God's Concern for the Poor and Fairness

Are you? Well, turn your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 23. Things sure did go smooth for a while. Deuteronomy chapter 23, I'm going to begin reading at verse 19. The Bible gives us characteristics about God, showing the activities that He gives us, His activities and behavior, and all the things that He gives, instructions that He gives to His people are representations of His own nature and character. So, what we learn from God's instruction to His people is His values, the things He sees that are important and a part of His nature. So, whenever we read these laws or instructions that He gives to the people of Israel, He's really telling us about His values. So, when the Holy Spirit comes into your life, you surrender your life to the control of God, and He begins to work in your life, these qualities should become more pressing to you. Because if God is controlling your thoughts and your attitudes and your direction, you will become aware of Him stressing these issues in your life. These series of laws that He gives are instructions about how the people are to live once they get into the land of promise. They've never been there yet. They're not settled in their land yet, but Moses is giving His final instructions. This is the way I want you to live. This is what I want you to do. Do not charge your brother interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but not your brother Israelite, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you're entering to possess. The instructions that He gives sounds like it's a financial instruction, but it really isn't. It's not really a concern about finances. For example, in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus, when Moses was being instructed as to what was to take place when they got in the land of promise, he deals with the same issue with a little bit more detail to give us an idea of exactly what the issue really is with him. Here he says in chapter 25 of the book of Leviticus, beginning with verse 35, If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. So here he issues, in this passage, he lets us know that the instructions about interest are designed for people who find themselves in poverty. A person becomes poor, unable to support himself. These are the issues that he's focused with. Now, when the land of promise is given to them, every family receives a plot of land. That plot of land is their security. They can grow whatever they need. We have a hard time seeing culture the way they were living because we have such an urban culture. But in the Bible times, especially the Old Testament, people lived off of what they earned or what they grew. When you planted something, you harvested it, it was yours. That's how you made your life. And if a person didn't have the seed to plant, then they couldn't ever harvest anything. So the issue of poverty was very powerful. So if a person had a series of bad crops and wanted to plant something and had no seed money, he would be destitute and unable even to make a living. So they might go to someone and say, I need to start to plant a crop and I've had some hard luck, had bad times. I want to borrow some money so I can buy seeds to plant the crop. If someone said, yeah, I'll loan you money, and the interest rates in those days were like 15% was not uncommon, 15% interest. Well, you would have the 15% that would run from the time of the seeds being, giving you money for the seeds until the harvest time came. And there would be not 15% a year. Oftentimes it was that much for a month or so. So the exorbitant interest would be very destructive. So what God said to His people was, all of you are brothers. You're all Israelites. You all belong in the family of God. You must see yourself in a different way than the rest of the world sees you. So what God is designing His instructions for, to say the people who live under God's control will be radically different than the people outside of that. And that's what He's talking about. So whenever a fellow Israelite comes to you in need, you're not to treat that person the same way other people would treat people in need. Verse 36, Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God so that your countrymen may continue to live among you. You're not to charge any interest. Instead of looking out for gaining additional money, you should have respect for God. The word fear here can be fear in terms of afraid something might happen to you. It could also be a sense of respect and sense those are tied together. So when you do have respect for someone, you're afraid that they will disapprove of you. So have respect and fear for God in the way you treat your brothers. We learned something else about God. He's always concerned about our relationships with each other, how we're dealing with each other. He is concerned that we have respect for what He wants. Verse 37, You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. So he's trying to plant a crop. He doesn't have enough to do that. Until the crop comes in, he has to buy food. So in scarce times, what happens to the price of food? It goes up. A poor person then is unable to even provide enough for his family. So as a brother, he's not talking about physical genetics. He's talking about being a part of the family of God. You have obligations for one another. That's why we have in our church a family ministry fund set up so that if any of us get in situations where we have need, there is a way by which we assist one another in times of need and trial. So what God is doing is showing us His concern for the poor. Throughout the Scriptures, God is concerned about people who are unable to help themselves. Now, the definition of poor in the Scriptures is often different than ours. Oftentimes we think of people who are poor as people who don't have a lot of money. And sometimes they're poor because they spend a lot of money. Sometimes they're poor because they bought a lot of things and they can't afford and they run out of money. But in the Bible's picture, poor people are not poor because they have cable TV and a smart phone and a big 90-inch TV. They're poor because they have no food. They have land, but the crops didn't grow or something happened to them and they're unable to feed themselves and their families. And He's talking about people who are poor and their poverty is outside of their control. So when you read in the Bible about poverty and poor people and God's concern for them, He's talking about people who are helplessly poor. It's not that if they managed better, they could make it. It's the issue that the circumstances, there's no safety nets by government or the community. And once you're a part of the family of God, we are the safety net for each other. That's what He's talking about. So when you find people in this situation, in Leviticus He makes it a little bit more clear the circumstances He's addressing in the book of Deuteronomy. Do not charge your brother interest. Now some of you may have in your Bibles the word usury, where it says interest here. I think King James has that word. Usury was the word for interest back in say 1500 in English, 1600s. And now it has become thought of as exorbitant interest. In fact, some translations have exorbitant interest. But He's really not talking about not charging exorbitant interest. He's not talking about not charging any at all. So if someone comes to you and needs money because of their poverty, you give him what he needs if you have it, and that person then will be able to raise a crop and have food for his family, and he can pay you back. There was not any restrictions about receiving something as collateral, but it was forbidden that he would charge someone interest on the money that he loaned him on food that the person would need to purchase to be able to make it until harvest time. Now verse 20 changes the whole picture of this. You'll see that in verse 20, he's balancing out the picture of commerce. You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a brother Israelite. And he's talking here about commercial transactions now. If someone as a trader comes to your country, trading in merchandise or something rather, and he wants to borrow money so he can buy grain to take back to wherever he lives and sell it there, and it's a business deal, you were allowed to charge interest for that because it wasn't a matter of poverty, it was a matter of business deals. So the issue was not interest, whether it's right to charge it or not. It was a condition of the person with whom you are dealing to loan money to. If you're loaning money to someone who's impoverished and unable to feed themselves or carry on their lifestyle and their family, and they're an Israelite, then you have an obligation not to burden them more with their difficulties. If they're a commercial person who's buying and selling products, then you make a business deal with them. And you can charge interest under those circumstances. The brother as opposed to the foreigner. There's a different kind of responsibility for each of those. You may charge the foreigner interest but not your brother Israelite so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you're entering to possess. Now, what God does is He tacks on to this the idea that taking care of your brother who's in need is a precursor to God's blessings to you. If you are greedy and you hold on to the money and charge your brother who's in difficult circumstances, you take advantage of his poverty to enrich yourself, then God sees this as a violation of this relationship that you should have with the people in Israel. You profit at another person's disaster and loss. You know, sometimes in the Bible we don't find specific answers to issues that we have in our own culture. But this one is a principle I think that's important. What God says is that no one should, as a follower of Christ, no one should profit at the expense of other people around you. This is the reason that traditionally gambling has been seen as something that Christians should not participate in. Because if there's 20 million people that paid $10 a piece for their lottery tickets and one person wins all this money, they win it at the expense of everyone else who loses. That's different than selling products where I make a product, I sell it to you, you get my product and you're real proud of it, and I get the money and I'm real proud of that. Both of us are winners. But in the gambling industry, there is a winner and a whole bunch of losers who's paid for the winner. And this is the principle he has here. You should not advance yourself financially at the expense of other people. But in a business deal where you're loaning money, like a trader comes through and he says, I want to buy some grain, I want to take it back to my own hometown and sell it. I'll pay you 10% interest on this if you'll loan me money. He gets the money, he buys the grain, he takes it and sells it, everyone profits. There's not one loser and one winner. So what the Bible's concerned about is fairness to everyone. That you make sure that working, you do a full day's work for what you get and you enrich yourself at the expense of your boss. All of these principles are based on equality with everyone around you. God is concerned with treating people fairly. And he is especially concerned with caring for people who are in desperate need and haven't necessarily caused it themselves beyond their ability to control. So we learn something about how we should treat people in need. We learn something about business arrangements. In fact, this issue of interest, all Christian communities and churches up to the 1500s preached against anyone loaning money to another person for interest. It was universal. What happened in the 16th century, 1500s, John Calvin in talking about the Ten Commandments on thou shalt not steal, he was using this idea that's here of stealing. I'm taking advantage of you because you're poor. And he was commenting on the Eighth Commandment, you're not to steal. And he said then that God was not opposed in his thinking to a person earning interest. What he was opposed to was taking something at the expense of another person. And from that time on, the Protestants then began to see investing and drawing interest in the business arena as an acceptable adventure. So we owe a lot to understanding this principle. Much of our commerce is built on that because you want to buy a house, you need to buy it, you need to borrow money. If you want to go into business, you need to borrow money. So this understanding of the Scripture has opened up capitalism in a tremendous way all around the Western world. Verse 21, If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it, for the Lord your God will certainly demand it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. But if you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty. Whatever your lips utter, you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the Lord your God with your own mouth. Now, here God is talking about another issue that's important to him. If you make a promise to me, a vow, and you say to God, I promise you I'm going to pray for somebody. That's a vow we oftentimes make. Somebody says, would you pray for me? Yeah, I'll pray for you. If you make a promise to me, God, I expect you to do it. And I expect you to do it immediately, as quickly as possible. Do not postpone it. Now, what God is telling us about what he expects from us is, I am the Lord, I am in charge, and when you make a promise to me because I am in charge, I expect you to do what you tell me you're going to do. Two things he teaches. One is, as a follower of God, I expect your word to be kept. Honesty and integrity he demands of his people. When you tell me you're going to do something, I expect it to be done. Respect for God and his authority is a key ingredient in our relationship with him. If you believe that God is holy and righteous and in charge of everything, you must treat him with the respect that is due him. So if you make a promise to him, and we're far more likely to keep our promises to each other than we are to God. And the reason we do that is because if I promise you something, I may see you tomorrow and you'll say, Hey, did you get that done? But if I promise God something, I don't physically see him. So it's easier to push that aside and then remember, after you've gotten off your knees and confessed your sin and asked him to forgive you and told him you're never going to do that again or as long as you live, you know when you quit that promise that God is not going to be following along with you and whack you once when you do it, he's not visible to you. God is demanding of his people that we have respect for his position and place as the ultimate ruler of the world. And that every promise we make him, we keep. Now we have to help each other. Sometimes we ask people to make promises that they don't fully understand. It's easy sometimes for us to talk to children and ask them to make promises to God, even a commitment of their life, that they're not really completely clear on what we're asking. And even adults, that's true. Sometimes people make decisions in church services or revivals or meetings in which they're really not clear exactly the dimensions of what they've made a promise to do. And sometimes they make promises without understanding that and they place themselves in violation of this. That's why when we talk to people, people come forward in our service, I try to sit down and talk to them about what this means and why we do it. We don't always act as quickly maybe as some people would like, but what we're trying to make sure is that you understand the dimensions of the promise that you're making. Why? Because the Bible is specifically clear. If you make a vow to the Lord, don't be slow to repay it or to keep it or to do it. For you'll be guilty then if you do of sin. If you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty. In other words, failure to make a promise to God does not make you guilty. But if you make a promise and you don't keep it, then you become guilty. And you're guilty if you don't make it. You're not guilty if you don't make it because it's your vow, something you generate from God. It's not that God said you must do this and you refused. You have set the standard yourself. Whatever your lips utter, you must be sure to do because you made your vow freely to the Lord your God with your own mouth. God takes seriously the promises we make. When you read through the Old Testament, sometimes He required people to do things that they promised when it was really very painful for them. He doesn't want us to stop making promises, but He wants us to make sure that the promises we make to Him are genuine and real and that as soon as we make them, we set out to make sure that they're kept. One of the things the church sometimes is not very careful about is like in a building campaign, passing around slips of paper and asking people to make a commitment of how much they're going to give. And some people don't understand how hard it is to give $10,000 to a building campaign. We've had them in the past, you know, when people would say, okay, I'm going to give $5,000. Well, I knew the people well enough to know they'd never had $5,000 in their whole life. And sometimes they didn't even give anything to the church, but they get carried away in the emotion of that experience. So I've tried to sit down sometimes with them and say, now, I'd rather you just say to God, I'm going to give you what I can and see how it works out. Because you make a promise to God. You sign your name to it. It doesn't make any difference to me or anybody else, but it does to God. Learn to be honest with God because that shows respect for Him. It shows reverence for Him. It also helps us to learn our own limits too, the dimensions of what we have. And self-control is a powerful part of what God does in the lives of His children. In verse 24, he deals with another issue. This is the issue of hospitality. In the New Testament, this is seen as a spiritual gift. The gift of hospitality. If you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor's grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put the sickle to his standing grain. If you are hungry and you go by someone's field, remember they didn't have McDonald's. You couldn't go in anywhere and just get something to eat on the road. But if you were traveling from one community to another, walking, sometimes it's a long way and you would be hungry. They didn't have sandwiches like we're able to fix. Sometimes the hot weather things would spoil. So if you're traveling and you come to a place where you're hungry and someone is passing your grain field and goes out and picks some grains of wheat, rubs it in their hand until they have grain and eat it, don't try to stop them because they're hungry people traveling and they need food. You remember that the grain doesn't belong to you. It belongs to me. I am the Lord. And I want to be generous with the people that are in need. And someone traveling through your area who has a need for food, I want you to share what I have given to you with them as I have been generous with you so you be generous with them. If they're going by your vineyard where there's grapes and they go over and they pick some grapes and they eat the grapes, don't be upset about that. If you have olives in an olive orchard and they're passing by your olive orchard and they see your olives are ripe and they go over and pick some of those and eat them, don't be upset about that. I have given you these things and I want you in turn to be generous to the people who are around you. But the Lord knew there are always selfish, greedy people. But when you pass by the vineyard where there are grapes and you say, those are wonderful grapes and I'd sure like to have some, don't take a basket and fill your basket up so you're not satisfying your hunger. You're harvesting the crop that belongs to someone else for yourself. You're not satisfying your hunger. You're harvesting. And when you take the grain and you take a sickle to the grain stalks and you bundle up a bundle of the grain and you take it with you, you're not satisfying your immediate hunger. You're harvesting someone else's crop. Something that God has given to you. Now another person comes along and they take that for their own. What's happened? The person coming along who harvests the crop for themselves is not trusting in God's provision. That's the first thing. The second thing is the person is taking what rightly belongs to another which means they're taking that person's livelihood for their own. So it's a lack of faith on their side and a lack of obedience to what God's telling them. God has promised His people, the people of Israel, when you go into the land of promise, if you will live the way I tell you, I will provide all of your needs. And even though you might think you need to have all of those grapes or you need to have more wheat than you normally would have, I want you to remember I'll make a provision for your meal right now and then I'll make provision for the next one when you need it. Trust Me. God's made a promise to the people of Israel, I will provide for you. That's one of His covenant promises. There are four of them. I'll guide you, provide for you, protect you, and give your life value and meaning. And one of the four promises of the covenant with Abraham and all the way through to us was provision. Trust Me. You don't have to steal. I'll take care of you. And whenever I'm taking care of someone who's passing through, don't be greedy about your grain and get mad if someone has a lunch out of the food that you have available because I will provide for you too. We don't have to worry about being greedy and we don't have to worry about stealing. All we have to do is to say I will live as God directs me and then He fulfills the promise He made to us. I will provide your needs. What God shows us in each of these is how He relates to the people He has with us. With us. He takes care of us. We don't have to gouge with interest if we have need. God has provision for that if we run into times of poverty ourselves. He shows us that when we become poor because of the circumstances that we're in, God has made provisions for us. That if we make our promises and live in obedience to that, He provides. And He gives us generously enough that we can share with others. What we see is a picture of God. A God who is a God of provision and care. A God who is a God who demands of His people respect and honor. And with that demand, He says, I will take care of you. I will take care of you and through you I'll take care of other people. I will always care for my people. Let's pray for a moment. Now, the provision He talks about here is different kinds of it. Sometimes it's food, material things. Sometimes it's spiritual things. I want you to think of maybe the most pressing need you have right now. What we see in this passage is that God is concerned about that need you have. If it's a genuine need, not simply a want or a desire, God is interested in satisfying that. He will either do it by His own provision and power, or He may do it through someone else. All He asks of you is you do exactly what He tells you and you keep the promises that you've made to Him. And when it's over, God will show in your life, to everyone around you, that He is a God that takes care of His children. And that is your witness to the world. And so, Father, give us faith and trust in You. Trust that allows us to live in the face of whatever comes up with perfect confidence that our Lord will provide. I ask, Father, that You teach each of us to trust You. To say to You, Lord, I place my whole life in Your hands to depend on You for every need that I have. In the name of Christ, Father, we make this vow of commitment to You. Amen. Amen.