Alright brethren, let's go to
Exodus chapter 22. In Exodus 22-21 we read, Thou shalt
neither vex a stranger nor oppress him. For ye were strangers in
the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow
or fatherless child or orphan. If thou afflict them and any
wives, and they cry it all unto me, I will surely hear their
cry. And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the
sword. And your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless. If thou lend money to any of
my people that is poor by thee, Thou shalt not be to him as a
usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury." No interest. If thou at all take thy neighbor's
raiment to pledge, if he gives you his raiment, his earnest
that he'll pay you, he says you only keep it one day. Thou shalt
deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down. For that is his
covering only. That's his only covering. It's
his raiment for his skin wherein shall he sleep. And it shall
come to pass when he crieth unto me that I will hear for I am
gracious. Now in each of these people that
God protects, we see a picture of you and I who are saved by
God's grace. That's what we have here. It's
a picture of God's elect who were saved by grace. The stranger,
that is a foreigner, that's us by nature. We were foreigners
to God, strangers from God. The widow, by nature, as far
as we could see, we had no husband. The orphan, from our standpoint,
we were fatherless. The poor, we were bankrupt. We had nothing. And God protected
these people in His law. He protected these downtrodden
people in His law. God told the children of Israel
to remember themselves when they saw them. He said, when you see
them, you remember yourself, you remember your condition.
But that law did not constrain the natural children of Israel
to treat these people any differently. They treated them terrible. You
know why? It wasn't politically advantageous
for them to treat them otherwise. You ever notice that about the
world? Only when it becomes popular and everybody thinks it and everybody
is doing it, does it become popular for you to defend that group
or stand for that stance. In a few years when that falls
out of fashion, something else will come along and then nobody
cares about that anymore. Constantly changing. I told Emma
the other day, if you don't like how it is, just wait because
it constantly changes. constantly. But God, by the Holy Spirit,
makes His child remember ourselves when we see these four kinds.
It's by grace that He makes you remember. And He makes you remember
grace. When you behold people, a foreigner,
or you behold a widow, or an orphan, or somebody that's poor,
He makes you remember who you are by nature. where God found
you by nature. And it's the grace of God toward
us that constrains us to treat people graciously. Those that
know something of God's mercy are going to be merciful people.
If you know something about grace, you'll be gracious. That's the
only ones that will be constrained by it. God saved us for one reason. He says in verse 27, for I am
gracious. And here's what I want to show
you. The motive for God's elect in all our dealings with one
another, in all our dealings with men, the motive of God's
elect is because God has been gracious to us. That's our motive. It's not law, it's grace. It's
not law, it's love. It's the grace of God in all
our dealings with one another, with our brethren, in all our
dealings with others, When we see someone in that condition,
when we see somebody that's helpless, that's what all these four have
in common. They're totally helpless. When we see somebody helpless,
we remember ourselves what condition God found us in and God was gracious
to us. Now let's look at these four
types of people. First of all, we were the stranger. We were the foreigner. Exodus
22, 21, Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for
you were strangers in the land of Egypt. A stranger was a Gentile. A stranger, a foreigner, was
anybody outside of the nation of Israel. A foreigner to us
is anybody outside the United States of America. That's a stranger.
Well, a stranger was anybody outside the nation of Israel.
And God told them, He told the children of Israel, and remember
this now, God told everybody in Israel this by law. They were
all under this law. But God particularly was speaking
to His elect. and he was teaching his elect
something spiritual. Even his elect in the midst of
Israel, he's teaching them something spiritual. They got it by the
Spirit of God. God didn't save any differently
then than he does now. God gave them the Spirit and
they understood this spiritually. Those that were natural understood
it as being a law we got to keep just like people today. Gentiles
today and the world today was not even under that law. And
yet men go back to that law and think this is a law we got to
keep so we can be saved. That's the only way they heard
it. God's people in the midst of them heard it like God's people
today hear it. By the Spirit of God we hear and see grace
in this. And that's how His people were
made to hear it. He said to them, don't vex a
stranger, don't oppress him, because you were vexed. You were
oppressed when you were in slavery to Pharaoh and his taskmasters.
They had every reason not to vex a stranger. You would think
that would... somehow compelling. They remember how they were strangers
and how they were in bondage in Egypt. God said, for that
reason, don't you treat another person the same way. Don't you
treat a stranger the same way. Didn't constrain them. Didn't
change, didn't do a thing to their heart. A few years passed,
next generation comes along, next generation, they just did
what was in their heart to do. and they oppressed them, they
took advantage of them, they worked injustice among them,
because they were helpless to do anything about it. These people
were. I want you to understand the
reason God said that He brought Israel out. God said, I'm gracious.
I'm gracious. But what I want you to get here,
and don't misunderstand this, it's easy to misunderstand the
meaning here. God's grace is not common. I
hate men speaking of common grace. There's nothing common about
God's grace. God is gracious to His elect. God loves His elect. He loves in Christ Jesus. That's
the only place in Scripture you're going to find God's love is in
Christ. And that's where He loves. If
you find God having pity on a man like He did the rich young ruler,
He saved the rich young ruler. Wherever He has pity and love
and grace, He saves. Because His grace can't be frustrated.
His grace is not common to say His grace is saving. So if we
say His grace is common, we're saying God's grace is meaningless
because some people He doesn't save by grace. He's not able
to. No, God's grace is saving. That means His grace is particular.
He saves His people. God delivered all the children
of Israel out. But God was being gracious to
His elect among the children of Israel. He was being gracious
to Moses and Caleb and Joshua and whoever else was there that
was an elect child of God, He was being gracious to them. And
to those children that God's going to preserve these under
20 years old and bring them into Canaan because they're going
to give birth to some of His elect. See, His grace, it may
fall upon a man who's not an elect child, but the only reason
he gets to partake in it is because God's saving his elect through
that man somehow. You get what I'm saying? God's
grace is particular. It's not common at all. God was
being gracious to His elect among them. And so He told them, don't
you vex a Gentile stranger, because you know what it's like to be
a foreigner, and you know what it's like to experience My grace.
So don't do that. You and I who God chose by grace,
by free grace, not any unburied grace, not because of anything
in us. You and I who God chose freely, who Christ redeemed by
grace, who we've been regenerated by grace. Everything about our
salvation is gracious. God just chose to give it to
us freely. Every one of us that has experienced
this, God tells us the same thing. Go back over to Ephesians 2 and
look here, Ephesians 2.11. God says, Ephesians 2.11, God
says, Remember that you being in time past Gentiles in the
flesh, that's me and you by nature. Now He's talking to me and you
who were Gentiles in the flesh. He said at that time, you were
called uncircumcision by the Jews, by that which is called
circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time you
were without Christ, you were aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel, you were strangers. See there, you were foreigners
from the commonwealth of Israel from the covenants of promise.
Having no hope without God in the world, but now in Christ
Jesus. Now in Christ Jesus. God said,
I'm gracious. Now in Christ Jesus. You, who
were sometimes far off, are made near by the blood of Christ.
You're no more a stranger. You're brought near by the blood
of Christ. He's our peace. He made us one. He made all God's
elect one. No matter what your race, your
gender, your social status, your class, no matter what it is,
He's made us one by His grace. How'd He do it? He broke down
the middle wall of partition between us. Everything that was
law, everything we thought made us better than our neighbor,
Christ fulfilled all that and took it out of the way. So we
can't use that to exalt ourselves anymore. There's nothing about
us we can use to exalt ourselves over anybody else. That's the
good thing about the gospel. It says you're a worm, you're
a worm, you're a worm, I'm a worm. Worms can't, worms don't have
any way of harming anybody. We're just worms. And we have
to be saved by grace. And look here. He said, He abolished
in His flesh the enmity even the law of commandments contained
in ordinances to make in Himself of two one new man and so make
in peace. He's made us one in Christ. He
reconciled us both unto God in one body by the cross. He slain
the enmity thereby. He took that enmity that made
a Jew hate a Gentile. What was it? God said, don't
you associate with them. And they thought because of that
they were better. Don't eat what they eat, don't
wear what they wear, don't worship their gods. That was God being
gracious to His people in Israel, separating them, sanctifying
them, teaching them that they were His. And the natural man
just heard that and said, this makes us so much better than
them. We're just better than they are. And they hated Him
for it. And so Christ came and took it
all out of the way. He fulfilled the whole law, removed
the law, and He comes in spirit and the heart now and teaches
you, that's not what the law meant. The law meant you're a
wretch, just like they are. Now, you've been saved by grace,
and so have I saved my elect from them among grace, and you're
one now by what I've done for you. Treat each other as one.
And He does this in the heart. Look here down at verse 17. He came and preached peace to
you which were far off and to them that were near. And through
Him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now look
down at verse 19. Now therefore you're no more
strangers and foreigners. You're not strangers and foreigners
anymore. Now you're all fellow citizens
with the saints and of the household of God. See what God does? He makes us one. So he says now,
remember you were strangers, you were without Christ, you
were without God, you were without hope. Don't be like the natural
children of Israel. They never, grace, they knew
nothing about grace. And law didn't constrain them.
Law made them treat the Gentiles with contempt. Now some of you
come here out of religion. You know what this is like. You
come out of religion where men thought they were saved in some
capacity by law. And you've tasted how cruel that
is. How mean that is. And it's hateful
and it's full of enmity and cruelty and oppression. And you've experienced
it. Now God says, now you remember
how they treated you. Don't treat them that way. God
might have some elect among them. Don't treat them that way. Be
gracious to them. God just might save some of them.
Don't treat them that way and don't treat your brethren that
way. We're not under law, we're under grace. If grace don't constrain
us to love one another, we don't know God. That's just plain and
simple. Just plain and simple. So God says in all our everyday
dealings with sinners, remember they're strangers. They're foreigners
to God just like we were. Deal kindly with them. Let brotherly
love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain
strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. Some
of those people you entertain that might be strangers may end
up being God's elect who God is going to save through you
teaching them the gospel, bringing them to hear the gospel. In our
day now, let me bring this home to us and apply this a little
differently. In our day, liberal folks say that, well, now that
means you Christians ought to be the number one ones on the
banner to allow everybody from the South to come into our country
because they're foreigners, they're strangers and your book tells
you treat them graciously. You know, God had laws for a
Gentile to come into Israel. They couldn't just come into
Israel and just become citizens of Israel. There were laws that
said how they had to come into Israel. You see, grace doesn't
do away with the law of the land. There's still a law of the land
we have to obey. There's a law to obey. All those
strangers that came into Israel, the Gentiles that did come to
Israel, they came lawfully the way God told them to come. Because
God was using that to show pictures of grace, pictures of salvation.
They came lawfully the way God said, come. You look back at
Ellis Island, all those people came to this country legally.
That's how they came to this country. That's all that I'm
saying is, come legally. Then God's people will be They'll
help you, they'll be gracious to you, they'll do whatever they
can to help you. Leave the burden off of you.
But you're going to have to come the way the law says come. Now I heard, what got me thinking
on this is I had finished my message and I heard a civil rights
activist yesterday making his arguments against Christianity.
And what he was saying was, is Christ told Christians to turn
the other cheek and he said, If they just turn the other cheek,
then there'll be no change in civil rights. You gotta fight. You can't turn the other cheek.
Well, God's not talking to the world when He says that. Let
the world fight. If there would have been a person
who was in slavery, a believer, and there were some, Just like
there were some masters who were believers. Read the scriptures.
God says to the master, you got a master. You treat him like
your master treats you. He said to the slave, you are
a free man before God. You treat that master as you
would if you were free. And God had a people. Those believers
didn't have to fight, they didn't have to do anything. God said,
you be gracious to one another and treat one another like slavery
don't even exist. And God raised up men of the
world to do all the fighting and carrying on. And God has
worked His purpose today that He intended from the beginning.
And those that never fought, never raised up an arm to fight,
they're partaking of all the benefits that those people that
fought did. God used them to do what they did for His elect
people. That's what God's doing in the
world. Everything He's doing is for His elect. We don't have
to fight. We don't have to fight. God's using this world for us. My grandfather used to say, there's
a whole lot of leaves on a tree that protects the fruit on the
tree. And there's a lot of leaves, and they're just protecting God's
fruit. That's all they're doing. They're not bearing fruit, they're
just protecting the fruit. And God's using them for that
manner. And here's the thing about this. Religion is not dealing
with the surface, what's on the surface. That's all civil rights
ever dealt with, what's on the surface. I get so sick of hearing
people talk about that. God deals with the heart. Here's
the truth of the matter. You could take every white man
and put him in chains and put him in a field working for you
and put every black man in power or any man of color in power. And the exact same thing would
happen that has happened in this word all the way through it.
Whoever is in power treats the poor man with injustice. You know why? That's the heart
that's in me and you. You can't change that with a
piece of cardboard saying treat everybody equal. God's going
to have to come in your heart and he does it through this gospel.
If this world was as zealous for making cardboard signs and
marching as they are for promoting the gospel of God's free and
sovereign grace, you'd see a change. God makes the change through
the gospel. That's what he's telling us here. You get this. The world don't get this. The
world does not get this. Now let's move on to the next
thing. We were the widow. Verse 22, you shall not afflict
any widow. Now a true widow in scripture
did not have a husband, she had no children, she had no extended
family to care for whatsoever. She had nobody. She was helpless. That's why God said that's the
description of a widow. Because that describes every
sinner, every one of God's elect while dead in our sins. We had
nobody. We didn't have a husband, we didn't have children, we didn't
have extended family, we had nobody. We were dead in sins. I won't labor this point because
we've been looking at marriage for a lot here lately. But when
we didn't even know it, we had a husband. We had Christ who
God had chosen His bride and given His elect to Christ. And
Christ had said, I'm betrothing her to Myself in faithfulness
and in righteousness and mercy and judgment. I'm going to call
her out. She's going to know Me. And so Christ came and redeemed
His people with His own blood. Just like, if you ever want to
see a good picture, go look at Hosea. You know, that's the pretty
picture of this. Hosea means Savior. Gomer was
a harlot, married to Hosea a little while and she went back and practiced
harlotry. Hosea never quit loving her. He kept putting fruit outside
her door and oil and flax and everything she needed. He'd lay
it at her door at night. And Gomer would pat herself on
the back and say, look what my lovers have brought to me. My
lovers are good to me. Hosea said she didn't know I
was the one providing it for her. You and I, we patted ourselves
on the back and we attributed it to every false reason in the
world that God was providing for us. Never knew Christ was
the one our husband was providing for us the whole time. But then
he said, now I'm going to discover to her her lewdness. I'm going
to make her see her sin now. I'm going to take away the corn
and the wool and the oil and the flax. God took away everything
we thought was our salvation. And he said, and I'm going to
discover to her her lewdness. He brought and ended up, Gomer
ended up on a slave block naked. This woman did. And all these
people she thought was her lovers wouldn't bid on her because nobody
wanted her. They didn't want this. She was a whore. They didn't
want her. Hosea came forth and said, I want her. What's the
price? And they gave him a huge sum
of money and he said, I'll pay it. And he paid it. And he took
her home. And he said, I said unto her,
Thou shalt abide for me many days. Thou shalt not play the
harlot any more. And thou shalt not be for another
man, so will I also be for thee. You think after that, you think
Hosea left him? Gomer left Hosea after that?
Uh-uh. She clung to that man and said,
I've got the best husband in the world. That's what Christ
makes us do. cling to Him. We see what He's
done for us. We were the orphan. He says there
in verse 22, you shall not afflict a fatherless child. That's an
orphan. We fell in Adam, we lost God
as our father. From our point of view, God,
we didn't have a father. We had no mother, we had no sister,
we had no brother. We were orphans. We were orphans. My father-in-law was left at
an orphanage when he was eight years old. Eight years old. An orphan. We were the helpless,
oppressed orphan that God speaks of throughout the Scripture.
That was us. Dead in sins. Didn't have a father,
didn't have a mother, didn't have a sister, didn't have a
brother. And God, by free grace, just simply because He would,
was a father to us. He came and He paid the price
and He adopted us. He gave us the spirit of adoption
whereby we cry, Abba, Father, and we became His children. Now
we have a mother. Jerusalem, which is above, the
church of God, is the mother of us all. Now we have an innumerable
number of sisters and brothers here in this earth and in heaven.
And that will never change. We'll never ever become orphans
again because God's gifts and His grace never changes. Once
He's given you this, you have it forever. And He'll never change
that. All this was by grace alone.
Now He's called us and He's revealed to us and we cry out. We say,
Oh behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon
us that we should be called the children of God. We see this. We're sons of God now. We see
this and we know it. And we have the protection of
God. We had this protection the whole time. He said there in
verse 23, If thou afflict them in any wise They cried all unto
me, I'll surely hear their cry. And my wrath shall wax hot, and
I'll kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows,
and your children fatherless." You know, that's what God did
to Israel, to natural Israel. That's exactly what He did to
them. Because they oppressed these people, God said, not oppressed.
And that's the lesson to you and me. You don't want to come
to God in the law. You will lose. You will do exactly the opposite
of what God says do. When He saved you by His grace
and made you see you were the widow, you were the orphan, it's
all together different. Love is the great bond. Love is the great constraint. Love is the great motive. You
could write down, the city could have a law that says, mothers,
you better stay up late with your children and you better
provide for your children and you better be there for them
when they're sick and all this or you're going to get carried
to jail. That won't make a mother do that. It won't. But if she
has love in her heart, she will. And that's the great constraint.
The grace of God. The grace of God. So he tells
us now, go to James 1.27. What does grace tell us? What
does grace teach us now? James 1.27. Pure religion. and undefiled before God and
the Father is this. You want to hear what real true
religion is. To visit the fatherless orphans
and widows in their affliction and keep yourself unspotted from
the world. What's he talking about? He said
over in Isaiah 117, here's what he's talking about. Listen. Learn
to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for
the widow. He is saying come to their defense.
Come to their defense. Now, you got to do this first
and foremost with the gospel. You can't help, you could lavish
somebody physically with everything they need, come to their physical
defense all you want to. If you haven't given them the
gospel of Christ, you ain't helped them a bit. First and foremost,
this is the gospel. We're talking about sinners here
who are widows and orphans. This is what sinners are. You want to judge them, you want
to seek judgment, you want to relieve the oppressed, you want
to judge the fatherless, you want to plead for the widow,
preach Christ and Him crucified to them. Because God is the only
one that can do all that for them. And you visit them with
the gospel, that's pure religion. You come to them with the gospel
and truth. And then whatever you can do for them physically,
do that for them too. But only for the reason that
you're trying to get that out of the way, so they're not focused
on that, so they can listen to what you're preaching. And declare
the truth to them. All right. Fourthly, we were
the poor. Verse 25, If thou lend money to any of my people that's
poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as a usurer, neither
shalt thou lay upon him usury, Did God, all these things that
God's given us, we were the bankrupt sinner.
We had no way to pay the debt we owed. And God in grace has
given us, He's paid our debt for us. God in grace has given
us freely, just like you give a loan to somebody, He's given
us everything we need freely. But it hasn't been a loan. It
would only be a loan if God said, now you've got to pay me back
with interest. That's usury. Did God do that to us? No. He said, now I'm gracious, now
you be gracious to others. But He didn't say, now you've
got to pay me back and you've got to pay me above and beyond
what I've given you. We'd never be able to do it.
He's given us grace and He said, now you be gracious. But he didn't
give us usury, did he? He didn't charge us with usury.
He said, come buy without money, without price. It didn't cost
you anything. And he says, if thou at all take
thy neighbor's raiment to pledge, you take an earnest from him.
You say, okay, I'm going to give you this. I'm not going to charge
you usury, but how am I going to know you're going to pay me?
He says, well, I'll give you all my raiment. Here's all my
wardrobe. This is all my clothes. And God
says, all right, that's fine. He can do that as a pledge. But
He says, now, you deliver that unto Him by the time the sun's
ready to go down. Because in the East, they slept
in whatever they wore. Whatever they wore, that's what
they slept on. They slept on a pallet. And whatever they were
wearing, that's what they slept in. I said, if you've taken His
raiment, you don't have anything to sleep in. This would be his
garments that he would wear at night, his coat and everything
on those cold Easter nights. And you got it? And he don't
have anything to warm himself with or anything to cover himself
with at night? God says, you give it back to
him. And you think about what God did to us. Did God take a
pledge from us? I see these churches making people
learn a catechism and making them learn all this doctrine
and then they make them sign a pledge that they're going to
give so much and they're going to be there on Sunday and they're
going to do this and that and the other. Did God make you do
that? He didn't make us do that. You know what He did to us? He
gave us a pledge. Read Ephesians 1. He's given us the earnest of
the Spirit. He's given us the pledge of the
Holy Spirit to let us know He's coming again. He's purchased
us. Where He is? He's coming back for us. And
He gave us the pledge. He didn't tell you to give Him
a pledge. Religion is so backward. Whatever this world's religion
does, you can guarantee it's going to be opposite to what
God does. Always. God doesn't work that way. Religions
of man, man's backwards if you haven't figured that out yet.
We say up is down and down is up by nature. We call bitter
sweet, sweet bitter by nature. And we do it in our religion,
we do it in our civil affair, we do it in everything. God has
to set a man right side up and teach you what's right. But He
doesn't take a pledge from us and when we call upon Him, He
says, ìYou deliver it to Him by the sun going down.î When
He brought us to cry unto Him, God said, ìIíll hear their cry
and Iíll be gracious.î When He brought us to cry unto Him, you
know what God did? He destroyed all our enemies
and He covered us with the robe of Christís righteousness before
the sun went down. The moment we cried unto Him,
He covered us. He didnít wait. He covered us. When He brought us to cry out
in truth and in spirit for mercy from God, God covered us right
then with the robe of Christ's perfect, pristine, spotless righteousness. All we had was a dirty, tattered
raiment and it was fig leaves and it wasn't worth anything
and it wouldn't cover our neckiness, it wouldn't keep us warm, it
was a bed too short and too narrow, we couldn't stretch out on it,
we couldn't cover ourselves. And God came and He provided
Christ's righteousness, a perfect robe for us. He provided a bed
so big you could just stretch out on it and rest. And He didn't
take usury. He didn't do any of that for
us. He did it freely. And so now He says, when you
see a helpless, poor individual, He says, you be gracious to him. And you do this to strangers,
to widows, to orphans, to the poor. What are you saying, preacher? Are we supposed to start these
humanitarian projects? No. Any sinner you see that don't
know Christ, especially that one that's in the height of religion
and thinks he's doing so good by the law, you're looking at
a stranger, an orphan, a widow, and one that's bankrupt. Give
him the gospel. That's the only way he can be
changed. That's the only way he can learn the truth and be
covered and have a father and a husband and have righteousness
and be a fellow citizen. It's by the grace of God. Isn't
that different from law? That's not law, brethren. That's grace. Listen to this. This is the difference between
law and grace. Grace says, be ye kind one to another, tender
hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake,
has forgiven you. That's the light and easy yoke,
isn't it? Alright, let's stand together. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
we thank you for your grace. We thank you for love and mercy
and saving these poor, helpless, helpless sinners. Lord, make
us gracious. Make us always, make it come
into our minds when we're offended by the religious or by this world. Take that old man away and make
us remember real fast, that's us by nature. and make us be
gracious, make us be loving, make us help them by giving them
the gospel and whatever else they need. Forgive us our sin
of haughtiness and arrogancy. Forgive us that, Lord. We ask
it in Christ's name. Amen.