Tag: God’s character

Digging in Deeper: Exodus 23:4-5

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“If you come across your enemy’s stray ox or donkey, you must return it to him. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying helpless under its load, and you want to refrain from helping it, you must help with it.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I love watching America’s Funniest Videos. I can sit for hours and laugh myself silly watching video after video of people doing crazy things or reacting to things in hilarious ways. The best videos, though, are always the ones in which someone probably gets hurt. There’s just something about a little kid hitting a ball right back into dad’s midsection that you can’t help laughing at. The misfortune of others is an easy thing to laugh at. When the other is someone we consider an enemy, though, the mirth can turn into a bit (or a lot) of schadenfreude. Yet how we treat our enemies matters. God has thoughts about it. Let’s talk about one of those thoughts right here.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 23:1-3

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“You must not spread a false report. Do not join the wicked to be a malicious witness. You must not follow a crowd in wrongdoing. Do not testify in a lawsuit and go along with a crowd to pervert justice. Do not show favoritism to a poor person in his lawsuit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Justice is hard to obtain. It’s so hard that when someone manages to achieve it, we tell those stories. They get splashed all over the newspapers. Well, that’s not really true anymore. They get splashed all over the Internet. They get made into movies. They become urban legends. Yet this isn’t how things should be. We serve a God who is just. How do we know? Well, because we keep running into passages like this one. God cares about justice and wants His people to care about it as well. Let’s talk through yet another example of this in a law He gave to Israel.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 22:25-27

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“If you lend silver to my people, to the poor person among you, you must not be like a creditor to him; you must not charge him interest. If you ever take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him before sunset. For it is his only covering; it is the clothing for his body. What will he sleep in? And if he cries out to me, I will listen because I am gracious.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A huge portion of our economy is built on interest. Everybody changes interest for everything. The only reason a business might not charge interest is if they are running a special sale in hopes that enough extra people will buy something to make up for the interest they are losing from a small number buying. The practice of charging interest on loans has been around for a long time. For much of that, though, one group of people in particular considered it a bad thing. This verse has a whole lot to do with why. Let’s think through what we see here, what it means, and what we should do with it today.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 22:5-6

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“When a man lets a field or vineyard be grazed in, and then allows his animals to go and graze in someone else’s field, he must repay with the best of his own field or vineyard. When a fire gets out of control, spreads to thornbushes, and consumes stacks of cut grain, standing grain, or a field, the one who started the fire must make full restitution for what was burned.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It’s no fun being held accountable for your actions. It’s awful having to be responsible for the choices you have made. This is true when we are young. Believe me. I know. I have kids. It’s not any less true when we are old. We’ll look for just about every way imaginable to get out of having to pay the piper when we’ve done something that carries negative consequences. The God we serve, though, is just. That means our choices have consequences. Sometimes the various laws Moses gave were complex or even profound. Other times, they simply espoused what should have been common sense. Let’s talk about one of those here.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 21:18-19, 33-34

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“When men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or his fist, and the injured man does not die but is confined to bed, if he can later get up and walk around outside leaning on his staff, then the one who struck him will be exempt from punishment. Nevertheless, he must pay for his lost work time and provide for his complete recovery. . .When a man uncovers a pit or digs a pit, and does not cover it, and an ox or a donkey falls into it, the owner of the pit must give compensation; he must pay to its owner, but the dead animal will become his.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a world of cause and effect. When one thing happens, something else happens because of it. Sometimes there is a clear and direct line from the one to the other such that the cause of a particular effect is obvious. Other times, a given effect has such a complex tapestry of causes that no one could possibly trace it back to a single event. One of the perils of sin is that it seeks to convince us that we can disconnect effects from their causes, that our actions will not eventually have consequences. What we see in this next law is that God wanted to help the people resist this particular temptation. Let’s talk about how this command helps with that goal.

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