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GOD REVEALS HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS TO EXPOSE INJUSTICE AND EVILEXODUS 22:18-23:9INTRODUCTION Derek Perdue shared a story this past week that is a great reminder of how our study of God’s laws ought to chiefly impact us. A friend of his was driving through the countryside near Monroe, WI, where Derek grew up. His friend ran a stop sign out in the middle of nowhere. As he went through the stop sign he saw, coming down the cross road a Green County sheriff’s car. As he watched in his rear view mirror the sheriff car turned and began to follow him but didn’t turn on his lights. The longer he drove with the sheriff behind him the guiltier he felt until finally he pulled over to the side of the road. The sheriff pulled up behind him, turned his flashing lights on and came up to the car. Derek’s friend confessed to running the stop sign and so the officer wrote him out a ticket. He had not stopped the young man because he was not sure if he had run the stop sign. We are all are just like Derek’s friend. We go through life breaking God’s laws, often knowingly, without any sense of guilt or remorse or fear. We live as if no one is watching. Mercifully, God sends his Holy Spirit to convict us of our law breaking. The Holy Spirit convinces us that God is watching. The Spirit takes God's law, these particular expressions of God’s moral will and through them forces us to face the fact that we are not living in secret. He knows everything we have done, said, thought and felt. He is always in our rear view mirror, keeping track of all the ways in which we violate his perfect law. It is only when we know this to be the truth of our situation that we are willing to pull over and acknowledge our guilt and recognize the justice of God in condemning us for our sins. The Holy Spirit intends to use these laws to bring us to the place where we willingly admit we are wrong and it would be completely just for God to send us to hell for our sins. It is God's gracious aim in our lives to persuade us that we have no greater problem than the fact that we have broken his law. God wants us to pull over and acknowledge our sin, not because he likes making us feel bad but because without an acknowledgement of our guilt we will never discover the greatness of his forgiveness. You see, unlike Derek's friend who had to pay the fine, God offers to us a way to justly escape the penalty due us for our sins. He has provided a Savior who has “paid the fine” for us. We will only trust Jesus, who has satisfied God's law for us, when we know that we have broken his law. As we consider another portion of God’s law, given to Moses, for the people of Israel we must first and foremost ask God the Holy Spirit to use these laws not to assure us that we are doing OK but to expose us for the frauds that we are. These laws are meant to create humility and lowliness in us, not self-assured confidence in our own goodness, in our ability to keep the law. There ought to be nothing assuring about these laws for us. Rather, as we consider God’s demands upon us we ought to fear. We ought to see God in the rear view mirror of our lives and feel the reality that he has seen what we have done and what we have left undone. These laws, rather than comforting us are meant by God to produce such a weight of guilt in us that we pull over and face him now when the possibility of forgiveness is held out to us. If we do not pull over now willingly, one day we will look in the mirror and the lights will be on and God will forcibly pull us over and give us what we deserve for our reckless disregard of his gracious moral will. MAIN POINT God sees and condemns us for…I. The evil we do (22:18-20) This section in the law that God gave to govern Israel as his chosen people begins by listing in quick succession three “crimes” that were punishable by death. What these three infractions have in common is that they represent three very common practices of the people who were living in the land of Canaan. All three of these acts can be found in lists of prohibited sins in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Associated with all of these lists are statements that Israel is not to behave in these ways because this is the way that the people living in Canaan lived and is the reason that God told Israel to wipe them out. Listen to how this is stated in Lev. 18:24ff after listing 18 forms of sexual perversion, “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws… for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you…” God warns Israel and us that if you live the way the pagan, Canaanite tribes lived you will suffer the same fate they suffered, death. The three kinds of evil he mentions here are evils which none of us should feel we have never participated in. The first evil is that of witchcraft or sorcery. Female witches are mentioned because this is a sin that is more commonly associated with women. However, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, all who practice magic or divination, whether male or female are condemned. By the way, there is no such thing, in God’s view, as white magic vs. black magic. Death is what is due to all who engage in any kind of sorcery. (This does not mean that Christians are to kill witches or to work to get a law passed that prescribes the death penalty for witches. The Christians who conducted the Salem witch trials, while godly and good Christians were in great error at this point. The NT clearly teaches that while the OT law enables us to understand God’s moral will and communicates God’s determination to punish all those who do not obey all the law, it also lets us know that it is not our business to punish in this world all those who sin. As we noted on other occasions, the church excommunicates all who profess to be Christians and yet persist in flagrant sin, whether it be witchcraft or adultery or embezzlement, we don’t kill them.) Why is God opposed to all forms of magic? Sorcery is an attempt to manipulate supernatural forces, both good and bad, to do your bidding through the use of secret rituals, incantations, potions, magical objects, séances and the like. The most extreme form of these rituals was and continues to be the sacrificing of children to persuade the gods to act. At the core of sorcery is the conviction that human beings can exercise power over the supernatural world and thus control the natural world for their own purposes. While there is much overt witchcraft at loose in the world, yet there is also much sorcery being performed in the name of Christ. The belief that sacred places and objects have divine power to heal or that certain prayers obligate God to act or demons to flee are nothing more than sorcery parading in the garb of Christian lingo. Those who teach that the words we speak create that reality, whether good or bad, are promoting sorcery, not biblical faith. Human words have no power to create reality. Only God's word creates the reality it commands. God responds to one thing in humans and that is humble, contrite faith. All superstitious acts are an attack upon the sovereignty of God. Sorcery is also much taken up with obtaining secret knowledge, especially knowledge of the future. All we need to know in order to live rightly in God’s world is revealed to us in his word, not through some mystical ritual or through reading the signs in the stars or on a person’s hand. All who seek to gain power through the manipulation of the supernatural world by magic or any form of divination stand under God’s condemnation. Please note, it is participation in magic, not being entertained by stories that contain fictional accounts of magic that God condemns. The second evil God condemns is that of sexual perversion. God is not just against this one form of sexual immorality. This one is used to stand, as the most extreme example, of all the forms of illicit sexual conduct that characterize the world we live in. The point that we need to take from this is that God cares about what goes on in the bedroom. He sees what you do in private and he has an opinion. He is paying attention and he is storing up wrath against those who engage in all forms of sexual conduct outside of monogamous, life-long marriage. The third evil is that of worshipping a false god. This is simply a restatement of the 1 st of the 10 Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before me.” There is only one God and all who worship a god other than the God who is a Trinity, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who is the God and Father of Jesus Christ are worshipping a false god and deserve death. Sincerity is not the test of whether or not your worship is acceptable to the God who exists. The only worship that is acceptable to God is worship that is directed to God the Father, through God the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. God sees and condemns us for…
II. The greed and pride that rules us (22:21-27) The next section deals with God’s commitment to the weak and vulnerable. There are four categories of “at risk” people identified, the foreigner who has made his home in Israel, widows, the fatherless and the economically poor. Aliens are vulnerable because they have no extended family and the network of relationships that an extended family creates in a society to fall back upon. The language will not be their mother tongue and so they will be at a disadvantage and open to abuse. They will not be familiar with the customs and practices of the majority culture and thus exposed to manipulation. Notice that the reason God gives for not harming the aliens is because the Israelites lived as aliens in Egypt. They know the reality of being a defenseless minority in another country. They know firsthand the extreme abuse that aliens are susceptible to. They know what it is like to be taken advantage of; therefore they are to not take advantage of those who are aliens among them. The next category of vulnerable people are the widows and orphans. Women and children without husbands and fathers are vulnerable in our culture but are particularly vulnerable in cultures where women cannot work and where most of the financial resources are in the hands of men. The reason given for not oppressing widows and orphans is because God pays special attention to them and will rise in their defense. He will personally kill any man who oppresses widows and orphans thereby making his wife a widow and his children orphans. The final category of defenseless people are the economically deprived. Here God gives instructions on how to lend money to other Israelites who have fallen on hard times. They are to charge no interest. They have the right to obtain some guarantee that the poor person will repay the loan. They can use the poor person’s outer cloak, which was also used as a blanket at night as collateral. However, they were to return the cloak every evening so that the poor man would have something to cover up with against the cold desert nights. In other words, God commands that the Israelites not get rich off another person’s misfortune. God wants the poor Israelite treated with compassion and kindness. God’s commitment to and concern for aliens, widows, the fatherless and the poor is one of the most common recurring themes throughout the Law of Moses, as in Deut. 10:16-17, “The Lord upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow and he loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. You also are to love those who are aliens because you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.” The negative command to not harm these people is coupled with the positive command to love and assist them. There are long sections in Deuteronomy describing how to harvest crops to make sure that the poor are able to eat and numerous commands to give generously to the poor. The prophets regularly tell Israel that one of the reasons God is destroying them is because of both their repression of and their refusal to care for these helpless groups of people. The prophet Isaiah says, “The Lord enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people: ‘It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’ declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.” ( 3:14-15) “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar?” (10:1-3) Then Jeremiah 5:27b-29 says, “‘…they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. Should I not punish them for this?’ declares the Lord.” Notice that the sin of Israel was not only that they oppressed the vulnerable but that they also did not defend them against those who were oppressing them. It is God’s absolute moral will that you and I be personally involved in caring for and defending the vulnerable groups of people in our society. It is his will that we do not participate in taking advantage of them, that we defend their rights and that we seek to relieve their distress. Yet, most of us, if not all of us have little or no contact with the needy among us. Our lives are consumed with taking care of what is ours. Our pride and our greed keep us from being involved in helping those who are helpless in our community. We give no attention to issues of economic justice, unless it concerns our own paycheck. We avoid immigrants and those who are racially and/or ethnically different from ourselves. We treat the poor, not with compassion, but with harshness, blaming them for their sad condition. We’ve run the stop sign and think that no one sees but God has noticed and he is following us. It would be perfectly just for God to pull us over and to punish us for not defending the cause of the fatherless and widow and for not assisting the foreigners who live among us. God sees and condemns us for…
III. The contempt we have for him and his worship (22:28-31) The next section begins with God’s requirement that we not despise him, not take him lightly and that we not curse those whom he has placed in authority over us. In Israel the people who were in authority over them were appointed by God and had authority over all of life. These were the judges and priests and finally kings who were responsible to make sure that Israel was obeying God and then meting out justice on God’s behalf to those who refused to obey. The NT expands the idea of authority beyond just church leaders to include every authority that exists. Romans 13 tells us that every authority has been appointed by God and so whenever we rebel against any authority we are in fact rebelling against God himself. It is not simply that we are to avoid speaking ill of those in authority but that we are to speak well of and obey them. All of us have failed to treat God with the seriousness and respect that he deserves. We have all treated him and his laws with contempt by complaining about the things he requires of us, by blatantly disobeying him, by accusing him of mismanaging his world. How many of us have judged and cursed our teachers or our parents or our political leaders or our pastors? Our mouths are full of cursing those whom God has placed over us. God sees and condemns us for it. Verses 29-30 command that we acknowledge that all we have comes from God by giving back to God a portion of what he has given to us. We don’t give to God because he needs our money but because we need to acknowledge his ownership of us, our families and our possessions. How often have we acted as though what we have is ours and does not belong to God? How often have we refused to give back a portion of what God has given to us? Verses 30-31 command that we worship him as he commands. The firstborn animals are given to God by sacrificing them at the temple. Avoiding eating the meat of an animal torn beasts was so that the Israelite would not be excluded from the worship in the temple by becoming ritually unclean. These verses simply are pointing to the fact that God commands that we worship him in the way he requires. We cannot offer worship to him any old way we please. We must come to him through the shed blood of a perfect substitute, having been cleansed from all our sins. How often do we think it is our sincerity that makes our singing or praying acceptable, rather than the blood of Christ? How often have we refused to offer to God the acts of worship that he requires of us? We regularly skip church, we don’t pray, we don’t encourage one another, we don’t allow God’s word to richly dwell within us. We freely disregard the worship of God and assume that he doesn’t care, that he isn’t paying attention. We live as if our time and our money are our own to do with as we please. We run the stop sign as if no one is watching but God is watching and he is following. God sees and condemns us for…
IV. The injustices we perform (23:1-9) Verses 1-9 in chapter 23 are primarily concerned with how the courts and the judges in Israel operate. On the formal level these verse command how testimony is to be given and how judges are to act in order to insure just judgments. However, there are several indications in the text that God aims for these commands to be applied to all of life, not just in a formal legal setting. These commands tell us the standards of justice that God expects us to maintain in all of our relationships. The first half of vv. 1 & 2 are general statements followed by a specific command regarding testimony in the courtroom. Then vv. 4-5 have no reference at all to the courtroom but describe just behavior towards our enemies. Finally, v. 9, while it would have application in the courtroom also describes what just behavior outside the courtroom looks like. Let’s just walk quickly through this list of commands to understand the just life God demands. First, gossip is forbidden. We are not to spread intentional lies about others or stories about which we do not have adequate eye-witness evidence. Then God forbids bearing false witness in a legal proceeding so that a guilty person is let to go free. In v. 2 we are commanded not to follow the crowd in doing wrong. We are to stand up and do the right thing no matter what our friends are doing. Rather than fearing men we are to fear God. Rather than desiring the approval of men, we are to desire the approval of God. This last week the Rotary Gardens here in Janesville was vandalized. Over $15,000 worth of damage was done. They've already caught three of those who were involved and the police think there were more. What do you think? Did any of those who did this, act out of a desire to be approved of by the group or out of fear of being rejected by the group? How often has each of us done wrong or not done right because we were afraid of what others might think? In the second half of v. 2 and v. 3 we are warned against giving prejudicial testimony in a court of law. Again, we are not to try to please the crowd by our testimony, nor are we to be overly sympathetic to the poor person. Poverty is no excuse for breaking the law and thus we must bear truthful witness even if it will bring the poor into judgment. In vv. 4-5 God commands that we not take justice into our own hands by refusing to help those whom we feel have harmed us, our enemies. We are commanded to treat our enemy as we would our friend. When we discover his property in peril, we are to seek to restore it to him. When we discover our enemy in need of assistance we are to help him. This is God’s absolute moral will for us. We are to help our enemy when he is in need. We are not to laugh at his misfortune or relish it in any way. Rather we are to render assistance to the one who hates us just as we would render assistance to a friend. It is easy to see that Jesus’ command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us is merely an extension of God's law in the OT. Verses 6-8 are addressed more directly to the judges in Israel. They are to not deny justice to the poor. They are to make sure that they do not listen to a false charge and thus sentence the innocent to death. They are to refuse bribes because bribes blind judges and pervert justice. Even though these commands pertain most directly to those who are in official positions yet it is not too difficult to see how easily they also apply to our daily relationships. Parents in particular must make sure they don’t show favoritism, that they don’t punish the innocent and that they don’t accept bribes or promises to be better or obey tomorrow when the child needs disciplining today. It is obvious, is it not, that each of us has failed to live justly? We each have perpetrated many injustices against others. We have participated in spreading false reports both by speaking them and listening to them. We have regularly gone along with the crowd in doing wrong rather than doing the right thing. How often have we applauded when our enemy has suffered, rather than seeking to help him? We have treated people with partiality, favoring some over others not because they deserve it but because of how they have benefited us. We deny justice to those who do not please us not because they deserve it but because they do not please us. We do these things with the same impunity that Derek’s friend blew through the stop sign. We are sure no one is going to call us to account. But that is simply not so. God is watching all of our injustices. I want to finish this morning by drawing your attention to the last phrase in v. 7. God says that the reason you should not put the innocent to death is because “I will not acquit the wicked.” Literally it says, “I will not justify the wicked.” In other words, God says that he is paying attention and that he will not pardon those who break his laws. He will not treat those who disobey him as though they have obeyed him. That is a statement that should send chills up and down our spines. We are wicked. None of us, when we compare ourselves with any part of God’s law can claim to have obeyed it. We all have violated his commands. Therefore, according to the end of v. 7, there is no hope for us. We cannot be justified according to the law. It is like Derek's friend. The police officer could not treat him as if he had not run the stop sign. He had to treat him as a lawbreaker and give him the ticket. It is what the law requires. However, the great and glorious good news is this: apart from the law God has made a way for us to be justified. In Romans 4:5 the exact same words are used to describe God but in the opposite way. It says, “Now to the man who works his wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation, but to the man who does not work but who trusts God, the one who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.” Did you hear that? Romans 4:5 says exactly the opposite thing about God that Exodus 23:7 says. What is being said here is this: The law is like an employment contract. In an employment contract the employee agrees to do so much work and the employer agrees to pay the employee a certain wage for the required work. When the employee fulfills the terms of his contract he doesn’t say thank you to the employer when he is paid. The employer is obligated to pay the wage. It is not a gift. It is the same with the law. If you obey then you gain the blessing of God. However, when someone is paid the wage of a worker without doing any work, then that is a gift. We cannot earn God’s favor by obeying the law because we don’t obey it. God cannot justify us on the basis of our law keeping, that is, reward us with all that he has promised to those who obey him because we have not obeyed him. Demanding that God accept us into heaven on the basis of our work is like me demanding that GM pay me for a forty hour work week when I've not worked a day there in my life. If you seek to come to God based upon your own obedience to him, then Exodus 22:7 applies to you: God will not justify the wicked but will give you justice, that is eternal condemnation. However, he has made a way to give us, freely, graciously all he promises to those who obey him. The way he has made is by crediting the obedience of Jesus Christ to the account of all who trust him. He counts the death of Christ who had no sin to be the death of all who have faith in Jesus. God did not treat Jesus like an obedient person. He treated Jesus as if he were the wicked one. He devoted Jesus to destruction for all those idol worshippers who trust him. He did not permit him to live for all those sorceress’s and sorcerer’s who trust him. He put his son to death for every sexually immoral person who clings to Christ. God will not justify the wicked through the law but he will justify all the wicked who have faith in Jesus. Therefore, pull over, confess your sin and trust Christ as the one who fulfilled the law for you. God sees and condemns us for…
© Copyright 2006 John Swanson.
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