Dennis Tuuri

He has matured us at least for this day by adding another instrument through the gracious services of Dave Benson here from Chicago. It’s just a delight and it’s hopefully something that you pray for over the years to come that our worship would continue to mature and that we would be able to add other instruments to our worship as well and obedience to the Savior’s law word as put forth very dramatically in the fourth book of the Psalms focusing on Psalm 98, the Ascension of the King and the call to rejoice with various musical instruments in worship.

I hope what you just sang is true of you that we cry because they do not heed the law of God. What is that law of God? We’re considering the law of the covenant and the instruction it brings us on the law of God for our lives. And today we’ll continue with this series. We’ll be looking reading for our scripture text Exodus 21:1-18. We’ll focus on the sermon on verses 16 and 18 and 19, but we’ll read verses 1-9 rather of Exodus 21, the opening portion of the law of the covenant.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Exodus 21 beginning at verse one. “Now, these are the judgments which you shall set before them. If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing. If he comes in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.

But if the servant plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I will not go out free.’ Then his master shall bring him to the judges, he shall also bring him to the door or to the doorpost, and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall serve him forever. And if a man sells his daughter to be a female slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do. If she does not please her master, who has betrothed her to himself, then he shall let her be redeemed.

He shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt deceitfully with her. And if he has betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her according to the custom of daughters. If he takes another wife, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, and her marriage rights. And if he does not do these three for her, then she shall go out free without paying money. He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death.

However, if he did not lie in wait, but God delivered him into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place where he may flee. But if a man acts with premeditation against his neighbor to kill him by treachery, you shall take him from my altar that he may die. And he who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He who kidnaps a man and sells him or if he is found in his hand shall surely be put to death.

And he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. If men contend with each other and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist, and he does not die, but is confined to his bed, if he rises again and walks about outside with his staff, then he who struck him shall be acquitted. He shall only pay for the loss of his time and shall provide for him to be thoroughly healed.”

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we pray, Father, that now that you would give us new minds, that our minds would be renewed through the preaching of your word. And we pray, Father, that you would give us open ears to hear things out of your law, that we might worship and glorify you because of these things. And that on the basis of those ears that your spirit opens today, that we might have hands wide open to do your work in accordance with your law and spirit as we move into this week.

We thank you, Lord God, and worship you for your word. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated. Those that require nursery services may be dismissed.

A number of years ago, a man at our church asked me several times, “What difference does it make practically speaking if you’re a theonomist?” Or if we want to use a different word, if you’re a theocrat, if you believe in the abiding validity of God’s law, that has an equity to our times, what difference does it make in our lives?

Yeah, that’s an excellent question. If the only thing we do is come up with ideologies or philosophies and don’t have any practical change to our lives as a result, it isn’t worth much. Now, of course, part of that question is a little bit should be answered in this way that in part this country was built upon a law code system going back to English common law which had its origins in the traditions of the elders ruling in the gate and then the written tradition of the law of God.

So much of our laws reflect a biblical law code to begin with. And so really it’s not far afield from what God’s law says. But still, the further the country moves away from Christ and his law, we can ask ourselves what practical differences the law of God has for us. And I want to spend a little time sort of reviewing what we’ve said and talk about some of these differences.

And the first thing we want to say is that civil or criminal laws are to be framed according to the wisdom of God’s word. Sometimes civil law is used in a general sense talking about the civil magistrate. Sometimes it’s used as civil as opposed to criminal statutes. Civil statutes are tort or damage statutes and involve monetary compensation. But here by civil I mean civil magistrate in the general sense.

And the first difference it makes to be a theocrat if you want to use James B. Jordan’s term or a theonomist if you want to use Greg Bahnsen’s term or one who believes in God’s law in a general sense using the terminology of reformed Christianity. The first difference I think it brings to us is that our criminal laws, our civil statutes are to be framed around the wisdom of God’s word. This law of the covenant begins in verse one by saying now these are the judgments which you shall set before them.

And the particular word judgment indicates these are as well as the sanctions that are given that belong properly to the state, the death penalty in many cases. These statutes really have a very strong civil implication to them and they form wisdom for us.

Deuteronomy 4:6-8, God says, “Listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe that you may live and go in and possess the land which the Lord your God, your father’s rather is giving you. You shall not add to those which I command you, nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor. For the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal Peor. But you who have held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you.

Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me that you should act according to them in the land you are going to possess. Therefore be careful to observe them for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples or nations who will hear all these statutes and say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us for whatever reason we may call upon him?’”

The scriptures tell us here and in various places that these civil statutes given to a particular people at a particular time in redemptive history have a wisdom behind them that we should apply to our civil statutes. So the first difference being a theocrat makes is looking at these laws and looking at the implications they have for how we frame civil laws in our particular city, county, state, and nation.

Now the case, the law of the covenant that we just read begins by placing a high emphasis upon liberty. It doesn’t begin with the capital crime offenses. It begins rather with the discussion of slavery and servitude. Now this is voluntary slavery, but nonetheless a discussion of how that’s to be regulated to move men toward freedom. Either the sabbatical release at the end of six years, the release of the man and as we saw from Deuteronomy with goods and services being enriched by the one who sends him out. Either that movement toward freedom or the movement to freedom of becoming not just a menial servant now to the head of the house but becoming adopted into his family by having one’s ear pierced through and one’s ear opened then to the father of the house.

Either way, the discussion of the law of the covenant at its beginning portion of it places a tremendous emphasis on a movement from slavery to freedom and thus inculcates in its civil code and in the sort of nation it produces a great love and desire for liberty and for freedom. And so our civil statutes designed to emulate these having the wisdom of them applied to our particular situation will have at their very core a movement from bondage to freedom of being a picture of what God has done for his covenant people. And so what we want to say is that in light of these particular civil statutes, they should indeed form our understanding of our civil statutes. And the first immediate application is that voluntary servitude should be regulated by the state.

Now I say voluntary servitude because in Deuteronomy 23:15 and 16 we read that you shall not give back to his master the slave who has escaped from his master to you. He may dwell with you in your midst in the place which he chooses within one of your gates when where it seems best to him. You shall not oppress him. So the law provided for no return of a slave who had escaped. So the sort of servitude we read about being regulated in Exodus 21 in the law of the covenant is a voluntary putting oneself into servitude to pay off a debt, a monetary debt to make restitution to a victim or because of tremendous indebtedness that a lifestyle or the providence of God has brought to pass.

So the first thing it tells us is that voluntary servitude is to be regulated by the state in terms of our civil statutes.

Secondly, we saw in these case laws that fault divorce should be enforced by the state. Well, we can’t go into the details here. We did early on in this series. The scriptures tell us here by way of a case law, by way of a not an exhaustive treatment of a subject, by an example of a treatment of a subject of servitude, that some daughters were put into this relationship for the purpose of marriage.

And that marriage relationship involved the payment of a dower not to the girl, but to the father. Now, to be held for the girl and what this case law tells us is that if her master, the one she’s to marry, ends up not providing the things for her that are necessary for marriage, she is then free to divorce, free to separate from the marriage without repayment of the dower. So what this tells us is that there’s a financial loss to the person responsible for divorce.

And so what this tells us by way of example again is that the civil law should be returned to what it was in this country up until the last I don’t know 20 or 30 years before no-fault divorce took root in our country—we should have fault divorce laws. The civil statutes we should pray that covenantal marriages are once again the thing that the state sanctions now by way of gradualism. The way this is happening in our country is there are certain states that have actually adopted statutes where covenantal marriage is one of several possibilities as people get married but what we want to see eventually is a return to fault divorce where there are sanctions, there are penalties for the breaking of this covenant.

One of the most important aspects of civil magistrate is to protect the inviolability of covenants to hold forth the sacred nature of covenants being premised upon the covenant that God has with man in Christ. Therefore, our covenants should be seen as highly important to us and the civil magistrate should enforce the terms of covenants and here we have a covenantal relationship in marriage that is absolutely critical to the well-being of a culture.

And at that high level of covenants, there is now no more holding forth of the necessity of a covenant, having rewards and punishments spelled out in the context of it. All sanctions have been removed from the marriage covenant. And essentially now we don’t have marriage covenants. A covenant requires sanctions in order to be a biblical covenant. And so it isn’t just to restore the family. But one reason we need to move toward fault divorce is to restore the inviolability of covenantal arrangements and to bring back the picture of sanctions for covenant breakers.

Third in terms of what difference it makes is that we should pray for mandatory death penalties for murderers. Remember we said that in Numbers 35:31 it tells us explicitly. Maybe I will try that water time. I don’t know if this is a summertime cold or not. I’m not sure we can call it a summertime cold in light of our weather. Please pray that I don’t knock that over a little later on.

Okay. So, another practical application we should pray for the mandatory death penalty.

Numbers 35:31 says that you cannot take ransom. You cannot take what in legal terms is called composition. An equivalent sum to pay for the murderer’s life. If someone murders somebody else, they have to be put to death. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. The implication is that other death penalty sanctions are maximum penalties to be assigned. But in terms of murder, according to Numbers 35:31, it must be punished by the death penalty.

And we should move toward that in our culture.

Another difference it makes is the idea that we should be moving toward the restoration of biblical sanctuary relative to the civil state. Remember that these laws said that if someone murders—if a person who kills somebody else accidentally, he could go to a city of refuge or to the altar of God in Jerusalem gets sanctuary there until the matter was sorted out. And so churches should be allowed by civil statute to set up sanctuary zones in the context of the local church to bring people into so that they then can be held safe from people trying to kill them while the civil government works out the guilt or innocence of the party.

Now, it’s biblical sanctuary. You know, if the murderer like Joab was a murderer seeks sanctuary in the church or in the temple, but he’s really a murderer, he is dragged off the altar, literally in Joab’s case, and put to death. So, there are regulations to biblical sanctuary laws.

Fifth, it makes a difference in that we would pray for the normative death penalty for incorrigibility. Now, we talked about this last week. Remember that while the text seems to indicate that any little child that takes a swipe at mom or dad or says bad things to them or holds them in light regard should be put to death. If we look at the commentary of the incorrigibility statute in Deuteronomy, then we see that what we’re really talking about is an adult son who could be capable of being a drunkard. An adult son who had a pattern of malicious behavior against parents and who was incorrigible in his rejection of parental authority.

And then parents are supposed to bring him to the civil magistrate for execution. Now, this is really, if truth were to be told, this is kind of the biblical basis for what’s called the three-strike laws in various states are adopting now where three felonies convictions mean life imprisonment. The basis for that thinking is this concept of the incorrigible criminal in Deuteronomy that’s based upon this case law of people being put to death for cursing or striking their parents.

So, we would want to pray for in terms of making a difference the civil statute not of life imprisonment but rather of normative death penalty for incorrigibility. Now remember that we said last week as you talk to this—if you talk about this in your home with your children with your relatives or friends remember that this is one of those statutes—the statute for the punishment of death for rebellious children—that is repeated in the New Testament.

Remember our Savior. We don’t need to have God’s laws repeated in the New Testament to be binding upon us. I mean, God says something and then we’re to understand it. Now, there’s wisdom in taking a law that’s given to a particular people in Israel at a particular time of redemptive history and applying it to our day and age. But nonetheless, we don’t need a restatement in the New Testament.

In fact, that if you remember what we were taught at camp, it’s kind of ridiculous to expect a restatement in the New Testament because that page you have in your Bibles between the Old Testament and the New Testament that says “New Testament” is not inspired. It should be taken out of the Bible. What we have is one word from God. And there is a period of prophetic silence between the closing of the Old Testament that we call the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. And there is the coming of Christ that does establish the new covenant in his blood. But really the word is one word.

And as Mr. Jordan taught us, there were several periods of prophetic silence in the history of the giving of God’s word where we actually could say that there are four covenants or maybe even more because covenant renewal is a regular pattern of how God interacts with his people. He renews covenant with us because we’re always breaking covenant and we need the assurance that he’s renewed covenant with us through the blood of the Savior. And so if you wanted a repeated paradigm where something had to be repeated, you have to have it repeated four or five times as you move through these four sections of the word of God.

But even setting all that aside, for someone who believes we must have it repeated in the New Testament. Well, here’s one of the most offensive laws to some evangelicals. And yet, it is repeated by our Savior because he told the Pharisees that a proper commentary on the commandment to honor your parents was this commentary that he who curses father or mother should be put to death. So, our Savior actually repeats this law in the New Testament and uses it to show the Pharisees that by their failure to support their old aged parents.

They were really guilty of a death penalty offense. See, we need to know our Old Testament to understand what’s being said in the gospel accounts. And our Savior was accusing them of a death penalty offense in terms of their attitude toward their parents.

Now, what difference does it make in terms of civil government? Well, we can pray for these things and work somewhat and over time try to affect these things. But there’s a bigger difference it makes in the context of the Christian culture which we are trying to build a Reformation Covenant Church and should be being built across the land by various churches and groups and people. Our Christian culture should reflect the character of these laws. I chose that term carefully. It should reflect the character of these laws. You know, there is a character that these laws produce in the context of a people.

These laws are a reflection of the character of God and in our relationships, in our families, our church, in our community and the Christian culture we’re trying to build. We should have a reflection of what is called the communicable attributes of God. The way God is the kind of characteristics of God that he tells us we can shine forth with in the context of the world. We got together for the homeschool church picnic yesterday and the advance recognition of four men and women who have completed high school and moving into various other spheres of activity yesterday.

And really it’s always sort of an encapsulation—this time is of looking at the future of RCC and looking at what sort of culture we’re trying to build and trying to see grow in the context of this church. And these particular commandments, the law of the covenant, do make a difference in terms of how we go about exhibiting that character in our cultures.

First, on your outline, we should see ourselves as household servants with ears wide open to our master as we reflect upon the law of God. And as we reflect upon the master—or the servant who loved his master and remember the parallel text to this does not include a love for his wife. It takes away the motivation of staying married to the wife given him by the master. So it reduces it down to its simplest level. Love for the master that is a picture of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ having our ears circumcised. Remember we looked at some prophetic works in the Bible that talked about having uncircumcised ears closed to the commandment of God.

We’ve been called into a relationship as household servants of God. We go to him in prayer and we ask him things to do in terms of his household in the world. And God hears us. And our culture should reflect an understanding of Christian service. Service being based upon our Christian servitude as it were, of being household servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve been called into his house and we love him and we’ve had our ears open to hear his commandments.

Secondly, the character of the culture we’re to be building should reflect this truth as found in these case laws we’ve been talking about that the dower is to be normative in marriage as opposed to concubinage. This is a big difference the way we live our lives as people in the context of the covenant community from those who don’t look at the law of God and study it and try to wisely make application.

The providing of dowries for the wives that really give them a degree of financial nourishment, an ability to use money provided by the husband for business ventures, a protection against the husband’s infidelity or his death, various things the scriptures tell us the dowry provides. And that enrichment of our wives, the practical application of giving honor to our wives as joint heirs of the gracious gift of life.

That practical application is to honor them by means of money. Our Savior told the Pharisees, you don’t honor your parents cuz you’re not giving them money in their old age. Don’t care that you’re saying it’s going to the church. It should be going to your parents and you’re dishonoring them. Remember, honor means weight or value. And when we honor our wives, we give them money. And in the Old Testament, if a wife was called a concubine, it’s because she had reduced legal status.

And one of the reasons for that was she was not an endowed wife. Abraham took a second wife, Keturah. She didn’t have any other wives. It wasn’t a matter of being a slave wife or a secondary wife. She was a concubine. And we see then that her children are not given part of the inheritance of the covenant seed. So our marriages and the preparation of our children should have marriages where wives are fully wives in the most biblical sense of the term and not like so many American wives really in a concubine state.

Third, practical application. What difference do these laws make? Husbands should be trained to think in terms of nurture, food, guarding, clothing, joy, and conjugal relations, and a future orientation. Remember, we read in the case law that the reason why the girl could walk away with that dower was if the proposed husband or the husband rather failed to provide for her food, clothing, or conjugal relations.

That’s the biblical laying out of acceptable reasons for divorce. If a husband refuses to provide those three things to his wife, that it’s grounds—I believe the scriptures tell us that is biblical grounds for divorce. He has totally forsaken his covenant obligations and they are a summary of what Christian men should always think in terms of as they evaluate their marriages.

When we look at the case law and what difference it makes, it makes this difference. We should be thinking about how well we’re nurturing our wives and our families. How are we providing food? Food’s a metaphor in the scriptures for the word of God and for all nurturement. How well do we do that? How well are we guarding them. Clothing is a metaphor for guarding again. And how well are we doing in terms of response to our wives, which points husbands to joy in the relationship for them and the wife and also points to a future orientation looking for covenant seed to come forth from the marriage.

Conjugal relations. Case laws make a difference because they inform us in summary way of what our obligations as Christians—Christian husbands—are to be in the context of our marriages. And it changes how we think. It changes how we act. And our boys, our young men should be being raised up to honor women, to look forward to giving their wives a dower, to look forward to providing for their wives, nurturement through food and other things, guarding through clothing and other things. In response, fellowship, union, and communion, joy, which points the whole relationship to the future, to the next generation like we did yesterday.

All the kids gathered and we thought of the future as we looked at all those children in front of us. And as a husband’s reminded to give his wife conjugal relations which the normal result of which is children, it’s a pointing toward the future. The family has a future orientation because of the gracious law of God and its corrections it brings to us.

Fourth, another prime practical application—what difference does it make—is we should have fault divorce contracts enforced in church courts. If civil courts won’t do it yet, we can at least do it in church courts. We can ask people that get married in the context of the church to agree that if the husband is unfaithful by way of example that he gives up the dowry to the wife and he gives up control of those children and their upbringing.

We can do that in the context of church courts and many civil courts would uphold that kind of contractual obligation entered into at the beginning of marriage. Tremendous difference in the way are formed and grown simply by looking at a couple of verses from the law of the covenant and their application to us today. Do you see the importance of this? We’re going to go through three chapters of laws, many verses, tremendous implications.

Our the Christian culture we’re trying to grow a Reformation Covenant is fleshing itself out through applying the word of God in these various ways. But there’s lots of holes still because God is going to mature us in an understanding of his gracious law so that we can fill in those gaps and holes in our culture. It’s like we’ve got baby seed laid out. It’s starting to sprout up, but it takes a long time to grow a good lawn.

And so, we’re in the process of doing that.

Another practical application—what difference does it make if you’re a theocrat? We should have an abhorrence for physical violence against God’s image bearers. This should be inculcated along with the promotion of life. The case law says murder should be put to death and even if you’ve accidentally killed somebody, it’s correct and right under that system at that time for the avenger to try to kill you.

And you have to have your life changed. You’ve got to go take up residence in the city of refuge and if you’re innocent, stay there until the high priest dies. You got to move your family there. You got to start a new lifestyle because human life is that important in the sight of God. He wants us to be very careful. You see, if you have an accident, you’re working construction and if let’s say you’ve got kind of a hardened conscience or callous and you’re not that careful and you drop a beam on somebody and kill them, well, you’re going to feel bad.

But I guarantee you’re not going to feel as bad as you would if your entire lifestyle had to change by moving to one of the six cities in the nation that were set up as a city of refuge. Now, I’m not saying we want to set those up. That was a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. The great high priest has died, so men have been redeemed from that. But what I am saying is the wisdom of this law is to place a high value on man as the image bearer of God.

A high value on human life, not animal life, human life, which results in a carefulness not to injure other people. And it results actually in the implied command is to try to seek and promote life in ourselves and in others. You see, we tell our children, “You know, that commandment says you shall not kill.” Well, if the only thing you tell your kids about that is don’t end up being a murderer, you’ve missed the full implication of that commandment as sketched out for us in these case laws and the other portions of scripture.

And the full implication is we should be careful not to hurt ourselves. We shouldn’t do stupid things that could damage the bodies that God has given to us. And we should be careful not to hurt other people. And we should abhor physical violence that brings damage to others. We’re going to talk about that a little bit here in a couple of minutes as we look at this next couple of laws. But violence is what’s being spoken against in this second main section of the law of the covenant.

And we should inculcate a desire in our children, ourselves to promote the life and well-being of those in the context of this Christian culture in which we’re raising things up. You know, we pray that we wouldn’t get hurt. We should pray that we would get better physically, stronger physical well-being and we should pray that we would assist each other in the promotion of life in the physical sense.

And then finally one more application—what difference does it make if we take seriously again this death penalty for incorrigible children then I suggest again that gives us high motivation in terms of inculcating a sense of honor and reverence for one’s parents. It’s like the accident thing. The only way it happens as a result of an accident, you feel a little bad, you can hurt somebody, you know, that’s one thing.

But to know that the law once required you to go through a major transition in your life, God sensitizes us to human life that way. And here, God sensitizes us to the importance of honoring parents. When he says, if you don’t honor your parents and you reach adulthood dishonoring your parents and treating them lightly, maybe beating them, maybe cursing them with your tongue, and it’s heard and it’s a pattern of life in you, you’re going to be executed.

Now, if we had that kind of civil statute, we would pay a lot more attention probably to how our children are beginning to grow up and are we weaning them away from violence against parents in terms of the words and in terms of their physical actions? Are we doing it diligently? Do we diligently train our sons to honor their mothers? I’m trying real hard this year. I’ve told my kids that is job one this next year because you know, it’s not that I’ve ignored it, but I think it’s so important as the kids get older, that final spin again.

What they really need and men particularly, you know, what they need is an honor and a respect for women that comes from an honor and respect from their mothers. And if boys honor and respect their mothers, then, you know, they’re going to honor and respect their dads, too. The tough case is mothers. That’s why God’s placed this particular arrangement. One of the wisdom part of the wisdom of that is a need for young men to honor their mothers.

I’d like to ask you young men and you young girls too, you know, have you tried harder in your home this last week to honor to reverence your parents to almost—I don’t know you know this may sound scandalous—to almost treat them like God, you. I hope you have tried real hard to have that kind of honor and reverence to the position your parents are in. And I hope that those of us who are older that it kind of hits home with us too.

And we think through our interactions with our parents as well, particularly their old age. Remember, our Savior went to the Pharisees and accused them of violation of this statute because they were not honoring their adult aged parents when they were adults. That’s the application of it. I really hope that it’s interesting in the providence of God, the young men study for the 13-year-olds and up. It’s that starting week Wednesday nights.

What a wonderful thing that is to have these young men want to study the word of God and get together and encourage each other to read their Bibles to study their Bibles to give little talks to each other about the sermon or about a text from the sermon to read through the book Every Thought Captive and try to think about how to defend the faith and their interactions with other people. This is wonderful.

And in the providence of God The first set of verses they had to think about last Wednesday night was from last week’s sermon on the death penalty for children that treat their parents lightly, curse them or hit them. You know, that’s good. That’s a God thing going on there. And we need to have that going on in our homes. Can’t stress that enough. And I believe that being a theonomist or a theocrat does have a practical change.

It affects a practical change in the way we train our children to think of their parents.

Okay. Now, few additional points. I wanted to provide that summary as the context. What we’re going to say now in terms of these particular laws, they’re really fairly simple. Only a few things need to be said. We’ll add to this these implications by first looking at the civil arena. And what we would say is that the civil or criminal laws of our country are to be framed according to the wisdom of God’s word by way of application that there should normally be the death penalty for kidnapping.

Okay. And the scriptures tell us that here that in verse 16, “He who kidnaps a man and sells him or if he’s found in his hand shall surely be put to death.” Doesn’t even have to sell him. If you kidnap somebody and you just got him doing whatever you want to do with that slave, that kidnapped person, you’re supposed to be put to death. Now remember these pleonasms. Remember that big word from last week, pleonasm.

“Surely he shall be put to death. Dying he shall die.” A reminder of the Adamic curse. Reminder that when you take part in these sorts of vile sins, you’re really walking in the footsteps of fallen man and Adam and dying, you shall die. And when you take that in conjunction with Numbers 35:31, some good men think that maybe it doesn’t mean it’s a mandatory death penalty for kidnapping, but rather it is normative the death penalty cuz it doesn’t say that those who are guilty of kidnapping cannot be ransomed for or exchange of or legal composition for.

It just says that about murderers. And I’m not going to assert something here that I am not 100% sure is right. And I am not 100% sure that every case of kidnapping should be punished by the death penalty. But I am sure that dying they shall die that it is normally the case and God puts strong language here that it’s normative the case that if someone kidnaps somebody else, removes their liberty and freedom of movement, then God says that’s a capital offense.

Well, that makes a difference in the culture. And the difference it would make in our culture is there’d be less kidnappings. And I know that because the word of God tells me that the law is a deterrent. But I also know that because it used to be a death penalty offense in this country. Kidnapping used to be a capital crime. And when it was a capital crime, there were far fewer cases of kidnapping. Now, I know a lot’s changed other than just the change in that law.

So, it’s not a fair, you know, correlation, but I think that, you know, to some degree, it’s pretty obvious that if someone knows if they’re caught kidnapping somebody, they’re going to die as opposed to being thrown in jail for 5 years, then they’re going to not probably kidnap somebody as readily as they would another time. So, the practical application here is that our civil statute should reflect normatively the death penalty for kidnapping.

Why is that? You don’t have to know why it is to obey it or to implement it. I think it’s something we should pray to be in our culture because I don’t think there’s anything in this particular law that changes as a result of the sabbatical system or the removal of the temple system or the fulfillment of that in Christ. I don’t see any redemptive historical reasons not to apply the wisdom of this statute.

But why is it? Well, I think that James B. Jordan was right when he said this in his commentary on this particular law. He said, “Kidnapping is an assault on the very person of the image of God and as such is a radical manifestation of man’s desire to murder God.” Like rape, it is a deep violation of personhood and manifests a deep rooted contempt for God and for his image. It’s interesting. I don’t think we’re going to find laws directly related to rape in Exodus 21-23.

And it could be that rape is subsumed as a category under the kidnapping regulations. We know in other in Deuteronomy that rape is punishable by death. And maybe that’s because it is a subset of kidnapping cuz you know commit rape you have to kidnap somebody at least for a period of time. And so Jordan draws this correlation that it’s an attack on the very personhood. It’s an attack on a deep level of who somebody is as a man or as a woman as an image bearer of God.

And as a result it’s a highly offensive act to strike out at God’s image bearer in that particular way. A parallel text to this is found in Deuteronomy 24:7. “If a man is found kidnapping any of his brethren of the children of Israel, now listen. Now, this applies to just Israelite slaves. It’s a the concern here is the covenant community. But here’s what it goes on to say. And mistreats him or sells him, then that kidnapper shall die and you shall put away the evil from among you.”

The idea here is that he mistreats him or sells him. He treats him—he reduces him to the category of property. He reduces a man to the category of property as if he was an animal, a tool or something else. And that is the radical assault on personhood that kidnapping represents. It changes dramatically the categorization of what you’re dealing with in a man, you change him into a thing or a piece of property as opposed to the liberty in which he’s to walk in God.

Another commentator said, “You are turning personality into property in the act of kidnapping and that’s why it’s such a horrific offense in the sight of God and should be to us as well.” So what we see here is that the great high value we’re to place on human life because of the manslaughter statutes—remember I just talked about that—is a high value on a particular kind of human life. It’s not just whether you’re sucking air or not.

The kidnapped person is still breathing. But you see, they’ve really been completely removed from life as life is given by God. And what we see in this statute again is a high estimation of liberty and freedom on the part of God’s people. “Give me liberty or give me death.” See, that’s kind of what this is about. When someone kidnaps somebody else, they’ve removed their liberty and they might as well kill him.

You see, cuz life to the one in proper relationship to God is liberty to engage vocation as we’ll see in a couple of minutes here as God’s image bearer and to have freedom to do what God has called us to do. It involves kidnapping involves violence to the very nature of a man and to his intrinsic value as a human being made in the image of God and therefore should be punished with death.

Secondly, these case laws that we just read say that physical violence should be prohibited and restitution sanctions should be applied. And what we’re dealing with now are verses 18 and 19.

Verses 18 and 19 say that if men contend with each other—now what that means is if men are arguing, it doesn’t mean they’re fighting. If men are arguing with each other, they’re involved in a verbal dispute of some sort. Okay? They’re contending and one strikes the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to his bed. If he rises again and walks about outside of his staff, then he who struck him shall be acquitted.

He shall only pay for the loss of his time and shall provide for him to be thoroughly healed.

Okay, so the picture is guys are arguing about something and one man—the guy who is at fault in this example case law from the law of the covenant. In other words, it doesn’t treat exhaustively with all fist fights. It gives us an example that has principles and wisdom that we can apply—truth rather we can apply to our situation in a broad variety of contexts that the example case is the one who escalates the violence from verbal violence to physical violence.

He’s the guilty party here. He hits the other guy with his fist with a stone. But the guy doesn’t die. See now this is we’re moving away now from capital crimes. They have a list of capital crimes so that if he hits the guy and he dies we already know what happens then he’s put to death. Right? Crime of passion. Nonetheless, he’s committed murder and he’s put to death. “Surely, he shall die. And take no ransom, take no substitute for the death of a man who’s a murderer.”

But if he doesn’t kill the guy with the blow, and the man gets up, he goes to his bed, he’s been hurt, he rises again, walks about outside of his staff. I think what that means is that he’s limping around on his staff. There are a couple of verses that picture that for us. I won’t take the time to read them now. But there are several other verses in the Old Testament that talk about aged people and the infirm walking about with their staff.

So this man has been hurt or damaged by the man who hits him. And the man who hits him is then responsible to pay for the loss of time and also for him to be thoroughly healed. And the first implication or application of this case law is that physical violence should be prohibited. Not supposed to get in physical fights with one another. It’s against the law. It should be.

And furthermore, that restitution sanctions are to be applied to the man who hurts the other man. He’s got to make restitution for his health and for his labor costs. God prohibits fighting to resolve disputes. So, does it make a difference in the context of civil law and also in context of our families? This particular case law makes a big difference because now we’re not going to be sending our kids out to say settle it with a fair fight.

No. One commentator by the way, you know, it says if he hits him with a stone or with his fist, the word for fist in some variant manuscripts means tool. So, one commentator in a wellrespected commentary series says, well, what’s really going on here is he’s not engaged in fair fighting. He’s got a tool. So, he’s escalated the fighting up to he’s not fighting fair anymore. And because he’s not fighting fair, that’s why he’s punished. As if, you know, our land was supposed to be filled with fair fights out there and people taking vengeance into their own hands instead of arbitrating it through the given authority structure of family, church, and state.

A terrible, terrible commentary based upon and they in order to get to that point, they got to use an odd rendering for this word hand and assume it means something other than what it plainly says, which is hand. But they don’t want hand to be part of it because they think that physical fighting should be okay and it’s just an unfair fight that’s not okay. God doesn’t speak that way. He says physical violence should be prohibited by civil statute by criminal statutes in the context of our culture.

And as I said the other thing this commentator gets wrong is the word for contend. It means a verbal it can mean physical in a very few instances but the normal use of this term for contend is a verbal dispute one with the other. Okay.

So one other point here before we move on. I’ve made this point several times that these case laws are example statutes. It doesn’t tell us every implication. What if two guys are both throwing punches? Doesn’t tell us that. Doesn’t tell us, you know, if he hits him with a board or if he pulls out a gun or a knife, it says a stone or a hand. So, it’s not exhaustive.

What that tells us—now God could have done that. He could have written a long law code like the state of Oregon, you know, 20 volumes long. Could have done that. But what God says is that biblical justice is mediated through two things. A law code with example laws in it that provide wisdom and truth from the lawgiver and a spirit-filled judge who administers that law code in the spirit of God. And as you look at the requirements for office in the church and state, whether it’s Deuteronomy 1 or in Acts, the selection of the deacons, all of those lists of qualifications, 1 Timothy, Titus 1. They’re marks of the spirit-filled, mature man.

That’s all they are. A spirit-filled guy. And a spirit-filled guy is the one who’s supposed to administer these laws. That’s really important because what we want to do in the context of our lives is submit ourselves to God in the abstract and to his law in the abstract again. But we don’t want to submit to each other. And that’s because we really don’t want to submit to God. The same way murder is a…