The Thief and the Miser

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Let's pray and we will get started. Heavenly Father, Almighty and Everlasting God, we come before You in humble awe.

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You are the one true God, and there is none other like You. Come, we pray, and bless our hearts and our minds as we study

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Your Word. Send Your Holy Spirit into our lives so that we may grow in love and grace and that we may go forth into all the world, proclaiming

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Your good news of Christ, crucified and risen for our sins, so that others may learn of this saving grace that You have supplied us with.

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We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Before we get into our study of Exodus 22 today, let me ask, were there any questions that percolated up in your minds as a result of the sermon?

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No, but Captain and me aren't together anymore, I hear. It's the end of the world.

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Oh, not again. Oh, that's right. I've survived the end of the world, like, what, 15 or 16 times?

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So, in fact, what's the date today? Oh, yeah, there was an end of the world that happened last week.

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Yeah, at least somebody predicted the rapture for last week, and I just didn't even pay attention.

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I've survived so many rapture predictions at this point. All right, that being the case, we're going to get back then into Exodus 22.

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A little bit of a reminder, this portion of Scripture is all law. There is zero gospel.

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We will do our best to bring the gospel to bear, and let me remind you of how we set this up last week.

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Jesus Christ made it clear when He was tested in Jerusalem after His triumphal entry, and the trick question, the answer to the question, what is the first and greatest commandment?

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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two, all of the law hinges, and you'll note then in our sermon today that the text makes it very clear when you go with the dynamic dual of doctrine and life that somebody claiming to love

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God but refusing to believe who he is in his revelation is not somebody who truly does.

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That's a fellow who doesn't love God. There's just no way. You can't sit there and say, you believe and trust and love

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Jesus, but deny what Jesus has revealed about himself and what he has done for us.

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That person is breaking the first table of God's law. The first commandment is, you will have no other gods before me.

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So the person who says, the Jesus I believe in didn't create the world in six days.

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The Jesus I believe in let everything come about through evolution. The Jesus I believe in wasn't born of the

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Virgin Mary. The Jesus I believe in would never send anybody to hell. Well, I'm sorry, but the

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Jesus you believe in doesn't exist. You've made an idol. You've named him Jesus and you are an idolater.

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You're a breaker of the first commandment. You do not love God. You actually hate him. And that's, those are strong words, but that's the reality.

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You don't love God and who he claims to be. Do you really love God? If you're going to make a

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God in your own image, according to what you think is reasonable, then you are an idolater.

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You're not a lover of God. That's the reality of the situation. Now, there are some doctrines that are not cardinal in the sense where that doesn't put somebody out of the faith.

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It puts them in error. But even when there's error involved rather than flat out heresy, heresy puts somebody outside of Christianity.

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When there's error involved, that error does have a way of kind of pulling up the fabric of faith.

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And so we always want to refer people back to Scripture, back to the Word of God. And part of the reason why the church is in such disarray as it is today, which really, you know, it couldn't have happened.

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What's happening in the church today could not have happened 50 years ago or 100 years ago. But the problems began back in the 1800s when people were challenging and denying the authenticity and reliability of Scripture.

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Over again, I'm reminded of the fact that in the 1800s, there were Enlightenment theologians who would do things like, well, you know, we can't find the pool of Bethesda in Scripture, you know, where Jesus supposedly performed this miracle.

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Therefore, the Gospels can't be trusted or relied upon. Yeah, you're familiar with guys like this, right?

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It's fascinating how all of these super -enlightened guys would talk this way and undermine the

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Scripture. Or we don't know where the pool of Siloam is. So therefore,

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John, in writing about the guy who was born blind, you know, there was no such place as the pool of Siloam, which is really fascinating because in the early 2000s, they found the pool of Siloam.

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You can actually go there today, and you can walk at least the steps down into the pool of Siloam.

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And what's fascinating is that over and again, the people who attack the authority of Scripture from within the visible church, these weren't atheists who were saying this, these were theologians, that when they find the things they say are not there, they never sit there and go, whoops,

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I was wrong. I guess you can trust John. They always find another way to attack

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Scripture. And unfortunately, I don't know what it is. Why does the Christian church tolerate seminary professors and pastors who attack and deny the

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Word of God? It doesn't make any sense. Why is it that they operate with impunity, and yet the person who confesses what

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Scripture says, says the same thing as Scripture, that guy often finds himself in hot water quick. We're a weird world that we live in.

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Now, all of that. So as we look at the law, we're going to note a few things about what real justice is.

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And this stands in stark contrast to what today people are calling social justice, which really isn't justice, it's something different.

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True justice is based upon what God's law reveals in His precepts. And then we're going to get into this in the first part of it, is that many people have this weird mistaken belief that somehow the

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Old Testament laws are really hard, and now that we're in the

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New Testament, things are a lot easier. That's actually a false notion.

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I'll explain in a minute. Exodus 22, verse 1.

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If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox, four sheep for a sheep.

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If a thief is found breaking in, and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no blood guilt for him.

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Alright, two little bits we'll start with here. So, somebody's caught stealing.

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Whatever they steal, they have to basically restore it, plus some.

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Restoration. Now, I want you to consider this. In our justice system, if somebody is caught stealing, what happens to that person when they're caught stealing?

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Are they required to make restitution for the things that they stole? Sometimes. But most often, what ends up happening?

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Not able to. So, if somebody's caught breaking in, they break into your house, and they steal your television set, your cell phone, your wife's laptop, and a few other pieces of jewelry, and maybe your firearms.

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And then, your house is not the only house I've knocked off. Let's say they've been able to successfully do this at five or six different houses before they were finally caught at your house, right?

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What happens to that person? A lot of times you'll see in the paper they've got to pay so much money in fines, they've got to pay so much time in jail, and a lot of times you will see the word restitution.

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Good. So here, there is a sense of restitution. Oftentimes now, in California, restitution is not that big of a thing.

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It's just criminal charges. And here's what oftentimes happens in many different places around the country.

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It's that people have this idea that somebody who is caught committing crimes, they go to prison, and in prison they pay off their, what do they call it?

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Debt to society. And so you're going to note, then, the idea of paying back a debt to society actually has its grounding, then, in Scripture.

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And in this particular case, it doesn't talk about jailing the person who's caught committing a crime, stealing.

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Instead, stealing would, okay, so the crime is this, you've taken, so now you're going to not only give back what you've stolen, you are now in debt to the persons that you've stolen from, and you owe them more.

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That's the punishment. Not time in jail, but you who've been caught stealing, you have to actually go and get a job now, and work, and pay back your debt.

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And your debt has been enlarged by four or fivefold, depending on what you stole. I think that's kind of an interesting thing.

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Scripture in the New Testament talks about Christians, you who once were thieves, you steal no longer, but get a productive job.

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The one who doesn't work shouldn't eat, Scripture says. So, the idea of debt to society comes from Scripture, that's true justice.

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And, in this case, time in prison isn't paying the debt, it's getting busy being productive with your hands and paying back your debt.

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Kind of an interesting little note. You know, I've had conversations with one who doesn't work, one who doesn't eat, one who doesn't try.

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I, in turn, then tell them that I don't want my taxes to go higher to pay for everybody, so everybody has some.

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I do my part through charity, and they said, well, that's not enough, and I said, how do you know?

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Try it sometime. And that usually ends the conversation, they slam the door in my face, and then

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I'm being cruel and hard, and then they befriend me on Facebook, and I hurt my feelings.

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It's been known to happen. You know what I mean. What I'm asking you is, is there a better way to approach them on that?

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Some people want to have it paid through that it's mandatory for everybody to pay for the person who can't.

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I see that as enabling people who can, but won't. Yeah, you bring up a good question, and this is going to get into political ideology, and I am not,

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I personally cannot reconcile socialism with scripture. I can't reconcile that.

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But charity you can. Charity I can. So charity has always been a hand up, helping somebody up, whereas the handouts of our current welfare state is keeping them down.

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It's actually hurting them. And I know what I'm going to say here is politically incorrect, but I think the way the government handouts have worked have crippled even some of the

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Native American nations that are even local to us. And I think it's actually criminal that the way it is done, it is actually keeping people down and repressing them.

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There's a part of me that just has to ask the question if that's not intentional on some level. Because just giving somebody a handout does not help them in bettering themselves.

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Now, if a person is incapable of providing for themselves, they've fallen or become ill or they have some kind of a disability,

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I am all for assisting that person as long as is necessary and as long as they are breathing until God calls them home.

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I don't have a problem with that. That's what we are to do. I do have a problem with somebody who is able -bodied who has figured out how to maneuver the system in such a way that there are no good works that they are providing at all.

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They are only receiving and not giving. So I do have a problem with that. And that comes down to,

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I think, political ideology. And you'll notice in scripture that when we look at Romans 13 the government has a charter.

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A charter given by God. The specific charter of government is for the punishing of the evildoer.

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That's its primary job. And the church has always been, go back into the early parts of Acts, from the inception of the church, you'll notice, no sooner does

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Peter preach at Pentecost thousands are brought to penitent faith in Christ.

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They are baptized. They are dedicating themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the prayers, the breaking of bread, and the fellowship.

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These are the four hallmarks if you would, of the Christian church. And no sooner are they doing that that you find out that immediately, what's the church engaging in?

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Caring for the needs of the widows and orphans. Right off the bat. I mean, it's almost like the one -two punch.

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We're believers in Jesus, we've got to care for widows and orphans. And that has always historically been the job of the church.

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And that flows from faith in good works. So I've got to admit, I don't think

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God's sitting there going, oh man, you know, government welfare people can do their thing as if that's the same kind of thing.

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Government does charity poorly and unfortunately what ends up happening is that some politicians have learned how to kind of turn government welfare into the deciding factor as to whether or not you should vote for them.

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That guy's going to take away your handout, so vote for me. Now this gets really wicked at this point.

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So there's some real problems. And then take a look at Alfie this past week.

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He died. And at the heart of that is the fact that the

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United Kingdom is a socialized medicine state. And there's a good chance had he been allowed to come to the

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United States to get the treatment that is available here as opposed to there, that he might still be alive today.

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You can't say with certainty but it would have given him a fighting chance. Italy made him an Italian citizen to get him to Italy for treatment and the

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British government said no. Yeah, but that in socialized medicine, here's the thing, when everything becomes free for everybody it's not.

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Then what happens is that a limited resource now is supposedly equally accessible to everybody but all that really ends up doing is making it so that healthcare becomes rationed.

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It's not an unlimited resource. And so, and all of the ideology that's driving this,

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I'll be blunt, is based in Marxist ideology. And Marxism cannot be reconciled with scripture.

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It is a government -sanctioned form of theft. It's extortion. Yeah. It really ultimately is.

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It's a breaking of the commandment thou shalt not steal now being done by governments. I have no problem with the government taxing me for the raising of a military, paying judges, paying police officers, even paying politicians and their job is to punish the evildoer.

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That's what we do best. But, and protecting us. But now you've got this whole system that is set up and it's a weird system where you somehow are declared to be evil because you're saying, wait a second, why is that person being permitted to take and take and take when that person is able to actually work and they're not?

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It creates people who are politically dependent on others who are not actually contributing to society.

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They're taking away from it. And that is an abuse. Not everybody who is on welfare does this.

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We've got to make that clear. But there are a lot of people. There's enough that it's a noticeable problem.

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And now the difference becomes political ideology. So, coming back then to justice for a thief.

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Justice for a thief is not jail time. Justice for a thief is, ah, we're going to put you to work and you're going to pay back what you've stolen from everybody and then some.

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Not just restore what you've stolen, but four or five fold depending. Fascinating.

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Now, another thing to note here. That the use of deadly force when somebody is stealing your stuff is actually talked about in verse 2 here.

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Now, there's a difference between North Dakota and a state like Texas. In North Dakota, if I were to go home this afternoon and somebody had pulled a white van into my driveway and I saw them walking out with my television and a computer or whatever,

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I could not use deadly force to stop them. Couldn't. The only time

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I could use deadly force is if they brandish a weapon or did something so that they posed a physical bodily threat to me.

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Which is weird. So, like when you get your concealed carry license in North Dakota, they make a big deal about this.

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So, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you hear that crash downstairs and there's somebody stealing your stuff, if they're not threatening you, you can't do anything to them.

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No, no. Even if they're in the house, you cannot do anything unless they are doing something to physically threaten you.

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Now, other states, I think they call it the stand and deliver concept.

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So, if somebody breaks into your home, whether or not they have a weapon or not, if they're stealing your stuff and you're in your home, you can defend yourself with lethal force.

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Only in Minnesota. So, that's some practical advice, Janet. So, shoot them, gun them down in your front yard and then drag the body back into the house and pray that they don't follow the blood trail.

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Got it. But you'll note, verse 22, if a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no blood guilt for him.

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So, ancient Israel, you kind of stand and deliver if you would. Yeah.

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Yep. Yeah. But if the sun is risen on him, there shall be blood guilt for him.

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The idea then being is that the stand and deliver only applies at night, not during the day.

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He shall surely pay. If he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. Now, we talked about slavery last week.

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So, somebody who's caught stealing, they've stolen four sheep, five goats, and a partridge in a pear tree, right?

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And now, restitution is four or five fold. If they do not have the ability to give restitution, now that person is sold into slavery for the purpose of paying back their debt.

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So, rather than prison, it's like, oh, you can't afford to pay back what you've stolen.

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Now you've lost your freedom as far as your own life is concerned, and you're sold into slavery so that your debt will be paid off.

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Fascinating. So, you do lose your freedom. It's just that you're going to lose your freedom in a way that we're going to make sure that you're going to be spending a lot of time working, and you're not going to have a lot of time on your hands to be out there pilfering.

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If the stolen beast is found alive in his possession, whether it's an ox or a donkey or a sheep, he shall pay double.

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So, four fold if they can't find it, double if they can find the animal.

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Which is why you want to put a cell phone tracker on all your sheep. It makes it a lot easier.

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Now, real quick, I may mention this at the beginning, and that is that many people think the

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Old Testament is tough, whereas the New Testament is easier. The answer is no, the

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New Testament is not easier. I found this interesting quote from the Church Fathers, and Gregory the

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Great writes, Some people consider the commandments of the Old Testament stricter than those of the New. They are deceived by a short -sighted interpretation.

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In the Old Testament, theft, not miserliness, is actually punished.

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So, you're punished if you steal. In the New Testament, the person who has and doesn't give is actually the one threatened with punishment from God.

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Fascinating. It's a good point that he makes. So, theft in the

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Old Testament is punished, but not miserliness is punished. Wrongful taking of property is punished with a four -fold restitution.

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In the New Testament, the rich man is not censored for having taken away somebody else's property, but the rich man is actually censored and condemned for not having given his property away.

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He is not said to have forcibly wronged anyone, but to have prided himself on what he has received.

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A couple of texts on this, I think, make this point. So, as Christians, don't think for a second just because you haven't stolen something that somehow you're not really a thief in God's eyes, because when

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God provides for you and blesses you above, beyond what you need for yourself, when you see somebody in need and you're not helping them,

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God actually treats you worse than somebody who had stolen.

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I'll give you an example. Luke chapter 16. Luke chapter 16.

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This is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The details of the story tell a lot. You'll notice that the rich man has no name.

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Lazarus has a name. I've said it before, I'll say it again. This speaks to the fact that over and again, when somebody is saved in Scripture, one of the metaphors, a way it's described is, their name is written in the

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Lamb's book of life. Those who are saved have a name.

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If your name is not written in there, Jesus says to those who go off to hell, depart from me.

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I never knew you. Jesus isn't familiar with, he doesn't know you.

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It's like, if you come up to him and he goes, yeah, I don't know. Who are you?

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That's bad. Christ knows Lazarus. Rich man doesn't have a name.

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Many people point this out, that this particular story that Jesus tells is not like any parable he's ever told.

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Usually a parable goes like this. The kingdom of God can be compared to a fellow who received a kingdom and then went away on a long journey.

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He left his servants with minas and told them to do business in his name until he returned. Or the kingdom of God can be compared to a field.

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A field where a fellow sold good seed in his field but his enemy came in at night and sowed

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Darnell, you know, into the wheat field. You see, that's a metaphor.

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That's parallel language. This is not like that. Watch the words. Jesus told his disciples, there was a rich man whose manager was accused of, oh, sorry, wrong verse.

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Okay. Let me find it. Verse 19.

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There we go. There was a rich man.

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So Jesus is talking to his disciples. He just says this. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen, lived in luxury every day.

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At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table, even the dogs came and licked his sores.

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So there's your setup. Fascinating setup. Let me change translations real quick here.

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There. Oh, man, that's small. So you got a rich guy.

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Here deposited at the edge of his property day after day is a poor fellow by the name of Lazarus.

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And what's the expectation? What's the expectation?

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The expectation is that God expected him to love his neighbor as himself, which would have required the rich man to care for the needs of this neighbor of his who was literally right on his doorstep.

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So he desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's side.

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A little bit of a note here. In the Old Testament, the word for the place where souls went shale.

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So if you read in the Old Testament where you hear somebody use the term shale, that's the place where when you died prior to Jesus's death and resurrection and ascension, you went.

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Everybody went to shale. Shale. We learned from this passage was divided up into two compartments.

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One compartment is mentioned here Abraham's side or Abraham's bosom. So the side where those who died in the faith went, they were with Abraham on one side of shale.

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The other side of shale, there was a chasm between the one side and this other side. The other side is described in very graphic detail as a place of torment, of fire, and anguish.

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And this is where the unbelievers went. Now, important to note this, is that we learned from the

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New Testament because when Christ ascended, he led captives in his train. The idea then being, when we confess,

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I believe in Jesus Christ, and he descended into hell, and the third day he rose again from the grave.

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Hell is a little bit of a confusing term. It would be better as Hades or maybe even shale would be a better way to say it, because that's really what it's referring to.

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So when Jesus dies, where does Jesus go? He goes to shale. And we learn from the epistles that when he goes there, it's to proclaim his victory.

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To proclaim his victory, and then upon his ascension, those who were in the faith, they now go to heaven with him.

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So the intermediate state for a believer in Jesus Christ, as Paul says, to be absent from the body is to be present with the

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Lord. That's in the book of Philippians. To die outside of the faith, not trusting in Christ, your soul goes to be where this rich man is.

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Shale. This is kind of a holding tank. And then when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, day of judgment occurs.

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Those who persisted in sin and unbelief, they spend eternity in the lake of fire with the devil and his angels.

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And we are resurrected from the grave and we spend eternity on a new earth.

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We're human beings forever and ever and ever. And Jerusalem being the capital of the whole planet, with King Jesus ruling over all.

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So that's kind of the big picture. So, here we see an intermediate state thing going on, which by the way, this story then shoots down the idea of what people call soul sleep.

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There is a group of people like Jehovah's Witnesses, and I think the Seventh Day Advent is talking this way, is they believe because Jesus uses the metaphor for sleep.

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For instance, Lazarus, when he dies, he's fallen asleep. That they take what Jesus is speaking metaphorically and they kind of woodenly and arcanely just translate it literally to mean, well that means that when you die you sleep.

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You know, death is a tearing apart of body and soul and there's an intermediate state. So here, this text actually rules out the idea of soul sleep because here we see people who are departed who are conversing and having conversations and having experiences.

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Remember the Mount of Transfiguration. Who shows up? Moses and Elijah. How'd that happen if they were sleeping?

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So the idea is that the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Seventh Day Advent are in error when they teach this concept of soul sleep.

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You have to take what scripture says in its entirety and take a look in context when it talks about those who have departed as fallen asleep.

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That's a kind way of talking for Christians for this very reason. Jesus says, though you die, yet shall you live.

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And those who believe in me, they will not experience death. So for us, dying as Christians is akin to and likened to falling asleep.

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As opposed to somebody who dies outside of the faith, they not only taste death, they experience in all of its bitterness and they have the agonies of hell to look forward to for eternity.

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Totally different thing. So for us, we have nothing to fear. When we die or when somebody we know dies, we do not mourn like the world mourns as if we don't have hope.

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And so, over and over again, Jesus is assuring us what we experience in death is not what the unbeliever experiences.

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That's why he likens it to sleep. But again, as Paul says, to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ. Here we have

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Abraham having conversations with somebody else and again Moses and Elijah and other things.

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So you take the full counsel of scripture, there is an intermediate state. That's the idea. A little bit of a side note, but I think it helps.

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So the poor man died. He was carried to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and buried. And in Hades, Hades would be the hell -like portion of Sheol.

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Being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and he saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.

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He called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I am in anguish in this flame.

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But Abraham said, Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner bad things.

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Now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. Besides all of this, between us and you is a great chasm that has been fixed in order that those who pass from here to you may not be able and none may cross from there to us.

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We get a little bit of the makeup here. And so he said, Well then I beg you, Father, send

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Lazarus to my father's house for I have five brothers so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.

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Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

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He said to them, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

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Romans 10 Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. It is through the word of God that people are brought to repentance, not magic tricks.

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Not ghost stories. Keep that in mind. Another text in the gospel of Luke.

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Luke chapter 12 verse 13.

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Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

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But he said to him, Man, who made me a judge or an arbiter over you? Now a little bit of a history lesson on this one.

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Number one, Jesus is not in the office of arbiter. That is somebody else's office.

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He's not a government official. The question is dismissed on that ground, but it's also dismissed on another ground.

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You have to understand what's being asked for here. So in the ancient world, especially ancient

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Israel, a man has five sons, and he owns property.

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How is his inheritance divided? The firstborn son gets a double portion.

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The remaining sons get a distributed portion. In this particular case, this fellow is basically saying,

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Jesus, make my older brother evenly split the inheritance with me.

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That's what's being asked here. Rather than him getting a double portion, make him share equally with me, which is kind of a he's basically in a sense challenging the way the inheritance system is set up and claiming that it's unjust.

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That's kind of at the root of the question. Jesus said, man, who made me an arbiter over you?

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And so he said to them, take care beyond your guard against all covetousness.

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And now you can see it. The reason why the fellow is asking for an even distribution is because he knows his brother is going to get more than him.

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He's coveting what his brother is being given in the inheritance. And so Jesus is going right after that and attacking covetousness itself for the sin that it is.

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For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And unfortunately,

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I know far too many people on this planet who would argue against this. And then

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Jesus told them a parable. Listen carefully to this one. The land of a rich man produced plentifully.

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And he thought to himself, what shall I do? I have nowhere to store my crops.

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Sounds like a good problem, right? And you notice what produced this? The land did.

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The land produced plentifully. Such is kind of the weird it's not luck, but kind of providential unpredictability of how things work out.

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You literally just might be a fellow who becomes a farmer at just the right time.

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Because when you go into farming for the next 30 years, it's going to be nothing but good, pleasant weather, perfect conditions.

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You have this stretch where it can just go for a while. And then you get out of farming and you're doing well.

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And then another fellow, he goes into farming and five years in starts a weather pattern that lasts a decade and a half where you're lucky to break even.

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And they're farming in the same region. That's just kind of how it goes.

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And it just seems kind of arbitrary, kind of capricious. But you're going to note here that the land is the thing producing.

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Our good gifts all come from God. So this guy has got a big problem.

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Man, what am I going to do with all these crops? I don't even have a place to store it all.

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So he said, I'll do this. I'll tear down my barns and I'll build larger ones.

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And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.

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Relax. Eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you and the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?

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What is God judging him for? Being miserly.

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Yeah. One of the church fathers, and I can't remember who it is offhand, his quote was actually quite poignant on this.

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It's blowing out there. And one of the church fathers said this. This man was foolish because he decided to store this grain in barns rather than store it in the bellies of the poor.

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And now it kind of makes sense. See, if God should so bless you that for whatever reason you find yourself financially doing very well.

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As a Christian, you are explicitly, explicitly told that that wealth is not for you.

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It is for others. And that's the idea. God doesn't condemn just the thief.

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God condemns the miserly. So this night your soul is required of you. So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.

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To be rich towards God is to be rich in good works. To love one another.

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To quote a particular apostle that we were reading this morning during the sermon. Yes, sir. It reminds me of a story

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I heard where this guy went to his pastor and told the pastor I won't be able to give anymore because I've got a big promotion at work so I'm going to buy a big house and it's really expensive.

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I won't be able to do it anymore. Well, the pastor had a good response. He said, let's pray to God that he'll return you to your previous salary so you can afford to give.

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We'll pray to God that you get demoted. Yeah. Let me read from 1

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Timothy chapter 6. Pastoral Epistle. Note here in this text we see the same things.

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Remember our context of the dynamic duel. Doctrine and life. 1

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Timothy chapter 6, second half of verse 2 begins, teach and urge these things.

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If anyone teaches a different doctrine does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness.

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He's puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. Good way to say it is he's an ignoramus.

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That'd be a valid translation of that text. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy, for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

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Imagine that godliness is a means of gain. And there you begin to see the emphasis coming out.

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But godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world. We cannot take anything out of it.

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If we have food and clothing with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich, they fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

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But as for you, O man, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

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Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

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And I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who is his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment unstained, free from reproach until the appearing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And then note here verse 17. As for the rich, here it is, in this present age, charge them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.

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They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

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The person who stores up riches for himself in this life doesn't understand what life really is.

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The person who understands that should the Lord bless them, and sometimes it seems kind of arbitrary how those blessings come, should the

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Lord bless them, that the purpose then of their having those riches and those blessings is for them to be generous with others.

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And in so being generous with others, you're going to note you're storing up for yourselves treasures in heaven, not here.

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The bank account that matters, you cannot check the balance right now on the internet. Good way to put it.

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So then we see that scripture is so clear on this, that miserliness is like the worst thing ever, it's even worse than theft, because rather than restitution, you lose your soul.

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James chapter 5, by the way, talks in a similar way. Come now you who are rich, weep and howl, verse 1, for the miseries that are coming upon you.

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Your riches have rotted, your garments are moth -eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.

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You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold the wages of your laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you.

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The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord, of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury, and in self -indulgence, you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

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You have condemned and murdered the righteous person, and he does not resist you." I think we get the point.

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I think we get the point. So then coming back to the law in Exodus 22, talk about proper management of your animals.

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If a man causes a field or a vineyard to be grazed over, whoops, the sheep got out and they ate all of your field.

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Or lets his beast loose and it feeds in another man's field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field and in his own vineyard.

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If a fire breaks out and catches in thorns, so that the stacked grain or the standing grain of the field is consumed, he who started the fire shall make full restitution.

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So you'll note arson was even a problem back then. It's a problem today.

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When we lived in California, it seemed like every October, every

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October, there is this naturally occurring thing that happens in the fall in Southern California. They're called the

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Santa Ana winds. And the Santa Ana winds, high pressure system will come in over the central coast of Southern California, of California, and the way the winds blow, it takes the hot air from the

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Javi Desert and blows it right into Southern California. The sky is as clean as a whistle, but temperatures will skyrocket to like 110, and it's as dry as a bone, and the winds are blowing like they are right now.

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Imagine that wind being 110 degrees. That would be a Santa Ana wind.

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And when those come, every single year, there would be somebody who would be lighting fires in different places.

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So the foothill areas and parts of Southern California always go up in flames. And we've seen those reports coming out of California for years.

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And that's, over and again, it's arsonists who set these things. I remember years ago, they caught one of the arsonists, and one of the arsonists who started one of these fires was a firefighter himself.

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And in a situation like that, the hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage, there's no way they can make restitution for something like that.

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Those are the types of fellows that will spend the rest of their life in prison. Fascinating, though, that restitution is expected in that situation.

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If a man gives to his neighbor money or goods to keep safe, and it's stolen from the man's house, then if the thief is found, he shall pay double.

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So, if you're going to lend me your, you know, lend me a piece of, you know, lend me one of your tractors,

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I wouldn't know where to put a combine in my yard, but, you know, you decided, you know, you're going to lend me a power tool or something like that, a saw or whatever, and my house is broken into.

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You're going to note how this kind of plays out, is that there is a presumed innocence and there's a possibility of guilt.

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So, it might just be that you loaned something to somebody and they say, oh, it got stolen, and they're not telling the truth, or it really did get stolen.

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So watch the way this law kind of plays out. So, if the thief is found, the thief pays double.

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If the thief is not found, the owner of the house shall come near to God to show whether or not he has put his hand to his neighbor's property.

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Now, this, by the way, these types of laws in the

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Old Testament form the basis for what became known in the medieval period as trial by ordeal.

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Have you heard of trial by ordeal? Okay, so the way trial by ordeal works, if you've seen

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Monty Python's The Holy Grail, there's a woman who's put on trial for being a witch, and the logic is that if she sinks, if she weighs the same as a duck, if she weighs the same as a duck and she floats, she weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood, and therefore a witch.

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That's right. Okay, so if she's made of wood and she floats, she weighs the same as a duck, that means she floats and she's innocent.

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But if she weighs more than a duck and sinks, then she's guilty. No, she has to weigh the same as a duck.

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It's confusing because it's so arbitrary. We should probably watch the scene. But, you know, what

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Monty Python lampooned was an actual practice in the medieval period.

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It was called trial by ordeal. And the guilt of somebody for particular things was based upon literally ordeals like throwing them into rivers and if they didn't, if they drowned, they were, you know, they were guilty.

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Just weird stuff like this. The problem is this trial by ordeal is not what's being taught here.

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Remember that the ancient Israelites had the presence of God. You know, the name of God was caused to dwell in the tabernacle and then eventually in the permanent residence in the temple in Jerusalem.

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And so to draw near to God is to draw near to the presence of God, the Holy of Holies. And in drawing near then to the presence of God, God had a way set up in the ancient theocracy of Israel that if somebody was saying, yeah, you know, those sheep you loaned me, they just were stolen and that person's not telling the truth.

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In drawing near to God, God would reveal whether or not that person was lying or telling the truth. This is not some kind of a system that should be brought then into our justice system.

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So if somebody's lying, bring them over to Kongsvinger and the presence of the Lord here will determine whether that's the case.

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That's the misuse of that. So, every breach of trust, whether it is for an ox or for a donkey or for a sheep, for a cloak, or for any kind of lost thing of which one says this is it, the case of both parties shall come before God.

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The one whom God condemns shall pay double to his neighbor. If a man gives to his neighbor a donkey or an ox or a sheep or any beast to keep safe and it dies or is injured or is driven away without anyone seeing it, and here's your kind of thing, you know, nobody saw what happened, an oath by Yahweh shall be between them both to see whether or not he has put his hand to his neighbor's property.

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The owner shall accept the oath and he shall not make restitution. But if it is stolen from him, he shall make restitution to its owner.

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If it is torn by beasts, let him bring it as evidence and he shall not make restitution for what has been torn.

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So in this particular last part then of this commandment or this part of the civil law is that, you know, so I'm watching your sheep for you and a wolf jumps the fence and tears up a bunch of the sheep,

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I can present the torn up sheep and say, listen, this is not my fault, this is just this is an act of God, you know, this wolf came in and tore these things up, in that case you're innocent and you do not have to make restitution.

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If a man borrows anything of his neighbor and is injured or dies, the owner not being with it, he shall make full restitution because the anticipation was that he was supposed to be caring for these things.

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If the owner was with it, he shall not make restitution. If it was hired, it came for its hiring fee.

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If a man seduces a virgin, a little bit of a note here, you're going to note that the concept of what we call a shotgun wedding has a basis in Scripture.

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So if a man seduces a virgin, notice who the Scriptures are putting the blame on, not the girl,

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Scriptures are blaming the guy. If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride price for her and make her his wife.

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Guess what? You're going to treat her like she's your wife? Guess what? You are going to be marrying her and you're going to be paying the bride price for her.

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If her father utterly refuses, the only exception is the dad says, no, there's no way you're going to marry that guy.

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If the father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride price for virgins.

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Either way, you're paying the bride price and depending on the decision of the father of the virgin, you're either going to be a married fellow or you're not.

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But the one who is responsible is the guy. He's the one who's held responsible.

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I'm going to stop there because this next part requires me to do a lot of cross -reference work.

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So when we come back to this next week, we will take a look at Exodus 22 and talking about what

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Scripture reveals regarding what is sorcery and what isn't and it was death penalty for the sorcerers.