Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Exodus 22, verses 14 and 15. “And if a man borrows anything from his neighbor and it becomes injured or dies, the owner of it not being with it, he shall surely make it good. If its owner was with it, he shall not make it good. If it was hired, it came for his hire.”

Let’s pray.

Father, we have stood before you to receive your command word to us. We thank you that law word is always a grace word to us as well, mediated through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray now as we stand before you to receive new knowledge from you in terms of how to think and how to do things. We pray that you would indeed by your Holy Spirit illuminate this text for our understanding. We pray, Lord God, you’d give us open ears, that you would help us to have big ears to hear what you’ve got to say, that you would unplug them. Lord God, remove the impediments to hearing and to doing that so easily beset us in our hearts, and create in us a people that are transformed with the character of the Lord Jesus Christ being put into our lives by the Holy Spirit as a result of your word.

We thank you for word and spirit, Lord God. And we pray now that you would do your work among us, that we might indeed work in the world according to your good graces and for the sake of the manifestation of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. For we ask in his name. Amen.

Please be seated. Young children and nursery workers, a small number may be dismissed at this time.

In 1 Kings 6:1-7, we read one of the stories of the sons of the prophets.

Here the word of God. “And the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, ‘See now the place where we dwell with you is too small for us. Please let us go to the Jordan and let every man take a beam from there and let us make there a place where we may dwell.’ So he answered, ‘Go.’ Then one said, ‘Please consent to go with your servants.’ And he answered, ‘I will go.’ So he went with them. And when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees.

“But as one was cutting down a tree, the iron axe head fell into the water. And he cried out and said, ‘Alas, master, for it was borrowed.’ So the man of God said, ‘Where did it fall?’ And he showed him the place. So he cut off a stick and threw it in there, and he made the iron float. Therefore, he said, ‘Pick it up for yourself.’ So he reached out his hand and took it.”

This story of one of the sons of the prophets losing an axe head and falling into the river is a little better understood as we understand the particular case law or situation that is addressed in this portion of God’s law of the covenant. The servant loses the axe head in water and he cries out, “Alas, this is a borrowed thing.” Why would he say that? Well, if it’s your own axe head and you lose it, well, it’s a loss, of course, and that would make you feel bad. But it doesn’t really place you in debt.

But here, the son of the prophet is placed in debt because he’s borrowed an axe head from someone else. And according to the case laws, as well as the common application of justice, if you borrowed something from somebody else and lost it, it’s your responsibility to replace it. And that’s what this case law says. The owner of it not being there, you’re under obligation to make restoration, or simple restitution, to the owner of the thing.

So he’s in a bad position. Now, because these axe heads were not necessarily common things, iron implements at this particular stage in covenant history were rather costly and they represented a thing of value. Be like taking a tractor today and losing it in the river somehow and then being concerned about it because you borrowed it from somebody else and you’re in a position of debt to those people.

Well, Elisha, of course, raises the ax—the iron floats—and the supernatural work of God’s servant is a picture of the removal of debt through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s interesting then that if we look for examples of the application of the case law that we just read, we find one in the sons of the prophets. Not necessarily would we think to go for one that was in debt or had borrowed something from someone else.

This is not the only story of borrowing and the indebted nature of the sons of the prophets. The sons of the prophets were, some say, the forerunner of seminary training. They were men that gathered themselves around Elisha to learn from him and then become trained in the word of God and the application of it. So you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be ones who were in debt or who had borrowed things from other people.

But as I said, there’s another story as well from the sons of the prophets that indicates that indeed this was not the only occurrence of such a thing.

Now before we pass on to that, we should say that the scriptures clearly tell us in various places—Psalm 37:21, Proverbs 22:7, etc.—that to be in debt or to be a borrower isn’t the best position to be in. “The borrower is servant to the lender.” So Proverbs 22:7 tells us. Psalm 37:21 tells us that the wicked borrows and does not repay, but the righteous shows mercy and gives.

In the covenant curses and blessings, if we’re obedient as a culture, we’re to see that we are going to lend to many nations. We’ll be the head and they’ll be the tail. But disobedience brings a position of debt to other nations. We’re the tail and they’re the head.

These stories, however, from the sons of the prophet as well as the case law that we’ve just looked at tell us that it is appropriate and useful in the context of community to borrow. And it is sometimes necessary, or at least in the providence of God, we find ourselves in a position of debt.

The other story of the sons of the prophets that I reference is 2 Kings 4:1-7. And I’ll read this as well.

“A certain woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets cried out to Elisha, saying, ‘Your servant, my husband, is dead. You know that your servant feared the Lord.’ So one of these men has died and his wife is crying out to Elisha. ‘And the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves.’ Debt servitude.

So this man was apparently in debt. And since he dies, he can’t work anymore to pay off the debt in a gradual way. The debt is collected upon by the owner of the debt. And to pay off the debt, his sons are being brought into servitude.

“So Elisha said to her, ‘What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?’ And she said, ‘Your maidservant has nothing in the house but a jar of oil.’ And he said, ‘Go borrow vessels from everywhere, from all your neighbors, empty vessels. Do not gather just a few.’ And when you have come in, you shall shut the door behind you and your sons, and then pour it onto all those vessels, and set aside the full ones.’

“So she went from him, shut the door behind her and her sons who brought the vessels to her and she poured it out. Now it came to pass when the vessels were full that she said to her son, ‘Bring me another vessel.’ And he said to her, ‘There is not another vessel.’ So the oil ceased.

“Then she came and told the man of God, and he said, ‘Go sell the oil, pay your debt, and you and your sons live on the rest of the money that’s left over from the sale of the oil.’”

So in these two instances of the sons of the prophet, we see Elisha portraying the work of the greater Elisha, the Lord Jesus Christ, in redeeming people away from debt servitude of one type or another. In the case of the borrowed axe, the debt that is now in place because of the losing of it in the case law, apart from the owner, produces a debt for restoration on the part of the son of the prophet.

And in the second case of the man who was in debt and could not pay it off after his death, and then his sons having the danger of being sold into servitude. This reversal of debt—whether contracted through borrowing and then losing an item or contracted through the debts that we commonly enter into in a culture that is sometimes of the sort that is driven by transactions that we can’t fully pay—these debts and the repayment of them by Elisha through miraculous means have a connection to our case law today that we will touch on at the end of the sermon.

But there are examples to us that we frequently find even the sons of the prophets in a relationship of borrowing a particular thing, which is what this case law specifically addresses.

Now this case law is in the context, as we’ve said before, of the greater law of the covenant. And one way to remember this first half—and we’re going to make the point that verses 16 and 17 represent the termination of the first half of the law of the covenant—and the way we’ve talked about an easy device to remember this portion of God’s word is to remember that in our Declaration of Independence we have this phrase that all men are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And what we’ve said is that historically, the pursuit of happiness was a modification by Jefferson of a term the “pursuit of property” that Locke had written into some of his writings. Locke was a Calvinist, although a lapsed one, and we see represented in these phrases really a summation of this first portion of these case laws of Exodus 21-23—the encapsulation of the covenant of God with his people at this particular point in time.

We’ve said that these laws move through the protection of life and liberty in the first chapter and then move to a consideration of the protection of property in chapter 22. And what we said is that there’s a transition in these laws about property from property held essentially by yourself—that you might accidentally damage someone else’s property or theft of property one from the other—that seems to assert the importance of private property, to now a series of laws here in chapter 23 that relate to the interaction of property on the part of God’s people.

Mr. Patrick is back today. John’s back, and sorry to say, but we talked about you in last week’s sermon. We used the example of the Patricks and the Foresters getting people, their neighbors, in one case, and the Paines in the other case, to safekeep their property and possessions while they’re gone. And those were the laws that were addressed in the verses immediately before the verses we’re considering today.

And so these verses stress the idea of property held in community. But again, the overall context for this is really the assertion that liberty is protected, that life is protected, and property is protected. That the pursuit of happiness really had a connection, as Jefferson saw it, to the proper civic use of property. You remember that from last week.

When we think of the pursuit of happiness, we don’t think of it this way. But in Jefferson’s writings, the pursuit of happiness was really the pursuit of property, but property used for civic good. So these case laws have followed that same progression. Or should I say that the sayings of some of the founders of the American republic had these same thoughts based upon their understanding of the word of God and how it saturated into the pores of their being.

Now another way to remind us of this is the book of Leviticus. And if you were in the Sunday school class this morning, you would have gotten a very nice chart—I think it was nice—kind of giving the flow of the book of Leviticus through three major areas. And if you look at the first three sacrifices in the book of Leviticus, the first sacrifice represents atonement. The second sacrifice, the cereal or grain offering, represents tribute to God as king. And the third sacrifice, the peace offering, represented community with God and with each other. Because part of that sacrifice, you and family got to eat. You and your friends got to have a meal together based on this sacrifice that was given to God.

So there’s this progression in the first three sacrifices of the three major themes of the book of Leviticus. Those themes can be seen correlated to our savior. Jesus is named Jesus because he saves us from our sins. He makes atonement for those sins. He is Christ. He is the anointed one. He is king. And as king, he deserves our tribute. And he is our elder brother. He brings us into relationship and community, not simply with God, but with each other as well.

So Jesus Christ our elder brother is a picture of these first three offerings of the book of Leviticus, and really the flow of Leviticus as you would understand if you’d attended the Sunday school class this morning. If you want one of those charts, just let me know.

The point here is that these three movements represent these same movements of the case law. You remember they began with this statement of what to do in terms of servants. And the servant who becomes a home-born servant, adopted into typologically the family of God, has his ear bored through at the doorway of the house. Now that clearly reminds us of the blood at the doorway of the Passover—atonement. It’s a relationship to the atonement offering, a picture of the atonement made by Christ. These began the case law situations.

And then Jesus is our king. And as king, he gives us particular laws relative to how to get along together. And as king, he brings us into community as well. So this progression of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—or property—is really a major theme in the scriptures that’s seen depicted in the book of Leviticus as well.

And as I said, one way to remember this is “Jesus Christ our brother: Jesus, savior; Christ, the king; brother, communion and fellow fellowship.” And so Jesus has brought us into relationship with him in the opening case law of the ear bored through at the door—a picture of Passover and atonement. He has asserted his kingship rights over us and told us to respect parents, who represent his authority over us. And now he talks to us about our property in relationship, not in isolation from one another, but in community with one another as well.

Turn if you will to Matthew 5. We’ll look at verses 38-41 in context, beginning at verse 38.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person. Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.”

Now, verse 42: “Give to him that asks of you, and from him that would borrow of you, turn not away.”

“You have heard that it said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven. For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. If you love those that love you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans do the same?”

Our savior seems here in his Sermon on the Mount—which is really the recasting of the law to protect it from the abuses of the Pharisees—to be making direct reference to the particular portion of the law of the covenant that we’ve been teaching through.

Now we talked about this a little bit when we talked about the lex talionis, the eye for an eye. But in verse 38, he talks about that and he says that the Pharisees have perverted it into making you seek out justice for yourself, as opposed to seeing the civil magistrate as the one who demands “eye for eye and tooth for tooth.” He then moves on from the truths of lex talionis of the end of chapter 21, dealing with property, to this discussion of borrowing—the same movement that the case law of Exodus 21 and 22 moves in the context of.

So our savior addresses that as well, and he tells us that implicit in that case law relative to borrowing is the idea of loving your neighbor as yourself, moving in the context of community with one another. So these case laws are framed in a movement of God telling us indeed, just like our forefathers told us: life, liberty, pursuit of property—to be used for the good of others, in the context of exchanges, safekeeping, borrowing, lending, and even renting items, as well as addressed in the cases.

So that’s the movement. And before we get into the actual text, one more point or perspective that I really want to stress once more is the idea of community.

Now in verse 18, we will see a transition in the way these verses are laid out in Exodus 22. Up to now—well, turn to verse 18, and you’ll see what I mean. Exodus 22:18.

And notice that up to now, as you’re turning there, what we’ve seen is a series of “if-then” statements. Their law put in the context of “if you loan somebody something and he breaks it, then this is what’s supposed to happen. If you borrowed that thing but he’s with you, this is what happens. If you hire the thing, this is what happens.” And this proceeds on into the next couple of verses as well, verses 16 and 17.

“If a man entice a maid that is not betrothed and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If then…” But look at verse 18: “You shall not suffer a witch to live. Verse 19, ‘Whosoever lieth with beast shall surely be put to death.’”

You see, there’s a transition in the way these laws are stated. In the first half ending in the enticement of a maid who’s not betrothed, we have a series of “if-then” statements. And in the second half of the law of the covenant, there’s a series of simple, strong statements: “Don’t allow a witch to live.” And those series of statements differentiate the second half of this law from the first half.

The point of that is this: The first half is reaching a climax as we move into the verses of consideration today and on into verses 16 and 17. The climax of liberty and life is the proper use of our relationships one to the other. The climax of these case laws protecting liberty, protecting life, protecting property—then see that property to be used correctly in the context of community—and then it addresses the height of community: marriage relationships and how that occurs.

So what I’m saying is there’s a movement in these case laws to a consideration that the height of happiness or blessedness is the proper protection of liberty and life and property in the context once more of community.

Now this is in the providence of God. Following up Elder Wilson’s two talks on Peter and resisting the adversary in the context of community, God has given us a double witness from the New Testament and from these case laws of the centrality of community in the life of the Christian. God has placed this dead ahead of us for three or four weeks here—the last three or four weeks—the importance of the context of community in the walk of God.

Now, in Genesis 1:26-28, God says that we’re made in his image. And as many of you know, that image involves righteousness, holiness, knowledge, and dominion. God says, “I made man to exercise dominion. He’s my image bearer.” But he also says in those verses, “Male and female, he created them in the image of God.” God, as part of our image, is community.

When man is created, he is created as the representation of God’s image by having fellowship or community in the context of male-female relationships. What does sin do? Remember this from our series on marriage in the fall over the last year or two. Sin brings isolation. Sin brings a removal of community. Sin brings a breaking down of the interpersonal relationships that God has established as part of our very image-bearing capacity as God’s creation.

Community is at the center of bearing the image of God. And these texts tell us the same thing: that in the height of the recovery, represented by the atoning work at the door—the servant’s ear pierced through in blood—the height of our redemption is found in the context of Christian community.

Okay? In the right relationship of our property, and seeing it in the context of community, and then developing, as I said, the very height of this set of laws is laws relating to the ending of wives. So I hope I didn’t lose you on that. It’s really quite simple: These case laws are building to a climax. The climax is Christian community and the right use of property in terms of Jefferson’s definition of happiness—the use of property for civic duty, interpersonal relationship, moving us from atonement made through Christ to the laws for the king’s people, to now fellowship and union and communion with each other.

The same movement that the book of Leviticus has to it, and the first three offerings in Leviticus have as well. We’re being moved to see at the height of the understanding of the case law of God here in the first half is a consideration of Christian community.

Let me read from Harper’s Bible Dictionary on community in terms of the many facets that the scriptures tell us. “As members of a community united by divine covenant law and teaching.” That’s us as well. That’s what we are. We’re community united by a divine covenant. We come together on the Lord’s day in community to partake of one loaf to take from the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in union, community with him and with each other.

Community based on covenant law and teaching. “The Israelites’ obligations to God were reflected in their moral obligations to each other. First set of five commandments: how to love God. Second: how to love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the law of God summarized. And we see that same movement in the first half of these case laws, culminating in the verses today and then in a couple of weeks on marriage.

“They were to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Thus, they were commanded concerning each other: not to covet their neighbor’s wife or possessions, not to hold a neighbor’s garment for pledge past sunset, not to steal, deal deceitfully, or swear falsely. Leviticus 19:11. Not to defraud. Leviticus 19:15. Not to gossip or to be passive while injustice is being done one to another. Again, Leviticus 19:16. Not to hate one another. Leviticus 19:17. Not to avenge or bear a grudge. Not to do that, but to love your neighbor as yourself.”

The very center of the book of Leviticus is chapter 19:18 with this statement that indeed we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves.

“Not to take us one from another or to enslave one another. Not to oppress each other. Not to withhold loans or charity from one another, having to do with our text today. Or to ignore a neighbor’s stray animal or lost property. The Israelites were obligated to each other for the property placed in one’s care.” The case laws we’ve just considered. “They were obligated to love the neighbor as themselves. Leviticus 19:18. To help the poor through free loans or hiring the poor for pay, gleaning laws, and the like.”

“One who has harmed his neighbor will be punished in kind. Leviticus tells us. God will destroy those who slander their neighbors. Psalms and Proverbs tell us over and over. To despise one’s neighbor is to be devoid of wisdom. Proverbs 11:12 tells us. And this is to sin. Proverbs 14:21.”

“According to Zechariah 3:10, ‘In the messianic age, neighbors shall dwell together in peace.’ We are in that messianic age, and we are now called to dwell together in peace.”

So before we get into the particulars of this case law, understand that the climax here that’s being reached is a call once more to Christian community.

And here I want to spend just a minute exhorting the young men who are becoming—who are transitioning from being young boys or older boys—to young men, the teenagers in the context of our church. We’ve been teaching through world history notes to a group of junior highs of that age. Uh, this school year from the church, and this last week we spent considering the fertility cult religions of the ancient Near East. And one of the very important things that we stressed in that class needs to be stressed today.

Fertility cults are obviously far different than Christian worship. But a very significant difference between that kind of false worship and abomination is that worship occurred individually. You did not come together as a group of people as a congregation. You went up individually to the priestess’s temples and these places where the fertility cult worship would go on. Everything was individualized. It represented man in isolation.

It also represented man apart from dominion or vocation. And every culture like our culture that moves away from a consideration of Jesus Christ and our calling to exercise dominion for the King of Kings devolves into the worship of the basic forces of nature that are good and proper in themselves, but when turned to for salvation, of course, become a curse to us from God.

Young men, as you go through puberty, as you transition from becoming a boy to a man, one of the temptations the devil will place in front of you—the opposition your Adamic flesh as well will tell you—is to go into isolation. You’ll become self-conscious about your voice that changes. You’ll become self-conscious about the physical changes that make you less attractive for a period of time. You’ll become self-conscious about your awkwardness. And your tendency will be to move in terms of isolation.

But remember, man is created in the context of community. Do not allow yourselves to become isolated one from the other. Do not allow yourselves to become isolated from your fathers and your mothers. Work hard at maintaining community. Otherwise, Chris W.’s excellent sermon on the adversary of the devil picking off the strays from the herd may well be what happens to you.

And beyond that, if we’re to love our neighbor as ourselves, young men, support one another in the coming together of Christian community in the context of your developing and growing up into Christian men. This is not a departure from this text. This text talks about property held in communion and community. And this is a strong truth that we must understand.

There are two errors in the context of social interaction. One is isolation, and the other is communalism. These verses—you have property; you can loan to another—the private property rights are affirmed by these, and yet you’re using your property for happiness, civic duty. Affirm the truth of Christian community being the model. To keep from swerving to the one side of isolation and keep from swerving to the other side of communalism and a denial of private property rights.

It is of the utmost importance for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to not come together as a series of isolated individuals from each other but to come together with a sense of community. How does God train us for the week? He trains us by bringing us together in rank and beauteous order as we sang about earlier, coming together as the assembled people of God in community. This is where the Lord Jesus Christ comes and meets with us. This is where we take community communion in the context of our fellowship, not just with Christ and the Father, but with one another as well, to form the body to form the love God calls us together to train us.

And we’ve tried at this church and continue to do many things to build a sense of Christian community. And I want you to understand the things we do as being self-consciously directed by the elders of the church to achieve and promote a sense of Christian community. Knowing that isolation is the mark of our day and knowing that isolation is a denial of the height of blessedness and happiness as these case laws portray them.

If you stop with property just taking care of your own and don’t move on to see the interactions of safekeeping for one another, borrowing from one another, and renting from another, you remain in isolation and do not see the full effects of Christian community at what Christ has bought for us with his atoning work on the cross.

We’re going to have prayer meetings in various areas today. And those prayer meetings are a demonstration of our attempt as elders to build Christian community, not just in the corporate whole, but in the regional areas in which we dwell as well. The prayer meetings are important for building Christian community.

We’re going to have a Reformation party here in three weeks. And I’m going to ask many of you this next week or so to agree to do things for that Reformation party. We’re going to try to do some events. We can’t do our full-blown what we normally do because it’s a Sunday evening and we can’t decorate, etc. But we can stay in this facility and rejoice in the truths of the Reformation. And we can also take pains to include our children in that rejoicing time.

And I think it’d be good for us to have some of the booths we’ve had in the past along the sides of this room to try to build into our children the sense of Christian community based around the great truths of the Reformation. We want to work with one another. We want to enter into the joy of that evening by entering into serving one another.

You know, some people have seen in Genesis 1 the calling of man to dominion. And in Genesis 2, there seems to be a focal point on the service required of man to the created order. He names the animals and becomes steward over them. He has dominion over the created order, but he also serves in the context of that created order. And that’s a picture of Christian community as well. We come together to serve and bear God’s image in doing that.

And these are events that build community. Times like the football game that many of you went to—I didn’t make it to that one a week and a half ago, a week and a day ago. And how God gave you, they say, one of the most exciting football games in the history of these teams that were involved. I guess the team that Penn State beat was number two in the nation in their particular ranking or group or something. God gave you a tremendously exciting game, and we come together to do those kind of fun things to build Christian community and to build interaction and to break down these walls of isolation that this culture wants us to experience and hold.

As the culture moved away from Christ, it moved away from community. Do you know that sixty and seventy years ago, it was not unusual to get on a bus or a train for a long trip and for everyone to sing songs together, out loud, just start informally singing songs together? You can’t imagine that today. Do you know that it was very difficult to get people to go to movie theaters to sit next to somebody in isolation in the dark? It was kind of a scary deal. But now it’s the way we prefer to do things—in isolation. Just me and this thing here.

I was talking to Steve Samson about reading books, and he said when you read a book, you ought to have some other guys read the book with you to interact with you over it. Otherwise, it’s just you and the dead author that you’re reading, whether it’s dead by way of actual death or he’s just not available to you. You see, community is what God brings us into. And we do these things at Reformation Covenant Church.

We worship together as the army of the Lord. We come together at the communion table. That’s the great demonstration, isn’t it, of our community together in the Lord Jesus Christ. We wanted to mention that the way we’re going to be doing communion—this will be the last Sunday for a while that we’ll have communion in the context of the first portion of the worship service. We’re going to return, as we said we would at the beginning of summer, now that summer has passed, to having communion at the end of the meal we have together.

It’s important for you to understand that as we think about these things and pray about them as elders, where should we place the partaking of communion in the worship service? There’s not one right answer to many of these things regarding how we do things. There are basic truths that can be emphasized by things we do, but it’s not the only way to do it—after the meal, nor is it the only way to do it in the context of the worship service, the preaching service.

And what we try to do as elders is think: What is our particular community of believers at Reformation Covenant? What emphases do we need right now in how we administer the table? How should we go about doing these things in wisdom and in the best possible way to encourage the sort of Christian community that the scriptures talk about?

So we’re doing those kind of evaluations all the time, trying to keep us from becoming isolated from one another and moving us in the context of Christian community.

All right, I’ve taken half an hour for the introduction. But the only reason I’ve done that is because the verses are quite short and quite easy to understand. You already understand them just by reading them, I’m sure. But let’s go over them a little bit and try to see the relationship of these stories of the sons of the prophets to this portion of case law.

We see this relationship to our savior’s words and his work. And let’s now look at the particular aspects of these case laws. What we have here, of course, are three sets of cases: two involving one sort of activity and then a third involving a second sort of activity.

First, we have borrowed items—animate or inanimate objects becoming damaged—in verses 14 and 15a. The first scenario is that the owner is not present, and when the owner is not present, simple restitution is to be made. “If a man borrows something from his neighbor, it becomes injured or dies. The owner not with it, he shall make it good.”

So we borrow something, it breaks, and the owner isn’t around while we’re using it, and we should make it good. The presupposition again is that we’re borrowing things in the context of community.

But if the owner is present, verse 15a: “If he was with it, he shall not make it good.” You’re not required to pay back the owner if he’s with you while you’re using his punch bowl or his lawnmower or his donkey or his horse or whatever it is. If he’s with you while you’re using his item that you’re borrowing from him, you don’t have to make restitution.

Calvin commenting on this says that the man’s—the owner’s—presence is tantamount to this: “As if it were said, if he shall have seen with his own eyes that the injury did not occur by the fault of him to whom he lent it, then he shall give him no trouble about it.” In other words, if the owner is with you, he sees what you’re doing. He sees whether you’re abusing the thing you’ve loaned or whether you’re using it correctly. And if you’re starting to use it improperly, he has a responsibility to stop your use and reclaim the thing. That seems to be what it means to be in the presence of the thing that’s borrowed and the difference in whether you make restoration or not.

The third case is found in the second half of verse 15. “If it was hired, it came for his hire.” And the idea here is pretty simple. I borrow something from you, but instead of borrowing it, I pay you a fee for the rental of it. And now I’ve got that thing, and if it breaks, even though you’re not present with it, God says the hire—the fee I paid you for the use of the thing—should cover the replacement cost if I break it or lose it.

Now obviously, if I intend to break it, then it’s another situation. This, I think, has as its case normal wear and tear in the usage of items—doesn’t have malicious damage in it—but the concept is fairly straightforward.

Let’s use an example. Several weeks ago, we had a baby shower—another event to build community. So these are events that you should participate in to build community. Now you might miss some. I missed the football game. There are times when you can’t go to these things. We don’t want to say you always got to go to these community building events. But if you find yourself apart from those community building events most of the time—and see—I would cause you to think through that a little bit, pray about it, and think: Do I understand that the height of my relationship to Christ comes in the context of community, not in isolation? You see.

Well, in any event, so we had this shower, and my oldest daughter borrowed a punch bowl from Debbie Fukuda and needed it for the shower. So, and then to return the punch bowl, Lana gave it to my wife to return. I don’t remember exactly why that occurred. So, let’s think about this a little bit.

Lana’s borrowed this punch bowl, and let’s say she’s using it and Debbie isn’t there. Let’s say Debbie’s not at the shower and the punch bowl gets broken. Lana’s responsibility then, as the one who borrowed it, is to pay back Debbie the punch bowl. Now, she’s not supposed to go and ask Debbie, “Oh, I broke the punch bowl. Would you like it back?” See, that’s not what she’s supposed to do. She’s not supposed to say, “Oh, I broke your punch bowl. Let me write you a check.” No, because now Debbie’s got to go buy another punch bowl.

The idea is this idea of restoration or wholeness—to make it good. The Hebrew word here is the same word as “Jerusalem,” “Salem,” “shalom”—God’s peace. The presence of God is his blessings to his people. And that’s reflected by making whole the person whose thing broke in your possession.

Okay? So you don’t ask, “Do you want it fixed?” You don’t give her a check; you don’t try to avoid it somehow. You simply go get a replacement punch bowl of the same value, and you bring it to her. Now, you may want to give it to her with a receipt in case she wants to go to the store to go and exchange it for one she likes better. You’ve given her that ability, but don’t make her go through that by writing her a check.

But let’s say Debbie is at the shower and you’re using the punch bowl and Debbie doesn’t say anything about how it’s being used and the thing breaks somehow or one of the cups breaks. Well, this law says that Debbie’s there. She has responsibility—implied in the law—to see how the thing’s being used. And as a result, she should then stop improper activity. And if she doesn’t stop improper activity but the thing’s being used and it just breaks, now Lana’s not obligated to restore it to Debbie.

But let’s say it gets a little trickier. Lana’s borrowed it. The shower is over. She gives it to Christine to return to Debbie. And let’s say it now breaks in Christine’s house somehow—my wife’s house. What happens? Well, again, whether it was direct or indirect, you’ve borrowed something from Debbie. You, in a sense, have ownership of it for that particular period of time. And if you break it, you’ve got to restore it. That’s what these laws are—really simple to apply, really.

Now, when you restore a thing that you’ve broken, you know, as I said, you not only should you do it in a correct way of doing it, but you should also, if it’s a non-Christian, take the opportunity to provide witness. “I’m doing this because Jesus makes us whole. He wants this picture of making things right and whole. I obey the King’s laws. That’s why I’m paying this back to you. Have you ever considered the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings, on your life and your property? I try to live my life in relationship to those truths.”

So it becomes a method, not simply of obedience to the law and restoration, but rather a method of evangelism as well.

If you’re the person who owns the thing that’s broken, by the way—Debbie’s broken it or rather Debbie has it—and she heard that Lana broke it. Don’t go to Lana and say, “Don’t don’t worry about it. Don’t pay me back.” Let the process work. God wants this process to work. If we normally tell each other, “Don’t worry about it,” the law becomes sublimated, or it goes away, and then the advantages of the law—which we’ll talk about in just a minute—don’t occur.

Okay? Now, if Debbie rents it to Lana for use at the shower, even though she’s not there, if the thing broke, Debbie doesn’t get paid back the punch bowl. Rather, whatever she rents it out for should be sufficient to include a small part of replacing the cost of the thing.

Now, obviously, the rental rate isn’t going to be the full purchase price, right? Otherwise, I would just buy my own rather than rent something for the same price as a new one. So, the purchase price—or rather, the rental price—indicates a small premium that the owner should be applying into an account. So, when the punch bowl comes back broken after one of its rental occurrences, they’ll have money sufficient to restore it to themselves.

All right, so that’s a practical example. Let’s look quickly at some of the important themes from the text.

First is rights, restoration, and responsibilities. Stewardship belongs to ownership. So you own a thing. You have a right to restoration of that thing. If somebody else breaks it and you’re not there, if they misuse it, you have a right to restoration of it. Okay? If it’s damaged accidentally, that’s a right. But it also brings a stewardship responsibility to you as well.

You’re to see yourself in the context of community. And you don’t have to loan things that people ask from you, but the Bible says that’s the way community is normally going to operate. So here are the principles or truths by which we should govern such transactions: You have a responsibility, but you have a responsibility only to loan it out to people that understand this law and will act in obedience to it.

Ultimately, it’s not your punch bowl. It’s God’s punch bowl. And he’s given it by way of stewardship to you. And you have rights to restoration if it gets broken. You also have responsibilities. If you’re with Lana at the shower and it’s your punch bowl, your ownership there remains intact and you should oversee the use of that thing as a good steward.

Okay. And underneath this I’ve got: “The presence of the owner means he retains the bundle of rights and responsibilities of ownership.” That’s a term from Gary North’s book on his commentary on the laws of the covenant. This bundle of rights and responsibilities—as an owner, you’ve got ownership over this thing, and you have a bundle of rights and responsibilities, necessary interactions of you with the property God gives you from stewardship.

Now, when you loan that thing out and you’re not there, the picture is that you’ve transferred ownership for a period of time to that person, because now that person, according to God’s law, has responsibilities relative to it and rights as well. Okay? They’ve got the right to use it, and they’ve got the responsibility to pay back if they break it. So it’s as if you’ve transferred ownership in the loaning of a thing to someone else.

That bundle of rights is transferred. Maybe a better way to see this is: If you’re there with the thing that you’re loaning out, the bundle of rights is not transferred. Now the person is simply using it in your presence, and you’re responsible for the well-being of that item. Even though you’ve loaned it to them, they’re using it. You are there, and your ownership rights are fully in place. You’re responsible for the proper stewardship of that item. If it breaks in a way you should look at it as it’s your fault.

Okay? So the ownership—the absence of the owner without a rental fee means the transfer of the bundle from him to the borrower for a season. And then finally, a rental fee means the retention of the bundle of rights and responsibilities. In other words, if I charge you for the use of the punch bowl, I’m still—I haven’t transferred over rights and responsibilities. I’m not going to get paid back if you improperly use it and it breaks.

Okay. So that I retain these responsibilities.

So, first, these scriptures repeat to us the rights and responsibilities of ownership. So the point here is that ownership certainly brings along rights, but it also brings along responsibilities. The points we’ve made at other places in these case laws show that it has risks and costs to ownership.

Another major theme of these laws is the intrusion of God upon the free market. No unmediated relationships. You’ve heard us talk about that. We have no unmediated relationships in the world. They’re all mediated through the Lord Jesus Christ. God here seems to be—