Dennis Tuuri

# Restitution and Restoration – The Eighth Word, Part Three
## Exodus 22:1-15 | July 17, 2011 | Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Is my mic on? Yes. Listen as we read from today’s sermon text, which is Exodus 22:1-15. You may not catch all of them, but the Hebrew word that is frequently translated “restitution” is found 15 times in these 15 verses—not one in every verse, sometimes doubling up and some verses with zero—but you’ll see 15 different translated words or phrases of this particular Hebrew word for restitution.

Exodus 22:1-15. If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep. If the thief is found breaking in and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed. If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed. He should make full restitution. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.

If the theft is certainly found alive in his hand, whether it is an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall restore double. If a man causes a field or vineyard to be grazed and lets loose his animal and it feeds in another man’s field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field and the best of his own vineyard. If fire breaks out and catches in thorns, so that stacked grain, standing grain, or the field is consumed, he who kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.

If a man delivers to his neighbor money or articles to keep, and it is stolen out of the man’s house, if the thief is found, he shall pay double. If the thief is not found, then the master of the house shall be brought to the judges to see whether he has put his hand into his neighbor’s goods. For any kind of trespass, whether it concerns an ox, a donkey, a sheep, or clothing, or for any kind of lost thing which another claims to be his, the cause of both parties shall come before the judges, and whomever the judges condemn shall pay double to his neighbor.

If a man delivers to his neighbor a donkey, an ox, a sheep, or any animal to keep, and it dies, is hurt, or is driven away, no one seeing it, then an oath of the Lord shall be between them both, that he has not put his hand into his neighbor’s goods. And the owner of it shall accept that, and he shall not make it good. But if, in fact, it is stolen from him, he shall make restitution to the owner of it.

If it’s torn in pieces by a beast, then he shall bring it as evidence, and he shall not make good what was torn. 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 the owner was with it, he shall not make it good. If it was hired, it came for its hire.

Thus, in the reading of God’s word. Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the clearness and the clarity of these laws that we have just read. We pray, Father, that you would help us to understand them in their fullness and depth. We desire, Lord God, your kingdom to be manifest on earth as it is in heaven. We desire the restoration of all things through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the indwelling Holy Spirit in your people. Make us, Lord God, a people who teach and practice restoration. In Jesus’ name we ask it and for the sake of that kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

Okay. So there’s this tremendous honking outline. Not to worry. Let me put you at peace about that. The Hebrew word that’s translated in those various ways 15 times is *shalm*. *Shalm*. Does it sound like another word? Yeah, it sounds like *shalom*. That’s because they’re part of the same word family. And in fact, *shalom* is sometimes translated “peace.” When they came into the promised land, they would make an offer of *shalm*. And if the city accepted it, great. And if not, they’d make war on it. So what we read about today is an essential component of *shalom*.

Well, let me bring you a little bit of shalom. What we have to do today is to do a very brief overview of these 15 verses. However, in times past, I’ve actually preached a series of four or five sermons on these same verses. And in a desire to not just help you, but to encourage you and exhort you to know your Bibles, I’ve provided outlines from all of those past sermons where I deal with each of these particular cases in much more detail.

Hopefully you have some method—young people, hear this. You should have some kind of method to keep track of what you know about the Bible and to pick up stuff that other people have taught you. It’s useful for you to understand your Bible when you read through it. And so hopefully you’ll take these outlines and put them in some kind of place for you. I could have just, you know, made copies like last week and put them in the rack. I didn’t. This is like medicine—not waiting for you to ask for it, giving it to you. These are important laws.

So the first page is the only thing we’re going to be dealing with, really. The second page is a brief summation of these particular cases or laws that are found in Exodus 22:1-15. And the next several pages are simply sermon notes. And then the last page is a coloring page for the children because Zaccheus—the wee little man who had to get up in a tree to see Jesus because he was short—Zaccheus made a pronouncement that if he takes things inappropriately (he was a tax collector), he would make restitution for those things that he took fourfold. I think that’s what he says. We’ll read the verse a little later on. So Zaccheus is a reminder to our children of the importance of restitution and restoration as it relates to somebody to whom Jesus then said the kingdom has now arrived at your place. So may we be people who are restoring things.

The coming of Jesus according to Matthew 19:28 and Acts 3:21 is to affect the regeneration and restoration of all things. The regeneration and restoration—and the word used here can be translated in these two verses as “restoration” or “restitution”—but that’s what Jesus actually came to do is the subject of this sermon. So the sermon’s topic is restitution, but it’s also restoration. And those two words really are quite similarly linked, both in terms of what the scriptures say but also in terms of the word itself.

This word “restitution” that comes over into our English means to restore, to set back up. It’s related to the word “statute,” right? You can hear it in “statute.” Statue is related to statute. There are enactments where people are stood up. Things are established. And to restitute is to restore, to restore from a fallen estate something to its proper standing again. And that’s what this word means. And so restitution and restoration, they’re both really part of the same thing.

And so in Acts 3:21, we read that Jesus has come for the restoring of all things. And that’s what’s going on now. Jesus came. If we wanted to say, “What’s one summary statement we could make about the coming of Jesus?” He came to regenerate and to restore all things through his work. The restoration of estates to rightful owners, a balancing of accounts, is the technical definition normally assigned to the particular word in Acts 3:21, the Greek word. So to restore accounts, to make right. Empty “rights”—you know, to put the rights, put everything right again, right? This is what it’s about, and this is what this concept is.

This is what’s mentioned in very specific ways 15 times. This is what Jesus Christ came to effect—is the restoring of things to their rightful owner. Man’s original sin is theft from God. And Jesus comes as the second Adam to restore man to God—rather, the original order. And then for God to restore to people, in union with Christ, dominion over land. Not so that we can just enjoy it, but so you can restore what becomes fallen when sinful men do their thing in the context of the world.

So really, this topic—we could talk about it in terms of trying to change the civil statutes. We’ll certainly talk about it today in terms of how our community should work—you know, our church community here, as well as perhaps the implications for our own communities. But really, we don’t want to get down to that narrow application without seeing the broad picture here, that what we’re talking about is central to the gospel. And in fact, you could say it is the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus Christ came to restore all things. The goal of godly society is restoration at every point. That’s what the purpose of the preaching of the word, the coming of the Spirit, the reason why God hasn’t taken you off to the afterlife yet—is so that your life might be involved in restoration in this grand purpose for what Jesus Christ is doing.

As I thought about these case laws—so-called, again—I was reminded of a book that Christine started to read to me this week. I’ve got the title on here. Now, for those of you—you know, Melody, Matt, Michael Lawrence, other people who are involved in thoughts about education—*homo sapiens*, man is man first and foremost as worshiping man, not as *sapiens*, thinking man. This is a new book recommended to me by Jeff Meyers called *Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation*, subtitled *Cultural Liturgies*, by James K. A. Smith. And he talks—he doesn’t talk about *homo sapiens*. He talks about *homo liturgicus*—that man is man as he engages in liturgical actions that form him.

And we just started the book, but it sounds fascinating. And I’ve already learned some new big words, like “animality.” Never heard of that. So it’s kind of written, you know, it’s got some big 25-cent words in it, but it’s going to be an interesting read. And I think that this whole movement—that’s kind of just beginning in the last 20 years—of rethinking man, to junk Descartes’ “I think therefore I am,” and say that we love, we have a love and desire. That desire is ultimately God and his kingdom. And that love and desire is expressed, transformed, or matured—we could say—through liturgical actions, right?

So even Tony Robbins says, “Monotonous repetition is the mother of mastery.” So we come in here and we monotonously do the same thing every Lord’s day. There’s things. And if you think about it, your life is filled with little liturgies. I have a particular liturgy Saturday night. After everything’s kind of in my head, I go outside, a little glorified air, sometimes a little music, and I just kind of let thoughts bubble up that I might want to stress in the sermon.

We’re filled with these kinds of things. And if you think about it, restitution—the paying of twofold in most cases for what one steals, and all kinds of other things going on that we just read about—you can see this as just raw intellectual ways that we should work as a culture, just as political theory or something, or practice. Or you can see it as a liturgical action that reminds us of the grand scope of what life is all about.

So if we steal from somebody and if we make restitution, if we break somebody else’s thing and they’re not around, and instead of just going with the flow of the culture (and “oh, who cares?”), we actually make it right—the way these laws kind of push us in that direction—these are liturgical actions. They’re symbols of something far greater that’s being expressed by that simple thing. It’s a real thing. It’s a real restoration, but it’s related to the restoration of all things. And then it sort of trains us to think of our whole lives in the context of that.

You know, if none of that makes sense to you, just forget it. We’ll get to the specific details of the text. But honestly, what I just said, I think, is the most important part of what I’m going to say today. Probably disappoints a lot of you, but you know, God’s word trains us in actions. In our parish group today, we’re going to be talking a little bit about Peter Leithart’s book *Against Christianity* and his section on “Against Theology.”

The scriptures don’t teach a systematic theology—as much as you can get one out of it—as much as they teach a series of actions, history, rituals that God uses to form us. And so one way to think about these laws is that kind of thing.

On your handout, I’ve given you also where we’re going. The next few sermons—in case you want to think about the next three. We’ll do at least three more sermons on the Eighth Word, and those three are listed on your handouts.

And let’s then just a few points I want to make today. Some will take a little longer than others. The first one’s quite easy. I’ve kind of already made it. The first point is *shalom* and *shalm*. And so again, this is very significant. And how are you going to know this if I don’t tell you? How am I going to know it if I don’t do a little bit of study?

This week, do a little word study on what this restitution thing means, this particular word. I’ve got all kinds of things going on in my head about it. But then I go to my little Bible program and click on the little button and it tells me, “Oh, it’s *shalom*.” And it’s part of the same group of words as *shalom*. Well, half my work’s done today as soon as I see that.

Bible study is significant and important. And it’s important to understand at least enough about the original languages to do that kind of thing—simple word studies based in the original words. And so it’s very significant to remember that restitution is tied to the restoration of all things. *Shalm*—these small actions that really are intended to produce *shalom*, God’s peace. *Shalom* is God’s peace—the rich ordering of all life in the presence of God. God brings peace, not the absence of conflict, but the right ordering of everything.

And so *shalm* produces a right ordering of things that have been flipped around and been taken out of place. Jesus comes to put the world to rights, to right all wrongs as far as the curse is found. And so that’s a very significant point. And if all you remember from today’s sermon is *shalom* and *shalm*, that’ll help you a ton. That’ll help you a lot in how you evaluate what should happen when you or your relatives or your kids—in other words, your spouse—what happens in community when things are broken, stolen, damaged inadvertently, etc.

Think in terms of *shalom* and *shalm*. That God’s word tells us these are small liturgical actions of what we do, but they’re significant. You know, it’s interesting. Only a few people will remember this, but I think the first controversy we ever had at our church involved this very thing. It involved a young teenage boy who stole a purse from somebody at church, another person. So we got involved and we ended up finding out it was him that stole it.

And then what the parents wanted was just, “Well, he’ll give the person back, say sorry, and we’re fine.” And we were like, “Well, you know, that Exodus 22 stuff, I think there’d be something a little bit more than that.” And then the offended party said, “No, no, all we want is a perspective. What are you talking about, restitution? Who cares about Exodus 22?” These were people who were supposedly very fanatic devotees of Reverend R.J. Rushdoony, who is where we learn half this stuff in terms of Exodus 22.

So, you know, it’s interesting. These things sound easy, but somehow our sentimental view of things and the ambience we live in—Christianity today of kind of a cheap grace and just sort of overlook everything and whatever—you know, it makes it hard for us. As simple as this stuff is and as profound as it is, it’s hard for us to actually do it. You know, it just is. It’s a big deal. Big controversy at RCC.

Okay. Overview of the text. Now, I want to do this very quickly, but I do—it’s important to do it. What I’ve got here is on their second page. And I don’t even know if this is helpful, but you know, it’s a way of sort of organizing the verses that we just read about. And so, you know, remember, these are what some call case laws, right? Another way to think of it is kind of sermonic notations on if particular things happen.

Now, we don’t believe in just cutting and pasting from whatever is in the Old Testament case laws to today’s culture. But we do think that the equity of that, right?—the truth underneath it, all that stuff should come over. And a lot of things can just come over one for one. And through most of Christian history, it did. Most of Exodus 22:1-15 just sort of came over because it’s not all that difficult, and it doesn’t seem like it needs a lot of rework. But that’s no longer true. And so these are foreign texts to us.

So what I’ve done is—there’s like 15 verses, and it turns out there’s 15 cases that I’ve broken it up into. There’s seven cases at the beginning dealing with unauthorized use of another’s property, and then there’s eight cases in the second half of the chapter that deal with problems stemming from authorized use.

Okay. So in any event, all this is about property, and it’s about an application in the broader way of teaching what the Eighth Word is all about. And so the verses dealing with—the unauthorized plain sense meaning—don’t steal. What happens when you steal? But then, you know what? You don’t want to diminish somebody’s property. And so what happens if you’ve been given permission to have property of another person for whatever reason, and something happens? There’s some damage to it.

So that’s kind of the way to think about it. And it automatically then sort of broadens out our understanding of the Eighth Word. Both these things are subsumed under the same general topic of restitution, the Eighth Word. So the Eighth Word has implications not just in terms of outright theft, but also in terms of authorized use of someone else’s property. And what should we do when things break? When things go wrong? “Uh-oh, better call Exodus 22:1-15.”

Okay. And both of these sets are broken out into two other sets. So first, there’s five cases involving violation of property in verses 1 to 4, right? “So man steals an ox or a sheep, slaughters it or sells it, restore five ox for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.” So restitution is right away. And right away we have this kind of odd four and five thing. And it’s not our—well, I cannot talk about that. I have talked about it in those other sermons that I gave you the outlines for. But understand that it starts that way. And so you got ox and sheep. You got strong things. You know, sheep, you know that we know was used in Nathan talking to David, you know, that a poor man will have a sheep. There’s stuff going on there that goes beyond just a description of property. And it’s stealing, but at any event, restitution.

And then secondly, “If the thief is found breaking in…”—so now it’s going to say first it deals with theft which results in slaughtering or selling it. Then it says something about what happens if the guy’s trying to steal that ox. If he’s found breaking in and he is struck so that he dies, there should be no guilt for his bloodshed. So he breaks in, you find him, and if you kill him at nighttime—which we’ll see from the next verse—it’s okay. And again, why? Well, we can’t get into that today, but it breaks out the case. This one is distinct from “If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed.”

So the plain meaning seems to be: at night, you’re protecting yourself or your property. You don’t know what’s going on exactly, and you can shoot the guy, and that’s that. It’s okay. If he’s violent, he’s breaking in to steal property. You don’t know why he’s breaking in. Could be trying to kill you. If it’s daytime, no, you can’t do that. You can’t shoot them. Now, this has actually formed a lot of basis in Western law and in American law for when you can and cannot discharge a firearm when somebody’s trying to take your property.

I think, again, though, the language is freighted here with symbolism. It doesn’t just say “if it’s daytime.” It says, in verse 3, “If the sun has risen on him.” And there’s other verses that relate to this—for instance, in Job 24:14: “The murderer rises with delight. He kills the poor and needy, and in the night he is like a thief.” Well, that’d be an important verse to think through how we’re going to make actual application of this. But in any event, we don’t want to get off on that rabbit trail, right?

And we want to say, though, that it does govern under the Eighth Commandment, the Eighth Word, the exposition of it—what you do to people who are breaking in to steal your property.

Verse 3 goes on to say, “He should make full restitution. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.” So what it’s done is: if he steals these things, restitution. If he’s breaking in to steal, and it’s dark or light, and then if he doesn’t have money to pay, he’s to be sold into slavery. He’s your servant till he works off the debt. I mean, it’s not like, you know, the kind of slavery that we had in America. It’s not that. It’s debt servitude. It’s people working off their debt to the person they can’t afford to pay back.

Another very important aspect: somebody who is stolen, he may not be able to make full restitution. If he’s got nothing, he’ll be sold for his theft. So in other words, you know, he then works off and gets money. And until he pays back you, all he can live on is his subsistence. He can’t be saving for his projects until he’s paid you back.

Next case: “If the theft is certainly found alive in his hand…”—”If the theft is found alive in his hand, whether it’s an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall restore double.” So, see, if it isn’t killed or sold, he still has the thing, and you find him, then it’s twofold restitution. So, you know, right away, and I’ve given you on your handouts today a little summation of the various kinds of restitution.

Here we already have 2x, 4x, 5x given to us in relationship to various cases. In Proverbs 6, we’re told that if a guy steals food because he’s hungry, at 7x, maybe. Again, we can’t get off into that rabbit trail, but you know, seven could be used as a fullness number. “He shall surely make restitution for what he steals.” So in the Bible, there’s various things you got to think through in terms of restitution. But most things, most theft that we find out about, is this twofold restitution that is described in verse 4.

Okay, so those things are fairly simple. Then the next group in verse 5: “You cause something to be grazed. You’re not careful with your animal. It goes over and eats your neighbor’s crops. What do you do? Oh, it’s okay.” No, no. God says that, you know, he’s not interested in you just sort of waving your hand if you’re the person whose crops have been hurt. He’s saying he wants things restored. He wants things brought back to their state and then some, right? Twofold restitution. Why? Well, that meant the crime didn’t pay. You lost exactly what it is you were hoping to gain, right? You got to restore back the car and the value of another car. So, it’s, you know, the idea is “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”—not in a retaliatory sense, but in a restoration sense. What you did is what you’ll end up paying, right?

You tried to steal a hundred bucks. It’s going to cost you a hundred bucks, and the other party will become enriched by an extra $100. So restoration has within it not just going back to Eden, right? Not just going back to the way things were, but actually a movement from Eden to Jerusalem. You understand that? So it’s not going back to the way it was before the theft. It’s actually improving the culture because the person—the thief—is diminished. The godly person is enriched. And it’s a picture. Remember what we said? *Shalom* and *shalm*. It’s a picture of what restoration under Jesus is all about.

We’re not just headed back to the garden and everything made right again. No, it’s double restitution. And God uses sin sinlessly to affect maturation, increased production, to move from the garden in Eden to the city garden of Jerusalem. Societal transformation, right? That’s the big picture. And the small picture are these little restitutions that are going on.

Well, so you let your animal loose. He goes over there. You’re not careful enough. And you don’t just make it right. You make it right with the best. The text goes on to say, “Make restitution from the best of his own field and the best of his own vineyard.” You weren’t doing it intentionally. You didn’t drive your animal over to his field. That would be theft. That’d be twofold restitution. It was an accident. But still you have responsibility. And still the end result is maturation and development where the responsible become enriched and the people that are irresponsible lose a little something till they become more responsible.

“Fire breaks out and catches in thorns so that standing grain, stacked grain, the field is consumed. He who kindled the fire shall surely make restitution.” And so here it seems to be accidental. And so you got to make restitution, make it right again. Now in the scriptures, Paul talks about thorns and wood and fire in the church, right? So right away we want to say that, yeah, there was an initial application of this to agricultural fire getting out and harming somebody’s field.

But think about the broader implication. Think about you’ve slandered somebody at church. You’ve hurt their reputation. Most of you have probably done that at one time or another in your life. I’ll bet I’ve heard most of you do it at one time or another. Not, you know, you didn’t want to hurt somebody, but you sort of positioned things in such a way as to make them not appear in the best of light. And so it’s like fire, right? And you’re sort of hurting the standing grain that was just sitting there next to you in the church.

What’s your obligation? Your obligation is not just to say, “Oh, I shouldn’t do that anymore. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.” And move on. No, your obligation is to bring about wholeness, to go from garden to Jerusalem. You don’t restore it back to God. You actually improve the man’s reputation. You have an obligation to go beyond and restore his reputation. And if you just stop and say, “I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m sorry,” not good enough by half. Exactly half. You’re supposed to go on and restore restitution, *shalm*, to bring peace by restoring the reputation that your fiery tongue, you know, damaged.

Just an example of how these laws, set in their broad context of the restoration and regeneration of all things, start to play themselves out if we understand this sermonic language being used here. And that’s why it’s not just case law. It’s sermonic law because it’s using terminology that’s used typologically in other portions of the scriptures for other things. So we can move quite easily from fire breaking out and then the tongue set on fire from hell, right? And we can move quite easily to you and me. We’re all part of this loaf over here. We’re all part of that standing grain or processed grain. And we get damaged by tongues set aflame by fire.

See, that’s what’s going on. It isn’t a law book. It’s sermons using typological language that teaches us law. Yeah. But it’s said in a much broader context. And if all we walk away from a sermon on restitution is an attempt to change laws without seeing that the change of laws is meant to provide a symbolic, typological implication of a change in perspective about what man is doing here, then we’ve missed the point.

If we just layer on biblical law onto our basic American mentality—no, God doesn’t let us do that. It’s not good for us. Biblical law is to transform us, to redefine who we are as a people. These are the rituals of our ancestors. These are the lawful, legal rituals of our ancestors, and they teach us about who they were and who they were supposed to be. And they teach us about who we are and who we’re supposed to be.

Do we sin? Yeah. Is sin just patched over? No. Is sin just restored? Simple one-fold restitution? No. Double restitution is the basic idea for most of these things. Well, other things go on.

Now you deliver to your man—your neighbor’s money or articles to keep. So now we move into the section of laws involved with safekeeping, bailment. Bailment is an old-fashioned word. It just means to give something to somebody for safekeeping, for whatever reason, right? So I give you something, and it’s stolen out of your man’s house. If the thief is found, he shall pay double. So, you know, that’s fine. That’s pretty straightforward. The neighbor doesn’t have to pay anything. The thief pays double.

“If the thief is not found, then the master of the house shall be brought to the judges to see whether he has put his hand into his neighbor’s goods. For any kind of trespass, whether it concerns an ox, a donkey, a sheep, clothing, or for any kind of lost thing which another claims to be his, the cause of both parties shall come before the judges, and whomever the judges condemn shall pay double to his neighbor.”

So, you know, things can get difficult. You don’t know what happened to the stuff. And you got to go before the judges. God’s established a system of judicial representatives to rule for him with wisdom. And if they decide—maybe they decide wrong sometimes—but what they decide goes. And as a ritual, it still works. As a ritual, it still shows us that theft, presumably by the person that’s convicted, has to be restituted double.

“If a man delivers to his neighbor a donkey, an ox, a sheep, or any animal to keep, and it dies, is hurt, or is driven away, no one seeing it, then an oath of the Lord shall be between them both that he has not put his hand into his neighbor’s goods. And the owner of it shall accept that, and he shall not make it good, shall not make restitution.”

So again, here, in addition to judges, God gives us oaths. “No, I swear in a stack of Bibles. I didn’t do that to your stuff. Animals dragged it away. Okay.” And if the guy does that, you know, then you’re supposed to say, “Okay, and let it go.” No restitution.

“But if, in fact, it is stolen from him, he shall make restitution to the owner of it. Now, this is a hard one to understand. But what it’s saying is, ‘I’ve got your thing. Somebody has stolen it.’ And if in fact it’s stolen, then I have to make restitution to you.” And then it says, “If it is torn to pieces, then you have evidence and you make good. You shall not have to make good. Make restitution.” I think the proper understanding—and it’s complicated, you know, in the Hebrew translation—the translation of the Hebrew here. But the idea is: if it’s stolen and I, who have it, I’m holding it in safekeeping for you, I get the thief. I make restitution to you. Simple one-fold restitution, which means I get to keep the twofold—the second part of it, right?

So the thief, he’s got to pay twofold. And he pays it to the neighbor who is keeping it safe for his neighbor. And then the neighbor is obligated to pass on simple restitution to the owner, which gives the neighbor an incentive to discover the thief and the property and get it back.

So here, you know, the law of restitution making whole actually creates neighborliness in the sense of a community. And it means that community members will look out for each other, particularly for things that they’ve given to you to keep in safekeeping. There’s a financial reward if you catch the thief of something you’re keeping for another person. And again, if you get lost in the details of that, it’s okay. But the point is, in all these safekeeping laws, because what’s being restored and protected and defended isn’t just the property. It’s the relationships of the community.

It says how should a community work in relationship to, you know, the Eighth Word and the ideas of restitution. And the way the neighborhood works is people look out for each other and have a positive incentive to punish actual thieves.

“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. So I, you know, I borrow your what—television?—and it breaks, and you’re not with it. I have to make simple restitution to you because now what’s important is maintaining relationship in community. Now it’s important that no suspicion enters into one neighbor’s mind that the other neighbor might have misused the property and he has no way of knowing whether it was misused or not.”

It goes on to say, “The neighbor being with it, he shall—if his owner was with it, he shall not make it good. So if I loan you my TV and I’m watching the TV with you and it breaks, no restitution from you. Because it deals with suspicion here, and the text knows and it’s telling us cmonically that in terms of property, suspicions can arise in community, and we want to avoid that. And at the same time, we engage in a liturgy of restoration, restitution, *shalm*, reminding us that what’s important in life is the overarching goal of the *shalom*, the restoration of all things, and certainly broken relationships in community.

“If it was hired, it came for his hire.” Last law. And an important one, because then it tells us, look, you know, it’s good for community to have things that you rent, right? Let me rent your lawnmower for a day. I’ll give you 10 bucks. And this law tells us that in that kind of situation, in that community, in addition to the 10 bucks, you’re actually buying a little insurance in case it breaks when the owner of it isn’t with you. And you don’t have to make restitution. It came for the hire. Okay.

So there’s a brief overview. And if you have interest in any of the specific details of these particular matters, you can consult the outlines I’ve given you or the sermons, which, of course, are online. But that’s an overview of what’s happening and the way property—and specifically in the first half—stolen property should be dealt with.

Now, that’s not the way it’s dealt with in our criminal justice system, right? In our criminal justice system, it almost is the exact reverse. In our criminal justice system, we have this thing called prison. And you know, it’s based on a theology of Quakerism where you would be put into a monastic cell. In that cell you would become a penitent, right? And you would learn the error of your ways and come out a better man. So we send people to a penitentiary. That’s where the word comes from.

We put them in a jail cell, a monastic cell. And somehow we think caged up like that for a year, five years, 15 years with screaming men every night, incredible profanity spoken, unspeakable acts done—somehow that’s going to produce *shalom*. I mean, come on. Come on. It’s the reverse of what should be happening.

And it’s even worse than that. Somebody steals your car and you get it destroyed. They go to jail. They don’t restitute you. They don’t even think about restituting God for their sin. They make restitution. They pay their debt to society, to the state, whatever that means. You don’t get restitution. And in fact, not only do you not get restored—even simple restitution, let alone the kind of *shalom* that’s produced by multiple restitution, disincentive to steal, and incentive to be a proper property-owning guy who does good stewardship—you don’t get even simple restitution. What you get is a bill—either through your employment, state taxes, or your property bill that comes once a year—and you write a check to pay for the guy who stole your car to live in that cell.

Not only are you not restituted. You are harmed, right? So what do you do? Well, you got to find some way to protect your property. So you get insurance. You get automobile theft insurance. And again, the thief—isn’t he?—he’s not going to have insurance. Typically, you’re going to have to pay for your insurance. And the more thieves and people there are, you got to pay more and more money for self-rest—for self-protection, self-restitution. It is completely reversed from what it should be, right? I mean, it’s just astonishing that we have reached a point—and mostly in the last hundred years, and originally the idea coming from bad theology—that people are inherently good and if we just give people time out for 20 years, just sit them down in a cell, everything’s going to be copacetic. No, that’s not the problem.

The problem is we’re trying to affect the restoration, the reordering of the world, and part of that is transferring stewardship of property—the most important thing we have to exercise dominion over—from the ungodly to the godly through principle. Now, the ungodly, he can give property to, assuming he sees the error of his ways and repents, makes that restitution, right? But that’s what we’re about. And it’s completely the opposite. It is absolutely incredible that things have come to such a place, and not just in America but across the world.

Let’s see. I have an interesting quote here. But where—yes. There was a man named Prince who is a Belgian, and there was a Paris prison congress in 1895. And they were saying, “Well, you know, restitution’s kind of hard, and there’s all these practical problems,” and, you know, and there are. Listen, there are problems with the system. Nobody’s saying there isn’t. We’re trying to take 15 little verses and make a criminal justice system. There’s going to be problems with application. It’s going to be difficult. We got to be, you know, adults about it. We can’t just cut and paste, and we have to be thoughtful. So there’s certainly problems.

But Prince was sitting there listening to all these supposed difficulties. And they were making the case for the modern-day prison system. And finally, Prince said this: “The guilty man lodged, fed, clothed, warmed, lighted, entertained at the expense of the state in a model cell, issued from it with a sum of money lawfully earned, has paid his debt to society. He can set his victims at defiance. But the victim has the consolation. He can think that by taxes he pays to the treasury, he has contributed towards the paternal care which has guarded the criminal during his stay in prison.”

Isn’t that great? That’s how bad things are, folks. It’s worse, though. That’s the criminal justice system. What about the bigger picture of restitution’s relationship to forgiveness and atonement, right?

Skipping over some stuff here on the outline. Going to the next major point. So one of the big problems that a proper understanding of these verses gives us is the simple problem. Obviously, from the get-go, from a prima facie look at Exodus 22, our criminal justice system is not right. Jesus has come to restore all things, to put the world to rights, to put everything right again. And let me tell you, it ain’t right now. It’s all upside down. But it’s upside down in some other significant ways.

First of all, there’s a relationship between restitution and atonement. And I’ve listed the verse that you want to look at is Numbers 5:6-8, where both restitution and an atonement offering are made for people that sin by means of property crimes.

So if we, as we said earlier, sacrilege is the original crime—God’s property rights are intruded by people. A commentator named Spelman put it this way: “Sacrilege was the first sin, the master sin, and the common sin at the beginning of the world, committed in earth by men in corruption, committed in paradise by men in perfection. Committed in heaven itself by the angels in glory against God the Father by arrogating his power. Against God the Son by condemning his word. Against God the Holy Ghost by profaning things sanctified, and against all of them in general by invading and violating the deity.” This was the fall of Adam and Eve.

And so it was this theft of all these things from God. And so it makes sense, then, that the Lord Jesus Christ came to make atonement, to make propitiation of God’s wrath, to produce a oneness, a *shalom*, between men and people by making restitution through his atoning death on the cross.

Jesus Christ offered perfect obedience—number one—and number two, he offered his own death on the cross as restitution. We could say the kind of restitution for capital crimes is the death of the person. Jesus came to affect that. But secondly, Jesus then redeems us, and we, as the work of the Lord Jesus Christ through the indwelling spirit, we also then are called—as we’ve been saying—to further restitution and restoration.

By virtue of the requirement of restitution, we must then, to a double, fourfold, and fivefold degree (quoting from Rushdoony), be developed to the glory of God. The creation must be developed to the glory of God in his service as man’s required restitution. Men must restore to God his due total lordship over all things. And this restoration begun by Christ’s regenerating act, continued by the Holy Spirit, and made the very life of the redeemed man, will further *shall* begin to come in its own only when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.

Why twofold restitution? How did Jesus affect twofold restitution? He makes restitution for us on the cross, but then the other part—not just restoring us back to Adamic innocence, the other part—is man restoring the created order that’s been affected by the fall of man. Not again back to Eden, but to the new Eden, the garden city of Jerusalem, by taking man, taking the created order, and exercising proper property rights over it. And restitution then becomes doubled, fourfold, fivefold, as the world which we had crushed under our sinful feet now comes to fullness and blessing again.

Isaiah 42:40—verse 2, rather—says that Jerusalem has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. We have to come to some understanding of that. And in part, it’s Jesus’s perfect obedience and then his death on the cross. And in part, it’s that we, as redeemed men, now work for the restoration of all things.

So first, we got a problem in criminal justice. Secondly, we got a problem because men don’t see atonement and propitiation as having anything to do with restitution and the restoration—a double restitution of the created order—and hence the need for man to exercise dominion.

And then the third problem we have is forgiveness. Forgiveness—because in the scriptures, forgiveness is tied to these very acts. You know, the seven A’s of confession involve accepting the consequences for our action. And if you’ve stolen something from somebody, your pastors here are going to say, part of proper confession is restitution. Agreeing to the consequences of paying twofold for what you’ve stolen, okay? Or not just not slandering a person, but speaking well of that person and building up their reputation.

Proverbs 14:9 says this: “Fools mock at the guilt offering.” Now the guilt offering was this restitution idea—making, you know, restitution payment for the effects of your trespasses. “Fools mock at the guilt offering. At restitution, we could say. But the upright enjoy acceptance.”

Now, if we don’t—if we mock at restitution—then we don’t have acceptance and favor. And what we have—in so—forgiveness is absolutely tied in the scriptures to restitution. And you don’t have forgiveness if you don’t have a commitment on the part of the other person who’s done the crime to do the time or to pay the price for his sin. You don’t have forgiveness. You can have forgiveness, you know, that’s worked out over time. He’s forgiven in the present because he’s accepted the consequences. But if he rejects the notion of repent or of restitution, there’s no biblical repentance. And who cares today? Because the church today says, “Well, who cares about biblical repentance? We’re supposed to forgive everybody. Everybody’s forgiven.” Unconditional forgiveness is what it’s all about. We don’t know why people go to hell anymore because, after all, they’re all forgiven, right?

And you’ve got somebody who stole something from you—a purse or whatever—forgive them. He’s sorry. This is not biblical. This is unbiblical. And so we’ve got three huge problems.

As I say in the outline, we can’t even see the shore from the distance we’ve drifted away from biblical thinking about restoration, restitution, *shalm*, *shalom*—God’s reordering of all things in Christ. We are so far away from a criminal justice system that reflects it we can’t even see anymore how we could possibly make it work. We are so far away from thinking that the death of Jesus Christ was to affect the restoration of all things and regeneration of it we can’t even imagine that. And we’re so far away from biblical doctrines of repentance and forgiveness.

I mean, what did John the Baptist say? “Bring fruits evidencing your repentance. Make restitution.” Clear as a bell. How are we supposed to forgive? As God forgives. Who does God forgive? John the Baptist tells us: those that make restitution, are committed to accepting the consequences of their action. Because God’s not interested in everybody just getting forgiven and going to heaven. He’s interested in redeemed man, forgiven man, once more, making restitution by restoring the world and taking it beyond Eden to Jerusalem, to the New Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem at the end of the Bible.

We are desperately far away from the shore. And you might think we’ll never get back. Except as I said at the beginning of the sermon, that’s exactly the reason why Christ came—was to bring us back to the shore of reality and peace and blessing. He came to affect it. And that means it’s going to happen, right? We’re Calvinists. We know it’s going to happen.

And in actuality, you know, this whole thing is sort of pictured. As I say on your outline here, Kings—you know, is one big book, right? I mean, First and Second Kings is just because the scrolls were big. But it’s one big book. And the very center of that book is this section that I’ve given you on your outlines under number four.

The big picture is the reversal of the curse. This is what Jesus said he came to effect. And it’s given to us in story form in the story of Elisha. At the very center of the book of Kings are these narratives. And at the middle of it is a healing of food and a feeding of a hundred men. And then on either side of that is the healing of people from leprosy and bringing a son back from death to life. And then around that is restoration of restitution.

The story in 6:1-7 is about recovering a borrowed ax head. It’s an application of Exodus 22. He’d borrowed an ax head to make a house. The sons of the prophets were apparently like they are today. When they died, they had no mortgage insurance, and they were about ready to lose their house. And so God takes care of that on one end of these stories. And they couldn’t afford even an ax head to make their houses with. And so they borrowed one, and they’re out there cutting lumber, and the ax head flies off and goes in the river.

And so the guy’s in Dutch because now, you know, the owner wasn’t with it. He’s got to make restitution if he can’t find it. And Elisha floats the ax head somehow and restores it. That’s the work of the greater Elisha, the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, he’s come to roll back leprosy, to bring us back from the dead. But he’s come to do that for particular reasons—to fulfill Exodus 22, that the whole world might be brought back, restored, restituted, and the world might become again a place of blessing.

This is God’s very purpose. So don’t worry. Yeah, we’re—we kind of got in that boat and didn’t have an engine. We didn’t know where we were going. We’re lost now. But we know what the engine is. The engine is God’s word. What are we going to do about *shalom*, *shalm*, and Salem? Because that’s what Salem means, right?

So when you think of our capital, you should think about *shalom* as the goal and *shalm*, restitution’s place in achieving *shalom*. But ultimately, we have this discussion on Biblical Horizons about the Lord’s Day. And I, you know, everybody—well, you know, we’re not sabbatarians. Someone would say we don’t do what you guys do. But, you know, we all agree that what we want long-term is a whole day when people aren’t working, maybe have a few places open for travelers. We all want to shut it down for one whole day on Sunday. We all want to make that day a committed day away from commerce.

But they say, you know, “Well, when we get control of Salem, we can pass laws. Then we’ll make it happen.” And we say, “Wait a minute. That’s the new world that we see coming. Isn’t that where we live? Isn’t our citizenship in heaven? Do we wait for Salem to decide how to start living in our own community? No, of course not. So we take the whole day off, and we encourage people. Now, it’s hard. Some people have to work, but we try to get the day set aside—whole day, just like everybody else wants to—but we say, ‘Let’s do it now. Let’s live it out now and watch it come to pass.’”

And the same thing is true of these laws. We don’t wait for Salem. Now, I think it’d be good. It’d be great for some of us to be motivated by this sermon to try to get some bills passed. Sure, I’m with that. You know, I am happy to do it. Love to do it. But we don’t wait for that stuff. Political action isn’t, you know, where we begin and end. Where we begin and end is the new palace, the body of Jesus Christ, you and I. We’re *eklesia*, the called-out ones today. And we live in that community throughout the week.

We can do restitution. The government doesn’t say you can’t do this stuff. We can live it out ourselves. We can think about each other and how we’ve helped or hindered one another. And we can make restitution for the ways that we’ve hindered or hurt each other—not just in terms of property, but in terms of reputation, our lives together. The beauty is that we’re surrounded today by two or three hundred people who all want to live together in community the way God says to do it here. And we are well able to do it. Nobody’s even persecuting us for wanting to do it.

The question is: What do we want to do? God told Zaccheus, you know, “Hey, salvation’s come to your house.” Zaccheus said, “If I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold.” He wasn’t waiting for somebody to tell him to do it. That’s what he did. And Jesus said, “Today, salvation has come to this house because he also is a son of Abraham.” Are you a son, a daughter of Abraham? If you’re not committed to restoration, restitution, *shalm*, as a means of accomplishing *shalom*, I think you got to question whether salvation has come to our house today.

God has told us. He’s given us all these wonderful sermonic sentences in Exodus 22 to teach us how to live in grand and glorious community. May the Lord Jesus Christ enable us as a community not to wait for laws to change—to live out *shalom* in the midst of who we are today.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the restoration of all things affected by our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for the indwelling Holy Spirit who motivates us to see in these simple liturgical actions—the restoration to one another of things—to see in that the grand scheme of what you have accomplished through our state of restoring all things. Bless us, Lord God, as we seek in small and significant and major ways to honor you by being people of the new world. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.