High Regard Exodus 21:28-36

God’s Holiness, Human Sin, and the Need for Christ

Good morning, and welcome to Faith Bible Church. We're glad you're here. We know you could have been a lot of other places, but you chose to be here this morning. God led you here, and we thank you. Thank the Lord for that.

And we appreciate those that are coming back from vacations and things. God is always good in every way. Happy Father's Day for fathers that are out there, and some of you are watching this online. So we just ask that, we'd ask the Lord to bless you where you're at and what things that you're doing, and that always, we're remembering you here today, and we know it's because of illness and different things that you're not able to be here today.

But we thank the Lord for you, and for the fellowship that we can have when we gather together. Reflecting on God's holiness this week, and the Bible teaches that God is holy, and we say that, and that's one of those expressions that we repeat over and over again of his holiness.

And the idea behind the concept of his holiness is that of separation, that it comes from a word meaning it's to separate or to cut off, it's to separate himself, and that what he's separating himself from is sin.

It's those things that are evil, and that he can't tolerate sin. And that's the whole reason we have Christ, is to bridge that, to make that bridge between us and God, because of his holiness. He cannot look upon sin.

In him, in Christ, there is no darkness. So an excerpt that I read from, there was a study on holiness of God, and the author wrote these things. He said, God is holy. In him there is not even the faintest trace of evil.

He is impeccably pure, holy without fault, and uncompromisingly just. God cannot lie, he cannot make wrong decisions. He is blameless, timeless, and sinless. By contrast, we are flawed beings, tainted by sin.

By all rights, a holy and righteous God must judge sinners, and the wages of sin is death. Thankfully, we can escape the wrath of God by placing our trust in Christ Jesus, his savior. Were it not for the gospel of Jesus Christ, the holiness of God would be mankind's greatest fear, for no sinner can stand in the presence of his blinding glory.

But through a simple act of faith, those who believe in Jesus as savior have been pardoned. To the lost and holiness of God, to the lost and holiness of God is a dreadful matter, but to the redeemed, the holiness of God is our greatest good.

So, that's something we can hold on to, and it's about us having a high view of God. And as we worship God today, we need to have a high view of God. Man tries to put himself above God, we do that all the time, more than we should, but we need to keep God in that place that he deserves, and that he is worthy.

Okay, would you join with me in prayer, please? Lord God, we thank you, Father, that you have brought us together here today. Father, we pray for those that aren't in our presence, Lord, that you would bless them and in their worship of you.

Father, you are a holy God, you are worthy. Lord, we thank you that you have given us your son, Jesus Christ, to be a propitiation of our sins, for our sins, Lord, that we might be made right before a holy God, that we can commune with you, that we can fellowship with you, Father.

There is none other than you, Father. So, God, we thank you that we can gather together today. We pray for the fathers, Lord. Thank you that we can acknowledge them today, that we might have great hearts of gratitude, that we would reflect on those things, attributes, Lord, that are good and honorable, Lord, that you have given us the ultimate example in our heavenly Father, that we can be examples as men, as fathers, Lord, that have been the opportunity to do that, Father.

We pray for fathers that have gone before us, Lord, that are in glory now. We thank you for their faithfulness. God, bless our time today. May we honor you. May you be pleased with our offerings of sacrifice, of praise, and that our voice would be lifted up, remembering how great you are.

You are a mighty God, and we thank you that we can come together today, Father. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Let's stand and sing to our Lord, our heavenly Father.

Fatherhood, Gratitude, and Psalm 8

Happy Father's Day. I want to tell you a little bit about my dad. It's because of him, his fault, that I almost didn't get married. I'll tell you why. As a girl, my father would take me to football games with him because he reffed football games for the Police Athletic League in Philadelphia.

Yeah. Now, fast forward in time, and I met Vic at church. Good place, ladies. And we dated a few times, and then he was out to sea. Well, Thanksgiving rolled around, and I hadn't seen him for several months.

And so it was Thanksgiving. I had my day planned. I had tickets to a football game, come home to a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner, and watch football all afternoon. So a half an hour before I left for the football game, the phone rings.

Guess who it was? Vic. I'm down at Bridge Street, and I can catch a bus and be at your house in half an hour. Now, ladies, I want to tell you, this man came from Norfolk, Virginia. That's where he was stationed.

He took a bus, a ferry, another bus, and a train. And he had one more bus to take to get to my house. And I said, oh, I was going to a football game. Dead silence, dead silence on that end. And finally, I had to sacrifice my love of football for the love of my life.

And I thank the Lord for that. After we got married, we'd watch football together. I would tell him what was what and what was happening. I knew all the arm signals for the refs. I knew how many yards it took for a first down.

I knew what a kick meant, you know. And so now, when the football game's on, I watch football, and he's at his computer. But I thank the Lord for him. This week will be our anniversary, and we will be married 61 years.

Don't say wow, say woo-hoo. But I thank the Lord. He's been a good husband and father. And so now, fathers, we have little love gifts for them just to show our appreciation.

Today's scripture reading is gonna be from Psalms 8. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. You have set your glory above the heavens out of the mouth of babies and infants. You have established strength because of your foes to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen and also the beast of the field, the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea. Whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. This is the word of the Lord.

This day is a difficult day for some of us, mainly because we may have lost our fathers or maybe you were never that close to your fathers and that's a very sad reality. But I want us to be encouraged knowing that all of us who believe in Jesus have our heavenly father, our heavenly father who is so compassionate and loving and he's so faithful that he would never leave us like our earthly fathers would.

Our heavenly father's heart is shown in what Jesus has done for us. His heart of mercy is shown through his son, Jesus, who died for our sin on the cross. Because of that, even for us who may not have fathers or may have fathers who are mean or who have abandoned us, we can still rejoice in our heavenly father who never abandons and is always providing for us and who loves us to the uttermost.

As the song that we sang, even if all of us were scribes by trade, that's all our job to write. And the sky, the parchment, the whole sky is the parchment, the paper that we can write on. And every stalk, every stem is actually quill, so pen that we can write with.

To write the love of God would drain the ocean dry. Even if the whole ocean were made into ink, we would not be able to write the love of God because it's so much greater. Let's turn to Exodus. Exodus 21 verses 28 through 36.

The Sanctity of Human Life in Exodus 21:28-36

If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, then the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten. But the owner of the ox shall be acquitted. But if the ox tended to thrust with its horns in times past, and it has been made known to his owner, and he has not kept it confined so that it has killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death.

If there is imposed on him a sum of money, then he shall pay to redeem his life, whatever is imposed on him. Whether it has gored a son or gored a daughter, according to this judgment, it shall be done to him.

If the ox gores a male or female servant, he shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. And if a man opens a pit, or if a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls in it, the owner of the pit shall make it good.

He shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his. If one man's ox hurts another's so that it dies, then they shall sell the live ox and divide the money from it. And the dead ox, they shall also divide.

Or if it was known that the ox tended to thrust in time past, and its owner has not kept it confined, he shall surely pay ox for ox, and the dead animal shall be his own. Let us pray. Father, we are thankful that we can call you our Father, and our identity is that we are children of God.

No matter where we are in our lives, no matter what has happened to us this week, we are pleased and delighted to come to the Heavenly Father who loves us so much. Father, we pray that you would teach us what you want us to know, and that your word would speak to us, and we're thankful for all that you will do today.

In Jesus' name, amen. The law that I've just read, the case laws, probably will not apply to most of us. As far as I know, none of us own any oxen. I don't think any of us own any animals that can even gore another human being.

However, this law shows us so much about God's character and how he views his people. Let me give us an example. So this law was written thousands of years ago by Moses, and in that time, the surrounding nations had similar laws when their ox would gore another human being.

However, how the surrounding nations treated the case was vastly different. So for example, Eshnunah, which is an ancient Sumerian code, Mesopotamia, right? If an ox killed a human being, the punishment for the owner would be the same as if the owner had cut someone else's finger off.

Very specific, but the problem is when there's a dead person because of a violent ox, the Sumerians treated as if someone lost his finger, right? That was their view of losing a human life. Well, we'll treat it as if he just cut off another person's finger.

And also, the Hammurabi's code, and also Eshnunah, right? Hammurabi's code is Babylonian law code. They do not recommend any action against the ox. So if there's an ox who kills a human being, you don't do anything to the ox.

The owner would just pay a fine, and the day would just go on. A human life was just lost, and the ox would live. A human life was just gored to death, and that ox would be fine. And that's because these surrounding regions treated an accidental death caused by an animal just as economic transaction.

That's how much a human life was valued. You could just pay off, and you can actually keep your ox. However, the law of God gives us a religious and moral considerations, right? Here, the ox must be destroyed whatever the history of the beast is.

And also, the ox cannot be eaten if it has killed a human life. God's law views the loss of human life, any human life, despite the circumstances, as tragic and evil. And this is because God has the highest regard for human life more than any other deities or any other nations.

And of course, it goes way back to Genesis 9, five through seven, after the flood. God gives a command to Noah and all the people. Surely for your lifeblood, I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast, I will require it.

And from the hand of man, from the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God, he made man. And as for you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly at the earth and multiply in it.

For God, he will keep even animals accountable for the loss of human life. It's not just man, but animals too. And that's because God holds human life at ultimate value because they're made in his image.

Human life is not valuable because of their net worth. Human life is valuable because of their identity in God. They reflect God's image. So it doesn't matter whether you're slave or free, poor or rich, male or female, king or a servant.

To God, each human life is infinitely valuable because they reflect God's image. And this is an important lesson for today because we often disregard human life in our culture. In our culture, we like to categorize certain people as not worth living because of their developmental status.

Maybe they're in the womb. So maybe they're not worth living. That's how the culture categorizes them. Or maybe they don't have a job. Then we view them as less. Maybe they have intellectual deficiency.

Again, many cultures view them as lower than human, but that is not how God regards them. God regards everyone equally because they're made in the image of God. And today, these laws, these case laws teach us how we ought to regard another human being.

So the main point of this text is that God's people care for the well-being of others and their livelihood. God's people care for the well-being of others and their livelihood. First, verses 28 through 32 shows us that God holds us responsible for disregarding another human life.

God holds us responsible for disregarding another human life. If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, then the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall be acquitted.

The first scenario is a tragic accident in which the ox attacks a human to death. Under God's law, it does not matter whether the victim is male or female because God views every human life as valuable.

There's not a separate code depending on the status of the victim. When a tragedy strikes, God's people are commanded to stone the ox. This method of execution is uniquely specific. So far, when we have gone through murder, intentional murder, and the person had to be surely put to death, God didn't specifically command how, but here, he does.

Unlike other forms of execution, stoning an ox to death was a communal event. This is because the ox is not killed because it's dangerous, right? It is not a consequentialist view. Oh, if we don't kill the ox, now it will do it again.

That's not the view here. But the ox is killed because its homicidal event is evil to the whole community. When a person made in the image of God is killed by an animal, the homicidal animal is the source of corruption to the whole community.

When a valuable human is killed, the whole community is deeply affected. Therefore, God prescribes the whole community to remove such evil. Furthermore, the flesh of the ox cannot be eaten. No one can benefit from the tragic incident of a person's death.

The ox here was not killed for meat, but killed because it robbed a human's life. That's how valuable a human is treated. That all the meat that the ox would have provided cannot be enjoyed because it's not an event to delight in.

A human just died. There is no time for celebration. There is no feasting happening tonight. The last clause of verse 28 finally protects the owner of the ox. Because the owner did not intend to kill the person.

It was the ox that committed the homicide, not the owner. God justly punishes the guilty, not anyone else. The owner does not bear the guilt of his ox. The next verse covers a different scenario, which is a little bit more complicated.

Verse 29. But if the ox tended to thrust with its horn in times past, and it has been made known to his owner, and he has not kept it confined so that it killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.

The previous case assumes that the owner did not know that the ox would kill a man. Hence, the owner was not held liable for the action of the ox. After all, God does not punish someone for the guilt of another.

That would be unjust. In this case, however, the ox's guilt is partially shared with the owner because the owner knew of the ox's violent tendency. Maybe the ox has a history of goring another ox or goring another person, but the person didn't die.

Yet, what the owner did not do was he did not take the necessary precautions to prevent further violence in the future. God takes into account what is known. That's a cause for guilt. When you know something that can cause evil and you don't prevent it, when it's in your control to do so.

Then the owner is guilty of reckless disregard for another person's safety. This means God takes negligence seriously. Negligence that leads to death of a human being is in fact punishable by death according to God's law.

And that's because again, God values human life that much. Verse 30 tells us there is a possibility of redemption in this case. If there is imposed on him a sum of money, then he shall pay to redeem his life whatever is imposed on him.

Now it is important to note that murderers who intentionally kill could not be redeemed according to the law, Numbers 35, 31. Moreover, you shall take no ransom, redemption fee, for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death.

However, in this case, the owner did not intentionally train the ox to kill his neighbor, but he was negligent. So there is a different category here to consider. The owner didn't intend to kill his neighbor even though he was grossly negligent that led to his neighbor's death.

Therefore, redemption was an option for this case. It wasn't an intentional homicide. Now redemption payment or as we heard, ransom was not paying someone off for the value of the lost life. Redemption payment or ransom was not a fine.

It's not like a fine for speeding ticket. Rather, redemption was buying back the living person's own life. Ransom paid allowed the guilty to live. Ransom paid expiated the guilt. It eliminated the guilt.

Ultimately, the idea of redemption or ransom sets the background for the ultimate ransom that God will give to his people to redeem his people. Before the holy God, no one deserved to live because we all rebelled against him constantly.

We commit treason against the most holy sovereign, the most holy king. And what we deserved is eternal wrath from the holy God. However, God in his mercy chooses to redeem us. How much money did he spend?

In order to redeem his people, God gave up more than just wealth. He gave up his son. Hence Mark 10 45, Jesus tells his disciples, for even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

It was precisely Jesus' life that purchased your life from the wrath that you deserved. His life was given so that your life may be spared by trusting in him alone. It was Jesus' pure, sinless, and precious life that redeemed our foul, rebellious, and filthy souls.

We deserved wrath, but through Jesus' atoning death on the cross, he gives us forgiveness and eternal adoption into his family. And in Exodus 21, God graciously introduces the concept and possibility of redemption of a guilty life so that we may understand what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross.

There's a possibility for the guilty who deserves death to live if the ransom is paid. And that possibility is fulfilled in Christ on the cross. The next two verses tell us that God's law covers even the lowest of the community.

Verse 31, whether it has gored a son or gored a daughter, according to the judgment, it shall be done to him. The first group that the law takes into account are children. This much detail cannot be found in any other ancient Near Eastern laws.

In ancient Near Eastern laws, they take into account of the rich and of the men. But the detail about children, not too much, not too often. Yet God cares not just about the adults, but the lives of the often the most disregarded, the children.

And verse 32 speaks about the servants. Even the servants' lives are taken into account, right? If the ox gores a male or female servant, he shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver and the ox shall be stoned.

The ox will still be put to death even if it's a servant's life. Even servants' lives matter. In ancient Israel, at first, this seems like a payment. Oh, well, how come the master is paid off 30 shekels?

A servant's life is not worth 30 shekels. It's more than that. First, we need to consider the fact that justice actually takes care of the guilty party. The one that has taken away the servant's life, which is the ox, will be put to death no matter what life it takes.

The ox will not go living because he is guilty. The ox that bears the blood guilt will be stoned to death. Second, the master of the servant will receive 30 shekels of silver for the loss of his worker.

Remember, the worker was hired by the master to work. Now, one may think this is a low treatment of the servants, but we have to consider the ancient cultural norm. The Babylonian Hammurabi's Code imposed a fine of 20 shekels to the owner of the ox if the servant was from an aristocratic family.

If the servant worked for a common family, there was no fine, and the ox would still live no matter what, whether the servant came from an aristocratic family or a common family. The ox would not face death.

On the other hand, the Sumerian Eshnunna Law Code imposed 15 shekels of silver, half of what Israel's law required. And of course, the main culprit, the ox, would live on. While God's law treated the death of a servant or a free person just the same by putting the ox to death.

Through the law, God shows his value of every human being. Whether young or old, slave or free, rich or poor, or loss of any human life is evil to God and must be repaid. The guilty must be put to death.

That's what God's law compassionately upheld. Every human life matters, children and slaves, too. Now, how much does God care about human life? These case laws teach us that God finds human death to be tragic and evil no matter what the circumstance is.

If it's an accident, it is still tragic. In this text, God wants his people to make choices to highly regard other people's lives. For us, this may not look like keeping a violent ox away from our neighbor's yard, but making choices that do not endanger the lives of another human being.

For example, drinking alcohol and driving. Driving after drinking alcohol may not be intentionally trying to kill another human, but it is grossly negligent and can take lives of many. Or any form of reckless driving on the road, no matter what the circumstance is, would be a good application of this law.

It's to view another human life highly. It's to view, value another human life the way God does. To know how tragic it would be if through even an accident, unintentional accident, a human life is lost because of a choice that I made or didn't make.

That's what God's heart teaches us this morning. Any loss of human life is tragic no matter what the circumstance is. And the whole community is involved when it happens. And that's because that's how God views human life.

All of our actions reflect God's regard for human life. And how much regard does God have for human life? Well, he cared so much that he died to redeem it. He loved his people so much that he willingly paid to purchase them with his life.

It was his blood for yours. And that's the type of regard we must have for another human being. Each human being that you meet, you sit next to, you drive next to, you might even get angry at, is regarded highly by God.

And that's what we must do as well. Second, God holds us responsible for disregarding another person's livelihood. God holds us responsible for disregarding another person's livelihood. From livestock that harms people, we move to people harming livestock through negligence.

Verse 35, and if a man opens a pit, and if a man digs a pit and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls in it, the scenario here is an action of negligence. The pit is not intentionally dug to trap an animal.

This is not a hunting season. But rather, the pit is dug and it's neglected. And tragically, another person's animal falls into it and dies. In such a case, verse 34 tells us that the owner of the pit shall make it good.

He shall give money to their owner, but the dead animal shall be his. Effectively, the person who killed the animal out of negligence would be purchasing the dead animal from the owner who lost his animal.

It was a compensation. Now, it's important to note that the death of an animal does not lead to the death of a human. The Bible makes a clear distinction that human life is more valuable than an animal's life.

And that's what Psalm 8, that Hezekiah read, taught us. God made humans a little bit lower than the angels. Humans are the crown jewel of creation. So even when a human causes the death of an animal, we do not kill a human for an animal's life.

To view human on an equal plane as an animal is highly unbiblical and extremely secular. We can't even live that way. We would all have to be vegetarians. It just doesn't work. Now, the fact that the owner of the pit has to pay for the owner of the lost animal is important because back then, animals were a source of income, right?

They weren't pets. People weren't keeping oxen for pets, right? As cute as they may be, they were not pets. They had use. The ox tilled the soil for farming. If you lose an ox, you just lost, technically, your year's worth of income because you could not till the soil or heavily face the loss of income, right?

A heavy loss in your profit. This may be similar to someone destroying your car if you own only one car, and that's your only vehicle of transportation to work in grocery stores, right? It's devastating.

He just lost his main source of income, in which case, the just course of action is to pay the owner the right amount so that he may reacquire his source of income again. That's what it means to have regard for your neighbor.

That's what it means to have regard for your neighbor's well-being. The next two verses show us the damage to another one's property done by one's own property. If one man's ox hurts another's so that it dies, then they shall sell the ox and divide the money from it, and the dead ox, they shall also divide.

Now, this is similar to the cases explained above, but the victim is not a human but another animal, and then the perpetrator is also not human, even out of negligence. It's just two oxen fighting, and one ends up dead.

Now, if it is purely an accident that your ox gored another ox, then both the owners would share the dead and the living ox. And this is actually peculiar. Well, you would think, well, maybe the owner of the living ox need to pay, right?

But if you consider it, it's hard to tell which animal's at fault. Just because an ox came out alive doesn't mean it was the ox that did not attack, right? We don't know, and without any evidence, it's hard to know which ox is at fault, therefore which owner has to pay compensation for it, which means the just course of action is you both share it.

You share the dead ox, take it, you can have the meat, and you also sell the living ox and share the profit there. Because without evidence, justice cannot be done. God takes into account of evidence.

It's based upon facts, not feelings. It doesn't matter how much the owner of the lost ox cries, justice has to be done according to facts, not feelings. However, verse 36 tells us what must happen if it's out of negligence.

Or if it was known that the ox tended to thrust in time past and its owner has not kept it confined, he shall surely pay ox for ox and the dead animal shall be his own. Now, in such a case where it is probable, right, it is known that there is a violent ox that tends to thrust and attack animals, well, then the owner of such ox must pay, right?

So the one who lost the ox must be compensated fully at the expense of the negligent owner, right? Again, it's based upon evidence. The prior knowledge counts as evidence. In our days, of course, we don't have oxen that gore each other.

This would be similar to if your house catches on fire and it spreads to your neighbor's house. In such a case, it would not be right just to put out the fire in your house and then go back home, but rather it would be right to help put out the fire in your neighbor's house and compensate whatever the neighbor has lost, right?

Even though the fire was not started intentionally, the damage done because of accident, negligence, must be compensated for if it is done by you. And that's because God's people ought to respect not just the lives of our neighbors, but also their property, their livelihood.

And we have to ask ourselves, how do we view another person's property? How do we view another person's materials? Do we view it as less important than ours? Today's text teaches us that we ought to protect and care for what belongs to others just as we care for ours.

And this is an example of loving our neighbor as ourselves. We would not want our property to get damaged from our own negligence, so we love others by not letting our negligence damage their property.

And what does this look like? A few weeks ago, there was a little dog outside of our apartment, and he was a friendly dog, and any person who passed by, the dog would follow them, and it seemed like the dog was just lost, and we didn't know who the owner was, but we were just watching the dog, and the other apartment people, they were like, hey, stay, stay, stay there.

And the dog was just out there, just playfully, playfully walking around, but we didn't know who the owner was. So what we decided, hey, what if we let the dog into our house and try to find out who the owner is?

Because the dog could run out and get hit by a car, right? Or the dog could be thirsty, it was a hot day. So we decided to bring the dog in, and then put him outside in our patio, which is fenced, so he can't escape, and then we brought him a bowl of water, which he drank delightfully, and he even peed in our garden.

And we checked the dog tag, and there was the number for the owner. So we called the owner, we texted the owner, and the owner soon came by to pick the dog up. And the decision we made was, if one of our cats got lost, we would want our neighbor to pick up the cat, and make sure the cat's not getting hit by a car, the cat's not getting kidnapped, and do their best to find the owner, why don't we do it for this dog's owner too?

And we found out it was the neighbor right across from us, the dog escaped under the fence through the chicken wire. But that's what it means to have regard for another person's belonging, whether it's property, material, or even pets, vehicles, right?

And when God's people do that, your neighbors feel actually most assured and secure by being your neighbor, right? Your neighbors delight in and appreciate the fact that you have high regard for them, and their goods, right?

Their car, their livelihood. And for God's people, we highly regard things that belong to our neighbors, because that's how God acts, that's how God works, right? He meticulously cares for everyone's well-being.

That's who he is, he's compassionate, to even to the people who don't belong to him, to people who even curse him out, he still provides for them. What it looks like is when Christians apply this law, you may be the first to be contacted by your neighbor to house sit when they're gone because of an emergency.

You may be the first one to be contacted when there's some emergency that they don't know how to take care of, because they trust you, because you have a track record of caring for their goods just as well as you take care of yours.

And this is because, again, we worship a God who cares about the well-being of others. Our God is an other-centered God. He is a God who gives and keeps on giving. He values the interests of others even at the high cost to himself, right?

God cared about your eternal state even at the cost of his life. That's why Jesus voluntarily died on the cross for your eternal inheritance, right? Even the Bible uses this idea of inheritance, goods, property, to metaphorically illustrate salvation, your soul.

And that's not because he needed to. There was no obligation for him, but he wanted to. That's who he is. That's how gracious he is. That's how loving he is. That's how selfless he is. That's how merciful he is.

And when we highly regard our neighbor's well-being just as we regard our well-being, we reflect Jesus' regard for our well-being. We actually reflect Jesus' mercy and compassion that he has on us.

And who knows, this may be an opportunity to share the gospel if they ask, why you're so caring for their house, for their pets, for their family? Well, because I have a God who selflessly cares for me even at the cost of his own son's life.

Let us pray. Father, we're thankful that you are a selfless God who loves us. You are a merciful Father who keeps on giving when we don't deserve any of it. Father, thank you so much for your heart for us.