"Life for Life" Exodus 23:22-24 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Exodus chapter 21 is one of those passages that is often described in the headings in the Bible as sundry laws.

Exodus 21 · chapter mention

Sundry just means various things thrown in there.

In your Bible reading plan, it is probably one of the places where you just speed through and get through so you don't get stuck in the weeds, you know, press on to the important stuff later on in the book of Exodus, for example.

And uh we don't often wade through each of these commands, each of these laws to see what exactly God was getting at.

But I want to do so tonight because behind the laws in Exodus 21 is this basic idea that God is striving to regulate life in a fallen world.

That's what was going on in the book of Exodus.

God was, in a sense, shepherding his people Israel and giving them laws to check their evil and corral them together in a fallen world.

Most of the Israelites, of course, were not regenerate.

God, the people who received the book of Exodus, God killed almost all of them save two in the wilderness for their disobedience.

This book was not given to people that uh were excelling in godliness, if you if you know what I mean.

I mean, they all died for their sin.

Uh nevertheless, the law forms the foundations of Israel and their life in the promised land as they await for the Savior.

The book of Exodus, along with Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, provides laws for the Israelites to follow, to give them the national identity, to convict them of sin, and prepare them to bring the Savior into the world.

Now, that's in the background of these laws.

Some of these laws are about slavery, and of course, Israel had slavery, and of course, slavery is uh, you know, illegal in the United States and immoral.

Now we perceive it as immoral.

Of course, it wasn't always that way in our country, and of course, slavery in Israel was fundamentally different than American slavery, and we'll talk more about that tonight.

It has laws in here about polygamy, and again, something that is outside of God's design for marriage, something that is not uh allowable, even legal in the United States today, and yet was common in Israel, and that God did regulate like he did slavery in the Old Testament.

And then some of these laws, of course, go to crimes, uh murdering other people, and then ultimately we work towards a section in here that uh many try to apply to the discussion about abortion.

Um, it's when you study the Americans or the American Christian Church's view on abortion, it has, of course, changed over the years.

And I don't know if many of you are aware of this, but in the 1960s and 1970s, the standard evangelical or Christian or Baptist position on abortion in the United States was that abortion should be safe, that it should be legal, and that it should be rare.

Those lines that uh president as recently as President Obama, I believe, used those lines to describe abortion.

That came from the standard Christian talking points about abortion in the 16 in the 1960s and 1970s.

This is a world back then, without while the ultrasound machine had been invented, it wasn't in common practice, and people by and large didn't understand what was happening inside of a mother's womb.

The standard Christian position on abortion in the 60s and 70s was that back alley abortions were commonplace and those were harmful and costing people their life, and so it was a Christian act of love and charity to make sure that there was a safe place for people to find an abortion.

Not that an abortion would ever be good or the right answer to anybody's problem, but that it should be available so that people didn't, you know, bleed out in the streets, so to speak.

And I read uh this week several articles from that time that were written in Christian publications, Baptist publications.

The very first mention of abortion in the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, was a declaration uh in the 1970s declaring that it was the official Baptist position to not have a stance on the issue of abortion.

This is after Roe v.

Wade, by the way, to not have a stance on the issue of abortion, that it was a Christian gray area for everyone to sort out themselves, but it was a matter of Christian virtue to make sure you strive uh for legal abortion so that women, no matter what they decide on the issue, have safe access to it.

That was the standard Christian position in the 70s.

So you jump forward to the late 1980s and you have a total sea change in this.

And by the time you get to the 1980s, uh every Christian movement in the United States, every denomination had issued some kind of statement against abortion, uh, calling for people to defend the by 1984 it was really the last of the main denominations to get on board with this, to call people to advocate for an end and overturning of Roe v.

Wade, to end for legalized abortion, to end the funding of Planned Parenthood, which was already growing at that time.

And uh it's a fast-forward today where, you know, outside of the liberal Christianities, liberal uh churches that you know basically don't believe major tenets of the Bible, you're not gonna find pro-choice Christians, you know, anymore.

That's not really something that's around.

Although it's worth noting that uh the new um newest senator in the U.S.

Senate bills himself as a pro-abortion pastor, not just a pro-choice pastor, but a pro-abortion uh pastor.

So not entirely extinct, this breed, um, but uh but very much uh endangered.

Most Christians now would come out strongly against abortion.

So what changed between the early 1970s and the 1980s?

Well, a few things changed, um one of which, the most obvious of which, is the proliferation of altar sounds, the proliferation of understanding of what was happening inside the human body.

Um I've read the Roe v.

Wade decision.

It really does read like something written by the Flat Earth Society as you go through it.

I mean, you have these Supreme Court justices that are saying things like, you know, honestly, who has any idea what's happening inside of a mother's womb?

You know, and and the whole trimester paradigm, which is not a medical paradigm at all, it's something invented by Supreme Court justices, it's out of thin air.

This idea that, you know, let's divide the pregnancy up into thirds and say that in the first third, you know, it's whatever's happening is probably not alive.

And the middle third, yeah, maybe it's alive, but it's not worthy of the protection of the law.

And the final third, yeah, we'll go ahead and say there's more protections deserving in the last third of um of a pregnancy.

I mean, that was a a medical fiction.

It was contrived artificially.

But as ultrasound machines are spreading and more and more people are being able to hear the heartbeat and even see images of what's happening inside of the womb, even being able to find out the gender of their baby before they're they're born.

I mean, this was very unusual, possible in the 70s, but very unusual.

Uh my brother and I both have names that were assigned to us before birth that we would have had, regardless of our gender.

I'm Jesse and I would have been a Jesse if I was a girl.

And my brother's Lee, and he would have been a Lee if he was a girl, and that's just the way it is.

And now that's just so long ago, isn't it?

Now, if you decide you're not going to find out the gender of your baby, you're the weird one.

I mean, what are you?

Some kind of Calvinist or something?

You you better trust the Lord's sovereignty.

And um, of course, God reminds us of that all the time.

We have people uh in our church who found out the gender of their baby only to be mistaken.

Not mistaken when the child went to college, but mistaken when the child was born.

So 1984, there's a Bibsack journal article that said Exodus 21, verses 23 through 25 is the key verse for evangelicals who are trying to hold on to the exception, to the ex acceptance of abortion.

Exodus 21:23–25

In the 1980s, as you see Christians starting to leave the pro-choice world and join the pro-life cause, you have those that were more reluctant to change their minds, because that's part of human nature, right?

If you are living through the Roe v.

Wade era of the 1970s, if you're uh going through that and now new technology is coming out and you're starting to question what you used to believe, it's not easy to get somebody to change their mind on something like abortion.

And so many believers were trying to justify their pro-choice views, but now they need a Bible verse to do so.

Whereas before it was just an act of mercy, so to speak, that they were pro-choice.

Now, as you're starting to discover, like this is it is a person inside of the mother's womb.

I mean, cellars cells are dividing, the person is growing, they have their own human DNA, they're distinct from their mother, they are very much alive.

I mean, what's the what's the pro-choice argument at that point?

That what it's not a person?

Of course it's a person, it's not a dog, it's not a cat.

You rule out every other option.

Of course it's a person.

It's not alive, of course it's alive, you can hear his heartbeat.

You can find out his gender.

They're starting to be able to diagnose diseases or illnesses in the womb.

So now what is your argument?

So now, for the first time really in the abortion in the American evangelical history, you have Christians that are starting to turn to the Bible and trying to find verses that they can use to justify being pro-choice.

And many authors, and I just quoting from a I said a 1984 Bibsac journal article, uh, that's the most obvious one, but that journal article quotes many other people that directed people to Exodus 21, verses 23 to 25, as the pro-choice passage.

Exodus 21:23–25

So I want to talk about that passage tonight.

Uh, and I want to do so by explaining the concepts of Exodus 21, and then I want to look at the actual passage, and I want to teach what I think that passage means, and then I want to show you what the pro-choice view of that passage is and why I think that wrong interpretation of the passage is still not really a pro-choice argument.

So that's the agenda tonight.

I want to walk you through Exodus 21, then I want to show you my view of this passage and why I think that it very much is a pro-life passage.

And then I want to look at the passage from the perspective of people who find a pro-choice argument there and show you how they're still wrong, even if the passage means what they think it means, they're still wrong about abortion.

That's the plan.

Let me begin with a quote from John Feinberg in his book on Ethics.

He writes this Exodus 21, 22 through 25 is relevant to abortion and when properly understood, offers an unusually strong argument for the pro-life position.

So that's where my destination tonight.

I want to take John Feinberg's words and show that he is in fact right.

When you understand Exodus 21, it is, quote, an unusually strong argument for the pro-life position.

Now, these laws in Exodus 21, I called them earlier sundry laws.

Uh, before we dive in and start working our way through them, let me give you a few warning signs about uh laws in the book of Exodus or the Torah in general.

These laws don't apply to Christians today.

There is often an attempt to divide them up and say some of them are moral and the moral ones apply, and some of them are civil, and those ones don't, or ceremonial, and those ones are fulfilled in Christ or whatever.

I think it's best to see that all of the Torah, the commands given in the Torah for Israel to live by, all of them is given to Israel.

They're not, in that sense, binding on the church.

The church doesn't strive to keep the law of Moses.

Jesus fulfilled the law of Moses as it was given to Israel.

We instead have freedom in Christ.

We don't lead immoral lives.

We are under the law of Christ as we seek holiness to be conformed to his image, but we, and no part of that, are trying to replicate the law of Moses in our own life.

Our nation does have some of its own laws, which are based upon principles from the book of Exodus, so you'll recognize some of them as we go through them tonight.

And you should be under the laws of our land, but not because they're in the laws of Exodus.

And finally, living by the laws in the Torah does not produce harmony in society.

You'll understand that as we go through this tonight.

Living by the laws in the Torah does not make people happy, healthy, and wise and living in harmony with each other.

Most of these laws are designed to restrain evil.

Even the Jews who strove to live by these laws, it did not produce harmonious life inside of Israel.

These laws weren't designed for that.

These laws were designed to restrain sin and convict people of their sin, show them their need for a savior.

That's what they were designed to do.

They were designed to make you fail and become aware of your the reality of your sin, become aware of the reality that you're living in a fallen world.

So I say that because there's always a tendency in the Christian heart to read these kind of laws and say, okay, how do they apply to me?

Alright, I'm not buying a slave.

How can this law apply to me?

I'm not, I don't have an ox that's gonna gore my neighbor's ox, so how does this apply to me?

And we come up with like these fanciful ways of trying to make them apply to you.

Like if your sister breaks your toy, is she responsible for it?

Well, no, unless she's prone to breaking toys, and then yes, she is responsible for it, and I will get her next allowance, but only if I warned her right way.

And we come up with these far-fetched ways to try to apply these passages to us.

And I don't think that I think that's kind of a fool's errand.

Uh it's better to look at this as laws given to people that are living under law, that it shows them their need for a savior, not to replicate them in the church, but in the church to recognize, listen, let's live with each other with grace, not with law.

And that's what we'll conclude tonight.

Well, with that in mind, let's look at these starting in Exodus 21.

Verses 1 through 6 are all about slaves.

Slaves are supposed to serve for six years.

It says in verse 2, in the seventh year the slave goes out free, it says, for nothing.

This is what I mean by slavery in the ancient Near East was fundamentally different than American slavery was.

Slavery in Israel was designed as a debtor's system.

If you were in debt, you could sell yourself into slavery, your debt would be forgiven.

So if you owed somebody a amount of money that you could not pay, you could not make ends meet, you couldn't provide for your family and pay off your debt, what you could do is sell yourself into slavery.

Your debt would be forgiven, you would work for six years, and then you would have your freedom in the seventh year.

And if that sounds far-fetched to you, some of you, all of you just about probably have a 30-year mortgage.

I want you to think about the temptation to say, okay, I owe the bank more than I can pay.

Why don't I go be the bank's slave for six years?

And then they let me go at the end of it, and I have my life back and I don't owe them anything ever again.

You can see how that would be tempting.

That was slavery in the ancient Near East.

If you owed somebody money, you could be their slave.

At the end of six years in Israel, in the other nations, they had you work for longer or perhaps your whole life, but in Israel, it was six years, and then you could have your freedom.

That's the law.

However, perhaps at the end of six years, you look at the world and it does not have promises for you out there.

And you say, I can't survive out there.

I'd rather stay as a slave than go back to trying to make ends meet.

Well, if that's acceptable to you and that's acceptable to your master, you bring a priest and you declare in verse 5, I love my master, I love my wife, I love my children, I will not go out free.

I'm gonna stay here and spend the rest of my life as a slave.

You get the earring in, you're marked as a slave for the rest of your life.

You have to declare that you're doing this out of love for your master.

So there's no involuntary servitude in Old Testament slavery.

That's that doesn't exist.

Instead, it's a declaration in front of the priest that you're doing it because you love you love your master.

And you love your wife and your children.

So perhaps you're a slave, and at year five, you marry someone who's a slave in year one, you have a child, and you're year six, and now you're free.

Are you gonna leave your wife and your child?

I mean, that's messed up.

And so you can declare, I'll be a slave for the rest of my life so I can stay married to my wife and raise my children.

Remember, the world wasn't designed with slavery, this was an accommodation because of debt.

This is why we began our service reading from Mark 10.

Even the laws for divorce were an accommodation because of people's hardness of heart.

They're living in a fallen world.

That's the point here.

All this is happening in a fallen world where bad things like debt happen, and one slave marries another slave and doesn't want to leave his family, so he can be a slave the rest of his life.

That's the law.

That's the first part, verses 1 through 6.

Verses 7 through 11.

What happens if those slaves marry?

Or if a man sells his daughter, it says as a slave, and and don't picture childhood things.

Picture here a grown daughter.

She will not be treated as the male slaves do.

She's not just gonna be thrown out.

If you sell her and she has any kind of sexual relations with her master, then she's going to be considered as married.

If at the end of six years she wants her freedom, she can be redeemed.

If she wants to stay, she can stay.

It's up to her.

Do you see the profound rights this is given to the so-called slave here?

The ball is in her court here.

She cannot be sold to a foreign people.

She has to stay with her people Israel.

She can be a wife if she wants to be a wife, she can be a slave if she wants to be a slave, she can have her freedom if she wants.

It is up to her.

If somebody buys a female slave and says she'll marry my son, verse 9 says, then she has to be treated like a daughter.

She can't be treated as a slave anymore.

You can't buy a slave and say she'll marry my son.

No.

If you have that approach, then that slave is no longer a slave.

She's a daughter with all the rights and protections that go in that.

And there's so much more that can be said about this.

This is just laying the background to understand that Exodus 21 is talking about defending the rights of people that would otherwise be exploited.

That's the background here.

Defending the rights of people who'd otherwise be exploited.

Well, you get to verse 12.

And verse 12 gives the legal structure that we still have in the United States.

If you strike a man so that he dies, you're going to be put to death.

We're going to go ahead and call that murder one.

You strike someone, they die, you're going to die.

But, verse 13, if you didn't lie and wait for him, but God let him fall into your hands, then you can run away and flee.

So, in other words, you weren't waiting to kill the guy.

The guy happened along, and you two got in a fight and you killed him, you're still responsible for his death.

But now you can run to a city's city of refuge, you can plead your case, the judges there can sort it out, and maybe you don't need to die.

And in our American law system, we get murder too from this.

Okay, so murder one, you laid in wait.

Murder one, you plotted this out, you killed him.

In the Old Testament, you're gonna die for that.

Murder two, hey, you guys are walking along, you get in a fight, you know, he stole something from you and you punched him, and one thing led to another, now he's dead.

This is not premeditated.

You can flee.

You're still guilty of murder, but you can flee with your life.

You can protect your life.

If the judges sort that out and think that's the fair result.

And again, even the American legal system keeps that distinction.

And then manslaughter, we're gonna come up to in a second.

Manslaughter is you're, you know, you do something careless and reckless and a person dies.

That's not murder.

You know, so murder one is you wait and you ambush somebody.

Murder two is you get in a fight with somebody and they die.

Murder three, you're just being crazy and you're, you know, running down a hill really fast and you knock somebody off the ledge totally accidentally.

You're still responsible for that.

You are guilty of that person's death, but it certainly isn't murder, and that has a totally different punishment.

We'll look at that as we go forward.

I just mentioned that because the same distinctions are in American law to this very day between murder one, murder two, and manslaughter.

It comes from a biblical worldview, and I think it is a very appropriate distinction that we have even at this very moment in life.

Well, you jump down to verse 15, and then verse 17, you have laws for parents.

If you strike your father or your mother, you'll be put to death.

That word strikes there is kind of unfortunate in the ESV.

It makes it sound like you just, you know, you hit them, you know.

Uh you accidentally punch your mom or your dad, and you can get taken to the city gate and stones.

That's not what this word strikes means.

It's the same word used from Moses earlier when he struck the Egyptian and killed him, and Moses had to go in the wilderness for decades.

It's the word that the angel of the Lord uses when he goes and kills the firstborn in every house, he strikes the firstborn.

So the image here is that you punch your father and your mother.

Some translations even say you kill your father and your mother, they die.

You hit them so hard they die, you're going to die.

So why does it repeat that?

If it already said if you punch someone and they die, you deserve death.

What it's doing is it's saying, when you're dealing with family, you don't have murder two as an out.

When you're dealing with family, you can't say it was the heat of the moment and I killed them.

I wasn't lying in wait.

No, you don't, when it's your family, you cannot plead murder to, in other words.

When it's your family, it's by definition murder one.

Because obviously every family has complicated scenarios.

There's anger that builds over time.

You have no excuse to kill someone in your family.

You do that, you will die.

Regardless if you say, oh, it just you know it was the heat of the moment.

No, no heat of the moment defenses in marriage.

Um you kill your parents, your spouse, you will die no matter what.

And then verse 17 is a hard one for Americans to understand.

Whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death.

And it doesn't mean just say, like, oh, I said a bad word about my mom or dad, you know, um, so they deserve to be died.

Now, this is a biblical concept of a curse where you bring your parents under a curse.

You swear an oath to your parents' harm.

In other words, you renounce your possessions.

This is almost like prodigal son style.

You renounce your possessions, but on top of that, you plead for the Lord to take the life of your parents, you enter some kind of commitment or oath or vow for your Family's harm.

If you do that, you will be executed.

This is the fifth commandment style.

You don't honor your father and your mother, which is the positive side of it.

The negative side of it is you actively curse them, then you will be put to death.

We don't really have that kind of concept in American culture.

Like there's no we're not a culture of like curses and blessings, you know?

But the Israelites certainly were.

And if you evoke an oath to bring harm to your family, you deserve death.

Verse 16, we skipped over there.

Whoever steals the man and sells him, anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death.

This one verse, by the way, if it was followed in American slavery, would have ended the American institution of slavery.

If you kidnap somebody, you deserve to die.

If you are in possession of somebody who is kidnapped, you deserve to die.

I say that because there are those that argue that American slavery is based upon biblical slavery.

No, it's not.

The very foundation of American slavery is a contradiction to verse 16.

Israelite slavery had nothing in common with American slavery really at all.

If you kidnap someone to sell them into slavery, or if you bought that person to own him as a slave, you would be put to death.

Again, the whole theme here is protecting those who otherwise wouldn't have rights.

So verses 18 through 21 is where things start to get a little weird.

If you've got two people who are fighting, and uh a stone gets involved in the fight, or perhaps a fist, they punch each other, and somebody gets really injured, but he doesn't die, instead, he's on bed rest.

But then the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff.

He who struck him is in the clear.

But you got to pay for his loss of time at work.

Uh and in the amount of time he's lost at work until he's thoroughly healed.

So look, what is going on with that kind of verse?

Well, the point here is if you punch someone and they get injured and they can't work, you have to pay their wages at work.

Okay, but what happens if you punch someone who gets injured and he can't work, but then he's, you know, you see him walking around the block again, and then like two months later he dies.

Now, are you the murderer?

And the law here says no.

Once he's out going for a walk, you are no longer going to be guilty of murder.

You know, who knows?

He fell off the sidewalk or something.

Who knows what happened to him?

But you do have to pay for his lost wages.

That's the principle.

Again, this is important for when we get to the abortion passage in a second.

The same principle, verses 26 to 27, jog your eyes down there.

The same principle applies for slaves.

If a man strikes the eye of a slave and destroys it, the slave has his freedom.

Okay, so this is eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth kind of law.

If he knocks out the tooth, the slave gets his freedom.

Is the point?

You know, if two people are fighting and one punches out the other's eye, there's a punishment that's equitable for both, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

Not literal, don't take that literally.

Like if I punch you in the eye and you go blind, it doesn't mean the priest is gonna gouge out my eye.

It means no, my punishment is gonna be equitable to a lost eye, which is gonna be significant, but it's got to be something.

It's not gonna be my life because I didn't kill you, I just blinded you.

But it's gonna be something big.

Well, for a slave, what good is that?

If a slave's master punches him, a slave and his master are fighting, and the slave gets blinded.

Well, who you don't want to punish the master by what punishment for the master would do the slave any good?

If you make the master poor, the slave is still poor.

Now he's a slave to a poor guy.

The whole thing would just be miserable.

So instead, the law says the slave can go free.

If the slave gets blinded, he gets his freedom.

This is protection of the slave.

That way the slave doesn't have to be owned by a toothless man.

He gets his freedom.

So that pretty much covers the main passages, the main cases in this passage.

It brings us to verse 22.

So let me read verses 22 through 25 and talk about how this applies to the abortion movement.

Verse 22.

When men strive together, so they're fighting, and they hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband will impose on him, and he will pay as the judges determined.

Okay?

But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

It's called Lex Talianos Law here.

It means that if you are fighting and you harm somebody, you get an equitable punishment in return.

And like I mentioned earlier, don't please don't take that literally.

Americans often are very bad at this kind of literature because we take the wrong things literally.

Uh, this would be, you know, things that are supposed to be literal, like creation, we make metaphorical, and things that are supposed to be, you know, illustrative, we tried to take literally.

Like they didn't gouge out each other's eyes.

The point of Lex Telianus is that, you know, if somebody dents your car, you don't get to break all their windows with a baseball bat.

Okay?

You have to pay for the dent, but you don't have to buy them a new car.

It's equitable, is the point, to make it more American.

Um, that's the same principle here.

So the story here is seems entirely out of left field.

Some kind of fight between two men.

A pregnant woman gets hit.

How in the world would a pregnant woman get hit if two men are fighting?

And I'm trying to think of a way, and I think the most likely way is that, you know, maybe she knows the guy's fighting.

I mean, she's probably not just walking down the street in her pregnancy, and she's far along here because there's a very real uh chance that the baby will be born here, and so she's walking along, far along in her pregnancy, and I don't know, I don't think two guys spill out of like a saloon or something and run into her in the street.

I think it's more likely she's trying to break up the fight for some reason.

And she gets struck, and now something happens.

Now, what the something happens, that's where the dispute is in this passage.

The text, read the SV, just says, her children come out, and that's a very literal translation.

Her children come out.

Uh, but there's no harm to them.

Now, let me tell you the way I understand this passage.

And I think this is the way most uh commentaries understand this passage.

Well, not I think this is the way most commentaries understand the passage.

I think it's the right interpretation of this passage.

Let me walk you through it and show you how it is a very profound pro-life teaching, and then we'll back up and go through it again from the pro-choice perspective.

So, from the pro-life perspective, or what I'm gonna call the right perspective, you see these two men arguing, the pregnant woman intervenes in some way, she's struck, her children come out.

As children is in plural here because we're dealing with like a timeless principle.

It's not just one child, this is a principle that applies indefinitely through the Torah.

Come out is a word that is uh often used in the Old Testament.

It's often used of live birth.

Um, and so the children didn't die here.

It's used in Genesis 31, 38, for example, Exodus 23, 26, Hosea 9, verse 4, 2 Kings 2, verse 19, and and those are the those verses that I all listed are the a word for miscarriage.

Hosea 9:4 2 Kings 2:19

That's not the word that's used here.

Those verses I just listed, that's the word for miscarriage where it's used.

Hebrews had Hebrew had a word for miscarriage.

It's not the word that's used here.

The word that's used here, translated come out, is a word that's used in Genesis 25, Genesis 38, Jeremiah 1, verse 5, and in those places it always means live birth.

Jeremiah 1:5

So the word come out here is describing the woman is struck and her children are born.

She gives birth because of the trauma.

I read a medical journal recently that described how, especially in a world without medical care, this is more, could be more common than perhaps the American medical mind might understand.

Some kind of uh physically induced trauma that induces the woman into labor or she gives birth, and then it says, there is no harm.

So the baby is fine.

That's the big question, right?

A pregnant woman gets struck and she gives birth.

The big question is, is the baby okay?

So in this verse it says very clearly in the middle, there is no harm.

And I take that to mean to the to the baby.

The baby lives.

Well, if that happens, what happens to the guy that punched the lady?

Which category does this fall into?

He didn't take out anybody's eye.

He didn't take out anybody's tooth, he didn't deprive anybody of their wages, the woman doesn't work.

So what happens to the guy?

Well, the guy will be fined.

The guy who punched her, or perhaps even both that were fighting, will be fined.

Well, who decides what the fine would be?

Well, first, as the woman, the woman's husband imposes on him.

So the the husband gets involved and he says, I can't believe he becomes the judge and says, I can't believe you fools did that.

I demand this amount of money.

Perhaps he missed work to care for this whole situation, so the people are fined, and the husband is the one who sets the find.

But would you imagine the husband to be the most level-headed guy in this scenario?

No.

No.

Husbands generally aren't level-headed in this kind of scenario, right?

Uh I mean, if you're the husband and this is your child that's involved, you're like a million dollars.

Cash.

And I have a big family that will come fetch that for you, you know, and your car, by the way.

That's what I find you.

And so it gives you a thing here.

You the judges can be involved, it says at the end of verse 22.

If this happens, the judges can be involved.

If the husband says, I want this amount of money and it seems exorbitant, then get the town's judges involved.

Ideally, you could take care of it without the town's judges.

You can just have your cash agreement right there.

But if you can't agree, you bring the judges, and the judges will determine who is right, and you have to pay it.

This is the law that they lived under.

You have to pay at that point.

And if you can't pay, I guess you would sell yourself into slavery.

I mean, that that but that's what you're stuck with.

Now, this is a fascinating thing, I think, to have in here.

Um, because you think this is such an unusual thing to happen.

Why would you need a whole law about that?

And this is why I think I agree with John Feinberg.

This is a profoundly pro-life argument here.

What is this law doing here?

How often can this possibly happen, even in the Hebrew world?

I think this law is put in here in the context of a series of laws of showing that God's desire is to protect those who otherwise would be exploited.

And in this context here, God is desiring to protect the woman and of course to protect the child.

This is a culture that would not protect either of those two.

That's why the law is here.

The law is here not to, you know, in some case in the future, this might happen.

Good thing there's a law on the books.

I think more likely this law is in the Torah to set a marker for those that read the Torah to know the world exploits slaves, God will protect slaves.

The world exploits women, God will protect women.

The world exploits babies, and here even babies in the womb, God will protect them.

That to me is the main takeaway of this passage.

This baby is endowed with certain rights because he's in the image of God.

And you can't harm him without consequence.

You hit the mother and you induce trauma for the child, you will be fine.

This is a, I think, a profound statement about the rights of the unborn.

Verse 23 says, if there is harm, if the baby is harmed by this, and again, I'm saying harm is coming to the baby here, because I think that's just the best way of reading it.

Because notice that in verse 23, the harm is here connected to the birth of the child.

The baby is born, and now you're investigating for harm.

That's why it doesn't make sense to me to say the harm is for the wife.

Is the mother harmed by this?

You would know that right away when she's struck.

That's not what we're talking about here.

It's saying the baby is born.

Now you need to figure out if there was harm inflicted by the blow.

You look at the baby who's born.

Is there harm?

No.

Okay, the guy's fined.

Is there harm?

Yes.

Again, you're examining after the birth of the baby.

If so, then you will pay life for life.

Is the baby born and the baby dies?

Then you pay life for life.

Do you see why this is radically pro-life in the ancient Near East?

If you strike a woman and her baby dies, you will pay with your own life.

We're back to murder one here.

You should know better than to hit a pregnant woman.

You don't get an excuse that it was the heat of the moment kind of thing.

No, you will, it's the same protection afforded to parents.

Earlier, you strike your parents, you don't get to plead murder two.

No, you will be put to death.

Here, you strike a pregnant woman and the baby dies, you are put to death.

What if the baby is just injured, injured eye, injured?

Again, don't take this literally.

I know most babies don't have teeth.

But the idea here is if the baby has some kind of pain or some kind of harm, then the fine increases and increases proportionate to whatever harm happened to the baby.

Burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Again, this is, I think, a radically pro-life understanding of this passage.

I think it is the most obvious understanding of this passage.

It is the historic understanding of the passage.

Ancient Jewish commentators take that view of the passage, that the harm here is inflicted on the child.

So you read this, and you're probably all read this the same way I do.

You think, how in the world is this the verse used by the pro-choice movement?

Doesn't this teach the exact opposite of the pro-choice movement?

Like, doesn't this establish pretty firmly that an unborn baby has rights and is deserving of protection to the point that if you kill him or her, you will die?

And the answer is yes, it does.

However, there's another way to understand this passage.

And so let me explain it to you from the perspective of those that use this verse to argue the pro-choice view.

What they say is that this verse establishes that the baby does not have rights and is not deserving of protection.

And this is how that view would read this passage.

Verse 22 men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, her children come out.

They would say that come out is miscarriage here, that the word itself means that the baby was miscarriaged.

And I said earlier, why I don't think that's true.

There is a Hebrew word for miscarriage.

It's not the word that's used here.

The word that's used here is the word that is usually used for live birth, but they argue that this word can mean miscarriage, and there are some perhaps some examples where it does.

And so, okay, it means miscarriage.

The baby is born.

So they're saying the baby, in the word come out, the baby is dead.

So the baby has come out because of the strike on the mother, the baby has died, but there is no harm.

So they say the harm there must mean towards the mother.

And again, I find this very far-fetched.

How do you hit a woman hard enough that her baby, she gives birth and her baby is dead, but she's not harmed?

That's just, it stretches credulity to me to even think that that you thought my example was far-fetched and hardly ever happened.

What about that example?

The same thing happened, only now the mom got struck so hard she actually gave birth, the baby's dead, but the mom was fine.

That doesn't make sense to me.

But that's the way they would take this passage.

And they say, in that scenario, the one who hit the mother will be fined.

So in other words, the baby's dead, the mom is not harmed, and the person who did the striking should be fined, the woman's husband will impose the fine on him.

But if there is harm, in other words, harm to the mother, then you pay life for life.

Again, that doesn't to me make any sense because if the harm came to the mother, did the mother die, I guess, in that analogy?

And if so, then so the only way the person who did the punching would be put to death is if the mother actually died, but not if the baby died.

That's how they would take this passage.

Eye for eye.

In other words, if this if the hit knocked the mom's eye out or knocked the mom's teeth out, or harmed the mom's hand or the mom's foot, etc., then the person who did the striking would be punished proportionately.

And that's the way they would take that passage.

Again, I don't think that is the right interpretation of that passage.

I find it far-fetched and contrary to the way nature and childbirth and laws work.

However, that is the way they take the passage.

For me, it's not a deal breaker.

What I want to do for the next 10, 12 minutes or so, I can't even see the clock in here.

That's great.

We have all night since there's no clock.

Uh, what I want to do for the next 10 minutes or so is walk you through why, if you hold that view of this passage, it is still not a pro-life argument.

And here's my little outline for you as we go through tonight.

I want to give you four reasons that a wrong interpretation still doesn't make abortion a right.

Okay.

And I thought of a way to give an outline because I want to communicate to you that for the next 10 minutes or so, I'm going to be talking about the wrong understanding of this passage.

Am I making that clear?

So I'm going to talk about the wrong view, not the view I hold, not the view Moses holds, the wrong view of this passage, which is the baby was born dead, the mom is the one who was injured.

If you hold that view of the passage, here's four reasons why it still does not mean that a baby, a parent should have the right to abort a baby.

And the first of those four reasons is that it uses the word for child here.

When two men survive together and hit a pregnant woman so that her children come out.

Even in this passage, this allegedly pro-choice passage, it designates what is inside the mother's womb as a child.

And that's huge.

It does not say the fetal matter, it does not say the dog or the cat, it doesn't say the clump of cells.

It uses a word that gives human dignity to the product of the womb.

And that in with a biblical worldview, that is the ballgame right there.

You go back to Genesis 1, 2, everything produces according to its kind.

The seed of the Savior is passed down through Adam and Eve, who will produce according to their kind.

Every human life is in the image of God, regardless of its stage of fetal development, regardless of if it can operate independently of the mother, or if it's elderly, or if it's a newborn, you produce according to your kind.

And so this passage refers to the baby in human terms.

Dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, and people produce people, even all the way back in Exodus.

Secondly, the context of this whole section here is intent.

This passage is in a section that demands commensurate justice for those that acted with criminal intent.

So, for example, back in verse 12, if you strike a man and he dies, you're put to death.

However, if your intent wasn't to kill, then you have an escape.

Or verse 16, if you steal someone for slavery, your intent puts them to death.

Interesting, a little thing we skipped over here earlier.

If you lie in wait to kill someone, verse 13?

If you lie in wait to kill someone, you are put to death.

Verse 14, if you willfully attack another by cunning, you don't even get to escape.

That's attempted murder.

The intent was to kill the person.

You might not have even successfully killed him.

You just wanted to, you can be put to death.

This passage is all about intent.

And in this passage here, where we're looking at verse 22, even in the quote, pro-choice understanding of this passage, obviously the intent was not to kill the child.

That's very different than abortion.

Abortion is more like the lying in wait back up in verse 14 than it is about this.

The same is true in the rest of this passage we didn't look at.

You know, if you have an ox and the ox gores your neighbor's ox, then you you kill both oxes, is what you do.

You sell them and you split the cash.

That's how they sorted that out.

Unless your ox had a reputation for goring oxes, in which case the other guy gets all the cash.

Your ox gores a person.

It's an accident.

It's okay.

Put the ox to death, give the family the money.

But if the ox had a reputation for being dangerous, then you're put to death because of the intent.

So how does that factor into this?

Here, nobody is trying to kill the baby.

The presumed death of the baby, which again this view holds is what happened, was unintentional.

There was a fight, the pregnant woman stepped in, the baby died, nobody tried to harm her.

It just happened.

This is my point here is that this is the same consequence that would happen if it wasn't a fetus, but if it was a full-grown person.

If you're fighting with somebody and you're punching somebody and somebody tries to break it up and you hit the person that was breaking it up and they die, that's murder too.

Remember, you didn't lie in wait for them.

You can run and you are not put to death.

The pro-choice argument says, hey, the fact that you struck the pregnant woman and the baby died and you aren't put to death is justification for abortion.

Because if God really thought the baby was a person, you would be put to death for striking the pregnant woman.

That's not true.

That's not true.

If it was a full-grown person that got punched in the fight and died, you wouldn't be put to death.

The fact that the baby was born dead and the person who did it isn't put to death, it's not a statement about how little the baby's life matters.

That's the argument here.

People say, oh, because the person who killed the baby isn't put to death, it means God doesn't value baby life like the pro life movement does.

Not true.

If it was an adult who died, the person who did it wouldn't be put to death because it was murder too.

If it was an ox who did it, it's an accident, okay?

You don't end somebody's life over an accident.

That's the whole principle here.

Which, if you reason that out, has profound pro-life implications, doesn't it?

You don't end a life over an accident.

Don't.

That's the point here.

That's the point.

The context is intent.

You don't kill someone for an accidental event.

Third, fines are here to demonstrate guilt.

Again, in the wrong view of this passage, it says in verse 23 that there is harm, then you pay life for life.

But look in verse 22.

If there is no harm, apparently to the mother in the wrong view of the passage, the one who hid her will be fined.

It is still demonstrating guilt.

Even in this context with the wrong view of the passage, the person who did it is declared as guilty by the fact that they have to pay a fine.

This is a fine not for any harm to the mother, remember?

Because in this first passage, verse 22, the mother is supposedly unharmed by this.

Nevertheless, the person who did it is still fined.

That's demonstrating guilt.

Fines in Exodus 21 are not demonstrating the severity of the crime.

Fines are an excuse to demonstrate guilt.

Even this week, there is a Supreme Court case I wish I had more time to talk about, brought by a college student in Georgia.

It is a crazy case where his university told him he's not allowed to preach the gospel on campus, okay?

So he's a brand new believer.

He's from Nigeria, brand new believer, and he says, No, I'm going to preach the gospel on campus.

And so they tell him you can preach in this free speech zone that is smaller than this piece of carpet for two minutes a day or something like that.

So he sues the university.

This Nigerian immigrant sues this massive university in Georgia, and the university immediately realizes they're in the wrong and folds and says, Okay, preach the gospel whenever you want.

And he says, No, you need to pay a fine for what you're doing to me.

I want one dollar.

And the university won't settle because it would be admitting guilt.

It made it all the way, it was argued in front of the Supreme Court last week.

Incredible case.

You recognize, just with that very modern example, the point is not the dollar.

The point is not the dollar amount, it's not one dollar or ten dollars.

In fact, the very reason he wants a fine is because it demonstrates they are guilty.

They're confessing that they did something wrong.

This guy, by the way, has a great story about how his parents brought him from the Nigeria telling him that he has freedom in America, and now university says you can't preach the gospel.

He's like, What?

Where's my dollar?

Like, oh, he's catching on.

Catching on in the American way right there.

That's the point of the find in Exodus 21.

It demonstrates that the person who hit was guilty even if the mother was fine.

Well, fourthly, this scenario is not at all like abortion.

This scenario is not at all like abortion.

Abortion is fundamentally different than that.

Abortion is not the case of two men fighting.

It's not the case of an accidental death against the wishes of a parent.

When you read this story, this is a horrible situation, isn't it?

Exodus 21.

Assuming anything like this ever happens, it's a horrible situation.

There are no good outcomes to this.

Let's pretend this really did happen.

Obviously, it was accidental.

Obviously, the person who did this, it was an accidental situation.

How do you unwind this?

There is no good outcome.

So the scenario, no matter what interpretation you have of this passage, the scenario you have to interpret in a way that describes the person who did it as guilty and causing extreme harm and suffering.

Very fundamentally different than abortion.

Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent child, not the accidental killing of a child by a stranger, but the intentional killing of the child by his parents.

Abortion is worse than Exodus 21 because it's done by the parents, whereas the story in Exodus 21 is done to the parents.

The truth is, when you zoom out a bit, Exodus doesn't regulate abortion.

There's no laws against abortion in Exodus 21.

Children in the ancient Near East were considered as a blessing.

The idea that you would take one's life is just so out of their world experience, there'd be no need for that kind of law.

But it's so interesting.

The Lord puts this kind of passage in here to kind of put a marker down.

To say, I recognize the value, the worth, the dignity, the honor, the life of this human inside the womb.

And if you hit the mother and that baby dies, you will pay with your life.

This leads to the Lexelion as it's often called, which is verse 23, 24, 25.

Very famous passage in Exodus.

This is his first appearance.

It'll make an appearance later on in the book of Leviticus.

Some Jewish scholars refer to Lextelion as summarizing the whole law.

Very interesting when Jesus summarizes the law, he says, Love your neighbor as yourself.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, love your neighbor as yourself.

When many Jewish scholars summarize the law, they summarize it with this verse right here: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

That's what I mean by it's so misguided to try to find principles for living from the law.

Try to find ways to apply this to your arguments with your siblings is so misguided.

Because it's a wrong approach to the law.

We don't approach Christian living by saying, how can I get equal justice for those who have wronged me?

We approach Christian living by saying, praise God, we don't have to live with equal justice.

Praise God that, listen, if my enemy strikes me on the right cheek, I'm going to turn my left to him.

If he takes my coat, I'm going to give him my jacket.

If he walks one while with me, I'll walk the second with him.

That's Christian ethics.

So different than, uh, did the ox have a reputation for goring or not?

Imagine applying this to marriage.

You know, did I warn my wife before she made her mistake?

Then I can rub it in.

Did I not warn it?

Then we just live with it.

Oh man.

Premarital counseling for you right now.

Don't live with that kind of ethic.

Don't say, I warned you.

Oh no, no, no, no.

Because the truth is that my wife warns me more often than me her.

We understand that's Christian life.

Love covers sin.

And that's because Jesus fulfills the law himself, and love is the fulfillment of the law.

Lord, we're thankful that there is forgiveness for sins.

Such were some of us.

I know there's people listening tonight online or here that have committed the sin of uh abortion.

They have taken human life.

I know that there is those in our congregation that have committed the sin of coveting, of valuing wealth and possessions over our life, over what God has called us to do, and that's what leads to murder.

That's what James tells us.

We kill because we desire something we don't have, and we want it, and we fight for it, and we'll even take life to get it.

Many of us have never committed that kind of sin outwardly, anyway, and yet we know that the seeds for it are all over our heart.

It's only by the grace of God we haven't acted on them.

We know we're not better than those we have, but we're all on equal ground at the foot of the cross.

Here the blasphemers and the murderers and the coveters and the idolaters and the adulterers, we all we all have friendship here at the foot of the cross.

Recognizing that our sin was taken from us and given to you.

But you do, Lord.

You do because you suffered and died for it.

And so we're thankful that there's forgiveness in Christ.

We're thankful that Christ came to earth as a human being born to marry.

And so it is with every child born in the image of God.

You sanctified the womb by your appearance here on earth.

You demonstrate the dignity that every human being has, regardless of their mental ability, regardless of their speed or skill or strength or money.

We're all in the image of God, which is another way to say we're in your image, Lord.

We pray that we'd become more in your image as we live our life.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.