The Righteous Inconvenience Text: Exodus 23:4-5
Introduction: The Law is Grace
We live in an age that is profoundly confused about law and grace. The modern evangelical mind, particularly when it is feeling sentimental, likes to imagine a great chasm between the Old Testament and the New. In this telling, the Old Testament is a grim, black and white affair, full of a wrathful God laying down harsh rules for a sullen people. The New Testament, by contrast, is presented in gentle pastels, where Jesus arrives to abolish all the sharp edges and replace them with a soft, therapeutic niceness. This is a caricature, a theological cartoon, and it is profoundly false. It is a lie that dishonors two-thirds of your Bible and misunderstands the God who wrote all of it.
The law of God, given at Sinai, was an act of stupendous grace. Remember the preamble to the Ten Commandments: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." The law is not given to a people trying to earn their salvation; it is given to a people who have already been saved. It is the constitution for a redeemed nation, the household rules for the children of God. The law is a fatherly instruction on how to live in the grain of the universe, how to walk in the freedom that God has already purchased.
Our text today, tucked away in a section of case laws, is a brilliant example of this. These verses are a direct assault on our fallen, selfish instincts. They are designed to reach into the dark corners of the human heart, where we nurse our grudges and celebrate the misfortunes of our rivals, and flood those corners with the light of God's own character. Here, in the law of Moses, we find the command to love your enemy, stated with a practical clarity that is impossible to ignore. Jesus did not invent this principle in the Sermon on the Mount; He amplified it. He took what was already there and turned up the volume for a generation that had grown deaf to the heart of their own Scriptures.
These two verses about stray oxen and collapsed donkeys are about far more than animal husbandry. They are a divine test. They ask a simple question: Does your righteousness extend beyond your circle of friends? Does your obedience function when it is inconvenient, when it costs you something, and when the beneficiary is someone you can't stand? This is where true religion lives, not in the grand pronouncements, but in the dusty, inconvenient, and costly application of God's Word to our enemies.
The Text
If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him.
(Exodus 23:4-5 LSB)
The Stray Animal and the Stinking Heart (v. 4)
We begin with the first scenario, a direct command that cuts across our natural inclinations.
"If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him." (Exodus 23:4 LSB)
This is what we call case law. God does not give us an exhaustive, multi-volume regulatory code that anticipates every possible scenario. He gives us representative examples, from which we are to derive the underlying principle. The principle here is not about donkeys; it is about enemies. The law assumes that you will have enemies. The Bible is a realistic book. It does not expect us to live in a world of universal back-patting. There will be people who dislike you, who work against you, who are, in plain terms, your enemy.
So what happens when you are walking down the road and you see his prize ox, his primary means of plowing his field, wandering off toward the wilderness? What is the first, fallen, human reaction? It is a quiet, internal fist pump. "Serves him right. Good. I hope it gets eaten by a lion. This is what you get, you scoundrel." We feel a sense of cosmic justice, a little gift from the universe. We think that if we just walk on by and whistle, our hands are clean. We didn't steal it, after all. We just... observed its departure.
But God says no. You are not a passive observer in God's world. You are a moral agent. And your responsibility is not negated by your personal animosity. In fact, your responsibility is highlighted by it. "You shall surely return it to him." The Hebrew is emphatic. It means you must make it a priority. You are to stop what you are doing, apprehend the beast, and lead it back to the doorstep of the man who makes your blood boil. This is a command to do good to those who hate you. It is a practical, shoe-leather application of the second great commandment, love your neighbor, and it applies even when that neighbor is an enemy.
This law is a scalpel, designed to cut out the tumor of bitterness. Resentment is a poison that we drink, hoping the other person will die. God, in His wisdom, prescribes the antidote: a forced act of kindness. You cannot nurse a grudge against a man while you are actively working for his good. This act of obedience is not primarily for the enemy's benefit, or even the ox's. It is for you. It is to keep your heart from becoming a stinking, hard, and useless thing.
The Collapsed Donkey and Costly Compassion (v. 5)
The second case law intensifies the principle. It moves from returning property to actively intervening in a crisis.
"If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying helpless under its load, you shall refrain from leaving it to him, you shall surely release it with him." (Exodus 23:5 LSB)
Here the situation is worse. The donkey of "one who hates you" has collapsed under its burden. It is trapped, helpless, and possibly injured. Your enemy is in a real bind. His livelihood is at stake, his goods are in the dirt, and he cannot solve the problem alone. The temptation here is even stronger than before. Not only might you feel a sense of satisfaction, you now have a perfect excuse for inaction. "It's his problem. He overloaded the animal. I've got places to be."
God's command is explicit. First, the negative: "you shall refrain from leaving it to him." In other words, you are forbidden from walking away. You cannot pretend you did not see it. Apathy is not an option. Then, the positive: "you shall surely release it with him." Notice the last two words: "with him." This is not about dropping off a check or sending a helpful note. This requires you to get down in the mud and the muck with your enemy. You have to work alongside him, shoulder to shoulder, heaving and pulling together to free this animal. You have to cooperate with your adversary to achieve a common good.
This is a profound picture of reconciliation. It forces an interaction. It demands communication. It is hard to maintain a cold wall of hatred when you are both sweating and straining together to lift a heavy burden. This law is not just about preventing cruelty to animals, though it is certainly that. It is about God's strategic plan for killing human animosity. He commands us into situations where our enmity is shown to be foolish and unsustainable in the face of a shared, practical need. He is teaching us to overcome evil with good, not in theory, but in the dirt, with a donkey.
The Gospel According to a Donkey
This law, like all of God's law, is a schoolmaster that points us to Christ. It reveals a standard that we, in our fallen nature, cannot possibly meet on our own. Our hearts are too proud, too selfish, too full of resentment. We love to see our enemies stumble. We are experts at justifying our own inaction. This law shows us our sin. It shows us our need for a new heart.
But more than that, it shows us the very heart of God in the gospel. For we were the ones who were enemies of God (Romans 5:10). We were not just wandering off; we were in active rebellion. And we were the ones lying helpless under a load we could not lift, the crushing burden of our own sin and guilt. We had collapsed on the road, and there was no hope of getting up on our own.
And what did God do? Did He walk by, saying it served us right? Did He leave us to our fate? No, He saw us. And He did not "refrain from leaving" us there. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, who came down into the muck and mire of our fallen world to get "with us." He came to work alongside us, but more than that, to work for us. He got under the load that was crushing us, the load of God's righteous wrath against our sin, and He took it upon Himself.
On the cross, Jesus was the ultimate fulfillment of this law. He saw His enemies, helpless under the burden of sin, and He did not walk away. He entered into our suffering and, at the cost of His own life, He released us. He is the true Good Samaritan, who finds his enemy beaten on the side of the road and does not pass by, but binds up his wounds and pays for his recovery.
Therefore, when we are called to help the one who hates us, we are being called to act out the gospel. We are demonstrating to a watching world what God has done for us in Christ. Our willingness to be inconvenienced for the good of our enemy is one of the most powerful sermons we could ever preach. It declares that we have been recipients of a grace that we did not deserve, and we are therefore compelled to extend a lesser grace to those who do not deserve it from us. To refuse this duty is to show that we have not yet understood the gospel that saved us. It is to be the unmerciful servant who, having been forgiven an insurmountable debt, goes out and throttles his brother for a few pennies.
So the next time you see your enemy's metaphorical donkey collapsed under a load, whether it is a flat tire, a difficult project at work, or a personal crisis, you know what the law of liberty requires. It requires you to stop, to help, and to do so "with him." In doing so, you are not just obeying an ancient rule. You are imitating your Savior. You are demonstrating the logic of the cross. You are heaping coals of fire on his head, not for vengeance, but in the hope of melting a cold heart with the unexpected, inexplicable, and glorious grace of God.