Slices
Prepare
When you think about the concept of godly routine, what principles and practices come to mind? Which bit of your routine do you most value?
Bible passage
Laws of justice and mercy
23 ‘Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person 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 favouritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.
4 ‘If you come across your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it. 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 them 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 innocent.
9 ‘Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.
Sabbath laws
10 ‘For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, 11 but during the seventh year let the land lie unploughed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.
12 ‘Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.
13 ‘Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.
The three annual festivals
14 ‘Three times a year you are to celebrate a festival to me.
15 ‘Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread; for seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you. Do this at the appointed time in the month of Aviv, for in that month you came out of Egypt.
‘No one is to appear before me empty-handed.
16 ‘Celebrate the Festival of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field.
‘Celebrate the Festival of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.
17 ‘Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord.
18 ‘Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast.
‘The fat of my festival offerings must not be kept until morning.
19 ‘Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
‘Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.
Explore
Back in the day (are you old enough to remember?!), weeks had their own routine. Monday was washing day and lunch was fry-up of Sunday’s leftovers. Sunday was a day of rest; there were no shops open then. Maybe our lives aren’t geared up to routine the way they once were, but a Sabbath day was important for the Israelites. And it should be for us too.
There are plenty of routines in this section on laws of justice and mercy. For animals too! They need their rest (v 12). They can’t always look after themselves. They need us (v 4). This verse also illustrates the ‘extra mile’. Not only do you have to look after a fallen donkey of a friend but even the animal of someone you hate (v 5).
What strikes me here is that, whatever the context, it is never only ‘me’ that is affected. We absolutely cannot live in isolation. Do we have our own little clique that we treat well? We need to remember the donkeys, slaves and foreigners too (v 12).
Respond
What stood out for you in today’s passage? Where is God prompting you? How might you go the ‘extra mile’ in relation to mercy and fairness, Sabbaths or celebrating the main feasts?
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: 1 Samuel 20–22; Mark 15
Pray for Scripture Union
Please pray for the many Faith Guides and Local Mission Partners in the central region as they support Year 6 pupils preparing to move to secondary education using It’s Your Move. Ask that the prayers prayed, scripture shared and relationships built will result in encounters with Jesus.
