so far tonight of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Has that crossed your mind at all? Luke chapter 10? So in Luke 10 30 Jesus says a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him half dead. Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. We might borrow from Deuteronomy 22 and says, he saw the situation and completely ignored him. All right, so he passed by. He's like, that's not my problem. And then he says, likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side. So you have people who see a terrible situation of great physical need, and they ignore it. The Samaritan is the third person. He is the helpful person. And Jesus says, which of these do you think prove to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? And of course the answer is the Good Samaritan. And Jesus says, go and do likewise. So this is not about being under the Sinai covenant, is it? This is about thinking of the implications of the sixth commandment for the people of God that we are to be good neighbors And one of the ways we are good neighbors is we help our neighbor in a time of need, or in the first few verses of the law there, restore your neighbor's property when you find it. Alright, so let's think about verse 5. This seems to operate under this kind of principle. Wear clothes which reflect your biological sex. Wear clothes which reflect your biological sex. And at first, verse five might seem to be out of context. It's like, we're talking about oxen, we're talking about donkeys, we're talking about sheep, we're talking about neighbor stuff. Why all of a sudden are we talking about how somebody dresses? And this seems to, again, point at the common denominator of life, livelihood, well-being, and nature that is being preserved and cared for. And in verse five, there's something about this kind of activity that actually violates that. Look in verse 5. A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. Not only is the law expressly stated in verse 5 that they're to heed, but the reasoning is very bracing, isn't it, in a moral sense. Whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. Could be a couple things to take from this contextually in the ancient Near Eastern audience. Now, first of all, this is recognizing the old truths the Bible teaches about creation, order, and design. That when you have a body and when you have this embodied personhood, which we have as human beings, your body matters. And it's not some way in your mind over against your body that should determine the kind of life, rather, you should see the cues that your body is giving you. in terms of who you are. You're not something other than what your body is telling you. And then in verse 5 you could also have not only an appeal to natural order and creation of things, you may also have foreign and religious practices that engage in various exchanges of garments of the opposite sex, for rituals and religious practices. Now, that is not explicitly stated in verse 5, but because the Canaanites engaged in all sorts of immorality prohibited to these Israelites, it would not surprise me if some sort of idolatrous or act of immoral worship was involved as well. Consider with me though the notion here of a woman not wearing a man's garment or a man not putting on a woman's cloak. You have here the cultural need for a man to appear as a man and a woman to appear as a woman. And we know that culturally these things may differ. You can see in various countries or cultures of the world women may represent themselves in a particular way. men may represent themselves in a particular way. Something that does seem to be consistent across ancient civilizations, though, is that there is a matching between what you are as a man or a woman and how that is reflected in the way that you dress. Now, of course, this issue is highly debated and disputed within our own culture. You know this. Not verses 1 to 4 as much as verse 5. It is something highly contested. And I want us to consider that there are moral ramifications to this because he does say at the end of verse 5, whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. In the opposite of that, we could say it is honoring to the Lord when a man represents himself as a man and a woman represents herself as a woman. That it is good that you are a man or good that you are a woman. and that you are a man or a woman is not something that resides exclusively in your mind. Instead, we know that in the scriptures, the goodness of the human body and the importance of God's design and the complementarity of the sexes is something that must be weighed heavily in this situation. In fact, not only do we see the inward nature of the body that can be explored by surgeons and anatomists, where they can recognize what may be unique within a male or a female, but even outwardly, the male and female body inwardly and outwardly is distinct. So a woman wearing a man's garment, thinking hypothetically here, we can recognize that there would be therefore a confusion of her bodily design. Because the woman would be given the impression that she is something other than a woman. Or, here you have a man putting on a woman's cloak. That kind of ambiguity is not something that should be embraced. Instead, you have a clarity of the sexes that is a good and godly thing. And this is good because the issue here seems to be nature. It seems to be life. It seems to be the way God's design and order and preservation of life has been taught in the scriptures and a command here consistent with that. What if, then, by extending the sixth commandment here, preserving and caring for life involves also caring for one's own body? and that caring for one's own body and preserving the nature of one's body in one's dress is actually honoring to God, good for those around you. You might say, well, there are people who may be around us in our culture and around the world who would say, well, I want to represent myself in a gender different from my biological sex. I think if we're reading carefully through the Old and New Testaments, we don't want to separate one's biological sex for how that is represented in one's dress. Even though it is a fracture that our culture tolerates in various sectors, it is not something that is rooted in a sound understanding of general revelation. in nature, or in the special revelation of the scriptures. When someone is born as a man, it is good that that person, and God honoring that that person, represent themselves in their dress as a man. The issue seems to be design in nature and that you are a steward of the body you have been given and that in some way to disrupt or to corrupt or even to mutilate, to use this verb, what is of your body, this here would be a violation of the spirit of the sixth commandment. To steward your body well and to represent yourself faithfully before the Lord is also good for those around you. And while our culture might say, well, if this individual believes that they are something in their mind, that they are not in their body and they want to live that way, how will that affect any of us? Well, I think that we have run that experiment long enough in our culture to recognize that there are all sorts of cultural societal effects based on what society encourages and endorses. And here in verse five, our neighbor is not helped by facilitating what the Bible calls abominations. It is not loving to our neighbor or helpful to our neighbor's well-being to see this kind of command and dismiss it. So I want us to see the moral reasoning then with verse five, the importance of the preservation of life that the sixth commandment argues and how the stewardship of the body plays such an important role. Verses six and seven also speak to life and to nature. In fact, it brings up a bird's nest where there is a mother and the young, mother and the eggs. So once again, the common denominator, we're tracing this thread here, the importance of life, the preservation of life, and in verses 6 and 7, here's the summary of this. Verses 6 and 7 under this heading, don't destroy the source of food. Don't destroy the source of food. In other words, you're gonna need more food and so you wanna treat very carefully what you come upon here in verses six and seven. If you come across a bird's nest in any tree or on the ground with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs. So you've got a specific situation in view. You don't just have a nest with eggs. You've got a nest where you've got eggs and the mother's on the eggs. You shall not take the mother with the young You shall let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourselves. It's talking about here the eggs as a source of food, and it's talking about not taking the mother with the young, and the reasoning is that it may go well with you, and that you may live long. Well that sounds like the fifth commandment in one sense. Honor your father and mother that you may live long in the land. It's this promise of prospering and quite literally the physical dimension to this must not be ignored. That you may live long will require food and if you are taking both food from the mother and the mother you are for sure, if not just in the short term, certainly in the long term, diminishing sources of food that you will need. I give you an example of this back in chapter 20. Remember in chapter 20, verse 19, when he says, when you besiege a city for a long time, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. So there's this prohibition about chopping down trees. And then he gets very specific. He says, you may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field human, that they should be besieged by you? Only the trees that aren't trees for food you may destroy and cut down, that you may build siege works against the city. So he's talking here about not just responding in a hasty way and not thinking through the consequences of that. So you start cutting down all the fruit trees. You know what that's gonna mean for you when you inherit the land? Oh, fewer fruit trees, less fruit for you. There's gonna be a shortening of the food supply. I think what verses six and seven is inviting them to do is take a long view to the way they acquire food. And he's saying, okay, you got these eggs? Sure, but what if you took the mom and the eggs? The mom's not gonna lay any more eggs, is she? And you don't want the situation where you take the mom and then leave the eggs, because then these eggs, of what use will they be to you, you've certainly taken the source of them. He says, you shall let the mother go, in verse 7. But the young you may take for yourself, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long. This seems to have in mind the connection between the mother and the young that we might say could be illustrated with the earlier commandment in Exodus where you have this, do not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. You have not a denial that you could eat a young goat, but there's certain treatment of the young and the mother that might be avoided. And in this case, Taking the mother along with the eggs is prohibited. And that's not because the bird wouldn't be a source of food. It's because you're not thinking long-term enough about how you will need more eggs from this mother. All right, so this seems to have in view the preservation of life, the incorporation of even proper care of these that are not image bearers, but rather a bird and the young and how I'm to treat that situation. But also thinking long term about the importance of life and how it's preserved. It's to undermine greed. Because if you have these eggs, and you say, but I'm just, while I'm here, I'm just gonna go take the eggs out of the nest, I'm just gonna take the mother too. The biblical author is saying, slow down there, let's think this through. Now, the final verse is in verse eight. where we can put it under this heading, this fifth heading, take measures to ensure the safety of others. And so the first four, just to reiterate, restore your neighbor's property when you find it, help your neighbor in a time of need, wear clothes which reflect your biological sex, don't destroy the source of food, and now take measures to ensure the safety of others. These seem to be five moral reasoning principles based out of the sixth commandment chiefly that are then informing the behavior of the Israelites. I kind of love this law because at the start of it, it's like giving you building advice. It's like saying, what's in my house? And then he's saying, and by the way, here's what you need. This is just to keep your house up to moral code, so to speak. In verse 8, when you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof. What's going on with a roof that something needs to be built on it and actually included in the sermons of Moses for it? Well, the standard roof of an Israelite house would be flat. And knowing that, the flat roof would be a place where there would be people resting, not just in the home, but guests who were over and fellowshipping. Sometimes the inside of the home would not be big enough for guests and fellowship. And so you would have the roof of the home, a place where dinners, parties, celebrations would be. And he's saying here, when you build a new house, think all the way through this about how you can help avoid disaster for people who might find themselves on your roof. So this is not somebody who's on your roof and they shouldn't be. This is part of what the flat roof of your home would be used for, all right? So in verse eight, when you build a new house, make a parapet. A parapet is a boundary. It is like a kind of barrier that would go around the breadth and width of the roof so that if someone is on the roof, they're less likely to tumble off of it. When you build a new house, make this parapet for your roof that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it. Well, so let's think this through here. The reasoning is not, well, if they fell off my roof, why were they up there? Well, if they fell off that roof, what were they doing to fall? If they fell off that roof, I told them I was gonna put a parapet, I told them there wasn't one, and I told them to be careful. You know, in verse eight, this is a command that when they think through the building of this new home, they should already be thinking about how they can avoid the unnecessary loss of life. So again, the preservation of life, the value of the human body and avoiding death. And he says that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house. So you bear a measure of responsibility in this. So it does no good to say, well, the reason this terrible thing happened on the roof of my house is because of what that person did. And I know I didn't have a parapet. I know I was supposed to, but. The biblical author says, there is a kind of guilt now that weighs upon you because you could have stopped this and you didn't. You could have avoided this, but you did not take proper measures for it. There's an analogous law in Exodus that comes to mind. In Exodus 21-33, when a man opens a pit or when a man digs a pit and doesn't cover it, and an ox or donkey falls into it, the owner of that pit shall make restoration. Because if the ox falls into the pit, you're not going to want to take the measure to try to get that ox out of there. It's better to just pay some sort of compensation for what's just been incurred, a loss from your neighbor. So if you open the pit and you don't cover the pit and something falls into that and a loss is incurred, you have a responsibility to play. And this, in Exodus 21, seems to be the kind of principle at work in Deuteronomy 22, 8. Got this new house, got this flat roof, better put a boundary around it. Because what you don't want is something reckless or haphazard to take place, and then all of a sudden, what you could have avoided, you didn't avoid. One writer puts it this way, anyone who doesn't keep this command is guilty of willful neglect. Okay, so guilty of willful neglect. They know that if they had put this parapet there, as the sermons of Moses had told them to do, certain things would be avoided. And knowing that, they still did not. So we call that neglect. And there is a level of criminality at play, especially when the loss of life is so clear and could have been avoided. Now, in verses one to eight, what we have noticed are a series of five laws that I've tried to summarize by taking these verses in turn, and that these five laws are aiming at love of neighbor, and in particular, valuing the life and body and property of neighbor. And that if you impede life, you're actually in violation of the sixth commandment. Whether it's the body of the person, the property of the person, the roof of the person, the animals of the person, the wallet, the watch, the garment, these things that are connected to your neighbor's body or extensions of what your neighbor owns. You're to honor that. So you could say in closing that the covenant community needs to honor what belongs to others. needs to respect the boundaries of nature and life, and to be proactive toward the preservation of life. I love how in the opening verses, he gives this illustration, this scenario, and he says, you may not ignore them. To be a person of love and to be a good and faithful neighbor toward image bearers around us means I'm willing to have initiative in a situation of need. I'm willing to step in and have a role to play, to exercise influence, to be proactive toward the preservation and restoration of life. We want to be like that good Samaritan. We don't want to be like this person who goes off this side and this person who goes off this side. We want to read Deuteronomy 22 and we want to hear the parable of Luke 10 and for Jesus to say, who proved to be the good neighbor? And of course, the one who showed compassion and mercy and care. But Mark Dever is right when he has said in a different sermon about love, but in a certain sense, certainly it applies here, that love of neighbor is costly. Love of neighbor is costly. When you have other plans and then something interrupts it. When you have resources that would be demanded of you for a particular need to be met. When time and convenience must be set aside for the sake of an image bearer. It seems that in Deuteronomy 22, this is the kind of thing we're to be prepared for. being ready to love others when we're not planning for it. Because this guy envisioned in Deuteronomy 22 isn't planning for his neighbor's ox to go wandering by. He's not looking at his calendar and it's like, this is the day the oxen is going astray, right on schedule. You know, this is all unexpected. This is all unexpected. These are unexpected opportunities for him to be a loving neighbor toward his fellow image bearer. This is not about Sinai Covenant versus New Covenant. This is about the moral reasoning of image bearers treating one another with love and compassion. Honor what belongs to others. Respect the boundaries of nature in life and be proactive toward the preservation of life. We want to be those like that good Samaritan to whom Jesus says to his audience afterward, go and do likewise.