God of Respect and Justice

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

I don't know if you've ever seen somebody's desk that is immaculate. I mean like color-coded, okay? Like you know it's that guy or you maybe you're that guy, okay? You got like the perfect desk. There's like a shelf system, okay? Like you've got the whole thing kind of laid out. By contrast, some of your emails, some of your email accounts, they're not that immaculate. I asked my wife, her personal email account, I asked her if I could say this number and she said yes. Her personal email account, Unread Messages. Now this includes you know all the shopping things, all the things you sign up for, all that. Her number of Unread Emails is 23,231. I lost my mind when she told me that number. I was thinking it was like 8,000. You know something totally pedestrian but still a little weird? No, no. Now in her defense she does not use that email that much and so she goes back and searches it when she needs to

find like a deal or a coupon or something. But if you just look at it, I mean it is just chaos. I mean it is anxiety inducing chaos. They're just kind of listed by how they came in, right? I mean it's Gmail so she can search them but man, whenever we are talking about organization and how like we think about how the Bible is organized, okay? That's not a thought that you and I typically have. We don't typically look at the Old Testament and go, huh, I wonder how these books are organized. Maybe you did, maybe you have, once or twice, that's fine but it's not like a regular occurrence for you, okay? You're not really thinking about it kind of that way. However, whenever we look into Exodus law, it is vital. It really tells us a lot about what is going on in the book of Exodus, okay? And if we don't understand that organization of what we are reading, it's going to look like my wife's email inbox, okay?

It's going to look a little chaotic. It's going to look a little kind of like what's happening right now. And sometimes, you know, like you just go from one verse to the next and there's not a whole lot of connection in between. It helps to know this. I've said this a couple of different ways but I keep trying to find ways to describe kind of what the Old Testament is. The Old Testament, and this includes Exodus law, so we're going to be looking at Exodus chapter 21 through 24 today. And, man, I would guarantee you hadn't heard a sermon on Exodus 21 through 24 in a decade. I'm just betting. Maybe you did. Maybe just somebody's going through Old Testament law. But in Exodus law and much of the Old Testament, it is stitched together and it's almost like a Pinterest board, okay? Go with me for just a second on this. It's almost like a Pinterest board. So if you have a Pinterest board, you're thinking, okay, this is like,

you know, backyard ideas. You know, that's the name of the Pinterest board. And then you've just got like ideas kind of thrown on there, okay? And then maybe you kind of like rearrange them. Maybe you put them in order. Maybe you edit some. Maybe you put some in. Maybe you do something like that. But to grasp what's going on with the Pinterest board, if you over focus on one little thing, you kind of miss what's going on with the Pinterest board, okay? You kind of miss what's going on. You kind of have to stand back and see the whole thing first and kind of begin to see it all kind of begin to piece together, okay? But you have to be able to stand back and see it to really grasp what you are getting. The Old Testament is a lot like this. It is pieces that have been put together. A lot of times we think about the New Testament when we think about the Bible and the New Testament are

letters written to people, okay? Or accounts, gospel accounts of what happened. But they're narrative typically or they are written like a letter. Well, that to us feels way more stream of consciousness, way more kind of in the groove of how you and I think about reading a book today, okay? So if we're reading a book today, we're thinking about it in terms of just like this normal flow, this either stream of consciousness or like a narrative flow. The Old Testament is not like that at all. There are parts where there are narratives, okay? So there are stories in there. I get it. But when you look at a lot of places, including Exodus law, it is things that have been stitched together way more like an encyclopedia. And I know some of you don't know what that is. It's okay.

But it's like an encyclopedia. It's like there's a master entry and then there's things that are kind of put together and they're stitched together in a certain way. And sometimes those things that are stitched together have different authors, but they've been kind of put together in a certain way so that the editor is kind of the author of the Old Testament. Okay. I'll keep trying to explain that. Here's something else that's really helpful. In academic circles, the Bible is known as meditative literature. The Old and New Testament, the genre of the work is called meditative literature. In other words, it is intended to be read over and over and over and over again. And after you've read it for the 10th time, you begin to kind of see some things that you didn't see before, because it's almost like as you read it over and over again, you're able to stand back and kind of

grasp a little bit more of what's going on with the Old Testament. And so as you read, you have to note things like placement, why is this story placed here? Frequency. Why is this word repeated throughout these different stories? What's going on? What are they trying to tell us? And as you read it over and over again, the themes begin to emerge. But if you just took four verses, you might not grasp the entire thing. Okay. So today, we are going to read over all of Exodus 21 through 24, not out loud. And we are going to notice some themes. Okay. I've read over Exodus 21 through 24 several times. There are some themes that kind of pop out. And there's two big ones of power and protection. Power and protection. Okay. We are in our series called No God. And we are reading the law to find God's heart. Admittedly, that is like reading the instruction manual to find the

use of a product. Understood. However, it's still Bible and we're still going for it. Okay. So we're going to read the law to see God's heart. And we talked about this last week. The law gives us an ideal, like a template. Okay. Like this is how life can be, should be lived. Okay. However, the law cannot heal. The law cannot give life. It's often called an x-ray machine. Right. The law can show you where you're broken. It cannot heal your bones. Okay. It can show you how you're broken though. And in part, it can show you how you're broken because it's giving you this template, this ideal of what life should be like. And you kind of see your life comparison that going, I don't measure up to that. Then the law is doing its job. Okay. But as we do, as we read over the law, we can kind of see God's heart in the middle of that. Because it's not just do this, don't do that.

It's, it's there kind of there's, we're going to see kind of some bigger themes emerge. Okay. Admittedly, the reason you don't hear a lot of sermons on Exodus 21 through 24 is because it requires a lot of, of context, a lot of backstory. I'm going to try to do that as streamlined as possible this morning. I've already given you some. I'm going to, I'm going to do it one more time and you'll see why in the first two verses. Exodus 21, one through two A. This is, says now these are the rules that you shall set before them. Let me stop there. The rules that you shall set before them. We've just gone through the 10 commandments in Exodus 20. And in Exodus 21 through 24, we get an expansion upon those 10 commandments. We get an explanation of, we get a particular case scenario of all of these commandments in a lot of different ways. And they're not like in order. It doesn't go like first

commandment, second commandment, third commandment. It doesn't. It kind of jumbles them all over the place, seemingly. Okay. So, so now these are the rules that you shall set before them. We're about to expand on the 10 commandments. You'll see why we need to stop here in a second. When you buy a Hebrew slave. Okay. We're going to stop right there. Okay. All right. When you buy a Hebrew slave. Slavery in the ancient Near East culture that this was written in. There in that, in that culture, there were no banks for a loan. There was no social security. There was no bankruptcy law. There was no Section 8 housing. There was, there was no minimum wage. The only safety net that existed whenever you were on hard times was selling yourself into slavery. So what we think of with like, what we think of with like a social security or like some kind of, some kind of safety net for like when the bottom

falls out on your life and you have, you owe a lot more than you could ever really pay. There's, there's nowhere to put you if we don't kind of have that social safety net. They didn't have that here except to be able to sell yourself into slavery. And what you would do is, if you owed money to somebody a lot more than you could pay, you would become their slave to effectively earn a super high wage and you would do that until that debt was paid off. Okay. So then as we're putting rules around slavery, sometimes people want to get up in arms and say like why isn't God abolishing slavery right there in Exodus 2 or 21. I would simply say God is giving rules for the culture that they are in. God is helping them understand how to operate in the system that is already there. And if we don't have slavery, then people that are destitute just die. They just die on the street. So let's

not pretend like we have some different operating structure so that we could just abolish slavery overnight and everything's fine. It's not. It would actually cause a lot more problems. Okay. Not defending slavery as a practice. I'm saying that when there is no social safety net like we have today, there's no way for people to get out of that debt. They have to work it off in some capacity and that's what slavery was. Okay. Very different actually than like 18th, 19th century chattel slavery in America. Very different. However, still slavery. Not going to try to color it up too much. There it is. Okay. So if you are, if you needed to get out of debt, you had to sell yourself. Now here's the, you just buckle up for this one. If you were physically unable to get out of the debt yourself, your option then was to sell your children into slavery. Okay. Are we uncomfortable this morning yet? Okay. We're there. Okay.

And you think about it, it's essentially sending your kid out to work for the family. Okay. And there was no other way for your family to survive. That was a, again, this is an outlet. This isn't like some awesome life goal that people had. They weren't like, man, one day, slavery. But it was a way for them to repair some major debt that their whole family owed. Okay. All right. Now, you might think upon, upon that, you might think, man, that sounds really dangerous to do that, to sell your child into slavery. It totally was. It was very dangerous. You, you didn't know what you were, what you were kind of getting into. And this is why God makes laws for slavery. To protect people. To actually protect the slaves. So in the first six verses, it says, when you buy a Hebrew slave, there's two things that it puts on there. It says you can only serve six years maximum. And if you win in single, then you can come out single. If

you win in married, you'd come out married. Okay. They're not trying to mess with the marital union there. But it's the law, here's what I really want to impress upon you. The law is protecting the slave, not the slave owner. The law is protecting the slave. It's giving order to how the slave owner should handle, but it's also giving order to what the slave should do. Now, the next couple of verses is when you sell your daughter into slavery. That's verse seven. Again, sounds super dangerous. Here's what you got to know. In the ancient Near Eastern culture, women did not have the kind of rights that they have today. They just didn't. And so, what happens here, it says, if the daughter is sold and taken as a wife, which did happen, if the daughter sold is taken as a wife, the law here provides that she is given the status of a wife, which is actually a big deal. It means she has inheritance. It means she has

protection. It means she has a lot of things kind of going for her. Whereas if she were just a normal slave and not taken as a wife, then she would have very, very few rights. She's sold. She's given the status of the wife. And she can't be, I know this sounds weird, she cannot be resold if her and her husband have a bad fight. Okay. I know it's difficult for us to wrap our mind around the power dynamic of what it is to be owned by your husband. Strange, very strange. But the law here is providing cover for that woman to be able to disagree with her husband, to be able to be a wife, basically, love her husband well, and not if things go south, not just get sold down the river. It's protecting this woman. Right? The same thing would happen if you sold your daughter in slavery and someone buys her and gives her as a wife to their son. They also, that slave girl also gains the status of a wife. Okay.

And if they are mistreated by the son, they go free. Period. Okay. I realize this is difficult to stomach kind of on the front end, but what I really wanted to help you understand was that God is setting laws and rules for people who have known nothing but slavery. In the ancient Near East, that is how the social safety net worked. And if they were going to just exist as a people, he couldn't say, slavery doesn't work anymore, figure it out. Right? It would have been a whole rewiring of where they were. God is taking them from where they are and he's providing ways to protect people. In fact, although it is difficult, God is actually, what he's doing here, he's actually establishing justice among the vulnerable. The first laws that you see after the Ten Commandments, whenever God begins to explain what's going on, God aims the laws right at people who could

easily be taken advantage of. Slaves, especially girl slaves. He calls girl slaves out in particular in verses seven through 11. Of 21. And I get it. Look, I understand like to, to, to, to warp your mind to get all the way into ancient Near Eastern culture is difficult. Okay. To, to think like, Oh, you know, pastors condoning slavery. No, I'm not. I'm saying it was a reality. And I'm saying it was a reality that they had to work out, that they had to move freely in and figure out how to help people in the midst of that. And so God here is establishing justice among the vulnerable. And you don't just see it with slaves. You see it in some other places here. It says in verses 21 and 22 of Exodus 22, it says, you shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. Okay. Why is he saying this?

Because all of these people were vulnerable. Sojourners vulnerable, widows vulnerable, fatherless children vulnerable. All these people could very easily be taken advantage of in the society that they were in. God is establishing law so that they would be protected. Look at 22 verse 25, just a couple of verses later, it says, if you lend money to any of my people with you, who is poor, you shall not be like a money lender to him. And you shall not exact interest from him. Okay. Again, protecting people that need help, protecting sojourner's widows, fatherless poor. Look at Exodus 23 verses six, and then verse nine, it says, you shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his lawsuit. And then verse nine, you shall not oppress a sojourner. Whenever poor people sued somebody or brought them to court or anything like that, it was very easy for the people that were in charge to be like, he's poor,

he doesn't matter. Let's just push this aside. What's he going to do? He doesn't have any social clout. He doesn't have any way to hold us to this. We're just going to push him aside. God is establishing laws, honestly, laws that you and I take totally for granted that protect people that cannot protect themselves. They cannot use the leverage of their position that they are in in order to get ahead or in order just to keep things fair.

God is establishing law to do that, legal protection for the poor. We begin to see an idea of a safety net here in the next couple of verses, Exodus 23, 10 through the first part of 11. It says, for six years, you shall sow your land and gather in its yield. But the seventh year, you shall let it rest and life, that the poor of your people may eat. Let me explain what's going on because you actually see this happen in the book of Ruth, okay? That if you own a field, and most people did, most people are working some kind of field or owning some kind of whatever, even if it's their field, it doesn't matter. You're going to sow and gather for six years of that field in year seven. And this is a year that year seven didn't like rotate among whoever. It was year seven was like a set thing among God's people. And then when that happened, every poor person knew that if they were hungry,

they could go in anybody's field and glean from their field and eat like right then. They could just, it was just food off the grain. They could just eat it. What you see in Ruth happened is there's another kind of similar law and that is like whenever you glean your field, whenever you bring in the harvest, you actually don't bring in the harvest on the corners of your field. Okay? So like whenever you're pulling the oxen, I realize, look, we got to get into ancient Near Eastern times here, but whenever the oxen are going around, you don't go to the edge of your field and then make a right hand turn. You go and you curve that out. You leave the corner. Why? So that poor people could eat. That's why. And so look, I realize it's not social security. Okay? I realize that. I realize you say, well, like how are people supposed to survive on that? Look, it's really hard to kind of time warp back

to where they were. However, provision is being made for people who cannot provide for themselves. Provision is being made for people who cannot leverage their way out of situations. God, in his law, immediately is protecting the vulnerable. He's protecting the vulnerable. Right? So you see the same thing happen, but in terms of not just straight up protecting them, but you see the same thing happen whenever God is talking about physical violence. So we got a lot of laws in here about physical violence. It mediates that violence. So we see, we saw this last week, or we talked about this last week, that murder has different degrees delineated, right? So we have first degree murder, second degree murder, third degree murder. The reason we have that in the United States is because it's in the book of Exodus. That's where we got it. It actually lines out what manslaughter is, how manslaughter is third degree murder.

And it doesn't stop with just straight murder. It even talks about fighting. So if you look at Exodus 21, 18 through 19, it says, when men quarrel and one strikes another with a stone or this fist and the man does not die, but takes to his bed, then if the man rises again and walks outdoors with his staff, he who is struck shall be clear. Only he shall pay for the loss of his time and shall have him thoroughly healed. So if you and another guy are fighting in a fistfight, or you pick up a rock or some kind of weapon or whatever, and you're laid up, then whoever whoever puts you down, whoever makes you have to heal, whoever whooped you, has to pay for your healing and has to pay for your lost time. This is like workman's comp. Okay. This is kind of, it's weird. I know it's not the same. It's like neighbor's workman's comp. I don't know.

But what it does, I mean, like, think about this. Like if you're about to get into a fistfight with somebody over something, you need to think through the fact that whatever you do to this person, you're going to have to pay for according to the law. Right? That's kind of a deterrent, if you will. Like it kind of makes people think twice before they're swinging or before they pick up a shovel. Okay. The laws hold the offender responsible, even if it's unintended. So if two people are fighting and a slave, a pregnant woman or whatever, they get hit, then they're paying whoever hit them is paying for the damages of what's happening. If in fact, if they're fighting and somebody like makes one of their slaves lose an eye, that slave immediately goes free. Period. If they make that slave lose a tooth, that slave immediately goes free. Okay. It's an old expression, but sometimes we talk about eye for eye

and tooth for tooth. That's where we get it. Even if your animal injures or kills somebody, or if you kill somebody's animal, the offender is responsible. Even in all of these really intricate, weird situations, the offender is responsible and it holds the understanding. It actually displays it that might does not make right. Okay. And it puts that kind of in all of these laws. And what it's teaching us is that God in his law to maintain justice, he restrains the powerful to help a just society thrive. These laws are God restraining the powerful

to help a just society thrive. Slave owners regulated. The ones quarreling are regulated. And this is by their law. And you see it one more time. You see it again with private property. We talked about this last week a little bit. There's respect for private property. Look at Exodus 22:14. It says, if a man borrows anything of his neighbor and it is injured or dies, the owner not being with it, he shall make full restitution. Okay. Again, there's an understanding that is baked in here that you kind of take for granted if you don't look for it, that private property is there because you can't borrow communal property. You can only borrow something that belongs to another person. Okay. So this idea that, here's a great illustration. I've spent time in the beautiful country of Madagascar. Okay. Madagascar is wild. It's totally fun. It's not like it is in the cartoon Madagascar. Okay. It's different than that.

There's people, animals don't talk, but there are lemurs. So I had a buddy that was in Madagascar. He was over on stateside. We became friends. He went back to build a seminary there. Okay. He wants to train people, train pastors. And he found a plot of land that he wanted to buy. And he was telling me this. I mean, he's born and raised there, so he understands, but he's explaining it to me who's, you know, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the idiot. And he's saying, I have to buy this three times. I said, okay, teach me why, why do you have to buy this three times? He goes, well, I have to buy it. First, I have to buy it from the village elder. So there's a village kind of generally like tribal area. It's in her area. She's the village elder. I need to, she believes she owns it. I need to pay her for it. Okay. What about the other guy? Well, there's another person I need to pay. He swears that his brother owned it when his brother died.

And he's gotten his family to testify to that. So he owns it. So I have to pay him too. That okay. Who's the third person? He said, I have to pay the government because the government believes they own it also. So I have to buy this thing three times. I said, is that common? He said, yes, happens all the time, actually. And that sounds crazy to us, right? Like if we're going to buy a house, we're going to know who owns it. We're going to, I mean, there's like, you know, titling fees and all this, I mean, all this stuff, crazy stuff.

We take it for granted that three people don't own the same thing. We do. We take that for granted that we have the rule of law here that governs a lot of our interactions. We take the rule of law for granted on the streets. Like if somebody wanted to drive the opposite way down the street, we're like, what's going on? Like you could take that guy's license plate down and like call the police station, like make bad things happen to this person who's doing something super dangerous, right? Like we have recourse for that because we have the rule of law. There are places even today that do not have that rule of law. In the ancient Near East, very similar, you didn't have a whole lot of rule of law. It had to be explained. This is what's happening here. But as he's doing that, he's laying it down that that might doesn't make right that the people that are in power are the ones that need to be checked. Okay. The only way,

the only way for this society to function according to justice is for owners and borrowers to be held responsible, for ownership to be documented, for particulars to be accounted for. And it sounds super boring. And again, if you're like reading Exodus 21, 18 through 19, and you're just like when one man corals or strikes, you know, it strikes the other one. Okay, you can get kind of lost in the middle of that. But when you step back, you can begin to see that God is protecting the vulnerable by restraining the powerful. He puts restraint upon the powerful. Okay, so for

justice to thrive, those that are powerful, economically powerful, socially powerful, governmentally powerful, physically powerful, whatever the power is, they need to be in check. They need to be held accountable because in that society, might is going to make right. The rules of the jungle, as we call them, will take over unless something else is there. And if you don't believe me, just go on a playground. I don't need to say anything else. You understand what I mean? And so if there's no extra laws kind of being thrown down, it's just whoever's bigger gets to go on the slide first. And there's no recourse. There's no teacher

kind of regulating that. And this is why God includes the last part. There's kind of another kind of layer to this. I want you to see it. So this is discussing sacrifices and God makes it really clear here in Exodus 22, 29. It says, you shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses, the first born of your sons you shall give to me. Now, giving the first born, this is not child sacrifice. Calm down, everybody. This is actually part of the 10th plague. And if you go back and read about the 10 plagues, on the 10th plague, God ransomed the first born. He said, you owe me the first born every time, all your first borns. And so the Israelites here are participating in something called like a redemption. So they're buying back their first born children. Okay, this is kind, it's kind of like a tax, but it's different. Obviously, it's a little different.

Let's see the emphasis though here. The emphasis is on do not delay from the fullness of your harvest, from the outflow of your presses, okay, olive presses. This is oil, right? You see it again. Look at 2319. It says, the best of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. What is God saying right here? What is he saying? He's saying this throughout. I'm just cherry picking a few verses to show you this. He's saying to his people, I want you to keep my feasts and mean it. I want you not just to do the religious thing that I'm asking you to do. I want you to just put your heart and soul into it. This is not drudgery. This is a sacrifice where you pour out your heart for me. It's a deep allegiance that comes through. God's not just telling them what to do in what sequence. He is, but he's also saying like when you do it, I want you to mean it. I don't want you to have some

religious checklist that you check off. You're like, okay, I did it, God. I'm fine. Get off my back now. That's now what's going on. God's saying, I want your heart. I want you to mean it. I mean, look, this is, we did this this morning, right? We could have got up here and I could have just like dunked them all in a row and then we're done. They were baptized technically, right? We put them in the water, right? No, that'd be awful. Why? Because you're supposed to mean it.

We're supposed to mean something. If it doesn't mean something, then we're doing it wrong. It doesn't matter what our technique is, right? Look, God is saying, look, I'm giving you these things, but you've got to mean it. I need your, I need your heart in this. You also see it kind of in the opposite effect. So I'm going to give you three real quick hits. Exodus 22 verse 20. It says, whoever sacrifices to any God other than the Lord alone shall be devoted to destruction. Okay. Death penalty for worshiping to other, worshiping other gods. Look at 2313. It says, pay attention to all I have said to you and make no mention of the names of other gods, nor let it be heard on your lips.

Okay. Look at the, look at the couple of verses later, 2324. You shall not bow down in fear to their gods or serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces. Look, God is saying, look, I don't want you to talk about other gods. I don't want you, I definitely don't want you to worship other gods, but I don't even want their old temples collecting dust. I want it gone. I want no remembrance of these other temples. Why? Why does God care? Why can't they just repurpose the temple into like a marketplace or something like that? God says, no, I don't want you to do that. I want you to understand that your allegiance to me is total, that there's no room for anything else. I don't want anything being repurposed. Okay, let's begin to put this together. I'm short on time, so we gotta go.

God is using, God is building these laws in Exodus 21 through 24 that includes slavery, that include all this weird stuff that doesn't compute with our modern American minds, like it's ancient near Eastern culture, but it's there. He's establishing a nation of his people and he wants to maintain justice. To maintain justice, he has to restrain the powerful. The powerful must honor and respect the less powerful because of God. But this is to maintain justice. If we want hearts to thrive, then all must keep covenant with their rescuer. For hearts to thrive, all must keep coding. Not just the powerful, not just the less powerful, not just, we're not just trying to keep each other in check here. It's saying everybody must keep covenant with their rescuer. God is not stopping people from having fun with all these laws. He's helping them see from his heart to

our hearts. He's helping them understand that none of this works without love for him. None. Life in its fullness, let me just see if I can give you like the highest sentence I can give you. Life in its fullness is only found in heartfelt covenant with God. Life in its fullness can only be found in heartfelt covenant with God. Disobedience, then, is not just getting caught doing something bad. In disobedience, life itself begins to unravel. Not all at once, but surely it will unravel. Let me just give you a couple of examples. Like when your mind and body go through sleep deprivation, okay, your reaction times slow, your mental stability plummets. You actually compromise your biological immunity to things through sleep deprivation, and you increase greatly your cardiovascular risk. And you actually do all of that on one night of sleep for four hours. Some of you are in trouble. You just did the math.

You're like, dang it. Sleep deprivation has real effects on your body, and it doesn't just stay in sleep. It doesn't just affect you when you're trying to sleep or just when you're in bed. It affects all. It affects everything. It affects your relationships. It affects everything. When you remove something fundamental, other things that are seemingly unrelated begin to break down. That's how sleep works. That's how a lot of fundamental things in your life work. I want to end with this story. In 1978, Flint, Michigan. So you might know Flint for other reasons, but let's go back to 1978. At that point in time, they had 80,000 GM workers, the car manufacturer. They were thriving. They had a booming economy. Middle class was pumping. They were doing great. After two decades of job cuts, 80s and 90s, they went from 80,000 to 7,000 GM workers. And GM in Flint, Michigan was the anchor employer. And when they pulled out,

even slowly, when they pulled out, the thing fell apart. The first household incomes were hit very hard. So local businesses didn't have people shopping at them, and they closed. After those businesses closed, younger workers started migrating away. So house prices began to tank because nobody was there to buy the new houses or the old houses. That in turn made the tax base vanish and basic infrastructure began to cost too much. So that in 2014, Flint, Michigan had a water crisis where people needed to bring in some of you remember that. Some of you, nine of you, you remember Flint, Michigan, right? They had to bring in bottled water for months because their infrastructure couldn't create safe water supply. Look, there's a lot of things going on in Flint, Michigan, and kind of a lot of things contributing to the 2014 water crisis. But none is bigger than GM pulling 73,000 jobs over two decades.

When your life or your city is built on one core thing and you begin to leave that thing, your life will begin to unravel and collapse like Flint, Michigan. The Lord has designed you, your family, your relationships, your career, everything to center around him, his goodness, his redemption, his joy, fear of him, worship of him, allegiance to him. And when you don't have that, to the degree that you are off that base, that is the degree to which your life will begin to unravel. I'm not saying it'll happen tomorrow. I'm not saying if you don't pray this morning, you're going to get an F on your test in the afternoon. I'm telling you that God will not be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. What we see here is God telling his people, I made all of this to work around your heart being devoted to me. And if your heart is not devoted to me, it doesn't matter what you're doing. It doesn't matter. I don't care how religious you are. I don't

care how shiny your religious clothes are. I don't care. I don't care how perfect the sacrifices are if your heart is not in it. That doesn't mean you quit doing the sacrifices. If you're like, I don't know if my heart's in it today, maybe I shouldn't do the sacrifice. No, man, do the sacrifice and pray as you do it. Pray as you do the sacrifice. Your invitation this morning is to pledge allegiance to Jesus. As I call Jacob back up, I want you to think about this, pledging allegiance to Jesus. Maybe you did this a while back. Maybe this is something that this is like a recurring thing for you where you kind of have like a boom and bust, right? Maybe you've been through periods of your life where you were like, oh, okay, yeah, I'm following Jesus now. Maybe you were a teenager and you got baptized and you were like, okay, yeah. Like, and you had crying out at camp and you were like,

oh man, I really feel like I'm a Christian now. But then something happened months later, maybe a year later, maybe you went through a tragedy. Maybe something really big happened to you and you didn't know how to handle that. You didn't know what shelf to put that on. And you were like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. And you step back and you began to try to build your life on something safer. You began to try to build your life on something else, maybe on the acceptance of people, maybe something that you found very easily. Maybe you're really good at a sport, right? You're really good at a sport. So you could just do that or you're really good at drawing, you're really good at video editing, whatever you're really good at. And you begin to find an identity there. You begin to build your life upon something else other than genuine heartfelt affection for the Lord God and

heaven. And when you did, when you made that decision, whether consciously or unconsciously, what began to happen in your life was that you began to unravel slowly. Here's our encouragement, pledge allegiance to Jesus. It's not all going to turn around and get better the next day. You don't pledge allegiance to Jesus in the morning and get an A plus on the test in the afternoon. That's not how that works. But it is how life is meant to be lived. It is where life is found. It is where life begins. This is why we celebrate baptism, because it is the beginning of something good. It is the beginning of somebody publicly pledging allegiance to Jesus. What a good thing. What a thing to get rowdy over, right?

This is your invitation this morning. At our church, we don't have a time where you walk down and pray here or anything like that. What we do is we would just want to encourage you, begin to think about that. Begin to think about, okay, should I pledge allegiance to Jesus? Maybe I want to pledge allegiance to Jesus now. That's great. You can talk to me after. We got Pastor Daniel here. Pastor Daniel, raise your hand. There you go. He's right there. We've got people here that are willing to talk. We want to help you through that. Even if you don't know what that next step is, we want to help you do that. We want to help you take that next step.

My encouragement, don't let it get in the way. Don't let your shame get in the way. Don't let anything else get in the way. Just raise your hand high and say, I want to belong to Jesus first. I want to worship him first. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for your law. How you require us to do all these things that just, especially outside of ancient Near Eastern culture, that just seem very strange. But even if we're just looking at our lives today, sometimes there's things that you call us to do that we don't want to do or we think are strange. Lord, help us to understand what you're calling us to do, how you're calling us to live, and that that begins with a heart that is only, only finding its allegiance.

Only finding life in you, joy in you. We love you. It's your name that we pray. Amen.