God's Compassion and Ownership of All People

I want to begin with verse 15. This is just a series of instructions that God gives us. You learn what people are like by what they say, and you learn what people are like by what they do. If somebody, if you go to somebody's house and they say, I'd like you to take your shoes off at the door. What do you know about that person? You like stinky feet? There's a guy with stinky feet when he takes his shoes off. You know something about that guy. What do they, what do they say? What does it say? Clean, they need to clean their house. What else? They're neat, huh? Okay. All those things are possible for you to learn. But what all of you see is that what person says about, and just a short statement like that says something. And what you have to understand is that the Bible records the events that take place in this world. And especially in the book of Deuteronomy, the instructions God gives us about how to live in his world. And the instructions that God gives us about how to live in his world tells us a great deal about who God is. If you've said to God, I give my life to you and I want to live in obedience to you, what he's like is the way he wants you to become. So that's why these instructions are so critical for us. This is what God wants us to be like. And if he wants us to be like, this is what he himself is like. So if you want to live in this world and have God approve of what you do, you need to know what he approves of. You need to know what he disapproves of because those are key guidelines in our relationship. Now, if you walk into somebody's house and the hostess says, I'd like you to take your shoes off at the door and just leave them by the door and get them on when you leave. And you look at her and you say, hmm. And you walk right in and don't take your shoes off. There's a little tension that will start right there. Because the person who's in charge of the house has given you the rules of the house and you ignore them. So when you get the rules that God gives you by the way he wants you to live and you say, hmm, I don't want to read that. I'm just going to go ahead and do what I want to. Tension between you and God comes about. And the more you disregard God's instructions about how to live, the more you tell God, you're not in charge of this. So if you walk into somebody's house and they tell you the rules, you ignore it. And they tell you the rules about what they want you to do. If you get a glass, set it on a coaster and you set it right down on the wood. The more you begin to do that, the more you insult the owner of the house. And the more likely they are not to want you around them. What God is trying to do with all these stories in the Old Testament is tell us how he wants us to live in his world. In chapter 23, there's a series of instructions that seem unrelated with regard to themes. But the relationship is, this is what God values. And this is what he does not value. If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him. Now, when you look at that, you ask yourself, what does this teach me about God? Well, you see, here he's talking about a slave. Why would God be interested in a slave? He has great concern, you'll find throughout the stories of the scripture, for people who are powerless and unable to help themselves. Slaves are owned by someone else, and they're powerless to be able to control their lives and their future. And they're defenseless against the powerful people around them. So God chooses to give laws regarding the helpless and the poor and the needy. You'll find that throughout the scriptures. God never takes the side of the wealthy and the powerful. He always takes the side of the powerless and the helpless. So if you want to be a person who's relating to God, you want to be having eyes for the people who are powerless and helpless. They are the ones that God is most concerned about. Because the people with power and money and influence can take care of themselves in this world. They have the power to be able to do what they need to do. They have the money to be able to make happen what they want to make happen. But poor people and powerless people don't have that. So you find the scriptures consistently on the side of these people. Here he's concerned about slaves. If a slave has taken refuge with you, the word refuge indicates to us that it's someone who's run away. Now if you think of a refugee, you think of someone who's gone from one country to another. So he's probably talking about people here who come into the land of promise, into the community where the people of Israel are going to be settling in the land of Canaan, who has come in there from another territory, running away from a slave owner. Now the normal laws that govern slavery, it was true in the Bible times, all the way from the Old Testament to the New Testament, that the laws govern slavery in most towns, in most cities, most countries, was when a slave ran away. He was the property of the owner, and he belonged to the owner. And to keep that slave away from its owner would be the same as stealing. For example, if you had a horse that ran away from you and went to somebody else's house or field, and the owner of the horse came and said, that's my horse, and you said, well it's in my field and I'm going to keep it, you would be considered a thief of a horse. The same law held in almost all the countries around Israel, and all around the world really, a slave owned by someone else was considered their property. Here though, the Lord says to the people of Israel, if a slave runs away from another country and comes to your country, and you find him, do not hand him over to his master. What God does is He declares that that slave is not owned by any other person. Who is the owner of that slave? The one who made him. So since the slave has run away, probably from circumstances that were painful or difficult, and life was not worth living in the place that he was with this person, he's running away from something that is dangerous or difficult or hard for them, the people of Israel are to give that person a reception as God would give them. I want to rescue you from the circumstance that caused you to feel you need to get away for your own protection and safety. So because this person who's run away from someone else belongs to me, God says, I give you the authority as the person who really made this slave, and here's what I want you to do. Give them the freedom to make a choice as to how they want to live their life. Let them live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. You're to give this person the freedom to live anywhere in the nation of Israel that he wants to live. He can make that choice. And then the last line, do not oppress him. It would be easy, you know, for someone to say, well, here's a slave that ran away. Now I can take this person and make him a slave of my own. But God is saying to the people of Israel, this man or woman belongs to me. And they're now free from the slavery they're running from, and they've come to you. And as the owner of that slave, the master of that slave by right of creation, I ask you to give them the opportunity to live their life without being oppressed or controlled. Give them the choice where they want to live and allow them to live. What we learn about God from this situation is that God considers all people really his by right of creation. What we see from the story is God had great compassion for people who are in difficult circumstances, being treated badly as a slave, so bad that they ran away. And now here's a person in a foreign land, maybe not even able to speak the language very well. An illegal immigrant, if we might choose that language for our own. And God says, receive this person because they belong to me. Give them the freedom to make the choice in the land where they live. And make sure that you do nothing that would make their life more difficult. Oppress, push down, weight down, make difficult. So we learn about the compassion of God. We learn about his ownership of people. We learn about how he looks to take care of people who are in difficult and trying situations and circumstances. Now, in this story, we're finding that God is talking about slaves that have run away from another country. In our own past history, in the 1800s, early 1800s, when slavery was very prominent in our country, slave owners in the South and people in the North were at great differences in what God wanted them to do. The slave owners in the South would quote the Book of Flehmen. If you look in your Bibles about that in the New Testament, you'll see that this story that Paul is writing, a very short book about a slave who ran away from his master. And what Paul said to the slave was, I want you to return to your master. And in this book, apparently the master is a follower of Christ, and the slave, having come to be with Paul, has also now become a follower of Christ. In Flehmen, verse 8, Paul says, Therefore in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul, an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus, I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. I am sending him, who is my very heart, back to you. I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel, but I did not want to do anything without your consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good, no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. For he is very dear to me, but even dearer to you, both as a man and a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has done any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will pay it back. Not to mention that you owe me your very self. I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident in your obedience, I write to you knowing that you will do even more than I ask. What Paul did was he said to Onesimus, the slave who had come to him, and now apparently became a follower of Christ. Paul knew his master, and he sent him back to his master, saying to Onesimus, You've run away from this man. I want you to go back. He didn't do this because of the law. He wasn't trying to keep the law. The Roman law required him to do it. Paul was doing this as a way to be able to reconcile the relationship between an owner and a slave, who were now both brothers in Christ. He doesn't ask him to receive him back as a slave, but he asks him to receive him back as a brother in Christ. Paul felt the leadership from God to say to him, Now that you're a brother in Christ, whatever differences the two of you had, you should work out. For that's a follower of Christ, too. And as you go back, you no longer go back just as a slave, but you're now a brother. You're a brother, but you're also a slave, but you're a brother. You're also an owner, but you're a brother. What's God trying to teach? He's trying to teach both of these men to reconcile the differences that they had, and to come to be able to fulfill the law without either one of them being burdened by the shame of what was going on. Slave owners would quote the book of Philemon, saying, If anyone's slave runs away, you should send them back. That's what Paul did. Well, it's quite a different thing to send someone back and say, Now he's going to be your brother, than to send someone back and say, Now you're going to put him out in the field and make him work from dawn till night, and punish him by making him live in a little cabin and take his family away from him. All the things that might happen to slaves. There was a great difference, you see, between what was happening in the South and what was taking place in the Bible. What God was trying to teach to his people is, All of these people belong to me, and how you treat them should be consistent with what takes place in my kingdom. There may be times whenever the slaves should go back to fulfill what God is trying to do. I want to show the world what a godly owner and a godly slave can do when they're together. To build a relationship that shouldn't be close. But now they're brothers. Not owner and the one owned. In the Old Testament, what he's talking about is, Whenever anybody comes into your country, and they're people who are in danger, and they have no way to be able to protect and care for themselves, take care of them. Both of these situations show us something about God. His concern, what he's trying to do. They are not hard and fast laws. Like we could say, you only travel 15 miles an hour, that's the speed limit. They're ways to react to circumstances based on the principles that are the character and nature of God. It's like anybody has a family. If you tell your kids what you want them to do, and they know what they're supposed to do, and they don't act exactly right, you get on to them. And you punish them until they do the right thing. If your neighbor's children come over and do the very same things that you tell your own children not to do, you react to them a little differently because they're not your children. You might want to catch them and thrash them, but you don't do that because they're not yours. What God is teaching us about himself is our special relationship to him and how he wants us to live. And he's teaching us who he is and how he wants us to be able to handle things. In verse 17, he turns to a different subject. No Israelite man or woman is to become a temple prostitute. You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow because the Lord your God detests them both. Now, I'd like you to think about what the principle is found here. What is the principle that he's giving? The issue is the vow. You've made a vow to me, like saying to God, I have this situation in my life and I promise you that I'm going to give you, I'm so filled with gratitude for your blessings to me, my family, the harvest, whatever it is. I'm so filled with gratitude to you that I'm going to give you $500. You've made a promise to God you're going to give him $500. How are you going to give him that promise? He says there are some promises for a gift of money that I'm not willing to accept. If you're a prostitute, now he's not talking about someone who's in the red light district, walking the streets, who's simply having sex for money. He's talking about people who are enticed by the culture of Canaan into the worship of Baal and other gods of fertility and goddesses of fertility who work in the temple doing events that would lead to erotic or sexual activity as a matter of worship in the temple. So male prostitutes, female prostitutes would work in the temple and it was a job and they had sex for pay and the acts of sex were intended to generate the gods of Baal to be fruitful and to make the crops grow and the cattle to have babies that are healthy and strong. So they're going to be surrounded by these people who had this kind of behavior and it would be tempting when seeing other people make a living this way for people to want to make a living in the same way. It both is exciting and thrilling in some ways and it's both pleasure in another way and it's a matter of income. So if you can make fun, enjoy yourself and have money, that's pretty attractive. And especially if you think on top of all of that it's going to promise you your life will be fruitful in terms of financial benefits because the gods of fertility would give you a blessing. Now he says, I don't want anyone who participates in that kind of activity to come to the temple and say I made a promise to give God $500 and now here's the money I've earned from the temple. I'm not keeping it all for myself. I'm going to tithe it to God. Don't ever bring that money to me. Now we don't have anybody in our culture who engages in temple prostitution. They just don't have that kind of thing around here. What God is talking about is do not give to me money that is dirty. That may sound familiar to you because whenever they were supposed to offer a sacrifice, the animal that they brought to have a sacrifice had to be perfect. No blemishes. Nothing wrong with them. The very best that God had to offer. You could not bring an animal that was lame or crippled or defective and give it to God because it was unworthy as a gift to God. What kind of money might people have in our culture that God would consider dirty money? I'm going to give you a break just a minute. At your table, would you guys talk about this and come up with a list of some dirty money that God might say I don't want you to give that to the Lottie Moon Mission offering or to the Sunday School or church offering. Turn around at your tables. Go. What about gambling money? I suppose he wants money. Lottery. Would that be dirty money? Well, we'll talk about that. Is that one of yours? Well, I don't want no money, but that would be something that would be illegal I would think. Okay. As long as it wasn't in his pocket when he found it. Sometimes if a person has that kind of large amount of money and it's from drugs, it has drug stuff on it. And so if they came and claimed it, it would kind of be like confessing they're drug dealers. So let's say I'd rather give away $10,000 than go to jail. Well, I don't know if that would be dirty money or not if you didn't accumulate it that way. If it was somebody else's, that would be illegal. I don't know. But I realize, you know, like if he was gambling and going somewhere and there was no money in the lottery, I don't care about it. Okay, let's take just a minute. We'll start with this group over here that look like they know a lot about dirty money. You guys come up with a list? Embezzled money, okay. Well, yeah, give us several if you have them. Drug money. Okay. Anything illegal? Yeah. Okay. Butch? You have one that's different than that? I'm not allowed to do my whole list. Yours? Yeah, mine. Well, we'd all pay to see that. If you do, you can't give it to the jury. Which could help, too. Okay. Like, do you have a photographic store or have a photographic website? Okay. Let's go to this next one here. You guys have some that you thought of? I only mentioned gambling. Otherwise, most of our list is fake. Okay. John mentioned black money. Everyone's got their own list. Okay. Pardon? Anything that's different than that. Okay. Yeah, mine is different. Yeah, we do. Carl and Virginia, you probably didn't know anything about any of these things, have you? I think most probably none of you knew about that, so I don't know that anybody mentioned that. But a lot of people have said, you know, unemployment shouldn't ever be unemployment. That's stealing from the family. Okay. Okay, I think most of them have, I think the table here, you guys got the same kind of things. What do you see? One more thing. Okay. If you won some money, like in that, what do they call it? Publishers Clearing House. If you won money in that, that wouldn't be dirty money, would it? What do you think? It would be a gift from them to you if you won it. If you won it, yeah. I mean, there's not a whole lot of people winning, but there's some of them that are winning $100,000. Yeah. If I won $100,000, I would think it would be clean money. Okay. And if I wanted to give half of it to the church and spend the rest of it on my family, I don't see anything wrong with that. What do you think the issue with gambling is in the Bible? The Bible doesn't say very much about gambling, but it does talk about getting money at the expense of other people. So you have everybody gets $10 into the lottery, and that's how the money builds, and then one or two people get it and all the others lose. It's a way by which a person benefits by the losses of others around them. That's what the difficulty of gambling is in God's eyes. If you don't earn this, you benefit at the expense of other people, which means that you take away from them for your own enrichment. It's a sort of way of stealing. It's just legalized and sort of set up in a different way. That's what God has about that, because what He's concerned is you do things that would earn your money so that when you do work for another person, they get benefit from it, and you get the pay which both of you benefit from. What God's interested in is our dealings with people always are mutually beneficial. Even if you give money to someone as a gift, there is a benefit that comes to you, not a loss. One of the hardest things that ever happened to me was whenever I first started being a pastor, a lady who was a widow in our church gave me a gift for Christmas, some money. I didn't want to take that money because I knew she didn't have very much. I really wrestled with this. I wanted to say no. As I thought about that, I realized that there are circumstances in which a person gives you something in which they get a benefit from it. If God had asked her to give me that money, then there was a benefit that she was going to get, and I should humble myself and allow myself to receive a gift from her. That was very hard money to receive. But understanding that a gift is not like a person loses. A person gains by giving that gift. So it's different than in the gambling situation. So you can see that some of these are more clear-cut. Like some of you mentioned being against the law, things where you steal, where you cheat, where you embezzle, where you sell drugs, where you've cheated on your taxes, done something illegal to get money, pornography. Gambling is not necessarily illegal everywhere, but it has that connotation because of the Bible's concern about how you get it. Blood money, I think that's having something to do with killing people, is it? I'm not very familiar with it. But most of these are illegal, and in God's sense, they are doing something that is wrong. Taking money without earning it. When you cheat, you take money you didn't earn. When you steal, you take money you didn't earn. And whenever you embezzle, you take money that's not yours. When you do drugs, you're having a business that is illegal, according to the law. So, all of these are things that God might find offensive. When I was in college, our president, Small Baptist College, he was always out raising money. And one time, to our student body, he said, we want people to give money to our school. And I'll tell you if the... I don't know what company makes Budweiser. Who makes that? Anheuser-Busch. If Anheuser-Busch gives us money, we'll name our dormitory Budweiser Hall. Well, you can imagine in a school that size, the president got very, very strong reactions to the willingness to take what was considered dirty money. Money that was earned from something that might be destructive to the life of a person, and destructive to the world. What God is saying to us is, when you give me something, I want it to be something that is consistent with my character. I don't lie. I don't cheat. I don't hurt people. I don't kill them. And so, anything that comes from those sources is dishonoring to me. What if you invest money and get money... when get money on investments? Would that be dirty money? Well, is anybody being cheated? Well, I don't know. They all invest in it. If you're investing in a company you know that's dishonest and illegal, like the national drug dealers of a country, they're probably... How would you know what you're investing in? Well, you have an idea if you... If you invested in some big company, it probably wouldn't be dirty money. Yeah. And it makes a difference if you know it. Yeah. In other words, if you've honestly invested in something, and you have done the research, and you don't have any idea they're doing anything illegal or bad, then you can... Because the company will grow, and as the company grows, your money will grow, with your investment. But it's not something you have chosen to do that is evil. Sometimes we don't have any control over what people do. In this situation, it's money I had control over how I earned it. I think that's a big difference. Now, if you're investing in a company that's involved in the gambling industry or the liquor industry, and you feel that that's something that's not acceptable to you, or not acceptable to God, then I think it's appropriate for you to say, that's not something I want to invest in. But sometimes we don't know. Companies are so big, they have... That wouldn't be dirty money, I wouldn't think. I don't think it would either. Think about all the magazines you have to order. Well, not only magazines, but they sell a lot of things, you know. Think about the man that gave his free service to the palace, and he left to see what they, you know, came back and see what they did with it. And the one who tries the most is the one that has an investment in it. Yeah. Investment is not seen in the Bible as a wicked thing. But using money that you've gained from something you know is contrary to the nature and instruction of God, he would see as as defective as a lamb that had a broken leg. That's what God's trying to say. Give me what is best and good and right. Because you honor me, you would give me things that you would be proud of and that I would be proud of, and don't give me anything that is contrary to the very nature that I have, righteous, holy, and godly. God wants us to be able to give to him the things that he values. And not those things that are contrary to his nature and character and teaching. Let's pray. So, Father, we're trying in our world to be able to make sure that we honor you. That the things we give you are things that you value. Because we know that you're holy and you're pure and you're righteous. So help us only to give to you the things that are best. In the name of Christ we ask this. Amen.