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Good Sunday morning July 21 to you friends,
I hope you have wonderful day of worship and reunion with God’s people where-ever you are this Sunday.
Exodus 22 is our chapter for today. And let me warn you…what I’m going to show you may surprise you!
Moses had climbed Mount Sinai for his fifth trip, at God’s invitation. Up that mountain, in the cloud, God audibly spoke with Moses, explaining His expectations, His guidelines for behavior, which would form the framework of this new society of people on earth. What new society? Those 2 million slaves waiting for Moses to come back down the mountain!
God wanted these people, that He had rescued from slavery, to honor God, with their lifestyles, their relationships, their ethics, their morals, their behavior, their words, as well as their worship!!
God wanted the world to see what happens, when a people voluntarily live under God’s authority; depend on God for their provisions and protection; trust God for His guidance; and learn to live with God ‘s Presence among them.
While God had tried this with one couple in the Garden of Eden, and later, with one family who came out of the ark after the flood, this was now 2 million slaves whom God was trying to form into a new nation, a holy nation… HIS people! Would you agree…an impossible task?
But remember, God had said to them, “Now if you obey Me fully and keep My covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be My treasured possession. Although the whole earth is Mine, you will be for Me, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:5,6)
That statement must have sounded ridiculous…beyond their ability to comprehend. The leap, from slavery to a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, was simply way outside the realm of reasonableness. But God had said it. . . so how could it come to be? What did God have in His mind, both for this group of runaway slaves, and humanity as a whole?
Now watch this carefully my friends… what God was doing here at Mount Sinai in Exodus 20-23, was starting the journey to the Incarnation of Jesus in Bethlehem and the Passover weekend, when Jesus would be crucified on the cross! God started right here, at Sinai, with Exodus 20-23, making His case for the Only Way (John 14:6; Acts 4:12)…a Redemption Plan, which would require a sinless Savior, for humanity born in bondage to sin!!! Can you see that?
Listen to these 8 powerful words that Paul wrote to the Romans… “…through the law we become conscious of sin.” (Romans 3:20)
Do you get it? Without laws, we do not know or understand when we do something bad or wrong. There is no right & wrong, good & bad, unless there is a standard of good, a holy standard, by which to judge something to be wrong or bad.
Now ponder that.
From your earliest memories as children, when you heard the word “NO”, or you heard a raised voice, or you felt a slap…someone was trying to teach you, that you had crossed a line from right into wrong, from good into bad, and you experienced the consequences!!
For 90 days, these 2 million people had been running wild & free, restrained only by their desperate reliance upon God’s miracle food & water, and the guiding cloud & pillar of fire. We can only imagine what life was like in this city with no laws!
Remember Exodus 18 told us that from morning till evening Moses would sit as judge and the people would bring to him their disagreements. Jethro urged him to raise up others whom he could train to do the same, since there were so many problems, between people, needing arbitration.
But here’s the $50,000 question: In the absence of ANY laws, how does anyone know what is right or wrong? This tidal wave of humanity fleeing Egypt had NO laws, NO moral code, NOTHING to guide any of them in right or wrong. They weren’t in Egypt anymore. They had no slave-masters, no Pharaoh, and Pharaoh’s military was dead! For 90 days, I believe God allowed them to experience life without laws. I wonder what words would honestly reflect what it was like… chaos, anarchy?
What do you think it really was like in that mess?
But God had a really big plan. . .stretching thousands of years and involving every human being who would ever live! The plan was birthed here, at Sinai, with these four chapters of laws, some of which seem irrelevant to us today…but still, God was defining life with laws, boundaries, consequences, accountability, responsibility.
So God began the journey to Bethlehem and Calvary, right here, Mount Sinai. . . He spoke, in Exodus 20, the foundational core, 10 Commandments, which form the framework of this new society of God’s people, a holy nation. People living up to God’s expectations!
Then, the 100 verses of Exodus 21,22, 23. God called them ‘laws’ and they all hang on these 10 Commandments, and spell out in much greater detail, how God wants people to live honorably, in the normal routines of their lives and relationships. No other nation on earth had a code of ethics like this.
I wonder, as Moses listened to God in that cloud up Mount Sinai, how long before he started shaking his head and muttering to himself…impossible?!
You’ll notice God didn’t simply present a long list of DO’s & DON’Ts. God over and over, added the ‘what ifs’. Seems to me, God was assuming every one of these laws was going to be broken at some point...and therefore, pro-actively, God spelled out the consequences, the punishments that He felt were appropriate.
You see there’s a fundamental life principle here. Laws without responsibility, accountability and justice consequences, are meaningless. Do you agree with that?
So God not only spelled out the laws, which defined HIS Expectations of behavior, in this new society of His people, but He also made it very clear responsibility and accountability would accompany His expectations, and when violation of the laws occurred, holy justice would bring consequences.
You’ll notice several verses in all three of these chapters which call for capital punishment! Does that seem harsh, unreasonable? Here are some examples…
21:14 “IF a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from My altar and put him to death.”
21:15 “Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death.”
21:16 “Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death.”
22:16 “Do not allow a sorceress to live.”
22:17 “Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal must be put to death.”
22:20 “Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the LORD must be destroyed.”
Perhaps you are thinking, ‘this almost sounds like Islamic Sharia law’!
Most of us reading this are mature adults. We’ve lived long enough to have seen the effects on society of lawless, or ruthless leadership without accountability. Remember Idi Amin in Uganda, or Paul Pot in Cambodia, or Hitler, or more recently the leaders of Syria or North Korea?
Over the years we’ve seen ethnic cleansing, or beheading terrorism, or genocide or even holocaust. Wicked, unaccountable people are capable of incredible evil, poured out even on their own people.
But we have also grown up with street gangs, or drug cartels, or mafia, even playground bullies. Unbridled selfishness can destroy families, neighborhoods, cities and entire countries. And of course in every country of the world, prisons are over-crowded. In America we have more than 2 million people incarcerated! What does it all mean?
It’s what Paul wrote Romans 1-3 to explain. . .when a person, a family, a neighborhood, a community, a nation turns its back on God and rejects God, unrestrained evil rises up in hearts and minds, and wickedness reigns in people!When that happens, God must and will respond in justice accountability!
Can you see in Exodus 20-23, God deals with our shared human problem head on. God establishes the high and holy standard for all human life. It is His right, since He created mankind. God wants a relationship with the humans that He creates…each and all of us, in every generation, in every place.
But God is Holy and He is INTOLERANT of anything less than Holy! He calls anything that is less than holy SIN. Sin distances a person, the sinner, from Holy God. No exceptions. Sin is contagious, have you discovered that? Evil unrestrained, grows and spreads, in fact it multiplies rapidly and destroys as it grows.
Please also notice in Exodus 22, God had some expectations of compassion and kindness toward widows, orphans and aliens. “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do, and they cry out to Me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused…” (22:21-24)
So as you read Exodus 22 today, may I urge you to consider that God is a Holy God and calls people, made in His image, to live our lives in a manner which honors His holiness? Holiness is a lifestyle rooted in a heart that is pure and clean, and deeply committed to honoring Holy God in every aspect of life.
But holy living is impossible for people with a sinful nature, living life in a sinful world, under the influence of the devil (1 John 5:19). UNLESS…there is a Savior who has the power to break the shackles of sin bondage, and transform a sin-slave into a holy man or woman. And that my friends is the reason for Jesus, right?
AH…now we begin to understand God’s larger purpose here in Moses’ 5th trip up the mountain. Exodus 20,21,22,23 are the REASON for the cross of Jesus Christ!
As we will see when we read ROMANS and the rest of Paul’s letters together, the Gospel of Jesus is rooted in Exodus. That’s why we’re reading Exodus. So as you read Exodus 22 today, thank Jesus for John 3:16 and Romans 3:23, Romans 5:8 and 1 John 1:9!!!! And pray today, for the people and places around the world who have NO idea what I’m talking about. . .they’ve never heard of Jesus, and they are living being consumed by sin. And as you worship today, oh praise God for Jesus and His remarkable Redemption plan available to every person. How many will hear and trust Jesus today!?
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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