A People Shaped by Salvation: The Book of the Covenant
Exodus 20:22–23:19
Text: Exodus 20:22–23:19
Introduction: Orienting Ourselves to the Book of the Covenant
📖 Scripture: Exodus 19:1–24:18; Exodus 24:7; Exodus 20:1–23:33; Exodus 19:8; Exodus 20:22–26; Exodus 23:14–19
I appreciate the clappers. I can't clap and sing at the same time, but I see you, and I'm glad you're here.
If you have your Bible, I invite you to turn to the book of Exodus.
Our time together this morning, especially because of the size of our text, will be greatly helped by you following along in a copy of God's Word. If you came without a copy of God's Word, you should be able to find one underneath the seat in front of you. If you don't have a copy of God's Word that you can call your own, we'd love for you to take one of those home. Just see that as a gift from us to you today. We'd love for you to have a Bible that you can read, that you can study, where you can learn more about Jesus Christ.
That's just a blessing from us to you today. Thank you for being here. I'm going to begin reading in chapter 20, verse 22 in just a moment. And though you're looking at the size of my text, I'm not going to read all of it right now, though I do think that we're going to read a large section of it today. The section of Scripture, just kind of to set us up for the sermon today, actually begins in chapter 19, verse 1.
And it goes all the way through chapter 24, verse 18. It's what we call the Book of the Covenant because of what we see in chapter 24. So if you have your Bible open, you can just kind of flip over real quick and you'll see these words in chapter 24, verse 7. Then Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. Now again, if you're one of the people not familiar with the Bible, large numbers are chapter numbers, small numbers are verse numbers.
So you should look for that large 24, that small 7, and you'll find those words. The contents of this book are what they receive while they're at the foot of Mount Sinai. From chapter 20, verse 1, all the way to chapter 23, verse 33. Law that is surrounded, as we've seen the past few weeks, by narratives. As it's describing the people's preparation for, and today their confirmation of, their covenant with God.
When we come to this section of the Bible, we often say, okay, this is about the law, but really it's a narrative with laws interspersed. It's a crucial observation for us. Exodus is not a book of laws. It is a narrative with laws interspersed in it, which is why there are narratives on either side of them receiving this law, this Book of the Covenant. Narratives where the people are committing themselves to live according to God's Word.
So again, chapter 19, verse 8. All the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken we will do. That's before they receive it. And at the end, just after the words we read a moment ago, the people say, and all that the Lord has spoken we will do, we will be obedient. As we enter Exodus 20 again this morning, we begin to see what they've actually committed themselves to do and to be obedient toward as these laws shape their lives and their behaviors, not only individually, but as a nation corporately.
And once again, it begs a question. Do we have to obey these laws? Are they relevant for us? How do we apply them? Answers to those questions shape everything about how we read this section.
Now I want to kind of give a disclaimer at the beginning of the sermon. It is either a nightmare or a dream for note takers. My introduction has three points. My sermon has three points. And my first point of my sermon has four sub points.
As we cover 123 verses across four and a half chapters. And that doesn't even mention the fact that I've received an email this week from an unidentified member named Tom Beer who asked me to give applications for every one of the laws, which would be like 60 to 100 applications. Amen.
So we're going to do our best to move through the text today. And if you're not a note taker, that's one of the reasons we record the sermons. Just go back and listen to it again. We're going to do the best that we can as we move through this section of Scripture today. But we're going to begin reading in Exodus chapter 20, verse 22.
I'm going to ask you to turn there first. And then we're going to turn to the end of that section in chapter 23 in just a moment. Moses writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And he speaks to us with the same authorities of Jesus Christ himself. We're here speaking to us today.
And the Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the people of Israel, You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you profane it.
And you shall not go up by steps to my altar that your nakedness be not exposed on it. All right, now turn to chapter 23, verse 14. The end of this first major section. Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread, as I command you.
You shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the feast of harvest, of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Three times in the year you shall, shall all your males appear before the Lord God.
And then verse 19, just the first part. The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God.
Prayer
Let's pray. God, we do ask for help today. It's a large section of Scripture. It is, in some ways, an incredibly unfamiliar section of Scripture to us. We, in some ways, only really know of this because of the things that we have found absurd and have shared as absurdities.
We pray that we would not be those who mock your word and belittle it. We do pray that we would understand your word and apply it to our lives in light of what Christ has done for us. We pray that we would grow in light of understanding your word, that we might grow in conformity with Christ and what it means to be his people. And we do pray for those who are here today who are not Christians. We thank you that you brought them, even to this day.
We pray that as we study your word, these laws especially, that you would open the eyes of their heart to see the beauty of the gospel, the relief that the gospel brings to those who trust in Christ by repentance and faith. And we ask all of this in the name of the one true and living God who has revealed himself to us as Father, Son, and Spirit, we pray. Amen.
Introduction Sub-Point 1: The Massive Cultural Difference
📖 Scripture: Exodus 20:22–23:19; Exodus 21:1
We are used to the Ten Commandments. They feel ancient to us, but still relevant to us. Honor your parents. Don't steal. Lying is sin.
But when it comes to this section of Scripture, from Exodus 20, verse 22, all the way to chapter 23, verse 19, which is going to be our first point and the longest point by far, it's a bit harder to know what to do with what we see in the text. Because if we're honest, the things that we read in this passage of Scripture seem strange to us. If your ox gores someone else's ox, here's what you need to do, unless, of course, your ox has a history of goring other people's ox, then this is what you need to do. Here's how you handle the situation when a master has knocked a tooth out of a slave. And here's the proper procedure when your donkey's sitting for someone else and the animal is stolen on your watch.
Or what to do when you meet a sorceress in the road. Though it's still okay to read Harry Potter, and if that offends you, my email is Rodney at Christchurchwc.org. These laws, if we're honest, not only seem weird to us, but irrelevant to us. And even more than seeming strange and weird to us, if we're honest, this section of Scripture and these laws cause some of us, and really a great deal of people outside of the church today, to think that the Bible can't be God's Word for us. A complaint they register because this section of Scripture seems to condone all types of things that we all know to be wicked.
If you have your Bible open and you just look at the beginning of chapter 21, I'm going to assume, no matter what version you're reading this morning, that there's a subject heading that says something like, Laws About Slaves. A heading that leaves careful and sensitive readers thinking, what laws do we need about slaves isn't the only law that we need that you should not have slaves. The heading alone, not to mention the verses underneath it, seemed to indicate that God is condoning something that we all know to be wicked. And then there's laws about how much to pay somebody when you seduce a young virgin and her father doesn't let you marry her, or where you can hide if you go and kill somebody. It seems that this part of the Bible, if we're honest, really isn't worth our attention, much less our reverence and our devotion and our obedience.
And I'm assuming that a great deal of us have many times have just skipped over it. It seems to be out of place. So how do we approach this section of Scripture when it is the reason for so many people to believe that this isn't God's Word at all? Because God, if He's good and loving, if He exists at all, would never say these types of things. I think first, in our first sub-point for the introduction, we have to acknowledge that there is a massive cultural difference between the world of these people and the world that we live in today.
And most of the unhelpful applications as we come to this section of Scripture fail to come to grips with that seismic difference between their culture and our culture. Just think for a moment of what it was like for those of us who grew up in a world before smartphones and those who have grown up in this room in a world where all they have ever known is smartphones.
Or for those in the room who grew up in a world before there were computers that people had at home and for those of us who have grown up in a world where we have computers all the time, it's ubiquitous. In just those two examples alone, over the course of about 40 or 50 years, the people before us would think that the world that we live in is science fiction because you're going to live in a world where you can carry a supercomputer in your pocket and contact people anywhere on the planet while accessing all data accessible to people publicly at the tap of your finger. If that's the difference for us over the course of 40 or 50 years, go back 3,500 years and realize that these worlds are wildly different. It doesn't make them irrelevant, but it does mean that we need to approach this section of Scripture humbly if we're going to try to apply it to our lives in any meaningful way and acknowledge that there's something for us here even as we see a cultural difference between their world and these people and our world and the people that we are.
Introduction Sub-Point 2: These Laws Are Applications of the Ten Commandments
📖 Scripture: Exodus 20:1–21; Exodus 22:28; Exodus 20:7; Exodus 20:12; Exodus 23:1; Exodus 20:16; Exodus 23:13; Exodus 20:3; Exodus 20:4; Exodus 22:19; Exodus 23:19
Second, we need to see that these laws in so many ways are specific applications of the Ten Commandments.
Ten Commandments that we learned about last week in chapter 20, verses 1 to 21. And here's a few examples. Turn to chapter 22, verse 28. It says, You shall not revile God nor curse a ruler of your people. A law that seems to be both connected to and applying commandment number three.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And commandment number five. Honor your father and your mother. Not that this is your father or mother, but that God has a category for us obeying appropriate authorities in our lives. Or look at chapter 23, verse 1.
You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. A law that is really clearly connected to commandment number nine. You shall not bear a false witness against your neighbor. Or chapter 23, verse 13.
Pay attention to all that I have said to you and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.
A law that seems to be deriving from both commandment number one. You shall have no other gods before me. And commandment number two. You shall not make for yourself a carved image because the people of Israel are to worship the Lord only and they are to worship the Lord in the way that the Lord has approved. When we step back and we realize there's a massive cultural difference and that these laws are coming out of the Ten Commandments, how to apply them in their context, then we can make better sense of laws that say this.
Chapter 22, verse 19. Whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death. Or probably one of the most famous in the section, chapter 23, verse 19, that we didn't read earlier. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk. Because both of them represent the way the people of Israel might be tempted to worship like the Canaanites in the lands that they're going to where they believed in false gods of fertility and produce and in so doing break commandment number one and commandment number two and turn away from the Lord God.
We have to see that there's a massive difference. And it's an application of the Ten Commandments.
Introduction Sub-Point 3: Seeking the General Equity of the Law
📖 Historical: The Reformers and Puritans on general equity of the law; Theonomy / Christian Nationalism
And then we need to acknowledge that these laws in so many ways prepare us to look for what the Reformers and the Puritans taught to be the general equity of the law. That is the universally abiding and applicable principles of the law that are always relevant. Now, I want to be really clear, this is nothing like the catastrophic error that is modern day theonomy, which wrongfully collapses the covenants across the storyline of the Bible, recognizing almost no discontinuity between the nation state of Israel and the United States and therefore tries to draw all types of legal applications to our society in a Christian nationalistic sense.
Theonomy is a massive problem and it really is a Scottish Presbyterian error that has no place among Baptists and it shouldn't be influencing our society. And its proponents mean something completely different than what I'm trying to teach you today because they're motivated by something very different in the way that they understand their principles. That's not what I mean and that's not what the Reformers meant and that's not what the Puritans meant. We need to be looking for the general equity when we could be looking for particular equity. What it says explicitly.
But to bring the application to ourselves, we need to have a general equity. Just think, for example, of the relevance of speeding laws. In a day and age when most of us can probably foresee when Teslas will be driving us around everywhere. What does a speeding law mean when we no longer have drivers who drive? But the general equity of the law would tell us, well, we need to be safe for ourselves and we need to be safe for other people.
In this section of Scripture, we see a general equity coming forth, which means that it's not wasting our time this morning to read a bunch of laws that don't apply to us in the exact same way. We need to see principles that are trans-historical throughout time and trans-cultural from them to us so that we can be a people just like them. And here's the main point for us. A people shaped by our experience of salvation. That's the very thing that I want us to walk away with today if we walk away with nothing else.
We need to be a people shaped by our experience of salvation. And we're going to seek to do that by observing three things from these chapters. God's pronouncement, what He says to the people, the laws. God's promise, what He promises to do for the people. And then God's provision.
His pronouncement, His promise, His provision.
I. God's Pronouncement: Laws Shaping a Redeemed People (Exodus 21:1–23:19)
📖 Scripture: Exodus 21:1–6; Exodus 21:16; Exodus 21:26–27; Exodus 21:7–11; Exodus 21:20; Exodus 22:16–17; Exodus 22:21–24; Exodus 23:2–3; James (book of); Exodus 21:12–14; Exodus 21:18–19; Exodus 21:33–36; Exodus 22:1; Exodus 22:25–27; Exodus 23:4–5; Exodus 20:22–26; Exodus 23:14–19
Notice first His pronouncement. Let's look at chapter 21, verse 1. Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall not go out single.
If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife of her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him to God, and shall bring him to the door or the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be a slave forever. If we don't situate these words properly, these verses in the Bible seem to endorse and condone both the buying of slaves and the splitting up of families. But in the opening verses of chapter 21, we need to have some help with some principles that help us observe what's taking place in these chapters.
We need to see some principles like, first, God's concern for justice. And if we don't see God's concern for justice, then we're going to import everything that our culture believes and has thought because of America's history with chattel slavery. But these verses are not speaking about America's history with chattel slavery. Though these verses were wrongly used by Christians, even Southern Baptist Christians, And Southern Baptist Christians to endorse chattel slavery, a terrible type of slavery that split up families and sold people and ruined lives and devastated people, a kind of slavery that is actually explicitly condemned in the passage. Look at chapter 21, verse 16.
Whoever steals a man and sells him and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. Or just drop your eyes to chapter 21, verse 26. When a man strikes the eye of his slave, male or female, and destroys it, he shall let the slave go free because of his eye. If he knocks out the tooth of his slave, male or female, he shall let the slave go free because of his tooth. As we come to chapter 21, it's very clear that the slave's life was not his master's property.
He could actually be set free, which is not true of chattel slavery in America. So there's a difference. And that means we need to think about not just what's being said, but even the word that is being translated here. The word slave is probably better rendered here servant, not only because it's a more accurate gloss, but because it communicates something that is actually more consistent with what we see in the passage. A servitude that was actually a safety net for people in their way out of poverty.
And that was never meant to be permanent. Chapter 21, verse 2. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go free for nothing. As we try to think about their day to our day, the closest analogy that I think many of us could come up with is something along the lines of military service. And though there are many reasons people join the military across all types of lines, at least one reason many people join the military is to have something to provide for college or a way out of poverty.
And though you sign up to do what the government tells you to do, and to go where the government tells you to go, and to be with who the government tells you to be with, and to serve how the government tells you to serve, you're provided for. There are rules for treating you fairly. They have to pay you and take care of you. And after your service, you're free to leave or sign up for more service. These laws express a concern by God for justice and fairness for those serving as servants.
Look again at chapter 21, verse 3. If he comes in single, he shall go out single. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. But if the slave plainly says, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever.
Now drop to verse 5. When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. Or maybe it's verse 7. If she does not please her master who has designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people since he has broken faith with her.
If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter. If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing without payment of money. They even teach how to protect female servants who are particularly vulnerable in the culture. Chapter 21, verse 20.
When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with rod, the slave dies under his hand. He shall be avenged. And it teaches us something about the slave or the servant, that their life was valuable. Now it may seem odd that immediately after kind of this theological high point, we've been getting so much narrative for 18, 19 chapters. And then we come to the high point that we're all familiar with, the Ten Commandments.
The very first thing that God wants to do after speaking to them is to talk to them about slavery. It seems almost entirely out of place until we remember and think about the fact that these people have been slaves, who themselves have been oppressed by cruel taskmasters, who had been taught and catechized in a world to mistreat other people. And then it makes a little more sense that the very first thing that God would want to do is to make sure that they don't do that to each other because they have experienced such cruelty at the hands of other people. God is a God of justice, teaching these people how to live a new and different life as redeemed people. Justice for servants and justice for those who are married.
Chapter 22, verse 16. If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride price for virgins. Marriage in that culture was incredibly different than ours. A difference that is almost seismic in its proportions.
Difference because marriage for us is primarily about falling in love and finding a soulmate. But for them, the arrangement was both financial and had social implications. Something that seems foreign to us, but that is not entirely foreign to many of our African and Asian brothers and sisters today. And what the scripture is trying to teach us is that if a man slept with a woman who wasn't his wife, he would diminish her value by taking something outside of the context of marriage and it was to be seen as an act of theft or stealing. And the God of justice cares about that.
The same is true today, brothers and sisters, as it comes all the way over. Sex outside of the context of marriage is stealing what is not yours to take. Similarly, the God of justice cares about sojourners and strangers. Exodus chapter 22. You shall not wrong a sojourner, verse 21, or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them and they cry to me, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath will burn and I will kill you with the sword and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless. They had been oppressed. They had been enslaved. They had had things taken from them.
They know what all of this is about and God is saying, you're going to live in light of redemption differently because the God of justice is concerned about protecting the weak and the vulnerable and the oppressed and those who are mistreated. So chapter 23, verse 2. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit siding with the many, so as to pervert justice, nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit. It's obvious to us because of the book of James that we shouldn't side with the rich man because he's rich, but the God of justice says you shouldn't side with the poor man simply because you don't like the rich man either. The Lord cares about justice all of the time and in every situation and that's what he's teaching the people about justice, about receiving proper treatment no matter who they are, no matter what the situation is, whether they're rich or poor, whether they're black or white or other, whether they're unborn and defenseless or elderly and can't care for themselves.
The God of justice cares about the vulnerable in every situation and though these laws don't apply directly to us, the principles teach us you should not show favoritism to somebody because they're rich and look down on somebody because they smell different and are poor. You should pay to other people what they are due and to not do so is stealing from them and when you're an employee, you should do what your employer tells you to do because when you don't, you are stealing from him. They apply in all types of ways to us because the God of justice cares about those things but it's still often hard for us because it's obscure because we are people also who live along partisan lines and to kind of just put my finger on a situation that many of us have thought about over the years, it's the same type of thing that happens when an officer kills a young black man and everybody assumes that he and all officers are racist or then immediately assume that this man must have done something worthy of death instead of caring about truth. Christians should not care about whose side is right. Christians must care about justice regardless of who was right or wrong and regardless of whose side gets offended or not. or not.
We choose sides because we are biased people. But the God of justice says, you are not to live like that and not be like them. We rush to choose sides, but Exodus teaches us to be concerned with giving people what they're due, no matter what it might feel like to us in that moment. He's a God of justice and he calls us to second, proportionality. That is a punishment that fits the crime.
Look at chapter 21, verse 12. Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. But if he does not lie and wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place to which you may flee. But if a man willfully attacks another to kill him by cunning, you shall take him from my altar that he may die. The idea is proportionality.
If you kill, you deserve to die. If you didn't intend for that to happen, you can seek asylum. Or chapter 21, verse 18. When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and the man does not die but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who struck him shall be clear. Only he shall pay for the loss of time.
He shall have him thoroughly healed. It's proportional. You get in a fight, you pay for the medical bills. You offset the treatment. You help him become healed.
You give income for what he's lost. Or chapter 21, verse 33. When a poor man opens a pit or when a man digs a pit and does not cover it or an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit shall make restoration. He shall give money to its owner and the dead beast shall be his. You get the dead animal unless, of course, verse 35.
When one man's ox butts another so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and share the price and the dead beast also and then they shall share it. It's proportional. Both are compensated. But in chapter 22, verse 1, if you steal, if a man steals an ox or a sheep and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep. With a scale, an ox is something like a modern-day tractor for the people.
Okay, you need to think about it on a scale and provide restitution for what was done proportional to the loss, teaching us that God is a God of justice with proportional punishments. Bring us all the way to our day. So parents who discipline their kids overly harshly are not being proportional like God. And when you rain down judgments on them like a ton of bricks and they act like normal childish kids or disobey, you're doing something that isn't proportional to the way that God has treated you. Or when employers severely punish somebody primarily because they don't like them when the offense is minor, it's not proportional to the way that you've been treated by the Lord.
Or when you leverage your life against somebody else so that they receive all of the consequences that you think that they deserve, it's not proportional to the way that you've been treated by the Lord. God is a God of justice who cares about proportional judgments, dealing in such a way that it's tempered by His law, and He is third a God of love and mercy. Look at chapter 22, verse 25. If you lend money to any of the people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.
If ever you take to your neighbor's cloak and pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering, and it is his cloak for his body. In what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. The principle is that you should not charge interest to a poor man who can't afford it, and if you take something as collateral, you should give it back to him because he's poor. Why?
Because the Lord is compassionate, and He has shown you compassion. And that's true even when dealing with an enemy. Chapter 23, verse 4. The Lord might want us to treat a poor man well, but what about our enemies? If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him.
If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it. You shall rescue it with him. When you discover that your enemy's misfortune can be great simply by you doing nothing, the law has baked into it that you must act in the good interest of the person who is your enemy because God is a God of justice who wants proportional judgments, and He is a God of love and mercy even to the people that you would prefer to receive pain. And it teaches us that we owe people more than what they deserve because we have received more than we deserve. All of this brings us to a place of gratitude for our redemption, which is the top and the tail of the passage that we read earlier.
Look in chapter 20, verse 22. The Lord said to Moses, Thus you shall say to the people of Israel, You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven. Now, quick stop. God spoke to sinful people. It should blow our minds.
You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourself gods of gold. An altar of earth you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen in every place where I cause my name to be remembered. I will come to you and bless you. If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you profane it, and you shall not go up by steps to my altar that your nakedness be not exposed on it. Now I want us to drop again to chapter 23, the verses that we read at the beginning.
Verse 14. We'll connect the two. Three times in the year you shall keep a feast to me. Remember, the whole point of the feast is to remind them of what they're prone to forget. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread, reminding them of the exodus.
As I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty-handed. You shall keep the feast of harvest of the firstfruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. Why? Because the Lord is the one who provides the harvest, not the fertility gods of the pagan Canaanites.
You shall keep the feast of ingathering at the end of the year when you gather it in from the fruit of your field, of your labor. And drop down to verse 19. The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God because he's the one who gave it to you in the first place. But careful readers notice that the top and the tail of the section begin the same way, with worship.
The whole point of all of the law sandwiched in between, between chapter 21, verse 1, all the way to chapter 23, verse 13, and those end pieces on worship is that all of these were to teach them how to worship and to worship in light of what God has done. God redeemed you. Worship in light of that. God saved you. Live in light of that.
God has shown you mercy. Show other people mercy. God has been compassionate towards you when you did not deserve compassion. Show compassion. He's been a God of justice.
You were lost. You were dead. You were not receiving justice. And yet I made sure that not only I brought you out, but I rendered judgment on your enemies for you. Therefore, live differently in the light of that redemption for what he has done and worship him accordingly.
Brothers and sisters, no matter what you might think about chapters 21, 22, and 23, a point that they're communicating is our lives must be shaped by our redemption, not by the world around us. We must strive to be people whose lives are shaped by our experience of salvation. And these laws teach us that that experience of salvation goes into every area of our lives. We would expect that God would just give them the Ten Commandments, the moral law, and be like, worship me when you gather on the Sabbath. And he says, and here's how you do it on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday because their entire life in every relationship that they had in the home and outside of the home with people that they don't like and people that they do like was to be shaped by their experience of salvation.
Which forces us to ask, is that true of us? Or maybe ask it this way. Would the people that know you the best say that your life is shaped by your experience of salvation? Or would they say, he or she is great on Sunday. They're wonderful when we have a special service.
Or would they say everything about them from what they own to how they live to the way that they prepare to every relationship they have is marked by God's work of salvation in their life. God's pronouncement of these laws is to help us realize that all of life is to be shaped by that experience. But in a second, God makes them a promise.
II. God's Promise: His Presence and the Fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant (Exodus 23:20–33)
📖 Scripture: Exodus 23:20–33; Genesis 12:3; Exodus 23:22; Exodus 23:25–26; Exodus 32
Look in chapter 23, verse 20. Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
Now remind you, the place that he has A lot that's going to happen between here and the promised land, but that's where they're going ultimately. Pay careful attention to him, the angel of the Lord, or the angel, I just kind of tipped my hand, and obey his voice. Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out before you, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. I will send my terror before you and throw into confusion all the people against whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivites and the Canaanites and the Hittites from before you.
I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you. Little by little, as they continue to depend upon the Lord, I will drive them out from before you until you have increased and possessed the land. And I will set your border from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines and from the wilderness to the Euphrates, for I will give the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you. You shall make no covenant with them and their gods, and they shall not dwell in your land. Their land is now your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.
There's a ton here again, but once again, what we see the Lord promising as he's brought the people out is his presence. He's promised that he's not just going to give them the moral standards and laws on how to live life, but that he's actually going to be with them and fulfill all of the promises that he made to Abraham. And though Abraham is not mentioned explicitly in the passage, the promise that God made to Abraham is referred to in the passage. God had promised Abraham, I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you. And these people are told, I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be a blessing to you, just as he said that he would do for Abraham.
So we see in chapter 23, verse 22, him saying this very explicitly. But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. But did you notice the conditionality of it? As this angel of the Lord leads them into God's presence, an angel who has God's name in him and is able to forgive and judge and speak for God. And regardless of what we think about the identity of the angel of the Lord, and I'm happy to talk about that another time, the condition of God's presence could not be more clear in the passage.
He will be with them if they listen to what he has said. So though last week, the grace that saves precedes the law that commands, obedience is required of the people. Salvation did not mean they could do whatever they want and live however they want because God had saved them. And that's true for us. Obedience is required in your life.
You must obey God if you are going to identify as one of his people.
If you do not obey God, you are not one of God's people. God's people obey God. God can command his people to do what he wants them to do. And any other way that you want to phrase it, obedience is required for salvation, finally, because you are God's people. The grace that saves precedes the law that commands, and that law commands obedience of his people because they have been saved.
Their obedience will secure, though, God's presence, and God's presence will fulfill all of the promises that God made to Abraham as the curse is somewhat lifted in the passage and something like Eden emerges when God is with them. Look at verse 25 of chapter 23. You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sicknesses away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days.
There will be no problem for the people. Utopia is not created from their efforts to bring it about. There is this Edenic-like moment because God is with them, and it is the result of God's presence among them, a God who cannot exist with unrighteousness and idolatry in people who do not obey him. As they strive to be a people shaped by their experience of salvation, and as they live in the light of that salvation, they enjoy God's presence. Brothers and sisters, I just wonder for a moment if you have sold the Lord too short.
You have gladly received the assurance of pardon, but you have not gladly obeyed the Lord your God. In fact, you do not or refuse to or are unwilling to obey the Lord your God. And perhaps in so doing, maybe indicate or prove that you're not who you think you are. God's people in the book of Exodus obey God because he is their God, and as a result of that, they receive the blessing of his presence that changes everything for them. The pronouncement of his laws, the promise of his presence, notice third, his provision.
III. God's Provision: The Blood of the Covenant and the Better Sacrifice (Exodus 24:1–18; Hebrews 9:11–28)
📖 Scripture: Exodus 24:1–18; Exodus 24:3; Exodus 24:7; Exodus 24:4; Hebrews 9:11–28; Galatians 4:4; 1 Peter 2:24
🎵 Hymn: "Jesus Paid It All" (Elvina Hall); "In Christ Alone" or possible allusion to "Before the Throne of God Above" (possible)
Look at chapter 24. Look at verse 1. Then he said to Moses, Come up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu. Quick striking comment. If you don't know who Nadab and Abihu are, that's your homework for the afternoon.
Go read. These verses don't age well for them. And the 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.
Moses came and told the people all the words that the Lord had spoken and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, All that the words of the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. 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 of oxen to the Lord.
And Moses took half of the blood and put it in the basins and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the blood of the covenant and read it in the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient. And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all of these words. Then Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and the 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. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel. They beheld God and ate and drank. The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and wait there that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction. So Moses rose with his assistant Joshua and Moses went up into the mountain of God.
And he said to the elders, Wait here for us until we return to you. And behold, Aaron and Hur are with you. Whoever has a dispute, let him go to them. Then Moses went up on the mountain and the cloud covered the mountain. The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai and the cloud covered it six days.
And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain on the side of the people of Israel. And Moses entered the cloud and went up on the mountain. And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. This chapter records the cutting of the covenant when God makes the covenant with his people and cuts the sacrifices.
And what God provides is a sacrifice when the people say that they will obey. Chapter 24, verse 3. All the people answered with one voice. All the words the Lord has spoken we will do. Chapter 24, verse 7.
All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will be obedient. And in between those two professions of their obedience, bulls are sacrificed and blood is spilled and the blood is sprinkled on the people. In fact, as I was talking to my kids last night about what the passage is, I said, Moses throws a bucket of blood on the people. Chapter 24, verse 4. And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord.
He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain and twelve pillars according to the twelve tribes. And he sent young men of the people of Israel who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in the basins and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the blood of the covenant and read it in the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, All that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient.
And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all of these words. How can God be at peace with these people? They've already shrunk back in fear. Moses, you go up. You let the Lord talk to you.
We don't want to. They've already tested and grumbled against God. God brought them out. Where's my bread? Where's my water?
Egypt was better. They had other stuff there that we really liked. And Israel will break this covenant before they leave the mountain. We're already on our way to the golden calf in chapter 32. How can God be at peace with these people?
Or with anyone? Because God, even at this time, had already prepared a better covenant based on a better sacrifice with a better mediator and better promises. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 9. I feel like so much of our time together has been us going from Exodus to Hebrews. And so many of these connections are the exact same because the Lord is just teaching the same lesson so that we don't forget it.
In Hebrews 9, reflecting on this covenant that we just read about and those verses, teaches us this in chapter 9, verse 11. When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God to purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.
For a will takes effect only at death since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all of the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded you. And in the same way, he sprinkled with blood both the tent and all of the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood.
And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites. But the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered not only into the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy place every year with the blood that is not his own.
For then he would have to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away the sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. The book of Hebrews teaches us that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came born under the law to deliver us from the curse of the law. He was faithful to the terms of the covenant and he established a new and better covenant, a new and better agreement between God and his people.
And the blood that he shed was his own for you and for me, for all who repent and place faith in him. What is astonishing for the careful reader is that the old covenant teaches us what happened to that animal should happen to me. But the new covenant in Jesus Christ teaches us that what happened to Jesus is what happened to me. He died as my substitute in my place. He bore the wrath that I deserve.
He was crushed so that I would not be. He bore my sins in his body on the tree that I might die to sin and live obediently to righteousness. And he paid it all for me. And that is the astonishing truth of the gospel that motivates present obedience. In light of all that God has done, why would we not obey?
Conclusion: Living as a People Shaped by Redemption
📖 Scripture: Hebrews 9:28
🎵 Hymn: "Blest Be the Tie That Binds" (John Fawcett)
And friends, that good news of the gospel is what calls people, you today, if you're not a Christian, to Jesus Christ. He bore the penalty that you deserve.
You deserve wrath. You deserve eternal conscious torment. You deserve the fury of God poured out on you for all of eternity. But Jesus Christ, in your place condemned, he stood. If you will repent, turn away, and place your faith, that is all of your trust in him.
That can be true for you today. You can know the forgiveness of sins. You can know that when he comes a second time, he will save those who are eagerly waiting for him. And friend, if you'd like to talk more about that gospel, we will have people at every exit today. But Christian, Exodus is preparing us to be a people shaped by our experience of salvation under a better covenant with a better mediator who has offered a better sacrifice that we might live a new and holy and better way of life.
Because of what he has done, we move forward in confidence. And when we hear the words of love and trust in Jesus' blood and see the mighty sacrifice, we believe the astonishing reality that I, because of him, have peace with God and am relieved of obeying my way into heaven. But I obey because he has secured my redemption and I will enjoy his presence forever because of what Christ has done. The Christ who can never die. I change.
He never changes. And because he never changes, every time you come to him in repentance and faith, he will always meet you with forgiveness of sins. You have a hard time forgiving somebody once, much less three times, much less hundreds of times. God has secured a covenant where every time you approach him in repentance and every time you come to him in faith, he will always meet you with the loving mercy of a forgiving God. His love, not yours, is the tie that binds as we live a life shaped by our redemption.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray. God, we pray that you would help us. Help us to understand. Help us to believe what we've tried to study. Help us to sing as those who have great faith.
Faith in what the Redeemer has done for us and for our salvation. And we pray, Father, today that we would leave here living better, new, and holy lives because of it. Amen.
Transcript processed May 24, 2026