Exodus 23:1-9
Laws of Justice and Mercy
1 "Do not spread false reports. Do not help a wicked man by being a malicious witness.
2 "Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, 3 and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit.
4 "If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to take it back to him. 5 If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help him with it.
6 "Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. 7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.
8 "Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the righteous.
9 "Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt.
God gave Moses the Law...Moses wrote down with God's assistance the first five books of the Bible...The first five books are called the Law of Moses...Genesis is included in the Law of Moses, but has little on Moses Law or God's rules...After God leads the Hebrews out of Egypt in the Exodus, Moses starts writing down the laws that God is telling him...These laws were for the Hebrews and the new Israeli nation that was to come...These laws would rule over the land of milk and honey, the promised land...These laws were specific to their culture, as we can see in an the law of an ox or donkey wandering off...
God tells Moses that we are not to lie or spread false reports...We are not to help wicked people by being a malicious witness...
It is so easy to follow the crowd...It is easy to get caught up in a crowd and do wrong...God tells us that if a crowd, or group of friends are doing wrong, we are not to follow that crowd, or group of friends...We are not to give testimony to a jury that would pervert justice, even though it might be against the crowd's view...We are not to show favoritism to someone, because we feel sorry for him or sympathetic to his cause...
If one finds property that belongs to someone else, we are not to keep it, but we must make an effort to try to bring it back to the one who has lost this property...If we see someone hurt or fallen, we are to help them, even though they maybe our enemy...
We are not to deny justice to poor people in their lawsuits...Do not put to death an honest person, whether they are poor or rich...God will not acquit the guilty...
We are not to accept bribes...A bribe can change our point of view, and our view of the truth...A bribe can twist the words of a righteous man...
We are not to oppress a stranger or foreigner...God's people were once strangers and foreigners in the land of Egypt...
These laws are full of justice, mercy, and morality...This is what God wants...He wants us to be just, to be merciful, and to be moral...
Our God is a just God...Our God is merciful...Our God is a moral God...He therefore is full of grace...He wants us, even thousand of years before Jesus, to help strangers and those that hate us...God is in our conscious, when we see someone in need and feel an urge to help...We should treat our conscious as if it came from God, because it has...He created us...Our conscious changes in the sense that our culture and what is modern is updated and changes throughout the ages...Therefore, our conscious has new or at least different thoughts and ideas in it than what was in our ancestors conscious...God never changes, but the things around us have changed...Trains, telephones, radio, TV, cars, airplanes, computers, and the internet are here and make our lives different than our ancestors...An ox and a donkey were at one time as common as cars and planes are today...If a new book was added by one of God's prophet's today or in the future, it might include examples of what is around today or tomorrow and might make better sense if it is read around or after the new book is written...That new book might make little sense to one of our ancient believers or readers...Many things written three thousand years ago are harder to relate to than they were when they were first written...
Like then and now, God is still just, merciful, and perfectly moral...He is still full of grace...