This Sunday's Worship Materials can be found in the "Featured Sermon" below. We meet in person at Harper Park Middle School, and the service is also livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

The Justice of the Lord (Exodus 21:1-23:9)

May 1, 2016 Speaker: Rev. Dave Dorst Series: Exodus - The Glory of the Lord

Topic: Sermons Passage: Exodus 21:1– 23:9

A few years ago, I read a book called The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs. The author is a secular Jewish writer who read through the entire Bible and wrote down all the laws and rules that he saw (over 700 rules by his count), and resolved to keep them all for a year. So he grew a long beard (before long beards were cool) and wore a robe that he attached tassles to every morning. He shaped his diet so that he didn’t eat anything that was forbidden and he didn’t wear anything that had mixed fibers (Leviticus 19:19). When he met a man in the park that he found out was an adulterer, he he picked up some pebbles and threw them at him as his version of a stoning (Lev. 20:10). He was happy that his wife gave birth to twins because they had been “fruitful and multiplied,” but he had to stop holding her hand after she delivered the babies because she was ceremonially unclean! (Lev. 12:5) He found it all very exhausting as he had to censor everything that came out of his mouth, but he came to appreciate things like actually taking a weekly Sabbath, so that at the end of the experiment he claimed that he was a “reverent atheist.”

Which begs the question: “What good is keeping the rules if you don’t believe in the rule Giver?” And for those who do believe in God, is it even possible to please Him just by keeping the rules? Since nobody actually keeps all these laws in the Bible anymore (except guys who write books about the accomplishment), which ones do we still obey and which ones do we set aside and explain away? This Sunday’s passage covers two and a half chapters of “case” laws given by God on the heels of the 10 Commandments. Some of them we appreciate and understand why they were given (“You shall not oppress a sojourner” and “he who started the fire shall make full restitution”), while others we have a hard time with (“you shall not permit a sorceress to live”). Let’s work through these rules together and see God’s heart for justice, holiness, protection, and compassion for His people reflected in them.

We’ll be celebrating the Lord’s Supper and then eating a Fellowship Lunch afterwards, so we’ll connect with God and one another more deeply. -Dave Dorst