CHAPTER 23

(1491 B.C.)

ETHICAL MATTERS

¹You shall not raise a false report: put not your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. (This deals with the Ninth Commandment, in that we must not bear false witness.)

²You shall not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shall you speak in a cause to decline after many to wrest judgment (just because a multitude of people may champion a particular cause doesnt necessarily mean that its right):

³Neither shall you countenance a poor man in his cause (in courts of justice, strict justice is to be rendered without any leaning either towards the rich or towards the poor; to lean either way is to pervert judgment).

⁴If you meet your enemys ox or his ass going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again (it is remarkable as to how close this particular law comes to New Testament Christianity).

⁵If you see the ass of him who hates you lying under his burden, and would forbear to help him, you shall surely help with him (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).

⁶You shall not wrest the judgment of your poor in his cause (while Verse 3 warned that the poor were not to be favored simply because they were poor, this Verse goes a step further, in effect, stating that the poor must not be maltreated simply because they are poor).

⁷You must keep far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay you not: for I will not justify the wicked (in effect, the Holy Spirit through Moses is saying here that the innocent and the righteous can be seriously hurt by the spreading of false matters).

⁸And you shall take no gift: for the gift blinds the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous (this Verse condemns all bribery).

⁹Also you shall not oppress a stranger (Gentile): for you know the heart of a stranger, seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

¹⁰And six years you shall sow your land, and shall gather in the fruits thereof:

¹¹But the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie still; that the poor of your people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner you shall deal with your vineyard, and with your oliveyard. (The seventh year was to be a sabbatical year, when no crops were to be planted, and the land was to lie fallow. It is believed that the seventy years of captivity by the Babylonians were intended to make up for the failure of this observance of the sabbatical year. This being the case, we must understand that God says what He means, and means what He says!)

¹²Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest: that your ox and your ass may rest, and the son of your handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed (as well, Israel was to remember the Sabbath, which speaks of the seventh day; as stated, this was a symbol of the rest which one would find in Christ).

¹³And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect (be careful to obey these laws): and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of your mouth (Israelites were not to mention the names of heathen gods; they were rather to praise the Lord, and do so constantly).

THREE NATIONAL FEASTS

¹⁴Three times you shall keep a Feast unto Me in the year. (Mans corrupt doctrine is never to be added to the fact of Atonement; hence the importance and sweetness of the expressions My Sacrifice and Feast unto Me Williams.)

¹⁵You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread: (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it you came out from Egypt: and none shall appear before Me empty:) (This Feast took place during the time of the barley harvest, which would correspond with our April. During the seven day period, three Feasts were observed: Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits. All typified Christ: Crucifixion, Perfect Life, Resurrection. As well, none were to come before the Lord without the proper Sacrifice.)

¹⁶And the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labours, which you have sown in the field (this was the Feast of Pentecost, which took place 50 days after Passover, corresponding with our May; it typified Christ as the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit): and the Feast of Ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when you have gathered in your labours out of the field. (This was the Feast of Tabernacles, which took place at the time of the fruit harvest, corresponding with our October; it incorporated three Feasts: Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles. The entire time was approximately 15 days.)

¹⁷Three times in the year all your males (from each family) shall appear before the LORD God (at these seven Feasts conducted three times a year, April, May, and October).

¹⁸You shall not offer the blood of My Sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall the fat of My Sacrifice remain until the morning. (It shall be burned immediately on the Altar. Nothing must be added to the Cross, or taken from the Cross. The Cross of Christ is the revealed truth of Gods judgment on sin. Never associate the idea of martyrdom with the Cross of Christ. It was the supreme triumph, and it shook the very foundations of Hell. There is nothing in time or eternity more certain and irrefutable than what Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross He made it possible for the entire human race to be brought back into a right-standing relationship with God.)

¹⁹The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not seethe (boil) a kid (baby lamb) in his mothers milk. (This is repeated three times in the Law of Moses [Ex. 23:19; 34:16; Deut. 14:21]. This prohibition had to do with the lamb being a symbol, or even a Type, of the coming Son of God, Who would give Himself for our sins on the Cross of Calvary. Christ did not die in the womb and, as well, even though Satan tried his hardest, He obviously was not killed as a baby. So, it was prohibited that a baby lamb would be used in this fashion.)

INSTRUCTIONS

²⁰Behold, I send an Angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. (The Angel mentioned here is the Son of God.)

²¹Beware of Him, and obey His Voice, provoke Him not; for He will not pardon your transgressions: for My Name is in Him. (Jewish Commentators claim the Angel to be Moses; however, the expressions, pardon and My Name is in Him, are too high for Moses, or any man, for that matter.)

²²But if you shall indeed obey His Voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto your enemies, and an adversary unto your adversaries. (This holds true at present, as well!)

²³For My Angel shall go before you, and bring you in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. (While the enemies would be present in the Promised Land, Israel didnt have to worry; the Lord would go before them and handle the situation. He does the same for us presently.)

²⁴You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but you shall utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images. (Israel was to rid the land of all heathen gods.)

²⁵And you shall serve the LORD your God, and He shall bless your bread, and your water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of you. (What a Promise!)

²⁶There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in your land (Israel would be fruitful as it regards large families): the number of your days I will fulfill (long life).

²⁷I will send My Fear before you, and will destroy all the people to whom you shall come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs unto you. (The Lord promises to destroy all the enemies of Israel. Can modern Believers claim the same Promises? We can claim these Promises, and even greater, because we now have a better Covenant, based on better Promises [Heb. 8:6].)

²⁸And I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before you. (The Lord has the entirety of creation at His disposal to use as He sees fit. So, He can take something as small as a hornet and use it as His army, which He did.)

²⁹I will not drive them out from before you in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against you.

³⁰By little and little I will drive them out from before you, until you be increased, and inherit the land. (Had their obedience been more complete, the power of the Canaanitish nations would have been more thoroughly broken, and the sufferings and servitude related in the Book of Judges would not have had to be endured.)

³¹And I will set your bounds from the Red Sea (takes in all of Sinai, the exact area occupied by Israel some years back, when they defeated the Egyptians, but given back to Egypt in the Camp David Accords) even unto the Sea of the Philistines (the Mediterranean), and from the desert (marks the eastern boundary, which probably included some of modern-day Saudi Arabia) unto the river (the river in the Pentateuch is always the Euphrates, which marked the northern boundary; so we can see from all of this that Israel was promised much more than what they actually attained, except under David): for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and you shall drive them out before you. (We are living as Believers in a fallen world. It is ruled by the prince of darkness; consequently, the Lord sets boundaries, as it regards His Children, with guaranteed victories within those boundaries, that is, if we properly follow the Lord.)

³²You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. (Every enemy must be rooted out of the land, just as every enemy must be rooted out of our own lives. Total trust in the Lord, and what He accomplished at Calvary, which gives the Holy Spirit the latitude to work in our lives, is the only way this can be done [Rom. 6:3-14; 8:1-2, 11; Gal. 6:14].)

³³They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against Me: for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto you. (Anything we leave in our lives that is a reproach to the Lord will ultimately be a snare unto us. Everything that is un-Christlike must be rooted out!)