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GOD REVEALS HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS TO CREATE INDIVIDUALS WHO VALUE PEOPLE OVER PROPERTYEXODUS 21:33-22:17INTRODUCTION About a month ago I was out in front of my house doing some yard work just before supper. Our dog, which is usually in our fenced back yard, was with me. I finished my work and headed towards the gate to go into the back yard with my dog right next to me. Suddenly, my dog noticed our neighbor’s cat in his yard about 20 yards away. The cat saw my dog at the same time and took off running with the dog in hot pursuit and me close behind screaming for him to stop and come back. Unfortunately the cat ran under the neighbor’s newly constructed back deck with my dog right on its tail. As I got up to the deck the horrific sounds of a dog and cat fighting came from under the deck. My dog is a killer and I knew that cat would not last long. My screams brought the woman of the house, Valerie and her son, Robin, and they joined in my screaming. We tried blasting the dog with water from a hose and poking him with a rake handle, all to no avail. One of their friends came out of the house with a crowbar and he and I began prying off one of the new deck boards while Valerie disappeared in the house. Just as we broke the deck board, Bob, the man of the house busted out the basement window and was able to grab my dog and the cat that were down in the window well. I took the dog home and put him in his crate and returned to find Valerie holding the beat up cat who was obviously injured. I felt horrible and apologized profusely and told them I would pay the vet bill for the cat and to repair the damage to the deck. By the way, both cat and dog, after a few days of lying around are both OK. We live in a world where human beings by accident, by negligence and by intention damage, destroy and steal the property of other human beings. Whether it is the teenager accidentally scratching his parent’s car while trying to park at the mall or the employee who doesn’t follow proper operating procedures and so by negligence destroys a piece of equipment that belongs to his employer or the burglar intentionally stealing the TV and DVD player, all of us both bring harm to the property of others and have our property harmed by others. The laws that God gave to Moses for Israel in this passage all have to do with the loss of property by accident, negligence or theft. While the details of these laws in this passage appear foreign to us, they are dealing with a reality that all of us face on a regular basis. These laws are specific applications to the nation Israel of the 8 th commandment, “You shall not steal.” If you will remember from our discussion of that commandment we noted that the commandment is rooted in the fact that God owns the whole universe, everything and everyone, and that God gives what he owns to each person as he decides. He, as it were, signs over temporary ownership to portions of his property to each person as he determines. He gives us the material and labor resources of his world for us to use for our own welfare and for the welfare of his entire world. Therefore, we are obligated, as stewards of his property, living in community with other stewards of his property to respect and promote the material well being of our fellow stewards. These laws then, are God’s instructions to Israel on how they are to react when property is damaged, destroyed or stolen whether by accident, negligence or intention. As I have wrestled with how best to talk about these laws I am drawn again to use the four questions that we’ve used before that are based upon how the NT tells us to use the OT law. First we will look at what these laws meant for Israel as God’s chosen people, directly ruled over by him. Second, we will examine how these laws reveal and condemn Israel and us for our sins. Third, we will consider what these laws show us about Christ and his salvation. Fourth, we will observe what direction these laws give us as God's new covenant people on how to love God and people. I. What did these laws mean for Israel, as God’s chosen people? All the laws in this passage are examples of ways in which property might be harmed or lost. These are what are called, “case law”. They give examples that are then to be used by the judges in Israel to determine how to respond to the infinite variety of ways that people damage one another’s property. The passage can be divided into three sections. 21:33-22:6 explains the penalties due to those who cause a loss of property either by accident, negligence or theft. Then 22:7-15 details the way to handle the loss of property when the property has been placed in the possession of a neighbor, either for safe-keeping or for use. Third, this section ends (vv. 16-17) with a unique loss. What should happen when one man seduces another man’s daughter? A number of the laws in the first section are addressed to the destruction of property through negligence. In vv. 33-34 a man digs a well or a pit for some purpose but then fails to cover it and his neighbor’s animal falls into it and is killed. If that happens then the one who dug the well must pay for the animal and he keeps the dead animal. The man cannot plead he didn't mean to do it. If you dig a well and you live among grazing animals, you must cover it to prevent the death of your neighbor's animals. In v. 36, one man’s bull that is known to be violent is not kept penned up and it kills his neighbor’s bull. In other words the owner of the violent bull is negligent in his duty to keep the animal under control. In that case he had to give a living bull to his neighbor and he kept the dead animal. Then if you’ll look down to 22:5, if a man is negligent in keeping his grazing animals in his own field or vineyard and they get into a neighbor’s field, the one whose animals trespassed must make restitution from the best of his own field. In other words, if your cattle ate an acre’s worth of your neighbor’s wheat, then you had to give him the harvest from your most productive acre of wheat. Two of the laws refer to what should happen if you damage your neighbor’s property by accident. In 21:35 if two oxen fight and one of them dies, then the living ox is to be sold and the money divided between the neighbors and they are to divide the meat from the dead ox between the two of them. In 22:6, if someone is burning off their field in preparation for planting, which was and is a very common practice, and the fire gets out of control and burns up either the neighbor’s shocks of grain or his standing grain, then the one who started the fire must pay for what was destroyed, even though the fire was an accident. The center section, vv. 22:1-4 deals with what should and should not happen to thieves. The basic law is in v. 1. If someone steals an animal and either butchers it or sells it to someone else and he is caught, then he must repay the one from whom he stole: five oxen if he stole an ox or four sheep or goats if that is what he stole. The difference in restitution is due to the relative value of the different livestock. If the thief is unable to pay the required restitution he is to be sold into temporary slavery to pay the restitution (v.3). If the thief still has the animal in his possession so that the owner gets his animal back, then he only needs to pay twice what he stole (v.4). So if he stole an ox he must return the ox and another one as well. Imbedded in the middle of the penalties for thievery is a statement of what should happen if the thief is killed while in the act of stealing. If the owner kills the thief at night, then the owner is not guilty of any wrongdoing and nothing is to happen to him or her. A person had the right to self defense and could use deadly force at night because it would be impossible to know whether the person was there to do something other than steal. However, if the thief is killed in the daylight, then the property owner is guilty of shedding blood and the laws concerning the killing of another apply. In Israel, you could not use deadly force to defend your property. He must flee to a city of refuge and the killing must be investigated. If it was not an act of premeditated murder for which he must die, then he would have to live in the city of refuge until the death of the man who was the high priest at the time. In verses 7-13 a different situation is envisioned. A neighbor entrusts his livestock or his money or some other property into the care of another neighbor. His neighbor is responsible for safe guarding the property. We are not told why the property is entrusted to his care but any number of reasons could be imagined. He goes on a trip and cannot take all of his livestock with him. He has more livestock than his land can support and so his neighbor permits some of his livestock to graze with his own herds. There were no banks so perhaps a neighbor has a more secure home and so you might entrust your silver with him. One thing to note in this arrangement: the one who is entrusting his property to another does so because he trusts his neighbor. Nobody gives his possessions into the safe keeping of another without knowing and trusting the other person. What happens is that when the owner of the property returns to get it, it is gone. The neighbor who was in charge of the property claims the money, the livestock or whatever is no longer in his possession, it was stolen or killed by wild animals. Verses 7-13 summarize the various ways to resolve this conflict. First, if a thief took it and the thief is caught with the property or livestock, then the thief has to return the property and add the same value, i.e. pay double. If no thief is caught, then the case has to go before the judges to find out who is telling the truth. (NOTE: some translations will say, “before God,” which is the literal translation of the Hebrew word. However, the same word for God is sometimes translated judge. In fact it doesn’t matter in the context because in Israel, to come before God’s appointed judges was the same as coming before God.) One of the possibilities envisioned in v. 9 is that the property is in the possession of the one who was to watch it, but he claims it belongs to him. After an investigation, the judges, acting in God’s place, will render a verdict and if the one who was guarding his neighbor’s property is found to be guilty, he must pay double the value of what was lost. In other words, he has to return the property and 100% of the value of it in addition. If however, there is no way to ascertain what happened, in other words, there are no witnesses, then the one who was caring for the property is to take an oath before the Lord and the one who has lost the property is to be satisfied with the oath. An oath was to essentially say, “May God curse me if I stole your property or have knowledge of what happened to it.” The owner who has lost his property is to value his relationship with his neighbor more than the lost property and live in friendship with his neighbor because he gives to his neighbor the benefit of the doubt. If the claim is made that wild beasts killed the animal in question then the keeper of the animal could produce the mutilated carcass to prove it was so and no restitution would be paid (v.13). If a neighbor borrowed livestock or some other property to use and the livestock was injured or the property damaged in any way, then the one who borrowed the item would have to pay for the damage, as long as the owner was not present (v. 14). However, if the owner was present, then no restitution would be required because the owner would know there was no negligence involved in the injury (v.15a). Finally, if a person hires a neighbor’s livestock or property and there is injury, damage or death, then the fee paid to hire is compensation enough. The owner who hired out his livestock or other property was taking a known risk for pay and so the pay is all the compensation deserved (v.15b). The final law (vv.16-17) we are considering this morning does not, to our modern eyes appear to be in the same category as the loss of property that we have been discussing. However, among the people of Israel it most certainly is a case of theft when a young man talks a young woman who is not engaged to be married into having an inappropriate physical relationship. He is stealing what is not his, taking something of great value from her family and her future husband. Women were valued and esteemed members of the household. Women brought economic value to the family of her birth through the payment of the bride-price by the groom and she added economic value to her husband’s new household both by her labor and her bearing of children. Additionally, the only secure and safe place for a woman was to be attached to a family. The only option for unattached women was prostitution or begging. The act that is being described here is not rape and not adultery, for which the penalty of both is death. What happens here is that a young man talks a young, unengaged woman into having an inappropriate physical relationship. If they are found out then the man is required to pay the bride price and marry the young woman and in the parallel law in Deuteronomy we are told that he can never divorce her. However, the father does not have to permit his daughter to marry the man and if that is the case, the young man still has to pay the bride price for what he has done. In this way the daughter is protected, the father's economic interest is protected and young men learn that it is serious business to mess around with another man's daughter. II. How do these laws reveal and condemn Israel and us for our sins? What we want to reflect on here is what the NT says is the primary function of the law in our lives. As Paul says in Romans 7:7, “…I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’” As he says a little bit later in that same chapter, it is through the law that “sin becomes utterly sinful.” In other words, it is only as I see God’s standards and compare myself to them that I can truly understand the greatness and the ugliness and the offensiveness of my sin. Without God’s law I do not see the true perversity of my sin. The law shows us our sin and God’s just anger against us for our sin. God uses the law for this purpose so that we will flee to Christ as the only way to escape the penalty due us for our sin. This was true for Israel and it is true also for us. God makes clear in both the OT and the NT that every sin deserves death. All of the criminal acts listed here, if God were to execute perfect justice, would be met with eternal condemnation in hell. However, God could not make every sin a capital crime because then all Israel would have been dead the day he gave his law. It is the same today; it is not God's will that every sin be a capital crime. He is still working out his plan to save all of his people and so he endures human sin and rebellion and gives these specific civil laws to Israel and requires governments today to have various civil laws in order to restrain human sin and anarchy and to help us to see his displeasure with particular sins. I want to mention four ways that these laws condemn us. First, as we saw when we talked about the 8 th commandment, God hates all who take what does not belong to them. It is an offense against God to possess or to use what you did not purchase with your own money or your own labor or through inheritance. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to a radio show on NPR entitled, “This American Life.” The topic of the show was theft. Three former thieves shared their stories of their thievery. One woman described how she stole thousands of dollars from her employer. A man talked about how he had robbed over 30 banks in a five year period before being caught and going to jail. The third person was an elderly woman who lived in Florida. Her story was the most shocking. She had recently gotten caught shoplifting a bottle of aspirin. It turns out that this was not the first time she shoplifted, though it was the first time she had gotten caught. She had been shoplifting a couple of times a week since she was a teenager; for fifty or sixty years. She shoplifted throughout her married life and while raising her children. Until she was caught, no one knew that she was a thief. What was shocking about her story was that she didn’t see anything wrong with what she was doing. She didn’t consider herself a thief. In fact, she went so far as to say she worked hard and had suffered much and so she deserved to get a little something for nothing. Like the rest of us, she had a reason why it was OK for her to commit this sin which was also a crime. She had a sufficient justification for her behavior. If you are one who is taking what does not belong to you, then let this law from God stop your mouth from its self-justifying words. You are a thief and while human courts do not punish thieves with death, you will not fare so well in God’s court. He is determined to send to hell every thief who does not repent and flee to Christ. Second, these laws show us that even if we have never actually stolen something from someone we have not yet kept the law to not steal. We are not merely responsible to not steal but we are responsible to make sure that our conduct does not bring harm to our neighbor’s property in any way. I must always be concerned about how my actions are affecting others and their property. I am not only to be my brother’s keeper but I am also to be the keeper of my brother’s property. I am to make sure that nothing that I do brings harm to the property of any other person. Any person who has every thrown a battery into the trash or poured oil or gasoline on the ground or in the storm sewer has broken this law by poisoning the water your neighbor depends upon. We daily do things that bring harm to the life and property of others by our consumption and disposal of hundreds of products. I broke God’s law to protect my neighbor’s property, in this case, his cat, by having my dog outside of my fenced back yard without a leash. The point I’m trying to make here is this: you and I rarely think about how our behavior affects the property of other people. We rarely modify our behavior out of concern for our neighbor’s property and material resources. It is only God's mercy that has kept us from harming what belongs to our neighbor more than we have. We all are lawbreakers and deserve death and hell for our negligent disregard for the welfare of our neighbor’s property. Third, these laws condemn us because God intends that when we harm another’s possessions we are to pay restitution. How many times have you and I damaged or destroyed the property of others, even members of your own family but have done nothing to compensate the one whose property you injured? How often have we sought to minimize or cover up what we have done to escape paying for what we have done? Jane had a favorite casserole dish that we received as a wedding present. She regularly used it to cook our family meals. I broke it when I was doing dishes without her knowledge. I threw it out and never told her and did nothing to replace it. She eventually discovered it was missing and that I was the culprit. I was wrong to not ask for her forgiveness and to seek to make it right. All of us have failed to restore what we have broken or to compensate those whose property we have harmed and by doing so have broken God’s law. He knows what we have done and he will call us to account for all the destruction we have brought to the possessions of others for which we have not paid restitution. Fourth, we live in a culture where, according to surveys, over 70% of eighteen year olds have had inappropriate physical relationships. Our culture treats these relationships as though they are merely private matters. God doesn't view promiscuity among unmarried people this way. He doesn't think that "hookin' up" is normal and moral behavior. In addition to being violations of the 7th commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," every inappropriate physical contact between unmarried people is stealing from future spouses. All such thieves deserve eternal hell for their robbery. III. What do these laws tell us about Christ and his salvation? These laws are not merely a statement of what penalties should be enforced but demonstrate that God wants us to be as concerned for our neighbor's well being as we are with our own. These laws show God's demand that human beings care more for the good of our neighbor and our relationship to him or her than we do for the preservation of our own property. In Philippians 2 we are told that Jesus, "though being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant…" The language used here is the language of grasping material possessions. Jesus gave up all his property rights as God and became a servant in order to promote the well-being of others. He supremely fulfilled these laws by using all of his physical resources, including his very life, to gain for us the greatest wealth to be obtained, eternal life with him in the Land of Promise which is a land overflowing with material abundance. As Paul says in 2 Cor. 8:9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor so that you through his poverty might be made rich." IV. How do these laws help us to love God and our neighbor? The story of the conversion of a wealthy man in Luke 19 shows us how these laws give us direction for what it means to be a follower of Jesus. The man’s name was Zaccheus. He lived in the town of Jericho, which was one of the prominent trade cities in Palestine during the time of Jesus. He was the chief tax collector in the town. He was a Jew. His job was to recruit other Jewish men to be his under tax collectors. Together these men would collect taxes from their fellow Jews, which they would then pay to the Roman governors who ruled over Palestine. The taxes were used to fund the occupying Roman army and government apparatus that kept Israel under Roman domination. The tax collectors were among the most hated and despised people in Jewish culture not only because they were traitors politically and religiously but also because they were extortionists. They collected by means of threat more taxes than the Roman government required and kept the extra. Zaccheus, as the chief tax collector, in addition to his own surplus taxes also took a percentage of everything that his subordinates collected. He was a wealthy man. His wealth was not obtained by lawful means but through theft. Most of you know the story. Jesus was traveling through Jericho one day and Zaccheus wanted to see him. However, as he was a short man and the crowds were large he couldn’t get a good look at Jesus. So he climbed a tree next to the road in order to see Jesus. When Jesus came to the tree he stopped and looked up and said, “Zaccheus come down for I am going to have lunch at your house today.” Zaccheus was delighted and quickly climbed down and brought Jesus into his home for lunch. We are not told what Jesus told Zaccheus that day but we do know that he became a follower of Christ that day. We know that he was born again by the Spirit of God, and so he placed his faith in Jesus. How do we know? We know because we can see the effects of spiritual life in him. He got up from lunch and announced to Jesus and to all who were assembled that he was going to give half of his possessions to the poor and that if he had stolen anything from anybody he was going to pay back four times what he stole. I want you to think about what is happening here. The law, which we just studied and which yet applied to Zaccheus only required that he repay double what he had stolen. Yet he is voluntarily paying back 4 times what he stole. In addition, He is giving away half of what he possessed off the top to the poor. He is obeying the law, but not the letter of the law. The law that the Holy Spirit writes on our heart is not merely the literal commandments of the OT, but the law of abundant generous love for neighbor. What is it about the gospel of Christ that motivates such extravagant generosity and humility? What Zaccheus came to understand at that luncheon was that in spite of his great sinfulness, yet God was willing to forgive him for the sake of Christ. God was willing to pledge himself to Zaccheus’ eternal well-being. God promised him that he would not punish him for his many sins but would treat him as a beloved child, an heir of the promises he made to Abraham and to his Seed for the sake of Christ. How could he not gladly give away his possessions to the poor and make right the wrong he had done to others? When a person is born again by the Spirit of God, that person cares about God and people, not about possessions. That is the direction of these laws in Exodus. The point of these laws isn’t just to punish thieves but to show the kind of concern we are to have for others and their possessions. All who call themselves Christians pay attention to how their behavior impacts the property of others. Those who belong to Christ cannot wait to repay what they have stolen, with interest. Christians love to give away their property to make things right with those whom they have harmed. If you have been born again, then you have sought to repay those from whom you have stolen and whose property you have damaged. All who have had God’s law written on their hearts by the Spirit value people, not property. Zaccheus wasn’t interested in haggling over how much he owed to others. He wanted to display the liberality of God by the freedom of his restitution. It isn’t only the generosity of his restitution that is so remarkable but also is the fact that he was willingly admitting to his thievery. No hiding of sins here but an open declaration, “I am a thief and if I have cheated you come see me and I will pay you four times what I took from you.” How quickly do you think this news spread throughout Jericho? The next day when he sat at his tax collecting booth a line of people whom he had cheated stood there, not to pay taxes but to receive back four times the amount that he had stolen from them. I can’t help but think what an impact a whole community of people like Zaccheus, who look out for their neighbor’s possessions and who freely admit to the harm they do and gladly pay back what they have taken with interest would have in a city like ours. People who don’t fight about property but who are generous and look out for others and who aren’t afraid to admit when they’ve harmed someone else and are even prepared to open up their checkbooks to show they mean to make things right will stand out from the crowd in remarkable ways, just like Zaccheus did. © Copyright 2006 John Swanson.
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