Dennis Tuuri

Sermon Text: Exodus 22:21–27

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way and they cry out at all to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword. Your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.

If you lend money to any of my people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a money lender to him. You shall not charge him interest. If you ever take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering. It is his garment for his skin. What will he sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to me, I will hear, for I am gracious.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you declare yourself to be gracious. And we pray, Lord God, that your Holy Spirit would make us gracious in our dealings with each other and in the context of our world. We thank you, Father, for your scriptures. We thank you that your spirit comes to illumine these texts for understanding and to transform our lives, reminding us of who we were in Adam and who we are in Christ on the basis of his work. We thank you then for all of these things and ask for your blessing upon this time. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Well, happy St. Nicholas Eve to you. Few of you know what that means. More in the Roman Catholic Church, St. Nicholas Day on December 6th is celebrated, as well as services on St. Nicholas Eve, December 5th, which in the providence of God is what today is. December 6th is a commemoration of St. Nicholas, and in our household and I know several other households here at the church, people celebrate St. Nicholas Day as a way to, in the context of the Christmas season, remind our children of the historical roots of the person of Santa Claus. Of course, St. Nicholas is that historical personage. He was the bishop of Myra in 350 AD—so the 4th century of the church.

Nicholas was orphaned at a young age, both his parents having died. Eventually he was martyred on December 6, which is why we celebrate that as this day, and he was particularly known for his kind deeds to children, the fatherless, particularly orphans, and also to others. While he was bishop and pastor in Myra, many wondrous and gracious things were done for the poor. And at first, wishing to keep his anonymity—of course, nobody knew about who it was that was doing it. And eventually, it was determined that it was Nicholas who was doing these things.

One of his more popular stories that we have about him—and we don’t know the truth of all these things coming over 1,600 years ago—but he apparently was moved with compassion for three daughters of a man who had no money to provide a dowry for them. By this time in Europe, the dowry had been perverted into a thing where the wife had to provide the dowry. And so Nicholas provided dowries for these girls, supposedly depositing the money in some fashion, whether it’s throwing it in a window or in some way getting these bags of gold into a stocking that was hung by the fireplace to dry off.

And so, at Christmas time, the tradition we have in America and many places around the world of stockings hung by the chimney with care really go back to these early stories of St. Nicholas and his good deeds done to the poor. Now, as I said, Nicholas was trained in this—in the providence of God. He was afflicted because he was an orphan and as a result, he had great compassion for those people who, in their context, had needs.

In the providence of God, we’re brought to the eve of St. Nicholas and a particular text that is an admonition to us to remember widows and the fatherless. And these stories of Nicholas’s deeds of charity to orphans and then to these young girls who couldn’t get married until they had a dowry are a reminder to us of what this text calls us to do. My wife was mentioning this morning on the way here that she had seen cherry blossoms this week budding out in December. And I guess maybe that’s a picture for us of the work of a man like St. Nicholas budding out in the context of a fallen world with new life even in the midst of darkness and despair—himself being orphaned and then reaching out to those who had great needs.

So today is essentially an encouragement and exhortation to you to live out the life of Christ the way that St. Nicholas lived out the life of Christ in deeds of compassion and actions based upon compassion, compassionate actions toward widows and the fatherless.

And next Lord’s Day, we’ll deal with the poor and poor loans, so to speak—no-interest loans to the poor. And then two weeks from that day, I’ll preach the Sunday before Christmas on the Feast of Purim found in the book of Esther. The Feast of Purim was a festival of the deliverance of God’s people from their enemies that we’ve just been singing about. And they were to celebrate it every year with great thanksgiving and joy and of sending portions one to another—fruit cakes, I suppose—and sending gifts as well to the poor, the remembering of the poor in the midst of God’s deliverance of the people of Israel who were going to be all executed and killed off by the wicked Haman.

So we’ll celebrate that at the beginning of the week leading up to our celebrations in our families of Christmas. So that’s kind of the context of what I want to talk about today—this picture of the life of Christ being lived out in the context of a man. I mean, if you think about this, this is an individual guy. This is a guy who put on his pants if they wore pants then one leg at a time just like we do—of a guy like us, you know, typical fallen man. And yet because of the way God trained him through affliction and then caused him to be a dispenser of the grace of Christ, the entire world, to all intents and purposes these days, knows about him if only in a perverted form in the form of Santa Claus.

So is the blessing of God, as it were, upon the singular acts of a single man reaching out in compassion to those that God has particularly singled out for us to demonstrate compassion to. It’s a big deal in the life of the Christian to exercise compassion and acts toward the fatherless and widows.

All right. What I want to do is to put this in a context first. And this will take some time to do. Don’t despair. It’s an essential element of what the sermon today is about as a proper context for this teaching that we have received in Exodus 22 dealing with the fatherless and widows. So what we want to talk about first is the big picture.

There are three levels of context we’ll be discussing here. And the first two essentially are the big picture and then the immediate context for this account for us in Exodus 22 of the need to demonstrate compassionate acts towards others.

So first we want to talk about the big picture. And to do this I want to review something that I brought up briefly a couple of weeks ago in the last sermon I preached in this text, and that is the proper place for these so-called case laws. The big picture is the Sinai treaty, the reversal of the effects of the curse. And I’ve given you on your outlines an overview of a structure that we can look at this entire event at Sinai that occurred.

It begins with God’s people arriving in Sinai in Exodus, in the middle of Exodus. And at Sinai, they first receive the Ten Commandments. And after they receive the Ten Commandments from God, then they receive these laws that we’re looking at now, the so-called law of the covenant. And that’s all happening at Sinai here in Exodus.

Now what happens next in the context of Sinai is that after these are completed, God then gives them instructions to build a tabernacle that he will come to them in the context of and dwell in their midst. So the next major chunk of Exodus deals with the instructions for the building of this tabernacle. In obedience to that, of course, God’s people then build the tabernacle at the base of Mount Sinai in the wilderness of Sinai. And after they complete the construction of this tabernacle and Moses goes in and does some things, God’s presence then comes into that tabernacle and fills it—the glory of God is manifest in the context of this tabernacle that’s been built. And it’s so glorious in there, Moses can’t even go in for a while.

So we have the glory of God coming and dwelling in the context of his people. Now, that’s the introduction to the book of Leviticus, which then continues to work on this whole Sinai treaty. Continuing now at Sinai, the next thing that happens is the book of Leviticus. And after God’s presence has filled the tabernacle, he then comes to Moses and gives a series of instructions to him on how to go about doing the offerings in the context of that tabernacle. So he gives him instructions for what’s to happen in the midst of the tabernacle.

After that portion of the book of Leviticus is completed, we then have a series of speeches dealing with the cleanness and uncleanness of the people and the removal of uncleanness from God’s people in the context of their dwelling in the context of God’s house. And then finally, the last part of Leviticus and the first part of Numbers is a restatement of the Ten Commandments in summary form calling again for God’s people to be holy—the so-called holiness code of Leviticus rather, starting at chapter 17 and moving into the book of Numbers.

So even while these are portions of three separate books, understand that the context—this big chunk of scripture, the middle of Exodus to the middle of Numbers, including Leviticus—all happens in the context of encampment at Sinai. And because of that, we should look at these things as a unit. Remember, I handed you out an outline two weeks ago dealing with these things as a unit. And this is a simplified form of that same outline from a recent book that I received that I purchased. And hopefully it’ll help you to understand the larger context for what we’re doing here in the context of the case laws.

So this is one of those chiastic structures, and by that I mean simply that while it begins with the giving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai, they begin by going to Sinai and receiving the commandments. At the end of it all, it’s sort of like that the Ten Commandments are repeated and they depart Sinai. So it begins and ends kind of the same way, and the central thing that happens as they move through this encampment at Sinai is God’s presence filling the tabernacle.

Now the value of looking at this structure in this particular way is that we can draw a correlation then between the cleanness and uncleanness section of the book of Leviticus and the law of the covenant. Looking at your outline, do you see how that lines up? The law of the covenant is B, and the laws of cleanness and uncleanness is B prime. As we come back out of God filling the tabernacle that the people built in obedience to him, and then offer sacrifices in the context of that tabernacle with God’s presence in the midst of his people.

This helps us when we realize the structure of the clean and unclean section of Leviticus. Okay. So what we want to do now is think a little bit about the clean and unclean structure of Leviticus 11–16. In other words, if God has written this text in such a way as to draw a correlation between these laws of the covenant in Exodus 21–23 and the laws dealing with cleanness and uncleanness in the context of Leviticus 11–16, it helps us to understand the relationship of what these laws of the covenant are all about.

Now, if we were to take the time to look at Leviticus 11–16, we find a number of details about how a person becomes unclean and then how that uncleanness is removed from them and so how they become acceptable—are clean again in the sight of God. Now, it’s very interesting the way that those things are structured. And it’s very simple to remember them if we just know what happened in Genesis 3 as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve.

Genesis 3: God comes to Adam, Eve, and the serpent. And he questions Adam and Eve, and then he pronounces judgments. Now, the first judgment God pronounces is upon the serpent. And the judgment is he’s got to crawl on his belly and eat dust. The next judgment is to Eve, and she has said that she is going to suffer pain in childbearing and childbirth. And then God works his way up to the covenantal head, Adam, in the third step of this judicial statement. And God tells Adam that his labor is now going to be cursed, as it were, or affected. And he’s going to work and produce food by the sweat of his brow.

So the curse is placed upon his body in terms of sweat in his labor. After these three things are said, God then clothes Adam and Eve and kicks them out of the garden. And after they’re kicked out of the garden, Adam then in chapter 4:1 knows Eve his wife and they bear a child.

Now, if we know that—if we know what happens in Genesis 3 and 4—then it’s very easy for us to remember the laws of uncleanness in Leviticus 11–16 because they follow that exact same pattern. If you take the time to read this week Leviticus 11–16, what you’ll find is that the first sets of uncleanness have to do with animals. And in terms of the land animals, the correlation seems to be that they are closer to the dust or they eat refuse or whatever it is. It’s a picture of the effects of the fall of Adam and Eve, the manifestation of the curse of God on the animal world. And the animal world represents in its distinction between clean and unclean animals the effects of the curse.

So just as God started by pronouncing the judgment upon the serpent, the laws of uncleanness start with describing the unclean state that exists in the context of the animal world. Now, just as God moves on then to talk to Eve about pain and childbearing, the next sets of laws of cleanness or uncleanness specifically address the uncleanness of childbirth. So when a woman has a child, she’s ceremonially unclean for a particular period of time depending whether it’s a boy or a girl.

So it has to do with childbearing. So in effect it shows again just what God had said in Genesis—that the manifestation of the curse will be the state of uncleanness that will exist to a woman upon giving birth to a child because Eve was cursed or affected in her childbearing.

Now the next section of the laws of uncleanness deal with leprosy. Leprosy is a condition of the skin. And just as Adam’s sentence was to have sweat, a manifestation of the effects of the curse on his body on his skin, so in the context of Leviticus, leprosy represents the manifestation of the uncleanness or curse of God upon fallen man.

So we have these judicial pronouncements in Genesis to the serpent, to Eve, and to Adam reflected in the Levitical laws of uncleanness related to distinction of animals, uncleanness in childbearing, and uncleanness on the skin, again pictured by leprosy.

Now I said that the next thing that happens in Genesis is that God clothes Adam and Eve. He provides them garments. And the next set of uncleanness laws in the context of Leviticus is the uncleanness of leprous garments, the effects on man. So he has garments that get leprous and you’ve got to clean them or get rid of them. So there’s a correlation again.

And now in Genesis the next step that happened was after they were clothed they were kicked out of the garden. And in Leviticus the next set of laws of uncleanness deal with leprous houses. And if you can’t get the leprosy out of your house, you got to tear it down. You’ve got to find another place to live. You’re evicted, just as Adam and Eve were evicted from the context of the garden.

Now, finally, after they’re evicted, Adam knows his wife Eve. And the last set of the laws of cleanness and uncleanness in Leviticus 11–16 are these laws that say when you enter into sexual relationships—which are good—it produces a ceremonial cleanness to man and woman and there are various discharges from those areas of the body that also make one unclean.

So you see the laws of uncleanness in Leviticus 11–16 correlate perfectly with the stages of God’s judicial pronouncement and the acts that follow it in Genesis 3 and 4. Well, so what? That’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s interesting to see that correlation, but I think that it helps us to understand what those laws of uncleanness are all about. What they are about is setting up in the context of the Old Testament sacrificial system a visual representation—a manifestation rather—of the effects of the curse on man.

The people that get these laws are redeemed people. They’re redeemed by the coming work of the Savior. They picture that in the sacrificial system, but there’s still these representations of the manifestations of the curse upon them. But of course, it goes on to talk about the rolling away of those manifestations as they can become clean from all of these things through these ritual actions that point to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Leviticus 11–16 is a picture of the manifestation of the effects of the curse being rolled back, being moved from uncleanness to cleanness through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the coming sacrifice, who would be the culmination of all of the actions producing cleanness in Leviticus 11–16.

Well, again, what’s the relevance of that to treating widows and the fatherless differently? The relevance of that is that if we see this structure where God has placed these laws of the covenant in a parallel fashion with the laws of cleanness and uncleanness, what we can see then in the law of the covenant are two things.

First, the laws of the covenant tell us what the Adamic nature is prone to do in its manifestation of the effects of the curse in our moral and ethical actions. Just as the Leviticus section is a manifestation of the effects of the curse, clearly drawn out in big bold letters that are impossible to miss if you know Genesis 3 and 4. So Exodus tells us that this is the effects of the curse and also the laws of the covenant tells us that this is what is going to be rolled back by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The cleanness and uncleanness sections of Leviticus are a description of the manifestation of the effects of the curse and then a prescription for the removal of the ceremonial manifestation of uncleanness. In a corollary fashion, then we can expect to see in the law of the covenant that we’ve been dealing with the manifestation of the effects of the curse and the means by which these effects are removed.

Now, I’ve not said anything new here in terms of doctrine. All I’ve done is use the textual arrangement of this big Sinai section of the Old Testament to point out the relationship of the coming of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ to affect the putting off of the old man and the putting on of the new man that the scriptures repeat on and on and on in the context of the New Testament.

This is helpful though to see this correlation. We see in the law of the covenant one of the most significant effects of the fall—the curse of a disruption of man-to-man relationships with a result in injury, death, loss of property, and a loss of liberty. That’s what we see traced out in the law of the covenant, the sections we’ve dealt with so far.

And we should think of those things as manifestations of the fall, as the way the Adamic nature works and is prone to behave. When we come to a text in the law of the covenant, we can ask what effect of the fall is being pictured here for us and how can we correct it? How can we manifest the newness of our life in the Lord Jesus Christ? What is the spirit doing in our lives to transform us into the image of the Son who is the image of the Father? That’s what we can say when we look at any particular one of these individual laws of the covenant in this particular block of text that we are now in the midst of.

In the context of these admonitions to gracious compassionate actions toward the stranger, the widows, the fatherless, and the poor, we can readily discern the effects of the fall on our interpersonal relationships. We now tend, in the Adamic nature and the fall of man—since the fall, we now tend to isolation, alienation, and outright oppression of whomever we can oppress. The stranger, the widow, the fatherless, the poor—they’re all relatively easy targets for the Adamic nature.

What this means is that we would, in our Adamic nature, oppress anyone given the right opportunity. Look at your neighbor. Think about the person next to you here in the context of our church. Think about your friends even in the context of this church. Should your Adamic flesh get an opportunity to oppress, humble, belittle, demean, push down, depress, or sarcastically to treat, or use to our own advantage, the other person, our Adamic nature will do just that if the opportunity provides itself.

This is because, as we pointed out two weeks ago, this is the Adamic man’s relationship to God after the fall and it’s mirrored in his relationship to God’s primary image bearer. We would—not the people outside, we in our flesh—would do just what the crowds in Jerusalem did to the Lord Jesus Christ. Shout out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Of course, the Bible doesn’t stop there. It tells us clearly how we can expect our flesh to act. But just as our childbirth, our sexual relations, our garments, our homes, and our flesh all tend to manifest the effects of the curse, God has also provided the means of the removal of the effects of the curse. Christ has come to produce cleanness. And Leviticus—the Leviticus clean and uncleanness laws—pictures the reversal of all of those things. It’s diagnostic. It tells us what happened in the fall, but it then is reparative for us. It repairs us by rolling back the effects of the curse.

You know, we sing in “Joy to the World”:

No more let sin and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground.
He comes to make his blessings flow
As far as the curse is found.

As far as the curse is found. See, the effects of the curse are pictured in Leviticus 11–16 in a ceremonial fashion. And they’re pictured for us in the law of the covenant in a moral and ethical fashion. And we can see what we’re prone to. But we also see what Christ is in the process of rolling back—the effects of the curse in our uncleanness, the effects of the curse in our moral and ethical natures.

We move from unclean to clean in the flow of Leviticus as it points toward the coming offering who will bring us near by his work of atonement. That section ends with the Day of Atonement, the work of the Savior to affect cleanness.

Applying this to our corollary text in the law of the covenant, the effects of the curse are laid out in sharp relief in the law of the covenant: slavery, not providing the essentials of food, raiment, and response to our wives; murder; manslaughter; kidnapping; despising of parents; assault; beating slaves to death or knocking their eyes out; self-centeredness; and a proneness to violence that produces death or injury to the judicially innocent bystander, woman, or her unborn child; engaging in sloppy and self-centered business or animal husbandry practices which bring death and destruction to men and beasts and the environment; slander, burning up other men’s reputation by our tongues set fires; stealing what isn’t ours; ripping off our neighbors who turn to us for help as they need caretaking; the seduction of virgins; the end run around God’s authority in the family; witchcraft; a preference for drug-induced states of reality and other forms of insanity; sexual sin of the most base sort; and outright bald-faced idolatry.

That’s what’s pictured for us so far in these laws of the covenant. This is what God tells us is the effect of the curse and the fall of man upon his moral and ethical nature. These are the deeds of the Adamic flesh, the Adamic nature that are listed for us in the law of the covenant.

And we see that the list continues with this bent we have in our old man to oppress whomever we can, wherever we can—judicially, economically, governmentally, and socially. This is who we are in Adam. And as surely as the act of the woman of bearing a child produces ceremonial uncleanness in the Mosaic administration, as surely as the God-ordained sexual relations of man and wife create a state of ritual uncleanness, so as surely as that the effects of the curse on our moral and ethical makeup is that we are prone to every sort of sin against one another that we think we can get away with.

Now we don’t always manifest that. The Adamic nature likes to ape God’s image. They like to ape the Christians. And so if our conscience that God gives us struggles with us in these outright acts of oppression, sometimes we’ll paper over what we’re doing and make us look good to others through benevolent acts, etc. But in our Adamic nature, we hate God. And because we hate God, we hate our fellow man. And the only thing we can do to exercise is good toward him is an act of hypocrisy and vain glory seeking to manifest what is not in our hearts apart from the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The law of the covenant paints out in bold relief who we are. Now, if you don’t get that down, if you don’t know how great your sin and misery is, you cannot move forward to the rest of the text.

The story doesn’t end there, of course. That’s the bad news of Leviticus 11–16 and Exodus 21–23. But the good news is that just as provision was made in the Mosaic administration for the removal of defilement through various methods, all pointing toward the work of the coming Savior, just so surely the moral and ethical effects of the fall have been rolled back by the manifestation of the grace of God in Messiah.

So now in the power of the spirit, understanding that the Law of the covenant points out diagnostically our fallen Adam, but also prescriptively what we do in the power of the spirit—now in the power of that spirit, we are called to and will effect the growing maturation and liberty of our fellow man. Where the law of the covenant began with husbands will—and increasingly will—begin to manifest and to take seriously the requirements to guard, nourish, and love their wives.

We take pains now in the power of the spirit not to damage each other’s bodies, property, reputation, or well-being. Whereas once we moved in terms of being dispensers of death in various degrees and forms, we now become dispensers of grace and life to one another. Instead of despising God’s authority in the home, in the church, and the state, we now do all we can to respect them and to build up that honor and prestige in the faith communities in which we live.

Where we were self-centered, we now become other-centered. Where we spurn the image-bearers of God, we now love our Creator, Redeemer, and the image-bearers whom we delight to minister to. Knowing that we are indeed ministering to Christ as we minister to the least of these that God has called us to minister to. We take our new man into the business world and we engage in responsible practices taking into account the effects of our actions on others, yes, upon the environment.

Where we once burned men up with our tongues, we now use those same tongues to bless and to build up reputations of other people. We gladly engage in restitution where required, knowing it’s a great picture of the restitutionary work of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ that he has accomplished for us.

In short, the text tells us that we put off the old man and we put on the new man who has been created in true righteousness and holiness in the sight of God and man. The effect of the curse ritually in Leviticus and morally and ethically in the law of the covenant in Exodus are acknowledged and then rolled back by the application of Christ’s work in the power of the spirit.

This is the gospel. This is the good news. This is the great reversal from uncleanness to cleanness, from moral and ethical forwardness to moral and ethical uprightness that’s been affected by the work of the Savior. This is the gospel.

We come together today to hear this, to believe it, to rejoice in it, and to be transformed by it, to demonstrate the newness of Christ in the newness of our new man. We live, however, in a now-but-not-yet world. The effects of this great reversal have been definitively accomplished once for all by the Savior, and they’re now being worked out progressively in each new creation in Christ and in the global matrix of the new creation as well.

Uncleanness and death and sin are being rolled back progressively in each of us individually, in this body corporately, and over the face of the earth as well. We’re assured of this victory of Christ affecting all of this to the end that we would move day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year to maturation in Christ, to a fuller manifestation of the fact of the reversal of a sinful Adamic nature by the work of Christ.

Now, that’s the big picture. That’s the context for everything we look at in the law of the covenant. It is a demonstration, a picture of what we are in Adam and what we are in the context of the new man.

Now, let’s take a look at the immediate context of the text itself, and that is these laws of the covenant. And what we said here is that the laws of the covenant can be divided into two sections. And we talked about this two weeks ago too, but it’s important to understand this.

The law of the covenant begins first with a series of if-then statements. The text before us that we’re going to deal with today repeats a refrain which is a central one to the flow of this immediate context that we have lined out here in the law of the covenant.

Today is the middle of three sermons on essentially the same truth: the manifestation of grace to others based upon God’s grace to us. That’s what these three sermons are all about. The manifestation of what some have referred to as the royal virtue, the kingly virtue that Christ has displayed in showing us his great hospitality and unmerited favor in which we now move in terms of as well. That’s what these sermons are about.

The law of the covenant in Exodus 21–23 has two parts. The first section is a series of if-then statements.

If a man curses his parents, if he’s an incorrigible rebel who strikes out at his parents, curses them—this is known to the community—then he is to be executed.

If two men fight and an unborn baby is killed, then the life of the man or men are forfeit.

If a husband unrepentantly and consistently fails to provide food, raiment, and response to his wife, then the wife can divorce him and is rather allowed then to retain the dowry that she was provided by the husband.

If a man seduces a virgin, then he must pay the dowry price set by the father, and the father determines if the man can marry his daughter.

The verses we are now considering, verses 21–27, are a little bit different than these but they still seem to retain the same if-then formula.

If we oppress the widow and the fatherless, then God will punish us.

If the poor are oppressed, God will hear the text tells us—and the clear implication is that he will act to bring judgments.

So while the pattern of previous statements had the consequence carried out by the magistrate or the family, this last one of the if-then statements is if you oppress the bride—represented by these needful people—then I will make your wives widows and your sons fatherless. I’ll hear the poor and I’ll bring forth judgment. If-then—a little different, but still an if-then formulation.

After the first of the year, we’ll begin the second section of the law of the covenant. Next week we’ll deal with a sermon on the poor. And after that sermon, the law of the covenant takes a major change of emphasis with a series of simple commands with no if-then formula.

Look at verse 28 of Exodus 22 in your Bibles. And we’ll read for a few verses to drive this point home.

Exodus 22:28:

Verse 28 says, and this begins a new section: “You shall not revile God nor curse a ruler of your people.”

Simple declarative statement—an imperative given to us. Not just declarative, it’s an imperative. It’s a command to us. But there’s no “if you don’t do it, this is what’s going to happen.”

Verse 29:

“You shall not delay to offer the first of your ripe produce and your juices. The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. Likewise, you shall do with your oxen and your sheep. It shall be with its mother seven days. On the eighth day, you shall give it to me. You shall be holy men to me. You shall not eat meat torn by beasts in the field. You shall throw it to the dogs. You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. You shall not follow a crowd to do evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice. You shall not show partiality to a poor man in a dispute. If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it.”

So you see this is simply a whole series of imperative statements, commands with no corresponding judgment issued to us.

So what this means is that the law of the covenant is clearly set forth in two halves. The first half is a whole series of if-then statements beginning with the laws relating to servitude or servants at the beginning of it and ending with these if-then statements about the widowed, the fatherless, the poor, and strangers. And then the second half is a whole long series of imperatives with no if-then formulation.

This means we should look at the first half of the law of the covenant—which we are now finishing up—as a complete unit. What that tells us is that this unit begins and ends with admonitions to kindness. The bookends for this half of the law of the covenant are admonitions to gracious, compassionate actions in terms of our treatment of slaves in the opening verses and of strangers, widows, fatherless, and the poor in the closing statements.

These are the bookends of the law of the covenant. Kindness then—graciousness in the extension of positive assistance to these easily oppressed image-bearers—is of the essence of covenant keeping. Gracious, compassionate actions toward these manifestations of the needy in the context of the law of the covenant—these gracious actions are of the essence of covenant keeping, of the absolute essence of covenant keeping.

Remember we said two weeks ago: the conclusion of the whole covenant in Deuteronomy, the affirmation of covenant keeping, is that I gave the portion of the tithe that was to go to the poor to them. Gracious, compassionate actions are of the essence of covenant keeping. Why? Because the prime effect of our sin—remember, the moral and ethical pictures for us here in the law of the covenant. The prime effect of our sin was alienation from God and from one another.

And the manifestation of reconciliation to God must be reconciliation to men and gracious actions to men, or there is no reconciliation to God. Okay. The primary effect of our sin is alienation from God which is mirrored in our alienation and mistreatment of one another. And if we understand the gracious nature of our reconciliation to God, we will demonstrate gracious actions toward the fatherless, the widows, the poor, and the stranger.

And if we do not, then it is a clear-cut picture that we have no true reconciliation by grace with God. To tell everyone to just work harder and to ignore the needy—of the fatherless, of the widow—to not provide for widows in the context of the church, for instance, when we’re needy, this is a practical denial of the faith and it means that we’re serving and worshiping a God of works righteousness, which is not the God of the scriptures.

Now, this isn’t the only text that brings this truth out in bold letters. The book of Leviticus, being at the climactic center of the Pentateuch, has a central section in chapter 19. This centrality of Leviticus 19 is marked off by a torrent of assertions and statements: “I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God. I am the Lord your God.” Chapter 19 is peppered with them over and over. And at the center of this central section thematically in the context of Leviticus is Leviticus 19:18.

We read: “You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge nor bear a grudge against the children of your people. Don’t be bitter against them. Right? Bearing grudges. But you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”

Now chapter 19, the central section of Leviticus begins with verse 2:

“Speak to the congregation of the children of Israel and say unto them, ‘You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.’”

Holiness then—reflected and proved by a kindness to your neighbor and particularly the neighbor that is a stranger, a widow, a fatherless, or a poor person—is at the heart of the Pentateuch itself. The reversal of the fall of man with the resultant bickering and hatred between Adam and Eve—the reversal reflected in the extensions of the grace we have received to others who need it. This is the core, the gospel message of the book of the Pentateuch, the five books of the Pentateuch. The very core is that the alienation and the bickering that we saw manifested in Genesis between Adam and Eve is now rolled back and grudges are no longer held, but kindness is demonstrated in love toward your neighbor and particularly to your neighbor who is poor, widowed, fatherless, or a stranger.

We see the same thing in the central section of Ephesians 4, the text that Richard spoke to last week. Do a little tag-teaming here on you a little bit. In Ephesians 4, we see this same thing.

Turn to Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4 verses 1 and 2:

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called with all loneliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.”

So at the center of this list of what it is like to put off and put on—put off the old man, put on the new man—what do we have? We have an admonition to walk worthy of our calling. In other words, he’s going to tell us here how we’re supposed to walk as Christians. If you’re really a Christian, then what you’ve got to do to demonstrate that is not to lobby for a theocratic form of government in the civil government. I mean, that’s good and proper application. But the immediate application is to have all loneliness and gentleness with longsuffering and to bear up with one another in love. It’s the same thing as Leviticus 19:18.

Going down to verse 17:

“I say therefore and testify in the Lord, verse 17, ‘You should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk.’ The Gentiles are walking in the Adamic flesh. That’s the old man’s walk.”

You’re not supposed to walk that way.

“And the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated—alienation and isolation from the life of God because of the ignorance that’s in them because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness.”

See a combination there again of this moral and ethical impurity of lewdness, greed—lewdness and uncleanness with greediness.

“But you’ve not so learned Christ if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him. As the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man, the Adamic nature, which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which is created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Put off the uncleanness that was pictured for you ceremonially in the Old Testament by the laws of uncleanness, demonstrating the effects of the curse in your life. Put off the moral and ethical uncleanness that you have a long list of in Exodus 21–23. That’s what the Adamic nature loves to do to his fellow man and would do to the Lord Jesus Christ if he was right there with him. Put all that stuff off and put on the cleanness of Leviticus and put on the ethical uprightness of the law of the covenant. That’s what Ephesians is really hearkening us to do here.

“Put off, put away lying. Let each of you speak the truth to his neighbor, for you are members of one another. Be angry and don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down in your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor working with his hands what is good. It’s a direct reference to the law of the covenant. Right? To steal and make restitution. Put off, put on—Adamic nature, new nature in Christ.”

“You might have something to give to him who has need.”

Verse 29:

“Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for necessary edification, that it may minister grace to the hearers. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

The Holy Spirit is the one who transforms us out of the Adamic nature into the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. He comes and pushes the characteristics of Christ by means of his word into our character and allows us to put off and put on.

And so now after saying don’t grieve the Holy Spirit, we have a couple of concluding remarks that sort of wrap all of this old man new man stuff up.

“Let all bitterness” as Richard preached on last week so well. “Let bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. Put off the Adamic nature which is prone to bitterness. In the words of Leviticus 19:18, which is prone to bear grudges against one another, and which is prone thus to oppress anyone you can oppress with wrath and malice. And put on instead the new man, the clean man, the ethical, pure, and upright man of the law of the covenant.”

And what does he describe that in the top of the list in verse 32?

“Be kind to one another. Compassionate actions toward each other is the mark of the new man and the Christian. Tenderhearted. Why do we have kindness toward each other? Because we are to forgive one another just as God in Christ forgave us.”

We serve a God of grace. We proclaim the God of grace and bear witness to him, and we give gracious, compassionate actions toward each other. And when we bear grudges and when we are embittered and when we oppress one another, we preach a god of works. We preach heresy and we preach idolatry, serving of another God.

“Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children.” It goes on in chapter 5 to say, “Walk in love as Christ also has loved us, given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”

He’s rolled back the ethical, the ritual uncleanness. He’s rolled back the ethical and moral forwardness. Can you see how bitterness is set in such radical opposition to the kindness that is to characterize the redeemed man? Radical opposition.

The immediate context then for the verses we are considering today is really the flip side of the putting off of the bitterness which we were all properly admonished to last Lord’s day. That flip side is to engage in practical actions of kindness to our neighbor and particularly to those neighbors who would be easily the targets of oppression otherwise, and those members of our community particularly who evidence the need for gracious actions.

So that’s the big picture and that’s the immediate context. And now let’s talk a little bit…