Dennis Tuuri

We pray that God would give light on us today as we consider his scriptures. Sermon text is in Exodus 21:33-36. Exodus 21:33-36. Please stand for the reading of the King’s Word.

If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, then the ox shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten. I’m sorry, we’re beginning to read at verse 28 to put it in correct context. Verse 28. If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, then the ox shall surely be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten.

But the owner of the ox shall be acquitted. But if the ox tended to thrust with his horn in times past, and has been made known to his owner, and he has not kept it confined, that it has killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death. If there is imposed on him a sum of money, then he shall pay to redeem his life, whatever is imposed on him. Whether it is toward a son or toward a daughter, according to this judgment shall it be done to him.

If the ox gores a male or female servant, he shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. And if a man opens a pit, or if a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls in it, the owner of the pit shall make it good, he shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his. If one man’s ox hurts another so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the money from it, and the dead ox they shall also divide.

Or if it was known that the ox tended to thrust in times past, and its owner has not kept it confined, he shall surely pay ox for ox, and the dead animal shall be his. Let’s pray.

Father, we do pray that your Holy Spirit would illuminate this text for understanding. Give us ears, Lord God, that have been circumcised by your gracious spirit that we may hear things from your word that we would be able to apply and proclaim in the context of our world to the end that Christ’s kingdom might be made more manifest. In his name we pray. Amen.

Before I have you sit down or dismiss the nursery people, just a quick announcement and it has to do with our text. Our text in summary says that if you have knowledge that you’ve got an open pit or a goring ox, you have responsibility to protect the life and property of others based on your knowledge. As you came in today, you were given knowledge by the bright shiny floor that it has been newly sealed and whatever they do to it every year.

This knowledge brings with it the responsibility today to be careful with the floor. Bob Evans and his setup crew obeyed the basic truths of the text we just read this morning. They placed every chair individually in its place. So when you move around today, when you go to wherever you’re going to go now, the nursery folks or when you sit down, please be careful with your chairs that we not mar this floor and so fulfill God’s word.

Okay. Please be seated and the nursery folks may be dismissed to go to their duties.

Now, I read verses 28 through 36 to kind of put this in somewhat of a context. We’ll see that the reference that we talked about last week in our sermon to the servant being gored and then 30 pieces of silver being the ransom for the man’s life whose ox gored the servant. How that had eschatological implications that pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ who was the servant gored by the strong bulls of Bashan using the words of Psalm 22 and Judas receiving the 30 shekels of silver identify him as his own words did that he came to be a servant took upon himself the form of a bond servant an abject servant on the cross and therefore these great truths of the Old Testament focus on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and I believe that it’s not too much to sort of see in this text today a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ as well, which will be the third point of our talk today.

So, I wanted to read it in context. The ox being equated typologically with the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, we said last week that Paul said, “Does God care about oxen?” I mean, yeah, he does. But relatively speaking, he doesn’t care at all about oxen. He says these things in the laws for our sake. We’re to understand him in reference to men. And specifically, our savior told us that all the Old Testament testifies to him.

Now, the first thing I’ve done on your outline is to give you a little broader context and just the immediate context of these eight verses. And I give you here a mechanism by which to review the truths of the past seven weeks. Today is the 8th sermon on the case laws the law of the covenant found in Exodus 21-23. An unusual piece of scripture. It’s a synopsis of the requirements of covenant life with God given to the people of God after their exodus from Egypt.

Now, and by way of review, quickly then we said that the first set of laws verses 2 through 11 were laws on slavery. The important theme from that is that we see in those laws on slavery that God’s word involves a movement from slavery to freedom. This is a people that have been brought out of slavery in Egypt brought into freedom. And so the law itself has as its general context instructions to a people who have an Adamic nature that enslaves them in their sin.

And God says move away from that by the power of the spirit. Move to freedom. And it’s an incentive for us as well to move out of debt status into freeholder status etc. There were some sub themes in that section on the dowry fault divorce you know if the man didn’t provide one of the three requirements for marriage to his wife she could divorce him and keep the dowry and also this serves as a general prescription for husbands this is knowledge folks and this is knowledge that brings increased responsibility to us if we know about these things and believe that what Pastor Tuuri said is true in some respects then we have an obligation to apply these things.

And if we don’t, God’s going to hold us more culpable. We’ll be like that owner of the open pit. You know, you shouldn’t leave an open pit for your wife by leaving her unprotected. You know, you shouldn’t leave an open pit for your wife by not taking that year of exclusion and really making her the focus to cause her to rejoice. But you don’t do that. You leave an open pit for her to fall into and stumble into.

You know that you’re supposed to provide nourishment, guarding, and response to your wife. If you don’t do that, you’ve left an open pit in your marriage. These things bring responsibilities to us.

Now, we said early on in this discussion, what difference do all these laws make to our practical lives? Every difference in the world. Let me give you an example, and I know it isn’t immediately applicable to this law. But let me give you an example. I was doing my research for the ballot measures for this November, the referrals from the legislature. I’m in an email correspondence with John Immo, and I asked him if he knows much about the biblical origins of juries. And I’ve got several guys around the country who are helping me with this. And he said, well, he doesn’t really know much about the biblical laws relative to normal juries, but he does know that the grand jury of 23 members is explicitly modeled on the Jewish Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin was a group of 70, but it was three sets of 23 with the presiding officer over them. And that’s where we get 23 people in a grand jury. And we don’t know that today. Another thing he said that was interesting that in Anglo-Saxon medieval period the jury was a check against the state, you know, the king. You want to be protected against the king. So, you could use a jury of your peers. That was part of the freedom checks and balances. And the jury would typically, or at least not abnormally, be composed of the witnesses to the crime. People that had knowledge of the men involved, knowledge of the facts of the case, those guys would get together, freeholders, of course, not debtors. That would rule out most of us. Freeholders. They’d get together and they’d make a decision based upon their knowledge.

Now, what do we have today? Today, we have a jury system that says if you know anything about the case, you can’t sit on the jury. We want you as neutral as possible in terms of this matter. We want your head to be an empty bowl of mush that we can pour content into. Aren’t you ignorant of the law, ignorant of the facts? That’s what they really like. You start talking to a lot of them, they’ll kick you out of the jury and won’t let you sit.

So, see, you see our culture molds our understanding. Most of us think the jury system is just great cuz it’s the context in which we live. And increasingly, our culture thinks there’s no reason for a man to support his wife. Oh, why can’t she support her husband? What’s the difference? Well, these case laws tell us. You see, they insulate us against the continental drift of a culture that has moved away from the Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, dowry, what’s all that about? Why does a wife need to be protected? She’s this full person just like I am. But the culture warns us against that. Why does the wife need to be cheered up that first year? I don’t know. But if God’s word says she does, then we better make it our priority to do that. See, it protects us. What difference it makes these laws, they protect us against the drift of the Adamic nature when it’s severed from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Okay. Laws on slavery. What difference does it make if we’re in debt? You know, it doesn’t seem to have any practical import. God says debt most of the time is equable to slavery. And we should not want to be in that as a church institutionally or people individually or as a civil state either. And one of the first things these laws tell us is a movement to freedom should be what our culture, the Christian culture is all about.

It’s not perpetual servitude. It’s not a denial of the realities of servitude. It’s a movement toward freedom from servitude because that’s the way history moves with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. All right. Then there’s a large section on violence and I’ve titled this laws on violence in verses 12-36 protecting the image bearer. Remember that the whole point here is not people as an abstract concept or nice things we want to protect.

It’s because people are the image bearers of God that we shall not take their lives. Genesis makes that very clear in the Noahic covenant. And I’ve kind of done some thinking this week and tried to summarize these various sections we’ve gone through on protection of the image bearer and verses 12-14. that deal with murder and manslaughter. They seem to stress the physical health of image bearers. So we have a responsibility to increase the life of image bearers to protect them to look out for the image bearers of God man in other words.

So life or physical health seems to be the focus. The next three verses stress the authority the authority of image bearers man to man. And these verses talk about you know you’re not supposed to curse your mom or dad or be an incorrigible youth or God says you’ll be put to death. So it protects the structure of covenantal authority that God has established in a culture in a Christian culture. So the word here is honor.

It protects the honor of image bearers and particularly those image bearers whom God has in his providence placed in a position of functional superiority over you like your parents. See very big practical difference what these laws mean to us because we’re going to have homes that not just teach kids not to kill each other but where they protect the life of each other and where they honor their parents and honor authorities.

The next section, verse 16 and 18-21, 16 was the laws against kidnapping. 18-21 was if you hurt somebody, you got to pay for his medical expenses and you got to pay for his lost wages and you I think you got to pay the employer for his lost time as well. And these things seem to focus on the protection of the freedom/vocation of image bearers. Remember we said that the kidnapping statute in Deuteronomy 24:7 is tied to the idea of vocation.

It’s almost as if the scriptures tell us that the life of a man is his work. It’s his vocation. You know that’s what difference does it make? Our culture says, you know, vocation is just something to do so you can retire. But the scriptures say that God placed Adam to exercise a vocation. And the reason why you can’t kidnap somebody isn’t so that he can’t have a good time at Reno. I mean, it’s part of that.

You can’t reduce his joy. But the primary reference in Deuteronomy tells us the reason is he needs to exercise vocation. So God wants us to protect the life of image bearers, the honor to image bearers and the work or vocation of image bearers by these laws. And then we have thrown in servants who die at their master’s hands. And I’ve got that in italics for you because what God does in this section on violence, he takes that servant stuff in the first section and he peppers it in to this section on violence.

Now, that tells me that we want to remind ourselves that servants and free men are different to remind us of that first great truth that we’re moving toward freedom, folks. We don’t want to stay servants. Servants get beat. Servants might die at the hand of their master. You know, the master’s got to be executed, but you’re likely to you don’t get—you’re dead. A servant’s more likely to get gored by an ox.

Owner, the guy the owner of the notorious ox only has to pay you 30 shekels of silver. That’s you’re more likely to suffer harm as a servant. So peppered throughout these laws on violence, servants are protected, but not in such a way as to remove the incentive for them to move to freeholder status. And then we talked about the Lex Talionis, the immediate concept of this, very immediate context rather of this very important concept of eye for eye, tooth for tooth, punishment fits the crime.

The idea is restoration of wholeness. The way Jesus restores the Adamic image and the context for that is the future of the image bearer. It’s a pregnant woman with a child in her. If the child dies as a result of two men striving, they’ve got to be put to death. So God protects the future of image bearers. He wants us forward looking in all of this stuff. So God protects this and then he again peppers in some stuff on freedom.

And then last week we talked about the authority of image bearers. It’s the ox that overturns and subverts the natural order of men. Exercising dominion over animals who is put to death. God wants the authority of image bearers and their dominion calling over the beasts and over the created order to be protected by our laws, by our thoughts, by the Christian culture we build here at this church and the other churches represented.

These are central truths that make a tremendous difference in our lives as we build a Christian culture. The protection of the dominion of man to exercise dominion in a Christian sense over the beasts and the inanimate objects. And today we move then to verses 33 through 36. And here I think I’ve thrown in the word stewardship as kind of a sum of this section. I’ve given you these one-word summaries. Help you think through what’s going on here.

Help you to teach your kids using this outline. Perhaps this most important very important section of scripture, the law of the covenant. And this word I’ve chosen is stewardship. Because I think as we look at this, we’ll see that men who have beasts, and now this has been implied in the last four verses, men who have beasts or property that could be dangerous. They are required to exercise proper stewardship as image bearers.

And so these laws protect and enhance stewardship responsibilities of image bearers. And in doing this, this is the conclusion. Now these verses today of the section on violence and the transition now is to property. Next week we’ll talk about restitution for theft. And we’ll see there’s some Christological elements. Four-fold restitution for sheep. Five for an ox. How does that point to Christ? Think about it this week.

What does it mean? Why the difference from normal double restitution? We’ll talk about that next week. But these verses in dealing with a pit and an animal hurting another animal sort of is a segue from laws of violence to laws of property because animals and pits are property oriented. All right. So that’s an overview and then as I said next week we’ll begin laws of the section on laws of regarding theft.

Now let’s look at these specific cases that are talked about three specific cases in verses 33 through 36 on your outline. And as I said we want to look at this and think about it and you can meditate on it this week as to what difference does this make in our lives personally ecclesiastically as a church civilly as a culture and and as I said earlier the idea is to prevent our drifting into through the norms and standards of our culture.

As I said, the jury is an example. Whether it moved good or bad, I’m not saying. I’m saying though that there’s been a tremendous shift in what juries are about. And that’s the way cultures go. Worldviews begin to have consequences. Ideas have consequences. And as a culture moves away from Christ, the very ethos of the culture becomes more Adamic nature oriented as opposed to Christ and his word. And when that happens, we have to protect ourselves against that by knowing God’s laws and the truths in these laws.

So, it’s good to spend some time on them. Okay. The first case here that we want to consider then is the open pit itself verses 33 and 34. And in summary, the owner is held liable for damages to creatures in this section. In the case of the open pit, there is unintended harm to an animal, but nonetheless harm happens. So, verses 33 and 34, the condition is given for us. If a man opens a pit, there might be a second condition or if a man digs a pit and doesn’t cover it.

Now, at our house, we had to find our sewer line this summer. And I won’t call him an angel again, but Mr. Frasier helped us in that effort. And in our effort digging all these holes in our backyard to find where the sewer line could be plugged into, we found a pit. We found a cistern or a well or something and it’s got a big concrete lid on it. So, this has immediate application to me and that’s the idea.

If you dig a well or a cistern, this word can be translated cistern or well, or if you dig a pit, could be dry and if you leave it open after you’ve dug it and an animal falls in, you’ve got to buy the animal, get pay the owner the cost of the animal. You get to keep the hide and everything, but you got to recompense him, make restitution. You didn’t intentionally cause his death, but you inadvertently did through negligence and you’ve got to pay for that.

You got culpability. Or if you’re like me, you find a cistern or an open pit on your property or a pit rather and I uncovered it like we did of course to look inside. What’s in there? Maybe money. No, about this much water, you know. and if I would have just left that cover off and somebody’s dog comes walking through my yard or a cat and falls down there and dies, I’m responsible. And I think we could say that if a child, a little child, a creature-like child, remember I said that, you know, the state’s compulsion, the church’s persuasion, the family is compulsion with little kids, moving to persuasion to big kids.

Little kids are treated like animals. They’re beaten. They’re supposed to be spanked when they do what’s wrong to protect them because they’re dumb. They don’t know much yet. They’re like that ox. So, if a little toddler comes walking through my yard, and I’ve either dug a pit and left it uncovered or I’ve left the cover off this thing. That child falls in. How am I going to pay for that child? Well, I think that the equity is that I’m going to pay with my life took the life of the child and I’m going to have to be executed unless the parents, as we said last week with the ox goring situation, unless the parents and the court says, “You can ransom your life back, Dennis.

You can pay a ransom to the person’s the child’s family as a state and then you’ll be redeemed.” Remember Numbers 35:31. Those of you just visiting today, don’t worry about it. But that’s a very important text establishing this principle that for most cases of civil damage, the scriptures do not envision pulling out somebody’s tooth if you’ve broken somebody else’s tooth. It envisions what in laws called composition, a payment, a ransom, if you will, for the damage you’ve caused.

The point is that an open pit is a very serious matter and you don’t want to take the life of a dumb beast and you don’t want to take the life of a small child either. The result is given in verse 34 of this action. If a donkey or an ox falls into it, in other words, if a creature does, the owner of the pit shall make it good. And then there’s an explanation of the result. He shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his.

So it’s simple compensation. It’s not double restitution. It indicates it was not intentional on his part. It was accidental but it was still negligent behavior and he has criminal culpability because of this negligence. These are civil statutes that are given for us here and by way of extension we have responsibility as I said if we create situations where people are hurt by our negligence. Now in Jewish case law there’s a whole section of these negligence statutes that are referred to as pit laws.

So this term pit used in this verse, this open thing that’s dug and as a danger represents in the minds of the Jewish commentators and I think they’re correct a whole class of actions. Let me just quote now from a Jewish legal scholar Shalom Albeck. He said this. This is the name given to another leading category that is pit. Another leading category of tort. Tort is a damage that somebody receives. and covers cases where an obstacle is created by a person’s negligence and left as a hazard by means of which another is injured.

You leave a hazard, another person is injured. It’s a tort. It’s a damage to them. You have responsibility in terms of pit laws. No matter what the obstacle might be, could be a refrigerator sitting in your backyard. You didn’t take the door off. Little child gets in there and dies. It’s a pit law. See? Could be a swimming pool. Pit law. Swimming pool is a bit different. We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes.

But these are hazards you create or your business creates. You leave a big pile of—there’s a right next to us there’s a battery factory and they have a huge pile, it would fill this room I think maybe not but it’s a big pile of glass various pieces of glass. I don’t know what they do with it. And they you know the civil magistrate correctly tells them don’t leave that so that little kids or animals can stumble in there and hurt themselves.

You cover that up. You put a fence around it, you cover that pit. So that’s the general category and the application of it. Prime example according to Albeck is that of a person who digs a pit, leaves it uncovered, and another person or an animal falls into it. Other major examples would be leaving stones or water unfettered, unfenced rather, and thus potentially hazardous. Application of builds a restraining wall for somebody, he knows it isn’t really solid or he puts a pile of rock someplace, it’s unsteady, child gets on it, plays on it.

He hasn’t fenced it. Pit law applies and this statute of scripture applies and then Toxi or whoever it was is held responsible. The common factor is the commission or omission of something which brings about a dangerous situation and the foreseeability of damage resulting. There must be foreseeability of damage resulting. a person who fails to take adequate precautions to render harmless a hazard under his control is considered negligible.

since he is presumed able to foresee that damage may result and he is therefore liable for any such subsequent damage. That’s the first case. That’s the result and that’s the basic truth of the case. Second case in these verses, verse 35, one man’s ox hurts another so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the money from it, and the dead ox they shall also divide.

Verse 35, this is the case of two ox striving together or fighting and one dies and the owners share the damages of this fight. Why would that be? Because we don’t know who started it. We can’t put the ox on the witness stand and say, “What were you thinking at the time?” Can’t judge the motivation of an ox. Civil magistrate is definitely limited in his abilities to force to understand things in spite of what people think today. And so God sets up a system where both owners are held equally liable to make restoration to each other for the dead animal.

So the live animal is sold. The dead animal has a value to it. That value is then split between the two owners. And notice they have to sell the live ox and divide the money from it. And the proceeds from the dead ox they also have to divide. See what this does is it lets the marketplace not a judge or the owners determine the value that they have to split up. So it lets the free market as it were the market constrained by God’s word.

determine the value of these oxen to make each other whole when these accidents occur. The market determines the value. Now, one implication of this is if you think very long about this, if you’ve got, let’s say you’ve got a bull that’s a prize-winning bull, you’ve been down to the Clackamas County Fair and your bull won first prize and there are people who want your bull to have other bulls and they’ll pay you real money for this bull.

And your neighbor has a bull that may be strong enough but only got one horn or maybe it’s blind or it’s got some defect. Your bull’s worth $10,000. His bull is worth 500 bucks. They fight and one of them dies and now you got to sell the live one, whichever one it is, and sell the dead one and split the proceeds. Well, you’ve just lost about 5,000 bucks worth of value. And your neighbor has gotten 5,000 bucks worth of value, right?

So, what’s the implication for that? Knowledge brings responsibility. You’re lucky enough providentially, you’re blessed enough by God in this example to be living in a culture that has fixed laws that don’t change every time Salem meets or every time they go to Olympia and make laws. And you’ve been trained since you were little that this is part of the law of the covenant. Two ox get in a fight, one dies, boom, equal division of proceeds.

So what are you going to do? Well, you’re going to protect that bull that’s worth $10,000. You’re going to have a real good fence, you know. not going to let him be in the proximity of a bull you don’t know and that’s of lesser value. See, knowledge brings responsibility. If you fail to exercise responsibility based on the knowledge of the value of your bull and the teaching of the law of God, which is a fixed standard should be in a culture, then you have culpability and you end up losing 5,000 bucks should your prize bull get involved in a death struggle with another ox.

Second case, then now the third case of this section, the last one of the violent sections, or if it was known, verse 36, that the ox tended to thrust in times past and its owner has not kept it confined, he shall surely pay ox for ox, and the dead animal shall be his own. Now, this is a case of two ox striving together. But one of these ox is notorious. It’s an ox that has been known to push, known to gore things in times past.

And as a result of this struggle, it doesn’t say which one dies. We can assume the one that didn’t gore dies, but it just says an ox dies. The owner of the notorious ox is held responsible for the damage. And this owner has to pay ox for ox. He’s got an ox. He’s gored a prize-winning ox. It’s a notorious ox. Owner hasn’t restrained it. It’s killed an ox worth 10,000 bucks. The phrase ox for ox does not mean he can give his $500 ox to the guy. It means value for value. Just like when we talked about eye for eye, hand for hand, my eye in his hand is worth more than, you know, my hand, so ox for ox, he’s got to pay.

But he gets to keep the carcass of the dead animal. Why is that? Why should he get to keep anything? Because the case doesn’t say that the notorious ox is at fault. It presumes the guilt of the notorious ox doesn’t presume the innocence of both ox because they’re not going to be put on the stand and testify witness.

They can’t give testimony. We don’t know their motivation. We don’t know what it’s like when ox get into fight. So there’s a liability for the man who does not restrain the notorious ox. But it’s somewhat limited. Okay. because there’s a presumption of guilt, not a proof of guilt, of the notorious ox. It’s his fault that the fight occurred. And that’s what the word of God says. Says that he’s got to pay ox for ox, but the dead animal is his own.

Now, this is interesting because in this case, the ox, the notorious ox is not said to be put to death, is he? Now, remember, if the notorious ox kills a man, ox is put to death. But not so here. If an ox kills a man, he’s put to death whether he’s notorious or not. Here, an ox kills another ox, either intentional or either being a peaceable ox or a bad ox. And either way, he’s not put to death necessarily.

Why? Because the laws are instilling in us this principle of covenantal authority and stewardship. You see, when the ox imitates the serpent and striking at the man that he’s supposed to, according to Genesis 9, have fear of and be ruled over by. That’s when the ox is put to death. He subverts the authority, the dominion authority of man over beast. Ox to ox. No, he’s not held culpable or liable for that.

Another indication of what we said last week, the reason why the ox is put to death is this perversion of the dominion order that God created that’s exhibited by this animal in his killing a man. All right. So, those are the three cases and briefly considered and We want to talk a little bit about some implications of this some of the principles or truths. I like the word truth. Principle sounds so abstract in Greek to me.

Truth comes from a truthgiver, Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. and so we want to look at some of these principles now or truths rather found in these laws. Let me just make a couple of summary comments first though and we have kind of seen in these eight verses a wide variety of cases involved and just a passing comment for your consideration. One response I think to our view of these laws and a proper understanding of them should be praise and thanksgiving to God who gives us such a beautiful law.

It’s a law that think of it the beauty of these laws in a few sentences here in these eight verses we have ranged from the loss of man to the loss of beast to the loss or to the inanimate object of the pit being addressed. Responsibility has been given primarily to man but also to man’s responsibility and his dominion authority has been restressed and taught to us again. the movement as I said from slavery to freedom has been reinstilled in us as we considered the death of the servant who’s more likely to be gored by an ox.

all of these things have been used to drill into us respect for life, respect for authority, the dominion structure of the world, honoring of authorities, the ox toward the man, movement, as I said, from slavery to freedom. All of these things have been kind of summed up in this almost mnemonic beautiful law that the Lord our God gives us and which we, you know, horribly sometimes think of as just some old obscure laws.

Let me also say that we can see in these laws and this one I just talked about that the way of God is not the way of the Oregon Civil Code. The Oregon Revised Statutes are, I don’t know, this big, this many books, and the administrative rules would probably fill the room. Man’s way, as it moves away from God, is trying to take every possible scenario or case so that there’s no discretion or wisdom left to the image bearer of God, the judge, in a matter.

But God’s way, according to Exodus 21-23, is to give these inspired cases with these beautiful themes and applications that move a culture ahead into the future in a godly righteous way and that are to be mediated in terms of civil actions by judges who are spirit-filled guides. If we look at the value, the criteria for elders in the New Testament, judges in the Old Testament, they’re all signs of the filling of the Holy Spirit for the task of being God’s image bearer as the judge with some guiding principles laid out by God’s inspired word but then he makes application not a computer program he an image bearer of God a judge makes application of these statutes well what are some of the truths of these statutes that he makes application on the basis of we’ll do this quickly truths in these cases Roman numeral point 2 on your outline first there is one law for all Deuteronomy—

I’m sorry. It’s Exodus 12:49. Exodus 12:49 says, “One law shall be for the native born and for the stranger who dwells among you.” The Jewish commentators on these texts turn this text on its head, the ox goring one. They say that if a Gentile has an ox and it gores a Jew’s ox, he’s got to pay. But if the Jew has an ox and it gores the Gentile’s ox, he doesn’t have to pay because the Gentiles don’t normally pay.

You see, they make it two laws. One, for us and one for the other guys. The beauty of God’s law is there’s one law for all because God has jurisdiction. Listen, God has jurisdiction over all men. And he holds all men responsible to a degree for fulfilling these laws in the power of the spirit. Nations are judged. It’s because they pervert these laws. It’s because they break these laws. What else is the principle of judgment of nations?

That’s what it is. One law for all people. These statutes affirm that as against, we’ll talk about this again next week. Some other law codes, the Code of Hammurabi and its definition of theft and its penalties. Quite different from the scriptures. One law.

Secondly, the Bible restrains economic externalities. And it’s a big 25-cent word. It’s the word of the day. Vocabulary word of the day, externalities. Remember composition. Composition is the legal doctrine that you can make payment by money for harm done. Composition. Externalities. We’ll talk about that in just a minute. Ownership rights bring responsibilities. Non-absolute private property rights are affirmed by these cases. Should have started with the last sentence first. These cases do not intrude on private property rights. They affirm and establish private property rights.

The guy who dug the pit and gets economic advantage from that pit is the guy who’s got to bear the cost for making the pit safe because he’s the owner. You see, the scriptures say He is legitimately by these statutes, I believe he’s legitimately the owner. The guy who has the ox that gores, the notorious ox, he has responsibility cuz he’s the owner. He’s the steward. That’s the big word here, right? Stewardship responsibilities in this section.

Building upon dominion, he has dominion over inanimate objects like pits or animate objects like bulls. And because of that, he’s got private property responsibilities, rights. Yes. limited rights. He can’t dig the pit on his own property, leave it uncovered because it’s my land and nobody’s going to tell me what to do with my land. All relationships, including man, to his property, is mediated by the Lord Jesus Christ, the king, and his word.

There’s nothing on this earth that you can look at and say, “Mine in the absolute sense.” It all belongs to King Jesus. It’s all stewardship responsibilities. When we have private property, pits or bulls, inanimate objects, animate objects, We’ve got private property rights, yes, but we have stewardship responsibilities over them. They are not absolute rights. They bring responsibilities. There it is. Rights and responsibilities brought together in this beautiful wonderful law that God has given to us.

Unlike our current culture’s drift, private property and responsibility are all brought in together. Now, I list a couple of other references for you. here. Deuteronomy 22:8, “When you build a new house, then you shall make a parapet railing for your roof that you may not bring guilt of bloodshed on your household if anyone falls from it.” He used to entertain on the roofs. We don’t do that today. Think of it as a deck on a second story.

You know, you go over to Howard’s house, he’s got a nice deck there, beautiful deck. Well, you got to put a railing around that deck cuz otherwise you’re entertaining. Some child could fall off accidentally and get hurt. And your whole mindset as covenant man Christian man is the protection of life. Okay? Unless it’s to be forfeited according to God’s word, the protection of life because man’s the image bearer of God.

And so you want to put something up around your deck to protect people. In fact, you’ve got to do it if the word of God says it’s a law. Now, it’s interesting because in that case, you know, it’s framed in such a way as to indicate that you have responsibility to your private property before anything happens. We’ll talk about that in just a minute, but it’s another extension to this same principle.

Ownership rights bring responsibilities. We’ll talk as the weeks go on about Exodus 22:6 and 14 as well. Exodus 22:6 and 14 for any of you boys in the young men’s Bible study who may want to use those verses for your study. But we’ll talk about those in a couple weeks. Same basic truth. Now it’s interesting that there are these two cases then of a pit and a roof and damage. You know, if you fall from the sky to the earth and it’s somebody else’s fault, they’re held liable.

Or if you fall from the earth to the pit under the earth, you’re held liable. We can see in this all of creation from the heavens to the waters under the earth. Man has dominion responsibilities, a dominion calling and stewardship responsibilities in what he does, whether it’s in airplanes or in deep wells to exercise safety and provide guarding against the loss or damage to human life or property the ox falling in.

Okay. so now let’s talk a little bit about externalities. economic externalities are a term that I learned from reading Gary North’s economic commentary on this text this last week. An economic externality means that the one who will not benefit from an action is forced to pay part of its cost. you or your ox or your child falls into a pit. The pit was dug by the owner for some economic advantage. Who knows what he or the refrigerator is kept in the backyard because he might use it at some point in time or he doesn’t want to pay the cost of disposing of it.

So, it has economic advantage to the owner. Economic externalities refer to things where you, the innocent bystander, so to speak, who’s not reaping a financial reward from an action of somebody else are forced to pay a part of the cost of that by falling in and paying for your own hurt. So the scriptures say they limit they restrain economic externalities. They make those who are going to receive economic benefits from property or stewardship over it pay the economic costs of damage to others if it’s a result of their negligence.

Okay. Now there’s the general truth that you can apply in a wide variety of situations. Are you benefiting from an action of yours? Does your action leave an open pit intellectually, terms of property, whatever it is for someone else who might get damaged? And you have to recognize that part of your incentive system of economic advantage of a pit must include factoring in the cost of covering that pit and making it safe to those who are not reaping economic benefits from it.

Okay. those who own a known dangerous object who own it property rights. They are legally responsible for making it safe for those who through either immaturity or otherwise lack of knowledge about the very real danger it poses could be hurt. Okay. So, private property rights are controlled affirmed but regulated by God.

Third. Some degree of prior restraint is a biblical concept. You know, we’ve had a little discussion about this. You know, our culture has gone mad with prior restraint. Preventing crime instead of punishing crime. And we can overreact against that and say that all means of preventing difficulties are not part of biblical law. But in reality, remember the parapet. God doesn’t say you wait for somebody to fall off and then you get punished. He says, “Put that railing up. It’s prior restraint on a possible harm or tort to someone.” So in some cases, these laws and tell us that prior restraint is necessary.

You got to pen the notorious ox to prevent damage coming to someone else.

D. We are not told to legislate a risk-free world. He doesn’t say here pits are dangerous. Don’t ever have a pit. Swimming pools are dangerous. Don’t do it. Don’t entertain on your roof. No, we’re not told to legislate a risk-free world. I say that because as our culture moves away from Christ, that’s just what it wants to do.

Write so many laws as they’re all risk is removed from the world. No, God limits risk, but he affirms the dominion actions of men in creating things that could be a risk to others. some practical applications of this we could talk Gary North in his commentary talks about speeding laws as a way to cover the pit or better example, drunk driving laws. A drunk driver is notorious. He’s known to drive without being in full control of his faculties.

So, I don’t think we’re required to wait till he kills somebody to pen him up. He, you know, in the in the early Christian colonies in this country, Laws of Plymouth Plantation, for instance, the guy got publicly drunk, he was put in the stocks and beaten. And the reason he was beaten was because he had become a dumbass. That’s what they said, a brute, a donkey. He had his drunkenness and his rebellion against God through drunkenness reduced his image bearing status enough you could treat him like an animal and beat him.

Well, same thing’s true of the drunk driver. He ought to be restrained in some way from getting in another car and driving it drunk. You got to put a cover on that pit. And if we as a culture have knowledge of dangerous men like that, we as a we have a responsibility to bring a degree of penning. Now, we can talk about how that’s done. Degree of penning. standing up of such cases. Speed laws culture says it is unsafe.

It’s like a wild ox or an open pit to have a car hurtling 80 miles an hour down an area where school kids are getting out. And the society says we’re going to put a cover on that pit. We’re not going to let you drive that fast. If you do, we’re going to restrain you. We’re going to make you pay a fine. Now, the fine probably ought to go into a fund, as Gary North says, to make restitution to victims of hit-and-run drivers directly linked the crime but still society has some obligation we do as a Christian culture to put restraints on open pits.

Okay. Next truth found here. E negligence is punished by these cases including or rather molding a proactive man as opposed to a reactive man. Be a blessing. You’re supposed to think ahead of time. You know, you’re not off the hook today if you don’t have any open pits in your yard. You might have a refrigerator. You have something at your workplace or home that poses a potential danger or hazard to others.

You may have some real I don’t know what you’ve got, but the point is you’re supposed to think about it. You’re supposed to think, what do I have that could cause damage, physical damage to an image bearer of God or to an image bearer of God’s stewardship responsibilities over property, to his ox, to whatever he owns. You see, scriptures want us to be proactive. Think about it ahead of time. not reactive.

Romans 14:13, let us not judge one another. let us, excuse me, therefore, let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way. Don’t leave an open pit. I mean, I don’t think it’s just talking about a block that a guy could stumble over. You put a cause of what does it say? Cause to fall in our brother’s way. An open pit is a cause to fall.

We have to be positively minded as Christians as Paul says here to resolve this not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way. Matthew 18 says causes of stumbling will occur but woe be it to that man. Person that sins is responsible for their sin. But if you’ve led them in some way into that if you put a stumbling block in front of them an open pit through slander or some other mechanism in front of them they fall into what? woe will be to you because you’ve not gone out of your way to actively seek to promote the well-being of other Dominion men and women. Matthew Henry says this, “That which we are taught by these laws is that we should be very careful…”