Building a Godly Society (Part 3)

Through the Book of the Covenant, God continues to reveal His character and values, including principles like restitution and community responsibility.


Transcription (automatically-generated):

We're going through the Book of the Covenant, a collection of civil laws given by God to his people, Israel, to guide them in building a society that reflected God's character and values. And if we were going to title this this whole message series in the Book of the Covenant, something different. We could have called it Ethics of the Kingdom, because that's what this is. It is the ethics of the Kingdom of God and how kingdom citizens are to think.

And as kingdom citizens, we are called to reflect the ethics of our Heavenly Father in the way that we treat each other and relate to our community.

In fact, keep in mind as we go through this, the church really is God's society on the earth. Today, the church is called to reflect the character and values of God to the world.

And so as we read through these laws, we need to look past Israel's context a few thousand years ago and look for the ethics, look for the values behind these laws so that we can live in greater alignment with God's values and in so doing, more accurately reflect this character to the world around us.

Now, it's kind of an odd message in the sense that there's no big mega story. We're just going through these different laws explaining them. And I just want to encourage you that every time we open the word of God, God is moving. He's moving just as we're gathered here in his name. He's doing something in us. Even if we don't realize it, he's building up our faith.

He's storing away scriptures for a future time when you're going to need it. He's changing the way that we think.

And so what I want to ask you is if the Holy Spirit illuminates something specific to you and says you need to take note of this, you need to think about this more, I'm talking to you about this. Make a note of that, because that is what God is trying to draw your attention to. We believe is always that the Holy Spirit can minister to every person here individually, as long as you're open to hearing from the Lord tonight.

And so with that, let's jump in that exodus 21 28, super applicable to our everyday lives. If an ox gore is a man or woman to death, then the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten. But the owner of the ox shall be acquitted. That means exempt from punishment. So back in the day, Israel's context, it wouldn't be normal for an ox to just randomly charge and try and kill someone.

And they would really be no way for the owner to know that the ox was randomly going to lose its cool and do this. If somebody died because of this, it would be a tragedy, but it wouldn't be the owners fault because the owner then wouldn't be liable, however.

But now we know that the ox is a man killer, so the ox has to be put down. And the reason they weren't allowed to to eat the meat of the ox is because the loss of human life was to be considered a tragedy.

And when there's a tragedy, the end is not to be a giant barbecue. And so for all intents and purposes, after killing a person, the animal was to be considered cursed, cursed.

Now, just because I seem to have some sort of quota of offensive things that I need to say in every message, I have to point out that this law makes it absolutely clear that God does not consider animals to be anywhere close to as valuable as people, because God doesn't say, guys, remember, the ox was just being an ox.

The ox was just doing what comes naturally.

You humans have to learn to share the earth with the animals. The ox had a right to go with that person.

No. God says people are sacred to me, and if there's an animal in your village or town that is a danger to people, that animal has to be put down because people are infinitely more important than animals.

It's OK to love animals, but it's not OK to be confused about what the Bible teaches. People are sacred because only people are made in the image of God. Animals are not made in the image of God. You feel the tension, people are like, how do I get up, do I throw something at him? What do I do? But if you disagree, please, I mean, feel free to send your angry emails to B.J. Verse 8 Verse 8 29.

But if the extended in other words, if the Oxford was inclined to thrust with its horn in times past.

So so if this was known to do this in the past and he had Gord's some people before, but probably not fatally, and it has been made known to his owner, his owner knew this was the case and he the owner has not kept it confined so that it has killed a man or woman. The OK shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death. Totally different scenario.

Now we've got an ox that has been known to be dangerous in the past, and instead of keeping the animal in the enclosure, the owner just continues to let it roam free, knowingly endangering the surrounding population.

In that case, the owner is responsible if the ox kills someone because it was a completely foreseeable and avoidable tragedy and ultimately it was an inevitable tragedy. Verse 8 30, if there is imposed on him a sum of money, then he shall pay to redeem his life, whatever is imposed on him. The difference in this situation is the owner of the Ox could, instead of receiving the death penalty, come to a financial settlement with the victim's family.

And I suggest this possibility is presented because it's not fully premeditated murder. Additionally, the person most likely to be gored by the ox would be someone who's working in the field, which means they're likely a breadwinner for their family or they're a slave earning money for their family.

And so if the family chose, they could opt to receive financial compensation instead of the ox's owner receiving the death penalty. Because if he got the death penalty, the victim's family now has no income at all.

But if they come to a financial settlement, the family's taken care of Verse 8 31, whether it is a son or gored a daughter, according to this judgement, it shall be done to him. If the Ox Gore's a male or female servant, he shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver and the ox shall be stoned.

Now, now, why is there a different value, a different consequence ascribed to the servant who is killed?

Why is an innocent servant only worth 30 pieces of silver when they unjustly lose their life?

Some of you, the wheels might be turning already and you might be thinking about the bribe that Judas Iscariot received from the Jewish authorities to betray Jesus to them, to remember what that bribe was, 30 pieces of silver, the price of the life of a slave.

And what did Jesus say when he was on the earth? He said to his disciples, I am among you as the one who serves. Jesus took on the identity of a servant, a born servant. When he was on the earth, he came to the earth as a servant.

And how unjust was it when Jesus's life was only valued at thirty pieces of silver?

You see, there's a picture being painted here because, yes, God really would go all the way back to the Book of the Covenant in the Book of Exodus and stick this little reference in there to connect all the way forward to the Gospels.

That's just how God put the Bible together. And that's really the prophetic explanation of the connection there.

But for a more practical explanation, let me just read something to you from the new American commentary by Douglas K. Stewart. It's the shortest explanation I could find because I knew some of you would say I still don't get why a slave has a different value to another person. So I'll just read it to you because I couldn't say it quicker than this.

A servant who was gored by a bull was presumably doing what his master told him to do by command. Typically, a servant told to work with or around a bull did not have the same freedom of independent decision making that someone else might have. And thus the servants master had to share some of the responsibility for the servants death with the owner of the bull that did the Goring.

This means that the owner of the bull was not as guilty in such a case as if the bulls simply gored someone who happened to be walking along near its property.

The law in this case then provided a severe penalty 30 shekels of silver and the loss of the bull to its owner, but did not assume that the owner alone was fully responsible for the death of the servant.

Naturally, the judges would have been free to impose the death penalty if it were decided that, for example, the Bulls owner had intentionally let a goreng bull loose against someone's servant who was, say, simply delivering a message to the bulls owner from his employer. That would be a case of murder and that would make the status of the servant irrelevant. So just to settle that Bible issue for everybody, let's keep moving.

Verse 8 33. And if a man opens a pit or if a man digs a pit, perhaps to collect rainwater and does not cover it and an ox or donkey falls in it, the owner of the pit shall make it good. He shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his.

You say, I love God's ways because there's individual freedom, but there's also individual responsibility.

You see, in our culture, what we do is we'll say, well, let's just pass a bylaw against digging pits or mandate that you cannot dig a pit deeper than eighty one point three inches. It's very, very simple. But in God's culture, there's individual freedom, but there's individual responsibility. Nobody gets to play games and say, well, technically, there's not a law against digging pits.

There's this overriding principle of no, just care about people around. You use common sense. You can't just create a hazard like a pit and then leave it out in the open, endangering all the animals and people in your community. You have a responsibility to think about how your actions will affect the lives of those you are sharing life with.

They didn't play games back then. There was there was no lawyers or trickery in the court system to get people out on technicalities.

So different is this type of thinking from the attitude of many today who think, well, as long as I get what I need out of this, then I'm good.

Everybody else can deal with themselves. It's the attitude we see everywhere. Every time you go to a park or a public place and you find people who just left their trash somewhere just out in the open.

It's because they're thinking it's not my problem, somebody else can deal with it. I got what I needed out of the deal, not having to put my trash away. And to that attitude, God would say in his law, yeah, but it is your problem because you're part of the community. And if you want the benefits of being part of the community, you have to also embrace the responsibilities of being part of the community. And then God would say, now, stop being a self-centered jerk and go pick up your trash.

Paraphrasing, of course.

So write this down. God's laws require his people to live with consideration toward their community.

God's laws require his people to live with consideration toward their community.

And again, remember, in our context, the community is the church.

It's the church. Verse 35.

If one man's ox hurts another's so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the money from it and the dead ox.

They shall also divide. Or if it was known that the ox tended to thrust in times past and its owner has not kept it confined, he shall surely pay ox for ox and the dead animal shall be his own. Relatively self-explanatory if you look over it again in the Chapter 22.

If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and for sheep.

For a sheep.

Now, because this would have been one of the easiest crimes to commit because you could literally eat the evidence, God assigns the significant deterrent of exponential restitution, four fold or five fold restitution, and that is a good idea.

You steal one and it can't be recovered. You owe for back.

You owe five back. I like this a lot, you know, fourfold restitution, let's do some Bible trivia is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke.

When Jesus decides to dine at the house of any guesses, and he guesses Zacchaeus, a little man named Zacchaeus, perhaps to recall the story, Jesus's ministry is thriving.

Everywhere he goes, crowds are gathering.

And there's this man of small stature who's unable to see through or see over the crowd.

But not only that, the crowd doesn't want him to see. They hate his guts because he's a corrupt tax collector. He's employed by the Roman occupiers and he's overcharging everybody on their taxes.

He's defrauding his own people to line his pockets.

And so they're not really big fans. Eventually, Zacchaeus climbs a tree to get a look at Jesus, and then the most incredible thing happens. Jesus looks straight at Zacchaeus and he says, Come down here, Zacchaeus coming to hang out at your house today. We're going to have dinner together. And the people are shocked that Jesus would do this. They're saying this guy can't be for real. He must not know how awful this Zacchaeus guy is. But Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus both into his home and into his heart.

It's implied and so transformed is Zacchaeus by his encounter with Jesus that in Luke eight, it's on your outlines. He says, Look, Lord, I give half of my gifts to the poor. And if I've taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore.

And then you see it four fold. I restore four fold.

You see, what Zacchaeus is doing is he's showing true repentance by repaying people back fourfold. He's acknowledging that under the law, he's stolen from people. He's saying, I recognize that I'm a thief. And so I have to make it right by restoring four fold.

And that's part of what genuine repentance does. So we're going to talk about this.

More genuine repentance says if there's any way I can make restitution for the ways that I've wronged people, I'm going to do that.

I want to do that. Verse 8, too, if the thief was found breaking in and he is struck so that he dies, there should be no guilt for his bloodshed. If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed. So if you break into a guy's house at night, it's dark.

He can't see you and he defends his home and his family and he kills you. It is what it is. You made the choice to break into his home at night.

He's allowed to defend his home. He doesn't have to get your identity very different from our Canadian laws, where if someone broke into your home at night, I think you actually have to have a small conversation.

You have to ask them who they are. Do they have any history of mental trauma that could explain their current behavior? And then actually the police laws here are hilarious.

And I'm friends with a lot of police officers. And if you noticed. But the law is there's a law of escalation where you're allowed to escalate to one degree.

So if a person breaks into your home and they don't have a weapon, you can escalate one degree. That's not to a knife. That would be two degrees.

You can go to a bat of some kind if they don't have a bat and if they have a bat, you can go up to a knife. If they have a knife, then you can go up to a gun. But it's Canada's. You actually have to ask them to hold on a minute while you put in your code, get your gun run 20 feet away the mandatory distance, put your code in your ammo safe, take the ammo out, load the gun, take the ammo, lock off of the gun and then come back to them.

So things are a little bit different here. But that's a practical point. You're learning at church tonight. Someone breaks into your house, you have a knife. They don't have anything you need to say. Hold on. Give me a minute. I need to go find a bat. Just stay where you are. I'll be back in a minute, because in Canada, our greatest concern is generally the criminal. Heaven forbid that we mistreat the criminal who's breaking into somebody's home under God's laws.

He's like, you're breaking into somebody's home at night. He doesn't know why you're there. He doesn't know if you have a weapon. He doesn't know if you're coming to kill his family. The guy's allowed to take care of business.

But interestingly enough, if the homeowner catches you breaking in and it's daytime, there's daylight and you're fully visible, he's not allowed to kill you. Why? Because he can see who you are.

And in that scenario, the idea is that he's going to be able to go to the judge's report, the issue, and they're going to deal with it because the thief's identity is going to be known and the taking of a life is not necessary.

And there's an interesting principle revealed just under the surface here with greater light, with greater illumination, with greater revelation comes greater responsibility.

Would you write this down and we'll talk about it some more? It's not the exact same line from Spider-Man, but it's close.

With greater revelation comes greater responsibility.

With greater revelation comes greater responsibility. And let me tell you how this principle applies to the Christian life.

When we say, God, I want to know your will. Lord, show me what to do in this situation. Show me what your will is in this relationship or or in my career, we are asking God to give us greater revelation. But were he to do that, were he to give us that greater revelation, we would also have greater responsibility and the responsibility we would have as believers is to obey him. And this is why we have to predetermine that we're going to obey God.

If we want to hear from God. We have to predetermine that, we're going to respond to greater revelation if we're asking God to give us greater revelation, if our attitude is Lord, show me your will and then I'll let you know if I want to do it.

The reality is that God would be merciful to not reveal his will to you if he knows that you're not actually going to do it because you would be responsible and now you'd be in the sin of disobeying the Lord. When Jesus was ministering on the earth, there came this moment in his ministry when he switched to teaching in parables instead of teaching directly. He started teaching in parables, allegories, analogies, stories. And Jesus actually told his disciples, he said, The reason I'm doing this is because there are people in the crowd, like most of the Jewish religious leaders.

And Jesus is saying, I'm standing right in front of them. They're hearing my teaching and they're rejecting all of it. They're just saying, no, no, no. And what Jesus was saying is every time they reject me. They're heaping judgment on themselves because they're going to stand before my father one day and they're going to have to answer for all this revelation they received. And then rejected. And Jesus said, so I'm going to switch to teaching in parables so that those who don't want to understand will not be able to understand and those who want to understand will be able to understand.

Jesus is actually being merciful to those who were rejecting them, rejecting him because he's not piling on them. Greater responsibility for more and more revelation.

The principle is that with greater revelation comes greater responsibility.

And so if we want a greater revelation of Jesus.

We have to be ready to respond to a greater revelation of Jesus, and I would challenge all of us with that very real question. If you're praying for a deeper knowledge of God, you're praying for a greater revelation of God, are you ready to respond to it if he gives it to you?

Or are you going to say, well, I'll weigh and decide what I want to do with that? We would be wise to remember that this is God we're talking about, this is God and God will not always say, yeah, I'll just I'll just let you decide. I'll share my revelation with you and then you can sit there and decide, hmm, it's a little bit insulting to God.

And so a lot of the time when we say God, give me greater revelation and we don't get it, it's because we haven't actually made up our mind already. No matter what it is. Lord, I'm in. I'm going to obey.

I'm going to follow you wherever it leads. Let's continue. It says he. The thief should make full restitution. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold.

The idea is as a slave for his theft.

And I'd have you underline that word restitution there, because as we've already talked about in previous weeks, slavery looked very different. BJ walked us through that a few weeks ago, continuing into verse four.

If the theft is certainly found alive in his hand, whether it is an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall restore double.

Now, I had you underline the word restitution because that's the key concept here. This is one of the major tools that allowed Israeli society to function without prisons.

Can you imagine how great it would be, though, if we had this penalty for theft in our culture today?

If you steal a truck, sell it to a chop shop and get caught. Guess what? You owe the truck's owner for trucks, for trucks. If the truck is recovered and that's still whole, you owe him two trucks. Can't afford to buy them two trucks or four trucks. Guess you're going to have to sell yourself into slavery till you work off that debt you incurred by being a thief. Oh, you're going to sell yourself into slavery with the plan of being a bad slave in a lazy slave while the owner is allowed to beat you to get you in line.

This would be a great, great system because instead of thieves getting endless probation.

You'd actually be able to drive past a field in your town, look out and see them hard at work, earning the money to pay you back for what they stole from you two to four times over? I think that would be fantastic.

We wouldn't see the rampant petty theft that is so prevalent in our society today would solve the problem real fast.

Now, keep this little detail in mind, too. If your daughter or son got into trouble, your family would be expected to settle the matter regardless of how old your son or daughter is. If they couldn't pay the restitution, the victims of the crime were coming to mom and dad. They're coming to the rest of the family. If there's a legal settlement that needs to be handled, the family is responsible if the son or daughter flees and just hightails it out of there.

So let me ask you, what sort of impact do you think that reality would have on parenting? Do you think that maybe it would have made parents care a little bit more, that they they don't raise a brat?

That they raise children who would become positive members of society as opposed to ruining the entire families lives in the future would be very, very different if every set of parents was actually liable legally, financially for their children's actions.

You're not going to raise a brat in that scenario. You'd be like, listen, I got plans to go to Hawaii when I retire and I'm not spending that money on your stupidity.

You see, in Israeli culture, you didn't get to say that's not my problem.

There was individual responsibility and then there was community responsibility.

You were responsible as an individual, but you were also responsible as a community because you were both individually and collectively accountable to God, because you had made the covenant with him, remember, as an individual and as a collective. So write this down. Israeli society assign responsibility to the individual and the community because their covenant with God was both individual and collective.

It's the same as we have in the church. We are individually responsible to God, but as a church, as a collective as well, we are responsible to God. We're responsible to live our individual lives in a way that honors God and we're responsible to run the church in a way that honors God.

And we see this heart throughout the Book of the Covenant, but we also see it reflected in Jesus's parable of the Good Samaritan, don't we? Who are the bad guys in that parable? It's the guys who walked past the injured man and said, it's not my problem, it's got nothing to do with me. Who's the hero in the parable? It's the Samaritan who did what was right because he understood that his commitment to God made him also responsible to have a commitment to his community.

And again, our equivalent community is the church.

It's the body of believers. We're not supposed to see a brother or sister in the church suffering and say, oh, man, sucks to be them right now.

Glad that's not my problem. Our individual commitment to Jesus comes along with a commitment to his church. So write this down.

I know it's another quick fill in, but it's important the believers community commitment is to his or her church. We have a community commitment to one another as the church.

And then it's worth noting, I'm not going to read it. But I did put it on your outlines. It's worth noting that Numbers five explains what would happen in a third scenario involving Sayf theft.

You see if someone committed theft but was then troubled by their conscience.

And they're like, oh, man, I shouldn't have done that. And they want to make things right.

They were to confess and then they were to make it right by giving back to the person what was stolen or the equivalent plus 20 percent.

Now, I'm not describing a situation where they're caught and then claimed to be remorseful because in God's law, remorse is expressed by making confession before you get caught or exposed.

And we're talking about a full confession, by the way. Not like the man who mailed a check to the CIA for two thousand dollars with a note that read. I've mailed you this check because I cannot sleep at night. My conscience is bothering me. I've defrauded the Canadian government and ripped off the Canadian people for 20 years. Please find enclosed a check for two thousand dollars. I want to make things right. And if I still can't sleep, I'll send the rest.

We're not talking about that.

We're talking about a full confession and repentance in this scenario. So to summarize, in the law of Moses, there's three levels to making restitution for theft.

If you steal something and it cannot be recovered, you're going to end up paying back four or five times what you stole.

If you steal something and it is fully recoverable, you're going to pay back double what you stole. If you steal something but confess and repent, you're going to pay back what you stole plus 20 percent. It's a good system. Verse five. If a man causes a field or a vineyard to be grazed and lets loose his animal and it feeds in another man's field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field and the best of his own vineyard.

We're continuing with this theme of restitution. If I let my animal graze in your field and eat your crops, I'm to make restitution to you from the best of my fields.

Not the leftovers, but the best.

And so the goal was that there was not to be any scenario in which stealing something from someone left the thief better off.

They weren't to be scenarios where you stole something worth a thousand dollars, sold it for five hundred dollars, got caught and got fined a hundred dollars.

There wasn't to be any scenario in which criminal activity benefited the perpetrator. The goal of the law was to make the thief realize that it wasn't worth it. Crazy concept, right?

Verse 8 six. If fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that stacked grain standing grain or the field is consumed, he who kindled the fire shall surely make restitution. So as they do today, actually still in some types of farming, they would use fire to clear Bush or a field or dead old crops. It was the quickest way to clear a field and if that was done carelessly, the fire could spread to an adjoining field that belonged to somebody else.

And so similar to verse five, the idea is that if that happened, you'd have to make restitution again from the best of your field, or if you didn't have enough, you'd have to buy premium stuff from somebody else and use that.

As I was thinking about this, you play this out in today's culture, the principles behind this.

Here's what it would mean if somebody started a forest fire by being careless, they would be legally bound to seed and replant the entire area.

That ended up burning down because it's all crown land or it's owned by a logging company and so belongs to somebody.

And yes, they would be doing that for the rest of their lives.

But I'll tell you one thing, we wouldn't have careless forest fires ever again.

So we have a fire and maybe risk spending the rest of our lives planting seeds. I'm actually good. It's not that big of a deal was to get a hot dog from 7-Eleven.

So you were responsible to not be careless with fire because it's dangerous. And so the way we think is what's my comfort level with this? God's law was teaching his people to think, how could this potentially affect those around me, is teaching them to think a different way. We're so individualistic in the West.

And this all takes my mind to an epistle in the New Testament. In which James compares something very specific to a fire. The tongue and I put it on your outline, he writes, See how great a forest, a little fire Kindles and the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity just unrighteousness.

The tongue is so set among our members. So it's placed in our body so that it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the course of nature and is set on fire by hell for every kind of beast and bird of reptile and creature of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by mankind.

But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil full of deadly poison. With it, we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude or made in the likeness of God out of the same mouth. Proceed blessing and cursing my brethren. These things ought not to be so. And so I'm just going to make an analogy here to make some practical application. I believe the Old Testament principle of restitution still applies to us today.

I believe that God still expects us to do everything we can to make things right with those we have wronged.

We're not supposed to simply say, well, God's forgiven me. And so you have to as well. I don't have to pay you the rent I owe because Jesus has paid it all. You see, if you're part of the church, then you represent Jesus.

And back here in the Book of the Covenant, the Lord said you're responsible for the way you handle fire and for any damage you cause with it.

In the same way we are responsible for the way that we handle our tongues, we are responsible for any damage we caused by being careless with our words.

I'm talking about gossip, slander, demeaning comments, hurtful speech, untrue words.

When we're guilty of that, we have a responsibility to make it right. If we've slandered someone, we need to go to those we spoke to and apologize to them for speaking that way.

Were to say, I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have spoken about that person that way. They didn't deserve to have me talk about them like that.

And when we've spoken wrongly or harshly to someone were to apologize and seek forgiveness, not only that, but were to make restitution.

How do we do that with our words? Well, when we've burned someone's field, so to speak, it needs to be replanted. And when it comes to our words, that means we need to plant the right words into that person's life, if that's an option, we need to speak encouragement, appreciation, affirmation, blessing. We need to build them up again. And here's the key. This is a relational key in marriage, parenting and deep friendship.

The thing about biblical restitution is that it had no time limit. If it took you the rest of your life to make restitution, then it took you the rest of your life. If it took you the rest of your life and you still wouldn't be able to get close to paying it off, then that's what it was.

So if we have the option where to keep trying to make restitution, if you've been careless with your words and wounded your spouse or your child, they may reject you and they may give you a cold response when you first try to speak with them.

They may continue to respond like that for a long time as you work toward restitution. But listen, if you have a field. You're not going to just throw a few seeds and then stand there and go. I guess it's not working. I tried. You're not going to throw some seeds, pour some water and go. I mean, well, if the sea doesn't want to grow, what am I supposed to do? Where I'm going with this is what we love to do, is we love to sometimes try and make restitution with our words, and then when it doesn't work right away, we say, well, I tried their fault now and everything I could do, I'm done.

The truth is, we're not even close to done if there's still the opportunity in the future to go back and try again. Were to go back and try again, keep planting those good seeds, keep speaking those words of life and keep trying to make it right, takes a long time for some fields to grow.

Again, it takes a lot of work, but if the options available, we got to keep at it. Would you write this down? Biblical restitution has no expiration date. It has no expiration date. Verse 8 seven, if a man delivers to his neighbor money or articles to keep and it is stolen out of the man's house, if the thief is found, he shall pay double. Not only were there no prisons in Israel at this time, there were no banks, no banks.

So if you had to take a trip somewhere you had anything valuable in your house for security's sake, you would simply go and leave it with your neighbors, say, hey, can you watch this for me while I'm away? This was something neighbors did for each other all the time. And as we've already established, if the thief is caught and the goods are recoverable, the thief has to pay back double.

However, Verse 8 if the thief is not found, then the master of the house shall be brought to the judges to see whether he has put his hand into his neighbor's goods for any kind of trespass, whether it concerns an ox, a donkey, a sheep or clothing, or for any kind of lost thing which another claims to be his.

The cause of both parties shall come before the judges and whomever the judges condemn shall pay double to his neighbor.

If the neighbor who's watching the stuff says, yeah, it's a real shame while you were away, you know, somebody stole your stuff. And the thief is not caught. Then the neighbor who was storing the stuff is to be brought before the judges, along with the neighbor whose stuff was stolen. And the judges are going to grill them both to figure out whether there really was theft or whether the neighbor actually stole the stuff.

Yeah, it's too bad somebody somebody stole your stuff from my house, but they didn't take any of your stuff.

No, it's the strangest thing you see in our context. The idea is that if there's a disagreement.

Between a brother and a brother, a sister, a sister, a sister and a brother in the church, that cannot be resolved, this is what's actually supposed to happen.

The parties that are involved in that dispute are to go before the elders of the church and the elders of the church are to act as judges.

Do you know that even in the New Testament, the Bible specifically tells us that believers are not to sue each other in court because it's bad for the reputation of Jesus?

Paul tells believer's he says it is disgraceful, even the idea that two believers would have to go in front of a non-believer to have the nonbelievers settle their dispute. He says it's disgraceful for the reputation of Jesus in the church. We're supposed to settle our issues within the church, with the elders functioning as the equivalent of Israel's judges back in the day because the reputation of Jesus and his church matters. Jesus said the defining mark of the church was to be our love for one another.

And it's not a good look when in front of nonbelievers, you're in court arguing and suing each other.

It's the absolute opposite of love for one another.

But again, this system can only work and this can only happen in a church if believers are more concerned about being right with God than they are about their legal rights.

Because there may be a situation where you're legally entitled to something, but it's not right in the eyes of God. And so this system only works when you have believers in a church who say, my number one concern is doing this right in the eyes of the Lord. My number one concern is not my legal rights. My number one concern is not getting mine.

My number one concern is what's right in the eyes of the Lord Verse 8 10, if a man delivers to his neighbor, a donkey and ox, a sheep or any animal to keep and it dies is hurt or driven away, no one's seeing it underline, no one seeing it, then an oath of the Lord shall be made between them both that he has not put his hand into his neighbor's goods, and the owner of it shall accept that, and he shall not make it good.

So if I'm going away and I say, Hey, can you watch this animal of mine? Can you watch this this little sheep of mine, little fluffy over here.

And when I come back here, like, yeah, too bad Fluffy died of natural causes while you're away or, you know, I come back fluffiest, missing a leg and they say, yeah, just got got injured out there in the wild or fluffy is gone. And you say, yeah, Fluffy ran away and nobody saw it happen.

We're both to go before the judges and you're going to swear an oath before the Lord, I'm going to swear an oath before the Lord to tell the truth.

And so if I if I do that, though, and I say, yes, the Lord sees me, I take an oath before the Lord, I did not eat Fluffy.

I do that when all there is to go on is my word. God says, listen, you got to believers and all there is to go on is their word. You're to take them at their word and you leave the rest to God. And I like this because, again, it's placing faith in the reality that God sees and God knows everything.

Remember what our brother Paul told the Galatians believers?

It's on your outline. He said, do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever a man sows that he will also reap. In other words, in a situation like this, God's not going to let justice be mocked.

He says, you take an oath before me and you lie. Don't think you're getting ahead. I'm going to make sure that what goes around comes around.

And the same is true in the church today for the sake of unity in the church, when all you have to go on in a situation is the word of another believer, you're to take them at their word and leave the rest to God.

And there's a lesson here. For those of us with certain personality types. And be open to hearing this, because I'm including myself in this group, for those of us with certain personality types, perhaps like me. Your natural tendency is to assume the worst. Your natural tendency is to believe the worst and you fight against that, there's a word for people like you and me in this in the church among believers or to take people at their word. Actually, believe them and trust, hey, if that's not the truth, that that's for God to take care of, that's for God to take care of.

Because perhaps like me, sometimes you think, Lord, Lord, I know only you can see and only you can judge the heart. But I'm here, Lourdes, so you can take a break, I'll I'll I'll take care of this one, I will discern the motives of their heart. I will look into the unseen things and I will judge.

Well, now, here's the principle. Believers in the Bible are called to judge the fruits of other believers within the church.

We are called to judge the external observable actions or the lack thereof, not so that we can be snippy with one another, but so that we can call each other up together to represent Jesus. Well, every time I share this, I say this. This is the great, great, impossible scenario that the world gives to the church. The world says to the church, oh, the church is full of hypocrites. And so we say, well, we're actually going to do what the Bible says.

And the Bible says we are actually to call each other out on our hypocrisy so that we represent Jesus.

Well, then the world says that's so judgmental. How could you do that?

And so the world puts the church in an impossible situation where if we don't actually try to act like Jesus, we're being hypocrites. But if we tell each other in the church to act like Jesus, then we're being judgmental.

And just so you know, the biblical standard is that we are within the church among believers to judge each other in a good way, that we call each other up to actually act like Christians.

Christians are to call other Christians to act like Christians. We don't call non Christians to act like Christians. But again, we can only judge based on what we can see on the outside.

You know, we can say, hey, I saw you before church beating that guy up outside the church.

And I think that was not really Christian behavior for you to do that because you saw something external, external.

But believers are not called to judge the unseen issues of the heart. We don't know a person's motivations. We don't know a person's intentions. Only God sees that stuff. And in this example, there's no way for the one guy to know if his neighbor is lying.

He might suspect he is, but he doesn't know. In the same way, there are many situations in our relationships where something happens and we suspect that we know what's going on, we're like, no, I know what they were thinking.

Trust me. I know. I know. But but we don't know. We don't know. And we can't know. And in those instances, God says, take them at their word, take them at their word, believe the best and leave it to me. If there's justice that needs to be done, God will take care of it. So write this down. When there's no external evidence, believers are to take each other at their word and release the rest to God, release the rest to God.

This is a timely word as well in the age of of social media and texting and instant messaging.

Sure, we've all been in that situation where you get an instant message and you just ascribe a tone to the message by the only one who does it, where you read a message and then you read it with a specific tone and you're like, why are they being so rude?

And you realize there's like 10 different ways you could have read that. You know, you tell us something, I need you to take care of this. And they're like, fine.

And you're like, fine, fine. What is fine mean? And they're really just like, yeah, fine.

Oh, OK. I will judge the unseen motivations of the heart.

But when there's no external evidence where to take each other at our word and just leave the rest to God, do you know that there's never a downside to believing the best about people? It's never a downside to believing the best about people, plenty of downside to believing the worst about people. You have to keep repeatedly pulling your foot out of your own mouth verse 8 12.

But if in fact it is stolen from him, he shall make restitution to the owner of it. If the animal is stolen because the man was careless and he didn't protect the animal, then he is liable for its loss if it is torn to pieces by a beast, then he shall bring in his evidence and he shall not make good what was torn. So if the animal is killed by a wild animal, the neighbor is to actually bring the carcass as evidence.

And that's to be the end of the matter because it wasn't anybody's fault. But the neighbor can't be like having a toothpick, you know, and he's picking meat out of his teeth and he says, yes, too bad your cow was taken by a wild animal, probably, probably a velociraptor.

There's nothing left.

He has to actually present the evidence, you know, and there can't be knife marks on the evidence where the ribs can't be that type of situation.

Verse 8 fourteen. And if a man borrows anything from his neighbor and it becomes injured or died, the owner of it not being with it, he shall surely make good.

So if I borrow your ox or I borrow anything from you, not just an animal, and while I'm using it becomes injured or dies, I need to get you a new one. This is just how to be a good neighbor.

You borrow something from a neighbor and it breaks while you're using it. You make it right. Verse 8 15.

If the owner was with it, he shall not make a good. If it was hired, it came for its higher.

So in other words, say, say I borrow a chainsaw from you, but you're with me in the backyard and you can see that I'm not misusing your chainsaw.

I'm being diligent with it and it just breaks in normal use, then I'm not liable because obviously that was going to happen whether it was you or me using it.

And you're not entitled to a free new chainsaw again, if the same thing happens, if I'm renting something from you and it gets damaged, that's just part of the rental business. There's going to be loss. I'm not liable. That's it for this week.

And so, as I said, we've got kind of a strange collection of different laws. We're going to have one more week in the Book of the Covenant.

And so what I want to ask is just, again, to be open to anything that God might be saying to you tonight, to think on a little bit more.

Maybe there's a relationship where you've said some things you shouldn't say.

And tonight's a reminder that you need to continue to work at speaking words of life and blessing and trying to make restitution there. Maybe there's a reminder tonight to assume the best about people and to take a believer at their word, unless there's external evidence to the contrary. Maybe there's a reminder. That unity and the reputation of Jesus in his church are important, and maybe there's a reminder that, hey, we have a responsibility to think through how our actions affect other people, not just ourselves, that every single person is an image bearer.

They are made by God, they're sacred and they're special.

So with that, let's pray.

Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to be together this evening. And Lord, we do ask that you would just protect the health of your church of the men, women and children who make up this church father, that you would preserve our ability to meet together as your church. And father, we pray and thank you that you have the ability and the desire to meet every need we have. Father, I just lift up right now to you.

Any person in this room feeling anxious, any person feeling stressed by the external situation of the world around us. Father, would you shift our eyes back to heaven and back to you? Because we know that when we're overwhelmed by anxiety from what's going on around us, it's because we've taken our eyes off you and we're looking all around us instead of looking upwards. So, Father, fix our eyes on you.

We ask for peace in the name of Jesus and father, fill us afresh with your love for one another, Lord, maybe, maybe not turn inward to be focused on ourselves right now. But Lord, would you stir loving us to care and love for one another, to check on one another, to care about one another in a greater way, to speak blessing to one another. And Father, thank you that you do speak faithfully through your word and that you are here with us.

You never leave us. You never forsake us. You with us to the end of the age. We love you so much, Jesus. In your precious name we pray. Amen.