Sermon Notes: Exodus 21:12-36 / Galatians 3:19-25
Exodus 21:12-17 (ESV) 12 “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. 13 But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee. 14 But if a man willfully attacks another to kill him by cunning, you shall take him from my altar, that he may die. 15 “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death. 16 “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death. 17 “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.
Exodus 21:28 (ESV) 28 “When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable.
Exodus 21:32 (ESV) 32 If the ox gores a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.
What is God’s intent for Moses, Israel, and for us who believe: 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (ESV) 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
I feel like I’ve baited and switched you in the promise we are back into Exodus. We are, but we have to make sure we can properly deal with our texts over the coming weeks. I cut the exposition of the verses for today in Exodus out and put them with next week’s text because the necessary work to interpret the law in the setting of the gospel is just too important.
Since Genesis 3, with the successful enticement of mankind, the Serpent has wrecked order and instituted his destructive law constructed on doubt in and distrust of God and God’s way of flourishing.
This rebellion has brought the just wrath of God to bear on all of mankind. However, God will bring order and salvation in the gospel work he began in the garden.
Israel has been living under Egyptian law and particularly Egyptian slavery for a long time. They are going to have to unlearn the slave and victim mind, and this is a difficult relational struggle the Lord Jesus is initiating in saving them, and he will use the means of revolutionary laws for Israel and the earth at this point in salvation history.
Israel is a mess, and God is going to bring them to order and flourishing, and he intends Israel’s flourishing to be a means for the nations to see their need for Jesus.
God will do this in giving the Mosaic law with its punishments, and in that law God will make Israel flourish and show them Jesus, their Creator, who will come in the fullness of time to pay for sin and invite them and all nations to come to him by faith.
We have to ask: What is God’s purpose in this law and these punishments combined with God’s missionary intent for Israel? We need to ask and answer this now so we can set an interpretive lens in place as we study Exodus and as you read yearly through your Bibles together.
Let’s dive in!
We will start with a rather explicit quotation that will help us.
The Bible “…does not give us a complete code with regulations for every situation that might arise in every culture for all time (Italics mine). However, it does provide a set of cases to help us understand the basic principles of divine justice. These legal cases are contained in the Book of the Covenant that God gave to Moses. Each case consists of both a crime and a punishment. The punishments God gave to Israel as a nation under his direct divine rule do not always apply today. Yet they still help us understand how to seek justice in an unjust world.” – Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 708–710.
Fellow Christians who might disagree with the sentence that says some of the punishments for Israel under God’s divine rule don’t always apply now have to explain what we do with Deuteronomy 21:18-21 if they do apply now.
This is the law about stubborn and rebellious children that has the leaders of a city stone stubborn and rebellious children to death at the entrance of our cities. If Deuteronomy 21:18-21 was the law of Floyd County, the punishment for stubborn and rebellious children would be for the Floyd County / Rome City Commission to take these sons and daughters out on highways 411, 101, 20, 53 and 27 at the county line stone them to death.
Again, we have to ask: What is God’s purpose in the law and punishments combined with God’s gospel missionary intent for Israel?
Galatians 3:19–25 gives us answers and will help us frame what we study moving forward in Exodus.
So, let’s read Galatians 3:19-25
What do we see?
The law defines sin and the fact we have a sin problem.
Paul states in Galatians 3:19 (ESV) 19 Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made…”
The law was given to make it evident what sin is and expose our inability to live up to God’s standard.
How can we say the law exposes our inability to live up to God’s standard?
We know this by experience. But even more Romans 3:20 says, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
The law says to not covet, so now I know coveting is a sin, and yet I still covet. The law lets me know what sin is, and yet no amount of work can kill coveting alone, and I can’t kill it well enough to earn justification. We can’t live up to God’s standard and be justified by our effort because we will inevitably mess up.
The law makes me see that I desperately need Jesus.
The law shows the powerlessness of the law to justify sinners.
The Bible is clear that the law cannot provide justification.
Galatians 3:22-23 (ESV) 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.
Galatians 2:16 (ESV) “…yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”
The Law’s purpose was never to save but to define sin and what sin does to humans and show the need for salvation through faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:21-26 is clear that the only way God has ever and will ever save is through the cross of Jesus Christ. That truth can be gleaned from every page of the Bible. The law was never God’s means of saving anyone.
What else did the law accomplish?
The law served as a temporary guardian.
Galatians 3:24 (ESV) “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”
The word “guardian” (the NASB translates this as “tutor”) refers to a household servant who was responsible for guiding and disciplining children. The law served like that “guide” to guide and discipline God’s people, to help them be holy and prepare them for the coming of Jesus and to receive him by faith not by works.
The law points people to Jesus.
Galatians 3:24 (ESV) “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.”
The Law was not an end by itself. The law was a means to show all nations their need to be justified by faith in Jesus who is the fulfillment of the law.
The law also has written into it gospel nuggets that when read within the complete framework of the canon of Scripture shows us the Bible is the most complex hyperlinked document in the history of the world.
In Exodus 21 is a beautiful gospel nugget I can’t wait to unpack with you next week. The law leads us to see and enjoy Jesus as the God of the Bible.
The law set God’s principles for human flourishing for all people everywhere as a work of general revelation.
The law restores good order for mankind to flourish in. The laws of civilizations before the Law of Moses (Hammurabi’s Code) lacked in equity for women and slaves. It also lacked room for mercy and showed that what is considered by some to be great works of law are works dark forces use to harm mankind not help. Sometimes it’s not so much what is addressed overtly in law that is dark but what is excluded that is dark.
Not so God’s law.
God’s law gives us God shaped principles to help humans, who are charged with governing, create good laws for every social order in every nation for all people because God is good even to those who are evil.
Matthew 5:43-45 (ESV) 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.’”
God will hold people accountable for this goodness that is spurned with just condemnation on the last day when men stand before him having taken advantage of good laws shaped by God himself and implemented by nations for their good because they trampled over God’s good in those laws as they resisted him.
God does not need an Islamic Republic to shift to a Christian government to save his elect or to use their own laws that had some good in them to hold people who won’t repent accountable for what they knew and saw. See Romans 1.
Application beliefs
The law of Moses served ancient Israel until the full revelation of Jesus Christ.
The Mosaic law was given specifically to ancient Israel as part of the old covenant. It was tailored to their unique identity as a theocratic nation chosen by God to represent him among the nations (Exodus 19:5-6>>>1 Peter 2:9) as what he was going to do in the church redeemed by Jesus Christ in the fullness of time.
Not every part of the law was intended to be the prescription for all nations for all time. Moses’ law was designed by God for Israel’s governance under Yahweh’s direct rule as their king to prepare them and the nations for the cross.
Israel would reject this when they asked for a king and got Saul, and their demise began slowly even though the Lord graciously gave them some good leaders over that decline.
Jesus fulfilled the law.
In the new covenant of the good news of the kingdom, the Mosaic law has been fulfilled in Christ (Matthew 5:17). Matthew 5:17-18 (ESV) 17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
Jesus accomplished the purpose of the law. Jesus death, burial, resurrection, and ascension has accomplished all things, and followers of Jesus are now under the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2>>>John 13:34-35>>>Romans 13:8-10, etc.). The law of Christ means that Christian obedience is shaped by Jesus’ love which is the fulfillment of he law, and that kind of love compels his people to care for each other and bear each other’s burdens as he bore ours.
The law of Christ exalts the gospel of the kingdom, and the transformation of people organized in local churches who are the royal nation and priesthood under God’s word with members making disciples and healing creation rather than reinstituting a specific set of civil laws from Israel.
Imposing Mosaic law on nations fails to account for the redemptive-historical shift from the old covenant to the new covenant.
The church, not a particular nation, is God’s covenant community.
Under the new covenant, the church is God’s covenant community. No nation on earth is God’s covenant community. It is the church. The church is the body of Christ drawn from all nations, tribes, and tongues (Revelation 7:9). Therefore, the church operates under Jesus’ authority, not Mosaic law.
Civil governments are ordained by God (Romans 13:1-7), but they are not theocratic extensions of the old covenant.
If you dig into this topic, you will read about “general equity”. So, what is that?
We must affirm the moral/ethical principles God wrote into Mosaic law, and we need to apply these principles in every appropriate and applicable way when given the opportunity to do so. Christians must get into and bring good reform to local, state, and federal government.
This is consistent with the Reformed idea of “general equity,” which suggests that the truths underlying the Mosaic law can guide civil governance, but the specific laws themselves are not directly binding.
For example, the moral principle of justice reflected in Mosaic laws against theft or oppression can inform modern laws, but the exact penalties prescribed in the Mosaic code, like stoning as the preferred method of capital punishment, are not binding.
Religious freedom and conscience are important.
The New Testament emphasizes freedom of conscience in matters of faith (Romans 14:1-12). Imposing Mosaic law as civil law would violate this principle, as it enforces a theocratic system that is not in line with a free conscience. If we imposed the law as it is, we would force conversion on millions of people.
Imposing theocratic Christian law in history has yet to work. The reformers murdered thousands of fellow Christians who refused to baptize their babies under national law.
We do not condone forced conversion or forced theological agreement.
What about the mission?
Enforcing Mosaic law on nations could undermine the mission of the church by commingling the gospel with a political or legal agenda.
God ordains government, and he did not design his church to be that government. I understand that not everyone agrees with that in evangelical Christianity.
Kuyper tried to deal with this distinction in his concept of “sphere sovereignty”. This is the idea that God has created certain spheres of sovereignty. These spheres are God-ordained spheres (government, education, business), each with its own authority and responsibility under God’s rule. No sphere should dominate another. Each sphere should operate independently yet in harmony. Kuyper opposed both state overreach and church control of state, advocating for a pluralistic structure where each sphere honors God’s design. This idea supports limited government, religious freedom, and social institutions flourishing within their God-given roles.
We try to make sense of what Kuyper was trying to make sense of when we look at the world through what we call “domains”. These domains are designed by God to exercise stewardship over creation, and we believe it is the church’s job is to NOT have their own domain, but to fill each domain so that by the preached gospel and disciples made we see Jesus kingdom come in government and all domains of creation leading to his return, NOT us becoming the government or replacing the domain itself.
Creation is not going anywhere. It will be completely transformed at Jesus’ coming, and we will dwell in it as completed forever. We are working toward that in the mission.
Worship the Lord for his law and its fulfillment in Jesus!