Exodus: God Speaks Into All Things

You're going, and why did Russ have Sam read all of that?

Well, for a distinct reason, actually.

I cut it down.

I mean, it was chapters 21 and 22.

I cut it down for you.

Um, but for I I did that for a reason.

Uh because by the end of all that, uh, I think what you get out of that is you go, wow, pretty detailed, right?

Like by the end of the year, I mean, we have some really detailed scenarios here.

And actually, my reaction to this text Monday morning, um, sit down, open it up, and I look at it, I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I've ever read these chapters.

Or if I was reading them, this was the quick just kind of flip, right?

Just get over to something that is gonna really be applicable to my life.

Um, definitely haven't preached from these chapters.

Um, probably haven't been very many devotions from these chapters.

Uh, but here's the thing about it, as I got into it, it got better and better uh throughout the week.

Um, and I think part of it for me was looking at it as a whole, like all those details you just heard.

The fact that God was so detailed tells us something, and that's what we're gonna be talking about.

That is actually some really good reminders out of these passages and then some phenomenal news out of it.

So I the first thing sort of that hits me when I read this text was wow, there's almost it almost feels severe at times.

I mean, quite severe.

I mean, like whoever curses his father or mother shall be put to death.

And what?

I mean, I'd like to read it to my kid every once in a while, but uh it seems sort of severe.

And uh, the first thing we have to know and realize in this Old Testament so many times when we're looking at law in the Old Testament is that this is perfect law.

This is perfect justice.

This is what justice looks like uh without grace and mercy.

Now, fortunately, we do not we do not govern our lives like that.

We do not govern each other like that.

Uh we govern each other in the aim of justice, but through grace and mercy.

But what we see here is we see the law of God.

We see the perfect standard to honor your father and mother, and that is the perfect standard, is what we should do, it's what we should be, and that when we break that, there's a payment for that.

There's always a payment.

And what we see is that this law, just like we've been talking about the past 12 sermons through the Ten Commandments and the right before it, that this law, what we've been saying over and over and over again, it guides us, right?

Honor your father and mother.

Don't curse them.

Honor them.

It guides us, but then it crushes us because inevitably we don't live up to it.

And then inevitably we need grace.

We need the grace and mercy of God to us because the idea of living up to perfect holiness or the ability to repay something back to God because of how we lived, that is not something that we have in our ability.

We actually need God's help in it.

And that's what Jesus is all about.

It's not your work for yourself, it's his work for you.

If that's new to you, even that phrasing, um, stick around.

We talk about it every single week.

So now what is it?

What does any of this have to do with you, right?

Like, what does it have to do with details about slaves and scenarios and an ox goring somebody's kid and somebody falls into a pit?

I mean, who owns a pit?

Not like a tar I was curious about this.

Not a target, like fire pit, like little metal thing.

Like, anybody just really you own a pit, like somebody could fall into it.

Anybody have a pit on their property?

No pit.

Anybody own an ox?

Anybody farming?

No.

So we come into this text, you're going, this is so far out of my life.

It's just so far out of my life.

But what we see is that God is getting up into their lives.

This is their lives.

I mean, this has everything to do with their life and their culture and their economics and their families and their properties.

This is totally how their lives work.

And this tells us something.

I mean, he's getting up in their business, and this tells us something that's so wonderful for us because what it means is that he cares completely about the practicals of our lives.

And that is so reassuring to me as you can wonder about does he does he care about my problem?

That does he does he care about the practicals of my life?

Does he want to speak into that?

Or is he is he only speaking into like like the election?

Or will he speak into like this, will he speak into my health?

Does he want to know about my health?

Does he want to know about my anxiety?

Does he want to know about my fears?

Does we know about my family dynamic?

Does he want to know about my dating or my singleness?

Does he want he wanna know about my fear?

Does he want to know about all of this?

Or is it only for like big things?

And what we see here, he's getting down into very detailed, small scenarios of people's lives.

And so that's what point number one.

I got three points, three-point sermon.

Point number one is that God infuses all of life.

That's what we see in these chapters.

He is infusing all of that.

Like this is their life in the context of the time.

This is how their lives were structured, and he comes right into it.

So this is my uh, it's kind of wardrobe month at uh Redeemer.

It's my rain jacket.

Um, love my rain jacket.

One of the reasons I love my rain jacket is compartments.

Love, you love compartments.

Anyone love compartments?

All right, your tackle box or your caboodle.

Anybody own a caboodle or the caboodle?

Right, your two your toolbox, um, why well like jack, like it has the two pockets, and then you have the inside pocket, and then you had the outside pocket.

And what I what I love about it is that you got you have your phone and your keys.

I don't like my phone and my keys in the same pocket, and you got your wallet, and then I like to carry a lot of times a little pen and paper just in case I have that like pastoral preacher inspirational moment.

I like to write that down and so and I like to keep all of it separate.

Like I like the compartments.

If you're a control freak, you know what I'm talking about because you compartmentalize, you know, everything, everything in your life, in your house.

You love compartments, and compartmentalization is uh is really efficient, right?

Like it's efficient for a jacket or for your tackle box or for whatever.

It's very it's efficient for our homes, like you know, the dishes are in the kitchen, the dishes aren't in the bedroom.

That's more efficient for them to be in the kitchen.

Your clothes are in your bedroom because that's more efficient.

So compartmentalization is very efficient.

I mean, it's efficient in some areas of our life, like you know, you're coming home from work, just leave work at work.

You know what?

Sometimes you just need to leave it there, and you come home and just be at home.

So that's some compartmentalization that can be really, really efficient.

But when it comes to spirituality, that's not how it works.

Because God, God, God moves about.

He goes into all sorts of compartments, and so it looks much more like our lives, which have all these different compartments that we form, but then the scriptures say in the New Testament that in him we live and move and have our being.

And so actually, all of our entire existence is within him.

And then what we see in this text is that God is coming into all these compartments of their life, into all these economics, his family structure.

He's coming into all this, and he's saying, I speak into that is what he's saying.

Because he's holistic in relationship to us, and he's he infuses all of life, he's all permeating.

So some of this some of this text sounds weird to us.

Yeah, it sounds weird to us, isn't it?

Our context.

I mean, slaves and how someone was killed or how they were hurt, and the result of that hurt, and who repays who.

I mean, a pit is open, an ox gores somebody, and God's saying, I speak into that.

Like I speak into that level of detail for your life.

Like you lend your donkey, that's in this chapter, lend your donkey to your neighbor, and while it's lent, something happens to your donkey, and you're gonna like that.

But God speaks into that.

What's right?

What's right for that scenario?

And God's saying, I want to speak into these types of details about how relationships work and what it means to be honest with each other, what it means to treat each other right.

God's saying over and over and over again, with these details that when we read the scripture, you think, well, this is insane.

What is this?

He's saying, I speak into all things.

And that this is true spirituality, not just like mountaintop, emotional experience, but but and not just to receive those Ten Commandments and like that's it.

No, like he goes straight out of the Ten Commandments and he gets all up in their lives.

And what I love is that he starts with how we treat each other.

I mean, that's what all this is.

He starts with the dignity of people, and that's point number two is God desires to protect the dignity of all people.

So the first major part of chapter 21 is about slavery.

Exodus 21, 1 through 3.

Now, these are the rules that you shall set before them when you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and then the seventh year he shall go out free for nothing, for nothing.

So not lifelong slavery here.

If he comes in single, he shall go out single.

If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.

So anytime I come across slavery in the Bible, I mean right away, like this wall comes up, and I'm like, oh, this horror, you know, you know, right away, right?

And and by no means is this like the ideal structure for life.

At no point, I think, can we come into even slavery in the Old Testament and say, here's the ideal.

This is not the ideal.

But this is also not the horror of the transatlantic slave trade that we knew in our country.

This is not what this is.

The Hebrew word for slave is much more of a word like servant than we think of as slave.

And their understanding was that a slave came into their into their family.

Now, some slave masters were much better and more loving than others.

I mean, naturally that would have happened.

But this is not forced lifelong slavery as we tend to think about it.

This is servanthood that had an out.

It had an out.

It was a life.

This was a life for people.

And God is speaking into this system that was going on.

He's speaking into the system for the well-being of the human being, that that child of God that could so easily be forgotten and easily be taken advantage of.

He speaks into that.

And that's what's clear in this text.

He comes in on the side of the slave.

He comes in on the side of the needy.

That's 21, 1 through 11.

He's giving all these protective rules for the slave.

And then next, he comes in on the side of the victim, on the person, uh, the victim and their family, 21, 12 through 13.

The verses go into detail about people being harmed and what the ruling should be.

So he comes in on the side of the slave, then he comes in on the side of the victim, and then so what we see over and over again, and then he goes into being in on the side of those who have been economically harmed.

God keeps coming in on the side of those that are needy.

He is for the rights of that person.

He wants to protect them and their dignity.

And what he's saying, I have everything to do with everything.

And to how we treat people.

So how you should be honest and how you should pay people back, but the but the dignity of how you treat people in general, how you should treat employees that work for you, or the clerk at the gym, or the person who checks you out at Kroger.

I mean, this comes into all of this.

He gets into people's business.

So we try to compartmentalize, but our lives are inside of God.

And God comes into all of these compartments.

He's speaking into them.

That's what the Holy Spirit in you is doing.

And we might find that scary.

I mean, some of us might find that scary.

I mean, based on your background, what church you've been in, that might be incredibly scary because you might think the only thing he would want to speak to you is condemnation.

Like he's just waiting to get you, like to find you out, and really he's gonna get you.

And there might be some conviction for your well-being.

There might be some conviction, but but he is waiting to help you heal, he's waiting to help speak into that area that is dark.

So we see that God is saying something to us and the fact that he is saying so much to them.

But also we see that he is saying something by how he's saying it.

Meaning this, that the narrative, even the structure of the narrative in these chapters tells us something.

So let me kind of explain that in point number three.

That's that God gives us dignity even when we deserve no dignity.

So if if we're honest, right, like the honest moment, we don't always treat each other well.

We don't always treat uh the clerk at the gym or the person at Kroger or our neighbor.

We don't always treat each other what we don't always treat our family well, our children well, our parents well, we don't always treat our friends well.

We can easily take advantage of other people groups economically.

Uh we can treat someone mechanically rather than relationally.

We can use people for function, or we can use them for status rather than for their creative value.

Uh we can hurt people physically, we can hurt them emotionally, we can ignore people, we can neglect people.

We can do this.

We do this.

So this week I was reading another interview with Bernie Madoff as I've kind of gotten on the Bernie Madoff kick lately, um, and so I've become a little obsessed, but the guy's got some good quotes.

So uh he's probably the modern definition of taking advantage of people, of not having any idea like this chapter 21 and 22 that God wants to speak into fairness of people's lives.

Pretty much he took, he just he just ignored 21 and 22 totally the idea that God might want to speak into details of how we rightly treat each other.

And so uh this interview uh he talks about how he's been reconciling as he's been in prison and and working with a psychologist, like how he could do the thing he did, um, this side of it.

And here's what he says.

I've spent a lot of time with a psychologist in prison, which I've never done before in my life, in order to try to figure out how I could have done it.

There are these mafia people who can kill people all day long, do terrible things, and then go home to their families.

I used to wonder how it was that people in wars could shoot people.

But the thing is, is that you can compartmentalize things in your life.

In the end, I was almost relieved.

The pressure I was under in the last 16 years was almost unbearable.

I wish they caught me sooner.

Right?

A life of compartmentalization, of not realizing that your whole life is in God's supreme reign and that the Holy Spirit is inside of you and wants to speak into all these different areas of your life, all these things we want to compartmentalize out, that he wants to speak into the just the most minute detail.

That thing he doesn't care about.

He still wants to speak in.

See, that's the greatness.

The greatness of God is not that he can care about the election.

That's great.

The greatness of God is that he can care about the election and he can care about that health issue you have.

See, that's greater.

That's greater than him just caring about uh genocide.

The fact that God can care about genocide and care about your anxiety over your job, the fact that he can care about both means he's just incredibly glorious.

I remember playing hide and seek.

Um, we'd play hide and seek in the dark when I was when I was a boy, like nine, ten years old, and my sister is three years older, so she was about 13.

And so some of the girls in the neighborhood, they'd come over, and then my my friends, my guy friends, they'd come over, and so there might be eight or ten of us, and we're all like between the ages of 10 and 13.

And we play hide and seek in the dark, and this is what we love to do.

And so uh the person who is it would have to go into the garage and count for two minutes, and then everybody else we'd all go hide in our yard in the dark.

And you know, this was I mean, this was so much fun.

We love this, and I'd find myself a nice little spot behind the bush, you know, just tucked away, like there's no way you can see me.

And the game would start, and whoever was it come out of the garage, you know, ready or not, and they start walking around, they'd find somebody, they'd find somebody else.

And and the more you were hiding in that spot, the darker it got, right?

Like it got so dark, and you start to hear things, and like you're pretty sure there was a snake by really close to me.

Like you start to imagine things, and there was this part of you that all these other people, the people who were finding the other people, they were having all the fun.

Like when you were the one still hiding, like your heartbeat is rushing, you're in the dark, you're not sure what's around you, you start to get paranoid, and there was always this part of me that wanted to be on the search party.

Like there's this part, there's this part of me that just knew there was so much relief in being found of not just continuing to hide.

See, there's nothing more relieving than becoming honest about the fact that we do compartmentalize.

That we can come into chapters like 21 and 22, and we can see how God is going after all these details and just breaking down compartments in their life and saying, I speak into that, I speak into that, I speak into that, I speak into that.

And to be honest and go, you know what, I do, I do compartmentalize, I segment off my finances, and I kind of run that with greed, or I segment off my personal life, maybe my sexuality, and I don't let God speak into that, or maybe my friends, or maybe my job.

And and you can compartmentalize it off so easily, but there's nothing more freeing to come before God and confess and say, I I do this, I do it.

To be caught and be found by the one who wants to transform you.

That's incredible.

And here's the good news.

The good news is that the the solution is not for you to become perfect in your ability to have one compartment.

Like that's not the solution.

The solution is the fact that God doesn't give up on you in the reality that you do create compartments.

And those are two very different things because one is a path of like legalistic perfectionism, and the other is a path of receiving God's grace to you, which helps you in your transformation.

And that you resonate and you rest in the reality of this.

This is the surrendered life.

That's Christian spirituality.

So it's not white knuckling yourself into an illusion of perfection, it's receiving God's reign over your life and the fact that He wants to help you transform as a believer and follower of Jesus.

And so, like I said, what we see in the narrative structure is what we need.

And here's what I mean by that.

So just before all this application in chapters 21 and 22, right?

Like a lot of what Sam read in chapter 21, all this application, we go, wow, that's that's a lot.

What we see is we see that grace precedes law.

We see it again.

We saw it with the Ten Commandments, right before all these rules of the Ten Commandments, right before it, God reminds them that he has rescued them.

We see it again here because what happens in chapter 20, the end of it in verses 18 through 21, uh, God comes to the people and he says, Hey, draw near to me.

Y'all draw near to me.

And they go, No, no, no.

Just Moses.

Just let Moses go.

Right?

I mean they they reject the invitation to draw near to God and they say, No, no, no, no.

We'll just let Moses go, he can report back.

We'll compartmentalize that one off for Moses.

And what's so awesome about this is that God had no plan to back away from them.

Because then he comes to them, he has no hesitancy toward them, or to us, thankfully, and he comes to them, and in verses uh 23 and 24, he says, Hey, build an altar.

And you don't have to be perfect.

Go go find an animal.

Sacrifice animal, so you don't have to keep sacrificing yourself in order to be perfect before me.

You sacrifice an animal.

Let that animal be your substitute.

Right?

This is the beginning of that sacrificial system in the Old Testament that we see.

And then God says this in every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you.

So you can't pay for your justification.

Not before God and not in this world.

You'll never be justified as a human being.

You'll never feel justified as a human being in this world by merit, and you'll never be justified before God by merit.

It's only by the grace of God to you, the work of Jesus.

And what we see on this side of Jesus, that Jesus was the final sacrifice.

So we don't have to keep sacrificing ourselves.

We don't have to be sacrificed.

Jesus was the perfect sacrifice once and for all, final.

So there's nothing else for us to add.

So we can take all this application, or any application, right?

Like any application for Christian teaching.

We can take it, if we just take it all by itself, we've talked about this, if we take it all by itself without grace, it becomes law because you slowly, by human nature, you'll slowly use it to attempt to justify yourself by all the application.

And you'll fall below it.

Eventually, you won't do all the application, right?

Like even today, probably some application out of this would be um, you know what, treat people right.

Like treat people work for you, treat your neighbor, treat people right, repay people when you owe them something.

That's good.

Like that's good.

That's what we need to do.

That's what we need to do.

And inevitably, you know what you'll do?

You won't treat somebody right.

And what are you gonna do at that point?

Are you gonna sacrifice yourself in your guilt and in your shame?

Are you gonna remember that God was so gracious to you that there was an altar built and he sacrificed himself for you.

So you don't have to keep sacrificing yourself every time you fall short.

That's how the law points us to the grace of God, the great Redeemer, the deliverer, the final sacrifice to Jesus the Christ.

My brothers and sisters, rest greater in the great care God has for every area of your life.

May you hear the Holy Spirit speaking words of comfort to you in every area of your life.

And may you rest in the work that Jesus accomplished for you.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you give us such good application for our lives.

Thank you that you speak into all areas, into our economics, into our family structures, into how we treat people, into the dignity of all human beings.

God, would you help us to treat people in better ways?

And in our failure, would you help us to rest greater in the final sacrifice of Jesus?

That we do not live.

That we do not live by our own merit, that we live by your word for us, and your grace and mercy to us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.