God's Community - Exodus 21-24

[00:00:05] Thank you for listening to the Calvary Monterey Podcast. Please visit Calvary.com to learn more about our church and visit Nate Holdridge.com for additional Bible teaching for my lead pastor, Nate Holdridge. Teaching today is our lead pastor, Nate Holdridge.

[00:00:23] Take out our Bible today and turn to the Book of Exodus together. If you're new here, this is what we're doing as a church. We're going through the Book of Exodus 1st by verse. Today we're in chapter 21. This is our 14th study in Exodus, Exodus chapter 21.

[00:00:40] And today we're going to actually do a little bit of a fly-by overview of chapter 21 all the way through chapter 24, which I'll explain in a moment. But if you guys would follow along on the screen or in your own Bibles,

[00:00:54] I want to read snippets of these four chapters. Starting out in verse 1. It says now these are the rules that you shall set before them. And what follows from that are three full chapters on rules for the people of Israel.

[00:01:12] I'm going to lead to those in a moment. But it fast forward to chapter 23 verse 20. At the end of listening these rules, God said, Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.

[00:01:31] Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him. For he will not part in your transgression for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say,

[00:01:44] Then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. Jump down now to verse 28. And I will send Hornets before you which he'll drive out the hybites, The Canaanites and the Hittites from before you.

[00:01:57] I will not drive them out from before you in one year, Less the land become desolate and the wild beast multiply against you. Little by little, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land. Okay, chapter 24 verse 1.

[00:02:15] Then he said to Moses, come up to the Lord. You and Aaron, Naedab and Abahu and 70 of the elders of Israel and worship from afar. Moses alone shall come near to the Lord but the others shall not come near. And the people shall not come up with him.

[00:02:35] Moses came up and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, all the words that the Lord has spoken we will do. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.

[00:02:50] He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and 12 pillars according to the 12 tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings to of oxen to the Lord.

[00:03:06] And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people.

[00:03:16] And they said, all that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. And Moses verse 8 took the blood and threw it on the people and said, behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you and accordance with all these words.

[00:03:32] Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abahu and 70 of the elders of Israel went up and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone like the very heaven for clearness.

[00:03:48] And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel day, be held God and eight and drink. Before I pray, I want to grab my water. I forgot to bring it up here with me. A little field trip.

[00:04:11] Okay, let's pray together. Lord, we thank you for your word. Lord, this book of the covenant that we're going to think about today, I pray, Lord, that you would apply it to our lives. These ancient laws for an ancient people at a very distant time from us.

[00:04:30] We pray, Lord, that we would clean from them, that we would learn from them. And we ask, Lord, that we'd be a people who as your special possession today, as your holy nation, as your kingdom of priests,

[00:04:42] that we would be Lord, a great witness to the world around us because we live under Lord, your commands for our lives. We thank you, Lord, and we praise you. And we ask you to speak to us today in Jesus' name. Amen.

[00:04:58] Okay, at this point in the book of Exodus, God has asked the people a very important question. We saw this two weeks ago in Exodus chapter 19. They'd come out of Egypt.

[00:05:14] They'd wandered for a little brief moment in the wilderness. The manna has begun to show up every day to sustain them. And God brings them to Mount Sinai. Remember, this is where God had said Moses and the people of Israel would return to worship.

[00:05:32] Mount Sinai is where the burning bush was not consumed or God appeared to Moses the first time at the beginning of Exodus. That's where that event occurred. And so they gathered together at Mount Sinai and Moses goes up the mountain top.

[00:05:46] And God says to Moses, I have an invitation for my people. If they want to be my special possession known as that throughout the world. If they want to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation that are introducing and modeling life under Yahweh for the world,

[00:06:10] then I have a covenant that I want to give to them. And if they want to enter into that covenant, then they will fulfill this destiny that I've called them to.

[00:06:21] Moses came down the mountain and announced this to the people of Israel. He did not yet have the details of the covenant, but he had the invitation to come into a covenant. The people knowing what they knew about God up to that moment,

[00:06:34] knowing that he was far better than Pharaoh, knowing that he was their great rescuer and redeemer, knowing that he was the God who could do whatever he wanted to set them free, they said yes.

[00:06:45] We want to enter into this covenant with the Lord. So Moses goes back up the mountain and announces this to God. God gives Moses directions on how to prepare the people nationally for a meeting with God.

[00:07:00] He goes down, gives them these directions and in three days they all come together, not up the mountain, but at the base of Mount Sinai. A smoke begins to descend, thunder begins to blast forth and the people begin to hear the voice of God.

[00:07:19] And what they heard, we studied last week. It was the 10 commandments. The 10 commandments that were meant to govern the people of Israel. The people responded to those 10 you remember with great fear. They didn't like the ominous presence of God.

[00:07:37] And so they tell Moses, hey, we don't want God to speak directly with us anymore. You be our mediator. You go up the mountain and talk to God and come back down and tell us what he says.

[00:07:48] And so Moses goes back up the mountain to hear more words from the Lord. Now the words that God gave to Moses are recorded for us in Exodus 21 all the way through Exodus chapter 24. Later in the 24th chapter, God will call these words the book of the covenant.

[00:08:11] So what's happening here? God has invited them into a covenant. God then gives them the 10 and then flowing from the 10 is a larger book of hundreds of specific laws that are meant to govern the people of Israel.

[00:08:29] In this book of the law, God touched on different aspects of life in ancient Israel. He didn't cover every single scenario that every single Israel would ever find themselves in but it is an extensive list.

[00:08:45] Now for us today we have a challenge. We're new testament people. We are Christians. We're on this side of the cross and the challenges.

[00:08:54] What do we do with the ancient law for the people of Israel when we discover it, when we read it, when we're trying to apply it into our lives?

[00:09:05] It can be challenging to know what to do with the ancient law. Part of this is because when you read the new testament, it appears that the new testament has a complicated relationship with the Old Testament law.

[00:09:18] For instance, there are times where the new testament appeals to the Old Testament law. Like when Paul in Ephesians chapter 6 talks to parents about how to parent their children. For our era, he appeals to the fifth commandment that children should honor their parents to obey their parents.

[00:09:42] Or in first Timothy, when Paul is explaining to Timothy that there are times where a pastor should receive financial compensation for his work, Paul goes back to the Old Testament law and appeals to a random law that says

[00:09:58] an ox should not be muscled when he is treading the grain. It's like he's drawing from a principle that says that pastor like an ox, if he's doing the work, he should eat a little bit of food while he's eating that work.

[00:10:14] I've always presented the comparison between pastors and oxen, but I'll take it. But then there are other times where the new testament seems to say,

[00:10:24] the law is entirely fulfilled. You don't appeal to it. It's fulfilled. I mean as a church last year, we studied the book of Galatians together.

[00:10:33] The book of Galatians is about that. The book of Galatians was written because there was a group of people who were abusing the law. They were using it incorrectly.

[00:10:41] They were trying to be justified in God's sight, approved in God's sight by keeping the law of the Old covenant and Paul wrote a whole letter to explain to us.

[00:10:52] No justification comes my faith. It does not come by the keeping of the law. So because of this complicated relationship, what are we supposed to do with the law?

[00:11:03] When we come to Exodus 21, 22, 23, 24, we're reading these chapters and I'm going to allude to some of these specific laws as we talk about this or think about this this morning.

[00:11:13] When we read them, how are we supposed to feel about them? On one hand, I could say we could just kind of like not worry about it all that much and just kind of read through them.

[00:11:23] And if you were to look in my Bible devotionally, there are certain laws that are underlined. It's like, oh, that one's cool. I like that one. It somehow resonates with me. It speaks to me, it encourages me.

[00:11:34] But there are others that I'm like, I don't know. It's just totally alien to me. Like there's a law in the book of the covenant where God says, you shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk.

[00:11:44] Like what am I supposed to do with that particular law? It's not, I mean, I don't have it underlined in my Bible. It's not like, oh yes, amen. I appreciate that one.

[00:11:54] You know, what do we do with these laws? Well, there are a few things that we need to remember.

[00:11:59] One thing that we have to remember and I talked about this last week and I'll keep reiterating this any time we're thinking about the Old Testament law is that these were laws that God gave to a people who had already been rescued.

[00:12:13] They're already redeemed. They already belonged to him. He has already entitled them my first born son. They are my people. That's an important one because Israel could not obey these laws as a way to become God's children.

[00:12:30] They were already God's children. That's an important distinction for us to make. Another thing that we need to remember is that these laws, they were designed originally to take a chaotic multitude of X slaves and shape them into a holy society centered upon God.

[00:12:54] Each dictate was meant in other words that that specific moment and time to build up and organize the ancient people of Israel. These are not laws for the churches, are not laws for our modern day because the law was for Israel and fulfilled by Jesus.

[00:13:13] But we can glean lessons from this book of the covenant. So how do we do that? Do we just spear a chalize the text? Do we just kind of treat it?

[00:13:25] I don't think that's the way for it. I think the way for it is to pull back and say what is God doing here? What God is doing is shaping a community after his own heart.

[00:13:41] So I think we can pull back from the book of the covenant and we can say what are some pillar emblematic things that God wanted in that community that the new testament reaffirms so that we can know he wants them in our community as well.

[00:14:00] So I try to do a little bit of work to get those pillars for us and I've got four of them for you this morning.

[00:14:08] So the first one is this. God's community it will hold to the primacy of love. God's community will hold to the primacy of love. Now this one's probably not surprising to you at all we all remember what they challenged Jesus with what's the greatest commitment.

[00:14:28] He said you should love the Lord your God with all your heart mind, soul and strength. There's love right there towards God but then Jesus said and there's a second like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. You know a lot of people forget that when Jesus said that he was quoting from the Old Testament and you know where he was quoting from he was quoting from Leviticus chapter 19.

[00:14:47] A lot of people make fun of Leviticus and I saw it touch what do I do with Leviticus but it's there in Leviticus that we lift the second greatest commitment. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

[00:14:59] But as you read through the book of the covenant what you'll discover is that there was an expectation from God that his people would be considerate of be loving towards others in the Israelite community.

[00:15:14] I love their neighbors as themselves. For instance in the opening salvo in the book of the covenant there is this long list of regulations concerning slavery and slave ownership in Israel.

[00:15:30] I'm not a problematic and we're going to talk about that in a moment but there were extensive laws governing how they were to treat servants in Israelite society. For instance in verse 5 there were directions on what to do when a servant says,

[00:15:47] I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children and I will not go free. Israelite servanthood you were set free every seven years there was a seven year clock and so when that clock came up a servant could say,

[00:16:02] I love it here so much I want to remain just embedded in that concept is the idea that God is nudging his people towards creating an environment that is good and wonderful even for the lowest among them.

[00:16:17] Later in Exodus 21 in verse 28 to 32 there were laws about how to handle things if your neighbor didn't properly fence off their livestock, especially if their livestock was prone to attacking people or goring people.

[00:16:37] It's like all these rules like this is what you're supposed to do again it's so consider it it's loving like you're like man I got this book wild ox and he's just always attacking people.

[00:16:48] I'm going to be loving to my neighbor by putting a fence around that ox.

[00:16:54] There were laws that dealt with how to handle people accused of crimes. In chapter 23 verse 13 God forbade a false report he forbade a false witness because what did he want he wanted a justice system in Israel that could be as pure as it could this was in consideration of others.

[00:17:14] There were laws that dealt with their treatment of foreigners who came and lived with them or would come along to be around them along with the way they were to treat widows and fatherless children.

[00:17:27] They weren't allowed to it says in chapter 21 wrong them or oppress them or mistreat any of them. There were even laws on the books and the book of the covenant on how to treat your enemies.

[00:17:41] If you find your enemies ox lost and wandering you got to take that ox and bring it back to your enemy and if you find his donkey overloaded with a burden you need to lighten its load and deliver him to his master.

[00:17:59] He was portrayed as interested in love being predominant and every single relationship in Israel. Even animals were considered by God. He said I want even the animals to have the Sabbath rest that all of you are getting once each week.

[00:18:17] And of course there were tons of laws all throughout the book of the covenant about their relationship with God himself. They were to be a sacrificing people, a worshiping people, a non-idoletris people.

[00:18:30] As I've already noted, Jesus affirmed that the greatest commandment is to love God and that a close second is to love your neighbor as yourself. And I think Israel's book of the covenant gives us a glimpse into what that love might look like to God.

[00:18:48] How does God imagine it? When God says love your neighbor as yourself is he saying what I want you to do is have warm fuzzy feelings about your neighbor as yourself. No, apparently God is thinking of action.

[00:19:03] He's thinking of tangible things that we do to demonstrate the love of God towards others. Loving actions towards everyone and everything in our sphere of influence. James said it this way, and James chapter one, he said religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this,

[00:19:24] to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. What is real Christianity look like? What are the outworkings of it in a person's life? Well you start looking around and saying who out there is hurting or broken or disadvantaged.

[00:19:44] I want to be a blessing to that pocket of my community and I also am going to serve my community by being a holy person. I'm going to keep myself unstained from this world.

[00:19:56] Now of course James said stuff like that because he knew that faith by itself if it does not have works is a dead faith. He would have looked into the Old Testament law and James would have seen love in action.

[00:20:10] These laws, like I've been saying, they don't immediately apply to the church but the principle of love that we find in the book of the covenant it certainly does apply to the church. James referred to love as the royal law of liberty.

[00:20:23] Now in the book of Galatians, which as I said earlier had to be written because Christians were using the law incorrectly,

[00:20:31] Paul affirmed love in action by saying, you were called to freedom brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

[00:20:51] And of course Jesus could have more to say about love than anyone told his disciples that everyone would know that they were his disciples. If they had love for one another as he had loved him.

[00:21:03] The primacy of love in other words was to color ancient Israel and it is also to color the church today. It's to be our lofty aim, our whole bar desire that we would love one another.

[00:21:16] It's a hard thing to do. It's a challenging thing to do but it's a thing that Christ has commissioned us towards.

[00:21:22] Just as the good Samaritan and Jesus' story did, what others wouldn't do in caring for a beaten man on a deserted road believers should care for others and one another.

[00:21:34] This is part of the spirit, the attitude that I hope that we bring into every single one of our small groups this next quarter where we're saying when I show up, I want to dispense love to the people that are there.

[00:21:48] Paul, when he wrote to the church in Rome, he said, I have been longing to see you.

[00:21:53] So that I could impart some spiritual gift to you. He was thinking, I want to get there so that I can give and I pray that we would become more that way in this church.

[00:22:09] Now these laws, they weren't meant as kind of like an exclusive or stiff way that the people of Israel were to live.

[00:22:19] This is kind of God's way of saying, here's the bare minimum. I would like you guys to rise above this but here are some examples of how you should be living your life.

[00:22:29] My family and I, we've been cracking up recently at this video that we found that a mom shot of her two young daughters. And it kind of reminds us of back in the day in our own home before our kids were older.

[00:22:44] And in this video the older daughter she's sitting on the floor and she's coloring with some crans. And her little sister comes up to her and very humbly and meekly says, can I have the red cram?

[00:23:01] And you can hear the older sister, you watch her, she very soberly and professionally looks up and says, you must say, please. Apparently that's what they've been taught in that house. And so the younger sister, she kind of stammered out like, please.

[00:23:18] And the older sister looks at her and says, no, you must say, may I have the red cram? Please. And so then the younger sister, she says it, she's like, may I have the red cram? And then the older girl looks at her and says, please.

[00:23:34] And she says, may I have the red cram? Please. And then the older girl looks up at her and says, no, you may not. Very cold, very calculating, but I guarantee it was by the rules.

[00:23:48] There's what mom and dad taught me to do. This is my very professional kind way of doing what I want to do.

[00:23:59] That's not what the Lord is doing here to the people of Israel. He's inviting them into a life of generosity, he's inviting them into a life of thinking of others, not unthinking or unfeeling formulas on how to technically be a good citizen.

[00:24:15] These were laws designed to propel them forward in their love for others. The second thing that I want you to see is that I think with the covenant shows us is, and this is adjacent to the first point, but God's community will also highly value human life.

[00:24:37] There's a lot of laws that talk about this, but here's one that reflects this principle chapter 21 verse 22 to 25. God said, when men strive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out, but there is no harm.

[00:24:54] The one who hit her shall be surely fined as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine.

[00:25:02] But if there is harm, then you shall pay. Life for life, I for I, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

[00:25:21] Now don't worry too much about the eye for eye and tooth for tooth language that's there in this passage. There's not much evidence that Israel practiced this law as a strict one for one kind of judgment.

[00:25:36] But lots of clues that they were meant to understand God as saying that they needed to at times elevate judgment or deescalate and restrict judgment to its appropriate and equitable level as if God is saying, the punishment needs to fit the crime.

[00:25:54] In fact, it's interesting when you compare the book of the covenant with other ancient Near East law codes from other nations around that time.

[00:26:04] Other nations, a lot of times if you stole the penalty was death but in the book of the covenant that's not the case. God is saying throughout the book it's human life that I value most.

[00:26:18] It's human life I'm most concerned about. The idea of this law is that if a fetal life is harmed due to a man's recklessness and fighting another, it should lead to his implied death.

[00:26:32] I think it should put Christians out of the book of the covenant. The punishment for striking someone in cold blood was capital punishment the offender must be put to death. I do this as for ancient Israel, not modern societies or the church,

[00:26:48] but laws like these do tell us how much God values human life. And I think that God's insistence that his people value life, I think it should put Christians out front in the battle for human rights. It should put Christians out front

[00:27:10] and combating modern forms of human slavery and trafficking. It should put Christians out front and defending the lives of the unborn. You know, Jesus taught us in Matthew chapter five to be peacemakers. And I think that means we're to go above

[00:27:27] and beyond to struggle not only against evil, but also for people who have been hurt by evil. Adoption, recovery ministries, compassion, that counseling, these are great examples of things that Christians who highly value human life will do. And as I prepared this teaching,

[00:27:52] I've felt compelled to just say to some of you that might be praying and asking a Lord right now for an open door or an opportunity or maybe there's a ministry that fits the bill that I'm talking about today that you're thinking about joining up with.

[00:28:07] You might be worried, where am I gonna find the time? Where am I gonna find the energy for volunteering in that way? Where am I gonna find the space in my life to serve in that way? And I just feel compelled. Those are fine questions to ask,

[00:28:20] but I just feel compelled to say to you, just go for it. Get out of the boat, see what the Lord will do. See how he'll take care of you and provide for you. Just go on an adventure with Jesus and say yes

[00:28:33] to him in that area of your life. Now this is probably a good place for me to talk about the presence of the laws regarding slaves in this book of the covenant. That's how the whole passage opens up in chapter 21.

[00:28:49] I mean, there's a good place to talk about it because I'm talking about the dignity of human life, the value of human life. It's like if God values human life so much, why did then he just abolish slavery outright at the beginning of the book of the covenant?

[00:29:02] Why did then that happen? Why did then God just say, first line, hey, you guys were slaves. Didn't like it, right? So don't do that. Why wasn't that what God said? Okay, let me just, I could talk about this for 45 minutes,

[00:29:18] but let me just give you seven minutes about this this morning. One of the first things you need to do is identify who slaves were in that Israelite society and culture. And the reason that we need to do that, especially is because American history is forever stained

[00:29:36] with the evils of the transatlantic slave trade. I mean, in that version of slavery, men and women, boys and girls made in the image of God were kidnapped from their homes and brutally transported to distant lands for lifelong captivity.

[00:29:55] That's not at all what is happening in ancient Israel. The issue in Israel had nothing to do with foreign people. It was Hebrew people who made decisions to allow themselves to be enslaved for a period of time. In other words, they were not enslaving

[00:30:12] an entire race or society of people. The issue was not capturing unwilling slaves. The issue was how to fund willing slaves. In other words, in a culture like that, when some people found themselves in poverty, there was no system that they could fall back on.

[00:30:30] There was no bankruptcy that they could declare. And so something similar to an indentured servitude could be entered into to help get yourself out of that hole. Even in this book of the covenant in chapter 21, verse 16, God tells them that they're not allowed to kidnap people.

[00:30:47] They're not allowed to sell people. They're not allowed to victimize a slave in any way. Their version of slavery was also not, as I mentioned for a lifetime. It wasn't permanent, but was for a maximum of seven years. More akin, like I said, to indentured servitude.

[00:31:07] It was a choice someone entered into for a period of time. And their slavery was not supposed to lead to inhumane practices, but provide protections to those rendering service. The Hebrew people had been slaves so they were meant to act mercifully towards those who needed to indenture themselves.

[00:31:27] And as I said, a lack of social structures like welfare or a prison system or bankruptcy. They made temporary slavery a viable option for many people. This is why in some of your bibles when you turn to the book of the covenant in Exodus chapter 21,

[00:31:43] you won't even find the words slaves. Because the translators have found that word to be so poisoned by our more recent history that they put the words servants in there. I think that word is probably too soft for what was actually happening in ancient Israel,

[00:31:58] but I understand the desire to interpret it in that way. Okay, we have to remember though, that these were instructions designed to take the Hebrew people forward from their condition at that time. A given their history and all the cultures around them slavery similar to indentured servitude

[00:32:20] was bound to be fairly common. So God put these laws on them to regulate their actions at that time. He did not create slavery, but as Pastor Dan Kimball writes in his book How Not to Read the Bible, he said, God work within the cultural framework

[00:32:38] of that time to begin a longer process of transformation and a process in which God is slowly moving people back toward a standard of greater respect and dignity for all people not less. And you, of course, see that more in the New Testament economy and era.

[00:32:58] So this is kind of a similar thing that you would do with many of the laws that you might discover in the book of the covenant that you read and at first kind of great upon your modern moral sensibilities, you just need to pause for a second

[00:33:12] and say there might be more to the story than meets the eye. I need to ask a few questions. I need to dig into this a little bit to find out what's really happening behind the scenes. But that's the second concept, the dignity of human life.

[00:33:27] The third thing I want you to see is that this book of the covenant seems to show that God's community it needs to let their story impact their treatment of other people. Their story needs to impact their treatment of other people. That's probably why slavery was addressed first.

[00:33:45] The Hebrew people had been slaves. They're coming out of slavery. And so immediately God is saying, this is who you were, this is how you need to treat others. And all throughout the book of the covenant, this is a theme.

[00:33:57] Their story was meant to impact the way they treated others. Like, look at chapter 22 verse 21. God said, you shall not wrong a sojourner. You shall not oppress a sojourner. For you were sojourners in the land of Egypt or chapter 23 verse 9, you shall not oppress a sojourner.

[00:34:19] You know the heart of a sojourner for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. God wanted them to treat people in a certain way because of their past, because of their story. He wanted them to make sure that they didn't pervert the justice due the poor.

[00:34:37] He says in 23 verse 10, or plow their land every single year, every seventh year, they were to let it lie follows so that those who are poor could eat whatever grew spontaneously from the land that year. And God's mind, Israel's past life, that slaves,

[00:34:57] and past life as those in poverty and those oppression have made them treat foreigners and slaves and everyone struggling with poverty really well. He didn't want his people to take advantage of their position over others in any way. Now all of this sounds like love,

[00:35:15] which was the first thing I said today. And it all sounds like holding high of value for human life, the second thing I said today. But the point I'm making here is that they should have been motivated to love and value human life

[00:35:29] because of who they had been. They had been poor. They had been foreign. They had been enslaved. They had been at the mercy of the power of Egypt. And because God had mercy on them in that state, they should extend mercy and grace to others

[00:35:49] who were in a similar condition. Now that concept that our story should impact our treatment of others is like one of the most gospel concepts you're gonna find in the book of the covenant. What God has done for us in the gospel

[00:36:06] of his only begotten son should deeply inform how we treat other people today. I wanna show you one example of this in the New Testament. It's all over the New Testament, but here's one example that I read recently when I was just going through my morning reading time.

[00:36:21] It came to the book of Titus. The book of Titus is written from Paul to a pastor named Titus who was ministering on the island of Crete out in the middle of the Mediterranean. He's giving Titus instructions that were for the church.

[00:36:36] This is how you lead the church. And at the beginning of Titus chapter three, he told Titus that he needed to be sure, to teach everyone in all the churches there, that they needed to submit to rulers and authorities, that they needed to speak evil of no one

[00:36:55] that they needed to avoid quarreling, that they needed to be gentle and that they needed to show perfect mercy toward all people. I mean, I kid you not when I read this recently, I double check to see if they put a little heading

[00:37:09] at the beginning of this section that said, how to handle presidential election years as a Christian? Because I just was like, oh, this is so good. This is giving us a framework for which to move forward. But then Paul gave them the reason for behaving that way.

[00:37:25] He said, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, let-ist-ray slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy-haided, by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us.

[00:37:46] Not because it works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of the regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. What was Paul saying there? He's saying our story, just as the law dictated for ancient Israel,

[00:38:01] our story should impact the way that we treat others. We were enslaved to sin. If you're Christian today, you say, we were enslaved to sin. God had to rescue us. So we must treat everyone as if they cannot save themselves,

[00:38:15] but need God's mercy and grace just like we did. We're not above anyone, but we need God's grace and mercy just like everyone. I had an experience recently that just made me so happy. I was out for an early morning walk with my dog Max.

[00:38:30] It was still dark out. And I was coming back into our neighborhood and I was down the block from my house, rounding the corner. And one of my neighbors, he was singing from his bathroom with the bathroom window wide open.

[00:38:47] I don't think he knew that everyone out there could hear him. But it was what he was singing that made me so happy. He was singing a 90s R&B song by the band, Bell Bif de Vaux, a song called Poison. Anybody remember this song?

[00:39:01] Okay, he's singing this song at the top of his lungs. And he wasn't a good singer either. It was terrible. It's just like that girl is poison and he's just going for it. And I just started busing up laughing. It was the best start to my day.

[00:39:16] I was like, thank you, Lord. Your word was great today. Time of prayer. I your walking was good. But that is how I want to start every day. I think the reason I laughed and the reason I brought me so much joy

[00:39:28] is because I have been there so many times. It was like I was like, I feel you right now, bro. I can't tell you how many times my daughters have been like, dad, what are you singing right now? What song are you singing? Stop singing that.

[00:39:41] I'm like, oh but this was a jam back in the 90s and they're like, no, dad, that's over. Don't sing that anymore. I too have been guilty of trying to hit notes. I have no business trying to hit. I too have ruined the morning quiet

[00:39:55] with a concert from my bathroom. I too. Look, we too were in need of a savior. We too needed grace. We too needed the precious blood of Jesus to rescue us. And we need to treat people like we should

[00:40:12] have to allow our story to impact our treatment of others. Okay, real quickly the last final fourth thing I want you to see is that God's community will apparently be centered on God. Okay, why do I say this? Well, God is the constant throughout

[00:40:29] the whole book of the covenant. At the beginning of the book of the covenant, we actually read it last week. There's a little preamble to the book of the covenant. It's rules for building an altar. If you're gonna build an altar, this is how you do it.

[00:40:41] It's like God knows you're gonna wanna fellowship with me. You're gonna need sacrifices here so how you build an altar. That's the start of the book of the covenant. At the end of the book of the covenant, there's all these rules for the Sabbath

[00:40:54] and these three annual festivals that people were supposed to worship God with in ancient Israel. And then right after that, God announces to them, and my presence is gonna go with you into the Promised Land. And then the real kicker is that once

[00:41:09] that whole book of the covenant was stated and they heard the book of the covenant, the people of Israel sent their leadership up the mountain to tell God we want in. And they committed to obeying that covenant. And then it says that they and we read this earlier,

[00:41:28] they beheld God, well, they ate and drank before him. Kind of trips us up because later in the book of Exodus, Moses says, God, I wanna see your face and God says, no one can see me and live. But right here that says, they saw God

[00:41:44] and they lived, they survived. I think what's happening there is that they're catching a glimpse of part of God as feet are mentioned in the passage, for instance, or that they were seeing the pre and carnet Christ. And you'd also say that the disciples,

[00:41:58] they saw God when they saw Jesus. They're seeing the second person of the triune Godhead. I think that might be what's happening. But all this to say that the entire book of the covenant was God saturated and God centered.

[00:42:12] I mean listen, it's like, what are we doing here? If it's not about God? What are we doing here? If it's just about rules and regulations? What are we doing here? At the end of the day, all of this is for us

[00:42:24] to have a relationship with the living God. These were a spiritual people, in other words. And I hope that you know. And I guess when I say that, I'm fairly certain that none of us truly know. How much God wants to be involved with our lives?

[00:42:45] Now I hope that you know that. He wants your every move to be made with the consciousness of Him. He doesn't want to be part of your life. He wants to be the one that you live all of life within. Peter said that believers in Jesus should live

[00:43:03] for the rest of the time and the flesh no longer for human passions for the will of God. We should allow our work, our relationships, our decisions to be influenced by and centered upon the God who loves us. And the more we as a community of believers say,

[00:43:22] yes to Jesus over and over again, the more we move into being the God saturated and influenced group of people that we are meant to be. All right, so backing up from this book of the covenant, one way that you might think of all this,

[00:43:38] maybe the civilist station will help you, is like a nested digital list entitled our covenant with God. Just imagine like a digital screen, it says our covenant with God. If you pushed on that title, it would expand into two more titles.

[00:43:55] Our covenant with God, pillar one, love God, pillar two, love your neighbor as yourself. If you pushed on love God, it would expand to the first four of the 10 commandments, which we're all about loving the Lord, respecting the Lord, we're shipping the Lord.

[00:44:14] And if you pushed on love people or love your neighbor, it would expand to the last six of the 10 commandments, honor parents, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't cover it. And if you pushed on any of those 10, those subheadings,

[00:44:30] you'd find the various laws mentioned in the book of the covenant that we just read about today or in the book of Leviticus or beyond, for example. Whenever you read of a more specific law about how to keep the Sabbath in the rest of Exodus,

[00:44:47] like in the passage we're studying today or the entire Bible, you can trace it back up to the fourth commandment. Keep the Sabbath, which you could trace up to a desire to love God, which you could trace up to keeping the covenant that God made with us.

[00:45:07] Why did they have that covenant? So that they could be God's special people who broadcast the name of Yahweh to the nations to the world. So why keep the Sabbath for an ancient Israelite? Well, trace it all the way up.

[00:45:22] The reason at the end of the day to keep the Sabbath or do any of the things found in the book of the covenant was to fulfill the destiny that God had given to this rescued people to be solved and light to the whole world.

[00:45:36] That's the same reason that we want to obey the Lord today so that we can be who God has called us to be to represent Him well in this world. So let's center our community as a church on God.

[00:45:48] Let's let our story impact the way we treat others. Let's highly value human life and let's hold to the primacy of love in our church. Thank you for listening. If you would like more teachings and information about Calvary Monterey, please visit calvary.com.

[00:46:11] You can also find books, teachings through the Bible, and articles from our lead pastor at natholderch.com. Thanks again for tuning in. See you next week.