Ex. 23-24
Now the part of the law given in the first several verses of Exodus 23 I can understand! And it struck me as I was reading the first two verses, “You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding with the many, so as to pervert justice.” This is exactly what happened against Jesus! The religious leaders, Judas, the false witnesses they gathered, and the crowds who were convinced to demand Jesus’ crucifixion – their guilt is found in these two verses.
Another thing I find interesting in these few verses is the wording in vs 5. “If you see the donkey of one who hates you…” Note that it does not say, “of one you hate.” Thinking on this, I think about how love is not just something you feel toward someone, but is something – an attitude, perhaps? – that manifests itself in an action. It has to do with the way you act toward or treat somebody. So, wouldn’t it stand to reason that hate works the same way; that hate isn’t so much about how you feel about the person, but about how you act toward them?
So God is saying that even when somebody does wrong toward us, we should still do right toward them. We should counter their hateful act with our loving one if given the opportunity, and not return hate for hate. And, while the text doesn’t indicate that we should go out of our way to do good things for one who hates us, it does indicate that not doing the right thing when the opportunity presents itself is not good. That all leads to a whole string of other thoughts, but I will spare you the rambling.
One last thing in Exodus. In chapter 28, vs. 9-11, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and at least 70 others (not sure if Joshua is counted as one of those, but know he was also there) “beheld God, and ate and drank.” Think about that – they saw the God of Israel right there before them and God communed with them. How awesome is that!!!
Matt. 28
Hmm – what do we see here? The religious leaders paid a bribe to the Roman soldiers to bear false witness against Jesus and His disciples….interesting. I think I was just reading about how that isn’t a good thing to do.
We also see yet another example of how God uses the Jews to tell His story of Redemption for all mankind (which is what the Bible is). Jesus came to the Jews and made disciples from among them. He then tells His disciples to go to “all nations” and make disciples, the same as He had done with them. I am not articulating the thought well at all here, but I see over and over again in the Bible story how the Jews are a representation of all humanity (among other things – the Bible is a mulit-layered wonder!). This is why Jesus came first to the Jews (and, actually, only to the Jews prior to His death). It’s like a demonstration of His bigger purpose.