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GOD REVEALS HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS TO MAKE THE JUSTICE OF HIS WRATH KNOWN
EXODUS 21:12-32INTRODUCTION I want to begin this morning by taking a poll of all those who are 16 and under. Raise your hand if you have ever, in your life, been injured or offended in some way by a brother or sister and have then gone to one of your parents and told your mom or dad what your sister or brother did to you? Why did you tell your parent what your sibling did to you? Did you do so because you believed something bad should happen to your brother or sister for the bad they did to you? Would every parent who has ever had a child give an injury report please raise their hand? Every parent who has punished a child for injuring, in some fashion, another child; please raise their hand. Every child comes out of the womb with a sense of justice. Every child knows that when they are injured, justice requires that the one who injured must pay for the injury done. Every parent knows that children who injure other children must suffer for the injury they cause. This sense of justice is called “the judicial sentiment” and it is a part of every human beings nature and of every human culture. The reason that every human being and every human culture possesses the “judicial sentiment” is because every human being is made in the image of God and God is a just God. God shows no partiality. He cannot be bribed or influenced by human work or status. He is not swayed in his determination to give to each person exactly what he or she deserves. He doesn’t favor the rich over the poor or the poor over the rich. He doesn’t favor men over women or women over men. He gives to each person according to what he has done, as Paul says in Romans 2:6, quoting several OT passages. As Abraham said in Genesis 18, “Will not the God of the whole earth do what is just?” In Exodus 21:2-23;19, it is the justice, the righteousness of God that is being put on display in these laws, which he has given to his chosen people Israel. However, as I have sought to make plain throughout our discussion of God’s law giving to Israel on Mt. Sinai, he gave this law to Israel, not as his eternal fixed will for every human being in every human culture but as his specific will for the nation of Israel as they lived in the land of Canaan as his chosen people. As Paul says in Galatians 3 this law served a temporary purpose until Jesus Christ came into the world. While these laws reveal his perfect justice it is a justice fit to the status of Israel as his chosen people in a particular cultural, sociological setting. With the coming of Jesus and the revelation of the true people of God, all those united to Christ by faith, this law was transformed. As we have seen, the two chief purposes for which God gave this law to Israel were to convict every human being of our sinfulness and to reveal the glory of Jesus Christ and his salvation. In other words it would be an error to teach that God wants every person who curses their mom or dad to be put to death immediately. It would be an error to say that it is God’s will that every human government should make it a criminal act, punishable by death, to do any work on Saturday. While that was God's will for Israel, these laws come to us in, with, by and through Jesus Christ. The laws regarding personal injury in Exodus 21:12-36 are an expression of God’s perfect and just anger against all who harm others unjustly. These laws are rooted in God’s commitment to defend the honor of his own name. How do I know that? Look with me back at Genesis 9:4-6. God told Noah and his family when they got off the ark that human beings are made in his image and therefore, those who attack human beings, whether man or animal, are attacking him and deserve to suffer in proportion to the violence they do to God by the violence they do to those made in his image. In this law he gives to Israel we see God’s just anger against those who attack his honor by attacking human beings. NOTE: In the midst of studying this passage I decided that while vv. 33-36 have some common ground with vv. 12-32, yet they more appropriately belong to the list of property crimes beginning in chapter 22. My first point will be the longest. MAIN POINT God is perfectly just, therefore…I. He requires people suffer in proportion to the evil they do A superficial reading of this list of laws might lead you to believe they are randomly put together. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, notice that the list begins with a human killing a human and it ends with one man’s bull killing another man’s bull. It moves from greater injury to lesser injury. Second, it begins with five crimes that must be punished with death and is followed by five crimes that cause injury but not death and therefore do not deserve the death penalty. Third, personal injury done to the various members of society are discussed with the most helpless and vulnerable, unborn babies, placed at the center of the discussion. Fourth, situated in the exact middle of the list is the foundational principle of justice. The placing of the main point at the center of a text is a very common way for Jewish writers to show what they consider most important. At the center of this text is the law of retribution, ie., every person deserves to suffer the suffering they have intentionally or negligently brought to others. Notice also that while the opening verses are stated as absolute principles, “Every murderer shall be put do death” the rest of the list is comprised of case law, or examples of how people might be injured. The entire list presupposes that there will be a judicial system in Israel where judges will be taking these laws and then applying them to the infinite variety of ways that people end up injuring one another. There is no way to list every possible way that a baby in the womb and/or a pregnant woman might be injured and so the example is meant to illustrate the principle that is to then be applied by wise judges to other ways that pregnant women and their unborn babies are injured. What I want to do now is go through the entire list in order to understand what God is requiring and to see the beauty of his justice as it is worked out in a particular cultural, national setting. Then I want to apply the justice of God as revealed here to us. As I mentioned it begins by saying that anyone who strikes a man and kills him should be put to death. However, immediately God qualifies that absolute statement by recognizing there will be cases where people kill others unintentionally. In other parts of the law examples of this are given as when a man is chopping wood and the axe head flies off and strikes another person and kills him or a person drops a stone on someone accidentally and it kills him (cf. Numbers 35:6ff, Deut. 19:1-13). When a person kills another person without intending to do so, that person is then to flee to one of the six “cities of refuge” that God designates where the judges of that town will investigate the matter and then, if the killing is accidental the judges will protect the one who killed from the family of the slain man. Verse 13 is given to stop the practice of revenge killing that is still very common in many tribal cultures. It is the motive that determines whether or not the man shall die or be kept safe. However, as the next verse states plainly, if a person intentionally kills another person, then even if they have fled to the altar in Jerusalem or in one of the other cities of refuge he is to be taken and killed. You cannot escape the just penalty of death for murder by claiming that God forgives you. In vv. 15-17 three more crimes that require the death penalty are added. Physically striking a parent, kidnapping people in order to enslave them or sell them as slaves and cursing a parent all deserve death. As I pointed out two weeks ago, the slavery that the OT permits (vv. 2-11) is debt slavery not the kind of slavery that took place in the U.S. and continues to take place all over the world where people are forcibly taken and enslaved. Everyone involved in the slavery practiced in the U.S. deserved to die. Why is God so strongly opposed to those who physically strike or curse their parents? Parents most visibly represent God as they are the ones through whom God gives us life, through whom God takes care of us when we cannot care for ourselves and who possess God’s authority to command and discipline us. Therefore, when a person strikes or curses a parent they are directly attacking the goodness, the generosity and the sovereignty of God himself. Thus, in Israel, such people were to be killed by the community. God moves next to a discussion of what should happen when one man strikes another man but he does not die. If the injured man makes a full recovery, then the one who did the injury must financially support the one he injured, including all medical bills, until he is able to work again. The one who caused the injury is not to be put to death if he did not kill. However, as vv. 23-25 make clear, if there is permanent injury than the one causing the injury is to be injured in return. Then God addresses another category of people in Israelite society, that of slaves. First, we need to remember who these slaves are. These are people who through their own decisions became so overcome with debt that they had no way to support themselves and pay off their debt. Therefore they sold themselves into slavery in order to pay off the debt. The slavery was temporary. The longest they could be enslaved, no matter how much debt they had incurred was six years, unless they voluntarily made themselves permanent slaves. Verses 20-21 assume that slave masters have the right to use corporeal punishment. The situation is this: the slave must work to pay off their debt. What will happen if a slave refuses to do the work he is required to do? What recourse does the person to whom the debt is owed have? He could sell the slave to another Israelite but it would be hard to do so when the obvious question would be asked, “why are you selling him?” Therefore, corporeal punishment is permitted if needed to motivate a person who is unwilling to fulfill his obligation. However, notice how God controls the amount and the violence of the force that can be used. First, in v. 20 that final clause in the NIV which says, “he must be punished,” literally reads “the slave must be avenged.” It is a very strong word that is normally associated with God. God avenged the Israelites (the slaves of Egypt) by destroying Egypt. God promises to avenge himself with a sword upon the Israelites if they break his law. God avenges the Israelites by destroying the Midianites for their seduction of Israel at Baal Peor. In other words, this word is almost exclusively used for God’s killing those who attack him or his people. Therefore, the first thing God wants every master to know is that if you kill your slave, you will be killed. However, if you do not kill or permanently injure your slave then you do not have to pay anything as you would have if you injured a free person. The reason for this isn’t that the slave doesn’t deserve to be compensated but because the master is responsible for feeding and caring for the injured slave and the slave's labor belongs to master anyway, therefore the master does pay by losing the services of the slave who is working to pay off a debt and paying for his care while he recuperates. If you look down to vv. 26-27 you can see that if a master does any permanent damage to his slave the slave gets to go free. Later in the law God requires that when the master sets the slave free he must send him out with food, clothing and livestock. In other words, the cost to a master for injuring a slave is huge, you either die or you lose some or all the money you had invested in the slave. Therefore, it is in the best interest of masters to use corporeal punishment sparsely and with great restraint. God treats those who have sold themselves as slaves as fully human with full rights and yet he takes serious their responsibility to pay off their debt. Right in the middle of this list of personal injury laws the most vulnerable members of the community are mentioned: pregnant women and their unborn babies. If someone causes the premature birth of a baby as the result of an act of violence, and there is no permanent harm to either mother or child, then the one who struck the woman must pay the family restitution as the husband demands and the judges allow. However, if there is any injury to either the mother or the child then whatever injury is incurred shall be done to the one who did the injury. If mother or child died, then the one who caused the premature birth must die. If the injury was less, then their must be an equitable punishment done to the one who caused the injury. This law of retribution (vv. 23-25) is stated several other times in the law and does not just apply to the injury to mothers and unborn babies. This is the fundamental application of God’s justice: as you have done it will be done to you. God next moves from humans injuring humans to animals injuring humans. First, in v. 28 a bull who kills a human is to be killed by stoning and his flesh may not be eaten. The reason for this is not to punish the owner but to highlight the value of human life. We are made in God’s image and so it is an attack upon God when an animal attacks a human. The bull, though it is a clean animal that can normally be eaten must be killed without being touched by a human as touching it will make the human unclean. It cannot be eaten because it has become unclean and will defile anyone who eats it. However, if the animal has been known to attack humans and the owner has been warned to keep it penned up and he did not do so, then the owner is to be killed along with the animal as it killed by his negligence. However, there is the possibility of the owner not being killed. This is the only case of homicide where a ransom can be paid instead of the person who caused the death being killed. The family of the dead person can permit the owner of the bull to simply pay a ransom. If the family and the judges permit, then he can redeem his life by a payment to the family of the dead person. God ends this section by explaining that the same law applies to children, including the children of the owner of the bull. In other words, if your bull kills your child and it was known to be violent and you didn’t keep it penned up then you must die as well unless your extended family and the judges agree to let your life be redeemed by a payment of money. Again, because slaves are in a different situation economically, if a bull kills a slave then in addition to the death of the bull the owner of the slave must be paid 30 shekels of silver. If the bull was known to be violent, then the owner of the bull dies, unless the owner of the dead slave agrees to accept a payment of 30 shekels instead. The family of the slave is not involved in the decision as the indebted person belongs to the master. The opponents of Christianity and those who are skeptical of the Bible love to point to the "barbaric" justice of the OT law given to Israel at Mt. Sinai. They mock the fact that God required death for cursing parents, for picking up firewood on the Sabbath day, for taking his name in vain. The charge is leveled that the God we trust is a cruel and inhumane God. Yet, what they do not realize is that the couple of dozen offences punishable by death in the law are a great reduction from what God’s perfect justice requires. If God were to legislate his perfect justice, every sin, every crime would require death. That is how it was with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Every violation of God’s command required death. That is what the apostle Paul says in the NT, “The wages of sin is death.” It doesn’t say that the wage of some sins is death, rather what every sin deserves is death. In fact, the law itself teaches that the death penalty applies to every infraction. Deut 27:26 says, “Cursed is everyone who does not do everything written in the Book of the Law.” “Cursing” in the context of Deuteronomy 27 is death. The prophets regularly said that the reason God was wiping Israel out as a nation was because they did not obey his law, all of it, not just the laws that require the death penalty. There are several things to learn about God and his justice from these laws. First, we see the grace of God in dealing with sinful humans in that he does not make every sin a capital offence. He aims to give to Israel fair and just laws by which they can live as a nation ruled over by him. If every sin were a capital offence then all of Israel would be dead before the day was over. Second, we also see how deadly serious God is about sin. He is committed to perfect justice. As the prophets regularly say, “As you have done it will be done to you.” As Paul says, “God will give to every person according to what he has done.” If we just take one law, the law of cursing parents, which of us has not spoken words of dishonor and even hatred to our parents? How many of us have refused to give to our parents the honor due to them? Would it not be just for God to kill each of us for our infraction against just this one law? Third, we discover here God's impartiality. Unlike humans he is not swayed by a person's position in society. The least influential members of society receive his protection and the most influential come under his judgment if they do wrong. All humans are valuable because all humans are made in his image and any attack upon a human being, even one in the womb is an attack upon himself. All who attack humans deserve to have done to them what they have done to others. God is paying attention and will avenge all the harm humans do to other humans. God is perfectly just, therefore…
II. He only forgives by satisfying his justice Obadiah 15 restates God’s perfect law of retribution: “As you have done, it will be done to you, your deeds will return upon your own head.” This is what vv. 23-25 teach. I deserve to have done to me what I have done to others, including God. I deserve to be hated as I have hated others. I deserve to be ignored as I have ignored others. I deserve to be treated with contempt as I have treated others with contempt. I deserve to be treated with ingratitude as I have treated others with ingratitude. It is impossible to make up for the evil I have done by doing good. To think that God should not repay me for the evil I have done because I have not done as much evil as I could have done or I have done some good is nuts. It would be like the murderer saying that he should not be sent to jail because he didn’t murder everyone he could have murdered and he actually was kind to his mother. Forgiveness cannot be given to us on the basis of our earning it or deserving it. What can I do to overcome the guilt of my sin? How can I justly escape the fact that I deserve to have done to me what I have done to others, including God to whom I owe continual gratitude and unending admiration? It would be so wrong for God to simply declare me forgiven and warmly welcome me into heaven. It would make a mockery of his claim to be just and holy and faithful. He could not be trusted if he just let me off the hook because he wanted to do so. Justice requires that I pay for what I have done. God’s perfect justice, his commitment to uphold the worth of his own name and his own righteousness is fulfilled in the work of Christ. God remains just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. I deserve to have done to me what I have done to others. However, God did to Jesus what I did to others so that perfect justice is satisfied. He lost his life for the lives I have taken by my anger. He was killed for the idolatry that I have engaged in. He suffered death for the cursing I have done to my parents. He was mocked and abused for the mockery and abuse I have heaped on others. He was ignored by God and man for the many times I have ignored both men and God. He suffered the death of a murderer for the murders I have committed by my unjust anger. He suffered the death of an adulterer for the many adulteries I have committed in my mind. God does not treat me as my sins deserve but rather forgives me and loves me because he treated Jesus as my sins deserve. God poured out his just anger, which is revealed in his law, against me upon his son so that I am justly forgiven and will not suffer what I have made others suffer. I am given life and treated as a law keeper because Jesus endured the death penalty that I deserve. God is perfectly just, therefore…
III. He requires his people to live differently
I want you to look at v. 14. God says that members of the Jewish community who claim to be forgiven because of what happens on the altar but who have committed murder are not to be forgiven but to be killed. Is it really possible that someone would make the argument that they are free to commit murder because God has promised mercy to sinners through the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb? It is not only possible but a very regular habit of human beings. Jeremiah 7 is a fascinating description of how this exact thing happened. Verses 4-11 say in part, “Do not trust in deceptive words and say, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!’ … you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name and say, ‘We are safe—safe to do all these detestable things?’” What v. 14 and Jeremiah are saying is the same thing that is said in the NT, you cannot be forgiven by Christ and continue to live in opposition to him and his word. There is no sin that cannot be forgiven by the work of Christ but all who are forgiven by Christ are seeking to not sin and when they sin they confess their sins, they don’t say it doesn’t matter that they sinned. You can’t be forgiven by Christ and say what the man who was divorcing his wife told me when I challenged him, “God will forgive me.” Christians hate sinning and mourn over their sin, they do not go around planning to sin because they know that Christ died in their place. We are in a war to avoid sin. We don’t use the death of Jesus as a reason to safely commit acts of sin. Christians do not act like they are safe to sin because there has been a sacrifice made to pay for sin. This passage cannot be properly understood without understanding what Jesus said about it in Matthew 5:38-48. Dr. Philip Ryken makes the point that Jesus was not saying the law was wrong but that how people were using the law was wrong. The law of retribution is not about personal revenge and it is not meant to require that people get what’s coming to them but to limit the penalty that can be imposed. If someone kills your baby you are going to want to make them pay for what they did, but the law set a limit on what could be done. The retribution and restitution had to fit the crime and could not exceed it. Those causing the death of the woman or child would lose their life, you could not take the life of their baby or their wife. Ryken says, “The law was about how we make things right when we harm someone else, not about our getting what is due us when others harm us…usually we do not quote the law of “eye for eye” when we are in the wrong. We tend to quote it only when we think someone else needs to be punished for what they did to us. Jesus was saying we have it backwards. When we are in the wrong, we need to make things right, and we ought to do everything justice requires. But when someone does us wrong, we do not have to insist on strict justice. Instead we have an opportunity to offer mercy.” He then asks, “Did he (Jesus) demand wound for wound and bruise for bruise? No. He said, ‘I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting (Isa 50:6). And when he died on the cross he said, ‘Father, forgive them.’” We, like Jesus, do not require others to pay us back but rather seek to show the love and mercy of God to those who harm us. We are people who want to make things right with those whom we have harmed and who treat with mercy those who harm us. God is perfectly just, therefore…
© Copyright 2006 John Swanson.
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