God's Plan to Care for His People

It's got quite a collection of people all over the room, different places. Chapter 15 of Deuteronomy has a long introduction to it. When Moses was talking about the people coming into the land of promise, the land of Canaan, he had a long, long, almost the first 14 chapters of talking about God's presence and His guidance, about who He is and what He demanded of them, that He would take them to a place where He would tell them they should worship, where He would tell them exactly how they should worship. He emphasizes, through this first section, the first three commandments that God gave. You're to have no other god before me, you're not to worship any idols, and you're to give God complete, total authority over your lives. It was this leading introduction that gets to this place. Now, in chapter 15, he starts out talking about, or chapter 14, he starts out talking about God's instructions about what they're to eat, about the rules that set them apart by their foods. Meaning, you are holy people, and I want you to eat in such a way so that all the people around you would know that you are different than all the culture around you, because I am your God. And then he moves in to talk about tithing. And in talking about tithing, he's talking about the instructions to the people of Israel that they're to set aside 10% of everything that they receive, all their growth and their income and their cattle and their crops, and that 10% is to be dedicated to Him. He says to them they can go to the temple and they can have a big meal and celebrate this with the tithe that they have, and the balance of that is to go for people who are taking care of the temple, the Levites and others. It's a means whereby he supports his income for the Levites. Now, oftentimes whenever people start talking about tithing or giving, there's always a little bit of resistance to that. I've heard preachers say, I don't like to preach about that, it makes people mad. I've heard them say that people get upset if you talk about money or tithing. But this is really an important thing to understand. All the way through this first part, Moses has been talking about who God is. And most of us agree with the things that Moses would say. For example, Moses says, we talk about God being the supreme ruler of everything, the owner of everything that's in the world. He created the world. He owns everything in the world. That every person, the Israelites who have dedicated themselves to live in obedience to God, they have promised to trust God and do whatever He asks them to do. Most people in most churches would agree with those primary truths. God created the whole world. Everything in the world is His. And when I've dedicated myself to Him, I've promised Him that I would do whatever He asks me to do. Now, if you take those three premises, then the one who owns everything that's in the world and everything we have, he has the right to tell us what to do with those things that are his. And if somebody gives you something and says, George, I want you to take this, and here's a hundred dollars. But you can only have this if you'll give Virginia ten. You'd take that deal, wouldn't you? Ninety dollars, get ten. Okay, that's fine. And most people don't have any trouble with that. You know, the reason is because it was my money. I gave it to George with the condition he shares some with her. And he looks at it and says, I'll take that deal because before then I didn't have any hundred dollars. Now, I at least have ninety dollars, more than I had before. I can't lose. The situation changes dramatically if George gets a job. And he goes to work, and he works hard three days, and he gets paid a hundred dollars. And then I come up to him and say, I want you to know that God says you should turn around and give Virginia ten of that. All of a sudden, the picture changes. This is my money. I worked hard to get it. And now you're telling me to give it away to someone else? You see, the idea that money given to me as a gift, when I didn't work for it, is just a wonderful blessing. And if someone who's giving it to me told me to give someone else ten dollars, I would gladly do it because that means that that person is giving me a hundred dollars, and all I have to do is give away ten. But when you've worked for it, in our own mind it changes the picture to say, I am not giving away the money someone gave to me. I'm giving away the money I worked hard to get. And now that I worked hard to get it, it's mine. And because I own it, he's asking me to give away my money. You see, the deal I make with George, he's not troubled to give it away because he's giving away my money. It's not his. He recognizes that I give him this hundred dollars, it wasn't his. It was somebody else's. You see, Satan deceives us into thinking because we work hard, and the money we get, it's really not God's. The Bible has a whole different view of this situation. God looks at the world and says, everything in it is mine. And if somebody works and gets a little bit of money, that money is still mine. And they get it because I've given them life. They get that money because I've given them the things around them that allow them to farm and make a living. These ancient people were farmers. They have cattle. I've given them the cattle, and I've made their cattle able to have calves. And so they have the produce from the calves. They have the produce from the goats. They have the produce from the chickens. All of this is my gift to them. But when we bring into the picture our human labor, suddenly we think, this is no longer God's. I earned it. That's where the change comes. From our point of view, we can think of it that way, but God doesn't think of it that way. He thinks of the fact that everything in the world really is His, and when He gives it to us, He has the right to say, here's what you do with it. Now in the passage in chapter 15, God takes this demand just another step further that's even harder for us to reconcile with our own lives and the way we think of the world. Chapter 15, verse 1, At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it's to be done. Every creditor shall cancel a loan he has made to his fellow Israelite. He shall not require payment from his fellow Israelite or brother because the Lord's time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your brother owes you. However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, He will richly bless you if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow these commands. The commands I'm giving you today. For the Lord your God will bless you as He has promised, and you will lend to many nations, but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations, but one but none will rule over you. What He set up here is a very unusual system. A system whereby every seventh year, the time that the crops were to be fallow in that year, no one was to plant crops. It may have been in this time that the poor person would have found the most difficult circumstances of his life, because now you have no opportunity to be able to work. You can't plant a crop, so if you had to borrow money in some way for some circumstance that came up in your life, the seventh year might be the very most difficult time for you to negotiate this. But He set up a system where the land on the seventh year was to be released. That's a word, that's the Hebrew word that's used, to lay fallow. It's released. You turn loose of it. You no longer control it. It's turned loose back to God, and it's His now. That's the language that's used on the seventh year. You release it. The exact same word is used here about the loans. Now, you have someone in your community who's come on hard times for one reason or another, and he's had to borrow money. And so you have some money, and you make that loan to the person, and then he starts paying it back. If he can't pay it all back by the time the seventh year comes, you are required by God to cancel that debt so that that person would no longer owe you anything. Now, you can see how the difficulty comes with this. I've worked hard. I've saved my money. I have it in the bank. And now here's a guy who needs the money, and I've loaned him the money, and he's going to pay me. And now comes a time when the seventh year is up, and I have to cancel that debt. It's the same as taking the balance of the loan and giving that much money to that person. What God's intention was, that the people of Israel would have no poor among them. For on every seventh year, everyone would come out of the seventh year with absolutely no debts. They would still have their land. They would still be able to do the work that they've done, but they would have no debts. All this would be cleared, and people would start over. God had made a promise to the people of Israel to say to them, I will guide you in all the choices and decisions you have to make. I will provide for you. And this is His means of provision for all the people. Now, God's provision to us is not the same. You may have noticed, some people have more money than other people have. It's not always the same. God could have done it differently. He did do it differently at one time. Everybody would get up in the morning and look out in the fields, and there was the manna, and everyone could go out and get the manna, but they could only get what they needed for that day. If they tried to fudge and get a little more wealth or manna, at the end of the day it rotted. They only had exactly enough. Everybody's provision was the same. Now, you could eat twice as much as the person next to you, but that's all you could do, is eat whatever you had that day, and then that was the end of it. So God could have made it so that every day a person walks out of their tent and there was enough money in front of them to pay for whatever they needed that day. Certainly God could have done it that way. He doesn't do it that way. There are some people who have more difficulties in life than others. Sickness, their cattle die, the ground that God has given them is not as fertile as someone else's. All kinds of things happen. Maybe even you get sick and you can't put in a crop and take care of it like you would like to have, and so you come to hard times. God's means of providing for His people is that there's someone who's prospered, and you can go and borrow money from that person, and you can pay it back as you work this out, but every seventh year He cleans the slate, gives you an opportunity financially to start over. It is God's way by which the people who belong to Him would be able to be cared for and provided. Now, all this looks like a dangerous thing because you have someone with wealth and someone who's poor and then you take from the rich and you give to the poor. If you think of it in terms of what I own, if you think of it in terms of God's money, His land and His cattle, He's just taking care of His children through other people. It's exactly the same thing He did with the tithe. You take your tithe to the temple and you give it there, and the priest, the Levite, who has no land to make a living from your wealth, the Levite will be taken care of. Here's how I'm going to provide for the Levite. I will give you money and you take your 10% and you take it to the temple, and then the Levite will have his share of the wealth of Israel. This is the way I choose to provide for my people. You see, if God thinks that He owns everything there is in the world and every cow and every dollar is really His, it's just a matter of God saying, here's the way I want to arrange my wealth. I'm going to give you some of it, I'm going to give you some of it, but when I'm ready for it, I want to tell you what I want to do about it. And God's intention was to make sure that there was no poverty among His people. Why was that? Because He made a promise. I will provide for you. I will take care of you. And in His manner of taking care of His people, He gave His distribution in however He chose, but here He says, now, I will give you 10% and you take 10%. This is what I want you to do with it. Every seventh year, you're to take whatever debts that you've accumulated from someone else and you're to cancel them. So, this money that you did have, no longer is yours, and the person who has a debt no longer has that, and so I've made everybody a little closer to equal. Now, God's means verse 4, However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, He will richly bless you. The blessing is promised to everyone if only you fully obey the Lord your God and are careful to follow all these commands I'm giving you today. Both the person with the money and the person who is poor are promised blessings from God, if they're obedient to them. Now, why would God do this? I don't know. He didn't tell us why He wanted to do it. I'll tell you one thing, though, that's a great curse to all of us, and that's greed. And what greed is to say, what I hold on to is mine, and no one else can have it. That's greed. And I want more and more of it. That's greed. And it's one of the sins that God warns us about. The rich farmer, you know, who looked out across his fields and he said, I've had such a great harvest, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to build bigger barns. I'm going to pile them high with all the produce that I have. And Jesus said in that story, the Lord said, you fool. The word fool, does it reflect financial planning? For if you were to sit down as an agricultural man and talk to the farmer who just had such a big harvest, you would have advised him to do exactly what his plan was. I better build bigger barns because I've got bigger harvests. But what his foolishness was, was he didn't consider what God had in store for him, or what God wanted from him. He was simply looking at himself and saying, what do I want? And that's the foolish road, because that night he would have none of it left. God took everything he had and he gave it to someone else. That's what happens when you die. Everything you have is given to someone else. What God asks is that the people of Israel would do that during their lifetime. So that in the prosperity that they received, a part of that would be given to help those who had not prospered in the same way. It was God's way of keeping a promise. Now you'll notice that he says that this is not to be done for people outside the community of faith. He shall not require payment from fellow Israelites or brothers because the Lord's time for cancelling debts has been proclaimed. Let me skip to verse 7, pick up there where I left off. If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your poor brother. Rather be open-handed and freely lend him whatever he needs. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought. The seventh year, the year of cancelling debts, is near so that you do not show ill-will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He said, I understand what you're going to think about. Say it's the fifth year and somebody comes and says, I'd like to borrow some money from you because I've come on hard times. You're going to think, let's see, how long is it until the seventh year and I have to cancel that? And then you're going to think, I better not make this loan because I'm not going to get all of it back. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought. Now why would that be wicked? Wouldn't it be just rude business? I mean, if you knew that in two years you wouldn't be able to get this money back, what kind of man wouldn't think, you know, this is not a good thing business deal for me to make a loan right now. You know why it's wicked? It's wicked because God's means of providing is being stymied. God wants to take care of the poor person and you have been asked by God because of this need to make a loan that you know you will not receive all of it back. So you've said to God, I am not going to help my poor brother. I'm going to take this money that you've given me and I'm going to keep it because I worked hard to get it and it belongs to me. You see, what you're saying to God is this isn't really yours, it's mine. The first commandment is to have no other gods before me. You're to realize that God made everything in this world, everything in this world and all of it belongs to him. And if he requests you to take some of his money and give it to someone else, you can trust him. Why? Because if you do what I tell you, I will bless you as I promised and you will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. You will rule over many nations but none will rule over you. Do I trust God so that I can make a bag of business deal, a loan at five years, knowing that I'm only going to get back at best 40% of it, can I really trust God to do what he said to me? So if I stop and say, I cannot afford financially to make this loan and lose 60% of this loan, what you're saying to God is, I do not trust you to provide for me. That's why it's a wicked thought. It's a wicked thought because you're looking God in the face and saying, your plan is just not acceptable to me. You've given me all these things but I'm not going to give it to anyone else because it's mine. See the heresy involved? I'm now claiming for myself what really belongs to God. So God calls this wicked thinking. The seventh year, and I'm going to read verse 9, be careful not to harbor this wicked thought. The seventh year, the year of cancellation is near so that you do not show ill will toward your needy brother and give him nothing. He may then appeal to the Lord against you and you will be found guilty of sin. And I've talked about what that sin is. The most serious sin you can commit in the world. Rebellion against the authority of God. I am the Lord. You're to have no other gods ahead of me. Now when you say, I know what's best how to use my money, you're saying, I know more than you God. That is the most cardinal and reprehensible sin that a human being can commit. The result is, you're to give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart. See, he hits another point. I can say, okay, it's the fifth year. I know my friend here is having a hard time. He had been sick and his kids can't help him and his crops have gone bad on him. Boy, I've got this money and I could lend it, but I don't think I want to do so. But God said I had to. He said he wouldn't bless me if I didn't. I'm going to do it, but I really, really don't want to. The grudging heart. Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart. Why is that a sin? It's a sin because I do not trust God to do what he said. If you do what I tell you, I will bless you richly. That's my promise to you. And whenever you say to me, I'm going to do what you want me to do, but I sure do hate to do it and I'm only doing it because I have to, you're not believing my promise to you. Then because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. That is, if you give generously without grudging. Powerful promise. The Lord God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. What God is making is a powerful promise. You look at this deal and all your friends are going to say you're stupid for giving a loan to a man when two years away you're going to lose 60% of your money. But you say to your friend, I'm not stupid. My God has made me a promise. If you do what I tell you to do, I'm really going to bless you. I would dare say that 80% of the people who are setting any church on Sunday do not believe that. They just don't. And if you talk to them about why they don't, they'll say, well, I'm not stupid. I've got a calculator. I add up my bills and I put down my money that I earn and it doesn't work out. And so I can't give God what he said I should give him. And I'm having to do this for my financial future. And God says, I'm not stupid. I've got a calculator if you'll give me this, I will bless you more than you're going to give up. But we don't believe God. Instead, we say, I think better than God does. And so, if you look around this world, you'll find that most people in the world have big financial problems. Almost every person I've ever talked to who has serious financial problems just doesn't tithe. They don't. They never put these two things together, but it's just as real as anything in the world. You can't put these two things together, but it's just as real as anything in the world. You can see it. God makes a promise to his people. Therefore, I command you to be open-handed toward your brother and toward the poor and the needy of your land. Now, there are a couple of stipulations here that are important for us to note. First of all, he says that it's not necessary for them to do this with people who are not a part of the community of faith. In other words, the foreigners in your land, it's not necessary for you to do the same thing with them. You can make a loan to them, and you don't have to give it for a given seventh year. This was not a command for caring for all the people in the world. It was only a command to care for the people in the community of faith. God did not make a promise to everyone in the world, I will guide you and provide you and protect you. He made that promise to the people who affirmed the covenant at Mount Sinai, the people who said by faith, I trust God with my life. The command to care for those who are poor is not a universal command to care for all the people who are poor in the world. But if you bring it to the church's circumstance, we have a responsibility to each other. Years ago, we started the family ministry fund in the church, and it was my vision that what we would do with that family ministry fund was to do exactly this. If there were people in our church who are followers of Christ, who came on hard times, we would all give money to that and we'd help them. We don't have a big obligation to people who are not following Christ. We can be generous to them, but we have a requirement for the people who are part of the family of God. And I think we tend to look at all the people in the world in sort of the same picture. But those who are part of the family of faith, we have a different kind of obligation to them. And this is simply not an Old Testament concept. It's a concept found really throughout the scriptures. He's talking about the early church in Acts chapter 2. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together, had everything in common, selling their possessions and good they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes, ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I think probably one of the most powerful pictures of this early church were groups that met together. They talked about Jesus. They prayed. They remembered what he did and said. And then when a brother fell on hard times, they said, Hey, if you need anything, we'll help you. And so when they were poor, they didn't take the money they had left over. They even sold some of their things and brought it together and said, Here, you can have this. I know you need it. Now, they didn't have a food bank for all the community. What they had was a way by which they took care of their own people. What's to cause someone who says, You know, the church over there gives stuff away to their members. I'll come and join that church, and then I'll get that. Well, there's a very simple reason. There was tremendous persecution for people that joined these groups. You didn't have any phonies. You didn't have any fakes. You had people that had placed their life on the line, and all of them knew that you had paid the price to become a follower of Christ. And so when they looked around their group, they knew all of each other's lives, and they knew what you had given up, and they knew what that one had given up, and they knew what that one had given up, and they knew that it was real for you. And whenever you have a Christian brother or sister, not just a member, but a Christian brother or sister, you have an obligation, an obligation to take what God has given you and extend it to them. I think a church, if you have young people join your church and families, maybe they can't afford to send their kids to college, church ought to send those kids as best they can to school. I think when you have a brother and sister who's working in the church and he comes on hard times, not just a matter of taking a little food over, but dig down and saying, we're going to make sure that this works right for you. Our church has done that in some instances. It's what the Bible requires. We had a man one time who was dying of cancer, and he bought a bunch of land. And when I talked to him, he said, my greatest fear is I'm going to die and leave my widow in debt. Some men in the church went out and bid on that property and made sure that it sold for enough to pay for it. And if it hadn't have, they were prepared to purchase it at a price that would cover the debt. That's what it means to carry your brother's burden. And whenever you know that someone belongs to God, we have an obligation to them that's greater than anything we know. Because God is fulfilling his promise to that person through our lives. Well, you know, we're all a little bit nervous about that because you can't count on everyone to be faithful to what they're supposed to do. But Paul gave us another condition. This is a little bit later in the Christian history, when the Thessalonians were not as, where becoming a follower of Jesus was not as dangerous. And so there were some people who joined without being submitted. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teachings you receive from us. For you know yourselves how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor do we eat anyone else's food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling, so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this not because we do not have the right to such help. Paul was saying, I have the right to have you help me in the work that I'm doing. But I didn't claim that right. Instead, I made sure that I never took advantage of it. But in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow, for even when we were with you, he gave you this rule, if a man will not work, he shall not eat. See, that's the other stipulation. The commandment he gives us about sharing our wealth with each other is a command for the people who are followers of Jesus. One. Second, it's a command that if you have somebody in your community of faith who's too lazy to work and will not take care of himself, you have no obligation. Why? Because that person is living in disobedience to God. Paul actually taught that a person who was idle and refused to work was disobedient and rebellious against God. This is not a way by which freeloaders can get a free ride. It is a way by which the love of God is shown to people and a way by which God shows how He takes care of His people. It takes faith and courage to do this. A trust in God that's enormous and powerful. But God makes a promise to the people who are willing to do it. Whatever you give away of the money I've shared with you, I'll promise you, you'll never lose if you do what I told you to do. Why? Because I'm the Lord. It's all mine. And I want the world to know that the people who follow me are different than the pagans. They say, how much can I get and how much can I keep? You say, it all belongs to the Lord. What do you want me to do with it? Our financial life is a living testimony that we have no greater power in our life, greater than the command of God. Not even our greed, not even our selfishness, for He is greater than all. Let's pray. Father, I believe as in the Old Testament, people learned who you were through the lifestyle of your people. And they learn how you provided. And we see it even in the New Testament. Give us that kind of heart. When we look around at our brothers and sisters that we know are faithful to you, love you, committed their lives to you, and working to do their part, help us never to close our hands nor hearts to one another. That the world might see in our behavior as a community of followers of yours, exactly what it's like to serve you. And they might see exactly what you are like. In the name of Christ, we ask this. Amen.