Why should we care about other people's property?

Why should we care about other people's property? That old saying: “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” Is that really true? What does God's word say about people's property? Let's look at God's word as we continue in our series, from Exodus 22 as well as Exodus 23:1-9 and we read this from God's law. He says this:

“Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. “If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed. “Anyone who steals must certainly make restitution, but if they have nothing, they must be sold to pay for their theft. If the stolen animal is found alive in their possession—whether ox or donkey or sheep—they must pay back double. “If anyone grazes their livestock in a field or vineyard and lets them stray and they graze in someone else’s field, the offender must make restitution from the best of their own field or vineyard. “If a fire breaks out and spreads into thorn bushes so that it burns shocks of grain or standing grain or the whole field, the one who started the fire must make restitution. “If anyone gives a neighbour silver or goods for safekeeping and they are stolen from the neighbour’s house, the thief, if caught, must pay back double. But if the thief is not found, the owner of the house must appear before the judges, and they must determine whether the owner of the house has laid hands on the other person’s property. In all cases of illegal possession of an ox, a donkey, a sheep, a garment, or any other lost property about which somebody says, ‘This is mine,’ both parties are to bring their cases before the judges. The one whom the judges declare guilty must pay back double to the other. “If anyone gives a donkey, an ox, a sheep or any other animal to their neighbour for safekeeping and it dies or is injured or is taken away while no one is looking, the issue between them will be settled by the taking of an oath before the Lord that the neighbour did not lay hands on the other person’s property. The owner is to accept this, and no restitution is required. But if the animal was stolen from the neighbour, restitution must be made to the owner. If it was torn to pieces by a wild animal, the neighbour shall bring in the remains as evidence and shall not be required to pay for the torn animal. If anyone borrows an animal from their neighbour and it is injured or dies while the owner is not present, they must make restitution. But if the owner is with the animal, the borrower will not have to pay. If the animal was hired, the money paid for the hire covers the loss. “If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins. “Do not allow a sorceress to live. “Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal is to be put to death. “Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed. “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless. “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest. If you take your neighbour’s cloak as a pledge, return it by sunset, because that cloak is the only covering your neighbour has. What else can they sleep in? When they cry out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. “Do not blaspheme God or curse the ruler of your people. “Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats. “You must give me the firstborn of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep. Let them stay with their mothers for seven days, but give them to me on the eighth day. “You are to be my holy people. So do not eat the meat of an animal torn by wild beasts; throw it to the dogs.

Exodus 23:1-10 says:

“Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a malicious witness. “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favouritism to a poor person in a lawsuit. “If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it. “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty. “Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent. “Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.”

As we look at this, I hope you're still persevering through all of these laws, because they are a bit of a challenge. It is not quite as exciting as those dramatic passages where all the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea, but it is God's Word. As we read in the New Testament, we are told in 2 Timothy 3:16, that all scripture is inspired by God. All scripture (this included), is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for the training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work. That's why we're looking at God's Word in this passage. That's why I go through God's Word systematically and we seek to learn all that God would have us learn and it follows that this passage has something to teach us. This is a case of considering what God has given us here and He provides principles for us, for justice; principles for jurisprudence. All of this teaches us how to love. We are reminded here that loving our neighbour means that we also need to care about their property. Let's look at this passage.

The first thing I want us to see is a brief summary of these laws. These laws deal with theft and loss of assets. We live in an age where perhaps most of us reading this don't have donkeys, cows and sheep, but we do have credit cards that are stolen. There is a way in which those who steal will create new ways or, “modern ways”, of doing evil using their wicked imagination and the internet for nefarious needs. What we see here is God's law and this law is designed to ameliorate the harm that has been done to the victim and to bring upon the perpetrator the same harm that he was ready and willing to bring upon their victim. Those are some of the principles we see in this passage.

What do we see here? In Exodus 22:1 it says that we are to give back stolen property. It's not, ‘finders keepers, losers weepers’, instead, give back. Make restitution if your beasts are grazing in somebody else's field. If fire destroys, make restitution. If you've looked after property for somebody, make restitution, if you're a trustee. There's the law that's of the loss of the deposit and the care of animals that are entrusted to you. We see in Exodus 22:11, the binding of an oath negates the need for a restitution. If that's the case we see negligence being punished when animals are stolen. In Exodus 22:12 we see where negligence leads to the death of animals, then restitution comes in where the animal is killed. There are rules for borrowing money and renting assets that are laid out in Exodus 22:14-15.

There is the robbing of chastity and reputation when somebody seduces a young woman, these laws about purity and justice are there to maintain the sanctity of marriage in Exodus 22:16-17. Now we need to note there, perhaps for a moment, that the woman was receptive to the man's advances. This was not a case of rape. This was a case of seduction, where the man seduces the woman, and the word ‘seduction’ means to persuade; the girl is persuaded. Notice what is to happen that this man is a thief because he steals the girl's virginity in this case. In the case of seduction, it is basically sex outside of wedlock, and it is not rape but the requirement is that the bride price is to be paid. In South Africa, we have lobola and all of those systems were put into place to protect young couples from falling into the temptations of sex outside of marriage. Why? This is because the Bible simply teaches us that the beauty of sex is to be kept within a heterosexual marriage, so in God's world there is no such thing as a one-night stand without accountability. We need to see that God has got biblical principles to protect the beauty of relationships in His word.

If there is the protection of purity and justice, in Exodus 22:18, there is the sorcery that is condemned. We need to realize that sorcery is a very serious issue. Revelations 18:23, is one of the last references in the Bible to sorcery. There we are told that the Babylon will deceive all nations by sorcery. Now what is sorcery? Sorcery is to deceive people. Sorcery is to entice them with lies that lead them astray from the truth of God, and sorcery then deludes people and causes them to wander away from the path of truth and light. Sorcery encourages people to walk in the path of lies and darkness which is the broad road of destruction that Jesus warned us about. For that reason, God has zero tolerance for sorcery. Sorcery uses spells and divination. The speaking to evil spirits is clearly condemned in the Bible. The very word ‘sorcery’ is always used in the context of evil and deceptive practices and when we easily point fingers at other cultures and say: “Don't go to witch doctors or to sangomas”, we need to also say that we should not be going to homeopaths because there are the same roots of sorcery. Eastern medicine has many of those roots of sorcery and we are to be very wise in these days and have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness. Sorcery is condemned.

Exodus 22:19 sees bestiality being condemned. You might be horrified by the thought of bestiality, but we know that in our day and age it is increasing in our jaded times, when people go from one sexual perversion to the next. It is growing. Did you know that in Europe, three countries have legalized bestiality? In Hungary, Finland and Romania bestiality is legal. All because sexual standards and morals are declining, and people are now choosing their morals rather than going to God's Word and seeing that God condemns bestiality. Firstly, bestiality degrades humans to the level of beasts, God has made us in His image. Also because it is an abuse of animals and God is concerned for property, for people and for animals. God is concerned for all of His creation. We have sorcery condemned. We have bestiality condemned. We have idolatry punished by destruction in Exodus 22:20 and we see the treatment of foreigners which needs to be fair in Exodus 22:22.

In Exodus 22:23, indicates that God hates the mistreatment of widows and orphans. He actually says in this passage, He will get angry and deal severely with those that touch the widow and the orphan. In Exodus 22:25, He speaks here about lending to the poor without interest and not becoming like a money-lender or loan-shark. He speaks about not cursing God or rulers and not delaying and giving our divine offerings. Not holding back our tithes for any reason even if we think it's justified, but God calls us in Exodus 22:31 to be holy as He is holy.

In Exodus 23, God says that slander is prohibited. Exodus 23:2, justice is demanded in the case of where there is the temptation to mob justice. He speaks there about no partiality either to the poor or to the rich, in Exodus 23:3. He says don't look the other way when there's unfairness or animals going wondering. Don't even hate the animal of your enemy who hates you, but help a fallen animal of your enemy. Don't walk past your enemy's car and scrape his paintwork with a key, would be an application in our day and age! Do not deny the poor of justice in Exodus 23:9. All of this in the Bible is very clear that we are not to give bribes or to receive bribes and these laws constantly spell that out for us. That's just a brief summary of these laws.

The question that I want us to dig into is how are these laws to be applied, because this deals with how we look at all the laws in the Old Testament? When looking at how the law is applied, we see that this part of the law is in The Book of the Covenant. The Book of the Covenant is not meant to be mined for particular laws that we like and the rest to be thrown away, nor is it a case of saying, “Well, I like the law, like “don't blaspheme God and don't curse the rulers.” Also I agree it would be good to have a death penalty for bestiality. If we're going to do that application, but not be selective, then we have also got to say, how do we treat our virgin daughters? Are they our property? Are they a blessed addition to the family? How would God have us deal with these issues?

The law is there to reflect the nature of God. I want you to go through that passage and underline, for instance, what those laws teach us about the nature of God. Those laws for instance, as I went through them, teach us that God is passionate about things. God gets angry about injustice; about mistreating the widows and orphans. It teaches us in these laws, that God will not only get angry at the injustice, but He tells us for instance, that He is a compassionate God. He wants us to be holy as He is holy. That He will not acquit the guilty. These laws constantly teach us about the nature of our Creator. That's what we are to see here. We are to learn that The Book of the Covenant is God revealing Himself to His people, at a particular point in time. They have just come out of Egypt. They are now three months in the desert and God is teaching them what He is like, by His laws. We must be careful of some vague or selective application here.

We need to learn from these laws, we don't own oxen and sheep. How do we apply these laws then? We need to understand the dangers in the application as we apply them. When we say we're going to find a principle we need to look at that principle carefully and be careful of principles. We might see that principle in Exodus 22:20: it says that, “whoever sacrifices to any other god, than the Lord, must be destroyed.” We can say ‘yes’, the principle is that the Lord is the only God to be worshipped. However, how do we apply that principle in a multi-faith world? How do you and I be careful of how we live? We need to go the New Testament and read those passages in 1 Corinthians for instance.

Some of these laws would be difficult to apply in principle. For instance, when we come to Exodus 22:29-31, there we see the concept of holiness is the principle. Holiness needs to be applied in our giving. We need to see God as holy, set apart, don't keep back what belongs to God. Give your tithes promptly. We need to be holy in our families and we need to be holy with our assets. That principle needs to be worked out in our day and age, but remember that all these laws were specific to Israel in that context. We need to understand that context and learn from it. Remember, that in applying principles they need to be based on something that the original audience would have understood and we can also understand in our day and age.

If we apply the laws with care, the third thing we need to see, is that the law needs to be applied in the context of Jesus having come. Jesus dying for you on the cross means that you need to look at these laws in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ your Lord. As we look at these principles, we need to see that our approach involves a struggle. We need to understand these laws in the light of the salvation that Christ brings. We must not simply extract principles from the Old Testament law that go against something else in God’s word. Jesus says we need to look again at what God wants us to do. This is the best that we can do in the light of what Jesus has done for us; in the light of the brilliance of His resurrection. We need to understand that we are treading on sensitive areas here. Sensitive territory as we discover the tensions and the blessings of the law and grace. We need to tread carefully as Christians have done for two thousand years. Yet these questions still need to be asked. We can't evade or avoid them.

We need to look at this issue here for the New Testament's perspective. It gives us at least three different ways of looking at it. Firstly, we see for instance, in the New Testament, that while it is a complicated matter in the New Testament, occasionally the law is spoken of as having been fulfilled. According to Romans 10:4, Christ accomplished the whole purpose of the law. What we see there is that we are saved by Jesus, totally, without the law. It's not the law that saves us but Christ Jesus alone that accomplishes everything we need for salvation.

Secondly, it goes on to say that having been saved, we are to see that there are certain specific laws that are still binding on us. Ephesians 6 tells us that all Christians are still bound by the law to honour your mother and father, that you may be blessed by God. Those laws apply and we can't discount them, and we need to learn from them.

There is a third way of seeing that sometimes the New Testament says that there is a sense in which the principles of the law are applied. One of the famous principles is that law from Deuteronomy 25:4 which says: “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain.” That law is quoted in 1 Corinthians 9:9. It is quoted in 1 Timothy 5:18. What does that principle mean? That principle is concerned with, as Paul explains, in 1 Corinthians 9:9-12. He says: “For it is written in the Law of Moses: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn’t he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the ploughman ploughs and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more?” We did not use this right. On the contrary. We put up with anything, rather than hinder the Gospel of Christ. What is Paul insisting on here? It is that while the law gives us principles and he points to those underlying principles, he doesn't lay out the specifics of the law. Paul is not appealing to the law for rhetorical effect.

This means we must make an honest attempt to deal with passages from the law. That's why, when we look at this passage, that we're looking at today, we need to grapple with it and apply it in our lives and remember that Jesus calls us to a higher standard. Not just to not murder or to kill people, but not even to hate them. How do we do this? When we turn to the New Testament, we find these three different models at play there. These models are the topic of ongoing debate. We read in the Exodus, laws that these things are not something we simply import into our life. We often say, “How do I follow them today?” Instead we must be saying, “How can I know God better. How can I know Him in a deeper way as He reveals Himself to the people of Exodus?”

These laws help us in our context, in all the complexities of our modern world. We must not say that none of these laws have any relevance to our conduct, nor must we draw up a new set of laws for every circumstance in our day and age, which is so often the case. What we need to do is to learn from all of the facts that Jesus has dealt with the law. 1) We are saved without the law. We are saved by His death on the cross, by grace and by grace alone and this is not of ourselves so none of us can boast. 2) Having been saved He has prepared good works in advance for us to do. Those good works we see in this passage here. 3) We see here the abstract principles that we are to learn from these laws. What are we to say in summary? That we are to love our neighbour and loving our neighbour means caring even about their property and the assets of others around us.

We as Christians need to glean from The Book of the Covenant. The first thing we glean is an understanding of God. The second thing we need to glean is that we need to see what God requires of us in those situations and in similar situations. Thirdly, we need to see that we learn about how God would love us, have us love Him and love one another. The practicalities of that love worked out in day to day life, is what we see in the law. The passage is clear, if you find something that belongs to somebody else, take it to them, keep it for them, look after it, don't just claim it as your own.

Let me share a story. A friend of mine just a few weeks ago went to the restroom at the supermarket. Put down her phone and didn't remember that she'd put it down. Went out of the restroom. She carried on shopping in the supermarket and a stranger walked up to her and said: “I think you might have left a phone in the restroom. If it's yours go to the Christian bookstore next door it's there.” Well, my friend went next door. It was an iPhone she lost. At the store she asked: “Have you got a phone handed in?” They said: “Well what does it look like?” After she described it, they said somebody found her phone in the toilet and handed it in. It was a stranger who applied God's law and saved my friend a tidy packet by doing what God's Word calls us to do. That person was loving my friend even though they were strangers to each other and doing that “as unto Christ.”

The Book of the Covenant is there to teach us what God requires of us. More importantly who God is. That we might love Him better and love our neighbours in the specifics of life. Most Christians understand what constitutes proper behaviour. We should increasingly understand that because we are maturing in Christ. Wisdom teaches us what is right and maturity guides us. We are not to make an exhaustive legalistic list: for example when I go to the shops, when I pick up a phone, always hand it in at the Christian bookstore. No! that would be a list of laws. Rather ask yourself: “What is the most loving thing I can do to my neighbour and for my neighbour and with his or her property?” How can I do that as unto Christ? Loving your neighbour means caring about people's property.

Let's pray together. ‘O Lord Jesus, thank you that You save us by Your death on the cross and by Your death alone. Thank you Lord Jesus that once we are saved we can know how to live in this world. We can learn from the laws you gave your people in the past and not only can we learn from the laws we can see Your nature spelled out and revealed in those laws. We can see, not only Your nature revealed in the application of those laws and the principles of those laws, but Lord, we see too something of how You would have us love our neighbour practically in these days. Lord, guide us we ask. Lead us by Your Spirit to truly love as You have first loved us. For this we pray because You have saved us and so in the name of Jesus Christ amen.’

Well may God bless you as you follow Jesus. As He saves you, may you experience His blessing and His kindness in your life. All to His glory as you live your life as a Christ did. Amen.