God's Provision and the Principle of Reward for Work

Last week we used chapter 25, verse 4 to talk about how the Old Testament law helps us to understand the nature of God and what He is like, and the instructions God gives us tells us something about His nature and character. And I wanted to use the same verse again in a little different way. And there was a principle involved in this passage, so I'm going to read verse 4, chapter 25. Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. Now does anyone remember what the principle was behind this verse? Pardon? Pardon? Okay. Right. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Anybody else? Now, the principle behind this has to do with more than feeding the animal. What is the fundamental principle behind all these things? Sharing? Leaving something for others. Now that's particularly whenever He talks about harvesting your grapes and your grain. If you leave a sack of grain in the field, then it belongs to the alien, the widows, and the orphans, because that's what God has given them. And this comes from the covenant that was found by Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, where he made a promise to Abraham. The Lord said to Abraham, leave your country and your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I will curse whoever curses you. I will curse. And all the people on the earth will be blessed through you. He promised provision for them. So all the people of Israel in this covenant relationship with God were promised provision. And that's the way He did it. You leave grain in the field. You leave olives on the tree. You leave grapes on the vine. And anybody then can come in, whether they own any ground or not, or have anything, and they can pick them. Now here's a sort of similar relationship to that. Here's an animal. And the animal is treading the grain. He is saying, do not muzzle the ox, which keeps the animal from eating. Do not muzzle the ox so it can't eat when it tramples out the grain. The principle. Anybody have another idea about the principle? When you work, you deserve pay from your work. That's for the animal. Treads the grain. Mashes it out. Produces the grain. And it deserves a result from that. Now, whenever you identify the principle, it has nothing to do with the animals. It has to do with the principle that God wants us to do in the world. And this is very important for us because if this is a principle by which God operates, He then rewards those who work. It's a good principle. I reward those who work. For when you work, you deserve a reward for that. My provision will be given to you. Even though the Bible says God provides for us, you can't go out on a hill and sit there and say, God, I need food, and Him just rain it down for you. He will normally give you that by means of a job or something you can do. And as a result of that, then He provides for you. So God's principle is you work and I will make provision for you. So when it comes to the animal, you work and provision will be made for the animal. Now, when Paul uses a passage in 1 Corinthians, I want to read 1 Corinthians chapter 9, Paul helps us to see that the basic principle of this passage in Deuteronomy chapter 25 is a principle that carries all the way through the Bible and all the way through God's relationship with us. Here he's talking about himself. People had complained about Paul. They said, Paul is just in this apostle business for the money. That's all he's doing. He wants to get money. He says, now, as a person who's doing the work of God, I deserve to be able to be treated like an apostle, and all the other apostles receive money for what they do. In my defense to those who sit in judgment of me, don't we have the right to food and drink? Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us as other apostles do and the Lord's brothers and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? Paul didn't work in the church for pay from the church. And then he brings this principle to bear. Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? So you wouldn't go out and say to a soldier, sign up to go fight for the United States. You have to buy your own gun, your own tanks, and your own food, and your own clothes. You go out and sign up to be a soldier, they buy all those things for you and pay you a salary. No soldier pays his own way. Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its grapes? The working and the getting the benefit from it, like the ox and the grain. Who tends a flock and does not drink the milk? If you have a flock of goats or cows, you milk the milk and you drink the milk. Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Is this something that I've thought up? Doesn't the law say the same thing? Now he's talking about the teachings of Moses here. Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. See, he quotes that principle. Is it about an oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this is written for us because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. If we have sown spiritual seed among us, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more? Now the principle Paul is using here is if someone is doing the work of God and the church work is being done, they deserve to be paid for the work that they do. Now in 1st Timothy, Paul uses this same passage to talk about the same issue. Here he's talking to Timothy, he's a young man who's a young preacher, and he's talking about this very same issue using the same passage, 1st Timothy chapter 5, and I'm going to begin reading with verse 17. The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of a double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. As Scripture says, do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain. The worker deserves his wage. Now you see he's identified how to interpret the Old Testament for us. This story in the Old Testament is not about animals and their feeding. It's the principle that God uses to deal with the world. God looks down on His people and says, here is the way I operate. If you will do the things I want you to do, I will make sure that you benefit from that financially and materially. So if you're working as a missionary for me or working in a church for me, or doing some work that requires all your attention so you don't have an opportunity to have another job, then you should benefit by the same principle that the oxen benefited when it was threshing out the grain. So God's principle then is, I want you to benefit from the work that you do in the kingdom of God. It's the principle that allows us to say there are pastors or church workers or missionaries who spend their whole time doing the work of God and then are paid as a result of this effort that they give out. Now here again, we're talking about God and the way He works in the world. I call you to be a servant of mine, and when you do the work of the church, and the church grows and the church is building and the church is doing things, then I will make provision for you. Now I think it's been kind of a difficult thing in our culture the last probably 20 years. This has changed a lot. But when I was growing up, and the country was a lot poorer then, and a lot of people had gone through the Depression, and when I told my dad I was called to be a preacher, he said, I'll never make a living doing that because Brother Miley, he preached all his life, and they just fed him, they'd bring him chickens and eggs, and that's all he ever got. So you need to get you a vocation so you can earn some money while you do the work of the kingdom of God or the Lord. And so he wanted me to learn to be a butcher. He was a butcher. So I could have something to fall back on. You know, he always thought that I would be broke because in those days, if you had a calling to serve, this was true of teachers, it was true of doctors, it was true of lawyers, it was true of preachers. They expected you to be more interested in serving than in making money. And so pastors oftentimes would serve and make hardly anything because the church didn't pay, because they thought that they should be serving for God, and they refused to see it as a vocation that required pay. That's changed a lot, really a lot. When I was starting out in ministry, you never went to a church when you were getting called, and you said, how much do you pay? Because you knew that if you asked that question, they'd say, gosh, you're just in it for the money. When we've interviewed staff people the last 15 years, that's one of the early questions they ask, what's the pay package? It's just different. People see it different. There's an excess one both ways on this. You know, you can look at it and say, okay, this person works in a job, and they shouldn't be in it for the money, so let's not give them any. You can look at it the other way and say, okay, this person just seems to be more interested in the salary than the service. There's always that danger. But in the middle of all this, God's principle is, you work, and I will promise to provide for you. Now, for a pastor, it's no different than anybody else in the world. God makes a promise to provide for us. If you've made a covenant relationship with God, if you've said to him, I give you my life, one of the things he promises you, I'll guide you in all your decisions, I'll provide your needs, I will protect you from the things that will destroy you, and I will give your life meaning and value. So part of God's promise is to provide. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything you need will be provided. And I think whether you're a pastor or you're working at any other kind of job and a follower of Christ, that's a promise he makes to you, that he will take care of you. Because it's a fundamental promise that God makes, even to the animals in the world, and it's to those people who are not able to care for themselves. He calls the aliens, the widows, and the orphans. God promises that. And to those who are in his kingdom, this is what he promises us. Now, here's a very important ingredient. God does not promise, when the ox is eating, that he'll have anything except what he needs. He doesn't promise to see more than that either. I will promise I'll give you what you need. In managing this, this basic principle, God does not say to us, I will give you riches. He says, I will give you what you need. The concept that God uses is for us to learn to be satisfied with our provision. That's a great difficulty in our culture that places so much emphasis on more and more and more. But to learn to be satisfied with what we have is a critical part of receiving this promise from God. The animal who's working and creating the grain gets to eat what he needs to be full. What we're promised is we will have enough to get by and to live. Part of the difficulty of our culture is it places so much emphasis on having more and more and more until people get overwhelmed financially and are constantly stressed by finances until they're not able to enjoy their life. God gives us what we need. If we think we need more than we need, then we have to talk to God about that. Learning to live within the framework of what gives us is a critical discipline for believers. That's the one side of this. The other side of this, Paul's talking to the church when he's talking in Corinthians and when he's talking to Timothy. It is the church's responsibility to make sure that the people that work for them are paid so that they have a sufficient lifestyle and income to live on. Not that a person is starved to death or unable to be able to make the basic necessities of life. There was a church nearby here one time with their pastor. They hired him, brought him up, and they were paying him just absolute minimum income. He wasn't living an extravagant lifestyle, but he had a family. He was working at night from 9 to 7 in the morning as a janitor to supplement his salary just to be able to pay for the food and the necessities of life for himself. The church was not interested in helping him any more than that. They thought he should be able and willing to work for God for whatever he was paid. There's an obligation on the part of the employer that God is using to make sure that they do leave enough grain, do leave enough olives, and do leave enough grapes for someone to be cared for. So God's provision is to say, I will make sure that you have enough. What I ask of you is to work. So our side of it, we trust God for that. If we are employers, we have to make sure that we're doing what's necessary and what God tells us we should do. See, one thing that happens to us in our culture is we think that the laws of our country ought to be our final guide. I read, Nancy sent me an email from, I forgot that craft store name, Hobby Lobby. And the guy was talking about what he was going to do about some issue he was dealing with. But he was saying, I start all my employees out at 30% above minimum wage. I make sure that we don't keep our business open at night so they'll have time with their family. I close on Sunday so they can have time with their family and go to church. Here's a businessman, because of his spiritual convictions, that was making sure that his employees were paid more than the minimum wage, but not required to work late at night so they couldn't be with their family. Not required, even though this Sunday is a very big shopping day. And he was trusting that caring for his employees in this way would be, he would be rewarded by God. And this Chick-fil-A business, you know, that's a man that runs, they'd never open on Sunday. And I heard this week that every one of his franchises is, has more gross income for the size of the business than any other chain business. See, there's another side to this. God says to the owner of the field, you leave some grain at a cost to yourself and I will pay for you. Whenever you look and say, as an employer, whether you're hiring somebody to paint your house or you have a business, I want to pay the absolute minimum wage because that's all I have to do. Remember, we don't live based on the economy of our culture. God's economic instructions are what control us. And God promises the man in the field who leaves the bale of grain that you will have enough. You don't have to worry about being generous. I will take care of you. So generosity on the part of an employer is a critical part of God's method of financing. He says to the guy that has the grape vineyard or the olive field or the grain field, you leave some at your own expense and I'll still take care of you as well as the person you're allowing to eat the grain. God's economy requires faith. You see, too much in the economic area, we think it requires our skillful planning. But just like every other part of our life, God has a principle by which the economics of our life are developed. You be generous to leave the grain and I will bless you. You be generous with those who work for you and I will bless you. It is a part of my provision to make sure that the people that work for you are taken care of if they're my people. So God's basic principle in just one verse, one line, one sentence tells us so much about who God is, how he plans to operate the world, and the demand that he places on us to be faithful to him. Now, the next section in chapter 25 is a culture all completely different than anything that we have in our whole world. When you read it, it sounds really bizarre. But let me go back just a minute to talk about the Israelite people and what God was doing with them. He brought them into this land of promise and he said, I'm going to drive out the people who are here and all of this land will be yours. I will give every man a piece of ground, ground that he can farm and make a living for his family and himself. And that ground then is passed down to the oldest child and from that child to the oldest to the next family. And every generation will still have this land. You will never be without land to make a living or to provide for yourself. Now, in the biblical days, it was an agricultural economy. You didn't have a grocery store to go to. Every family raised their own food. And they raised it on the ground that was given to them by God. Passing down the ground from one family to another was a very critical issue in the economics that God had. His provision was, I will give you, we would say, I'll give you a job. And you'll always have that job. And the job will provide enough for you to feed your family and to live. And his means by doing that was giving them the ground. And when they worked the ground and planted the seed and harvested the seed, then they had the provision that God wanted them to have. But sometimes things didn't work exactly as they ought to. Verse 5. If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she will bear shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. The oldest son would always receive the inheritance of the ground. So here's a situation, and the key is in this first section, if the brothers are living together. It means by that your father has a piece of ground. Say it's 60 acres. When you marry and you move, build a house on the back of your dad's house, which is the way they did it, your brother marries, builds another room on the back of the house, and so you're both living in the house working for your dad, and then he dies. You all have the 60 acres together. The oldest brother gets that land because he's the oldest one. He gets 60% of it. You get the younger one would get 40%. So each one of you has some of that ground. But they don't choose to divide it. They're still living in the family complex. And then the brother dies with no son. The law would say that if the wife married someone from another tribe, then the land would go to the child born from that other marriage, and the original family plot would be now divided and taken away from that family. So the law given by God, the instructions by God, is I have made a promise to take care of my people. This woman, if she marries and has a son, the land's going to be divided. This woman, if she doesn't marry, then all of the land when she dies will go to the other brother. And her daughters, if there are other daughters, will never have any inheritance. So God makes a provision for this. It's called the Leverite marriage. It comes from the Latin word leverite. And it's called the marriage of a brother to his sister-in-law. So here's the law. To be able to provide for you, I want to make sure that there's provision for the woman who loses her husband and has no way to make a provision for herself. So the law says the husband, her husband's brother, is then to marry her. And if out of that union a son is born, it would be like my son's name, I'm Doyle, and my son would say I'm going to take Doyle's share of the farm as my own. He then has a provision for himself. The land stays within the family and the tribe, and the provision then is secured. So if you have someone who fails to keep this provision that I've made, here's God's promise, this land will always be in your family, passed down from one generation to the other. Now it's broken because there's no male heir. God's provision is the brother is to take his brother's wife, and they are to have, if they have a child, marry her, so that the land stays within the family because he's now the wife of his brother's wife. He's the husband of his brother's wife. So the land then is secured for the family. If a child is born, then the child will still maintain that piece of property all the rest of his life, so that the guarantee of provision is secured generation after generation. Now if this person fails to fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her, the first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out. Verse 7 However, if a man does not want to marry his brother's wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, My husband's brother refuses to carry on his brother's name in Israel. See, that's the issue. Carry on the name of his brother, his brother's inheritance. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me. Then the elders of the town shall summons him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, I do not want to marry her, his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line. The man's line shall be known as the family of the unsandled, so that the name of the man's whole family line will be changed because he's refused to do what is required of a brother. Now why would he do that? Well, if he marries her and produces a son, the son gets a portion of the estate, and he loses a portion of it. If it's the first child of his brother who is older than he was, then he'd get the 60%. If it's the younger brother, then he would get 40%. So it would be out of greed that a man would say, I'm not going to marry you, knowing that when the widow died, he would be able to have all of the ground for himself. So here he's dealing with the issue of greed. How do you manage greed in the face of the promise of God to take care of you? If the man fulfilled his duty and took her to be a wife, then he would be guaranteeing himself the loss of potential land. An act of faith required him to be more concerned about his brother's wife than about his own financial wealth. God makes a promise. The promise is that everyone will have this provision. And when you stand in the way of that provision, then you distort what God is trying to do. This man will carry, because of his greed, the insult of all the community of Israel. Here is a man who would not take care of his duty under God to his family. Now, in this story, we don't have this kind of culture. We don't each one have been given a piece of ground. What is the principle God is trying to present to us? See, that's what you're looking at in all these Old Testament passages. First, what does it show us about God? Any thoughts in your mind? He's got a plan for us, and if we adhere to His plan, His way, we can be blessed the way He intended. That's a good principle. God's plan takes care of contingencies. He has a plan. And if we follow His plan, we will find the plan works for us. Now, the man who's having to give up part of his ground, does it look like to him he's going to end up on the good side or the bad side of this thing? Yeah. So, following God's plan almost always requires the risk that sometimes looks as if you're losing. That's why the life of following God requires faith. In all of God's plans, almost every one of the laws He gives us, the instructions He gives us, requires risk. And if you're living as God wants you to live, you will find the people around you that will sometimes say about your own financial matters, you're sort of foolish by what you do. You have to say to yourself, in the eyes of the world, that looks foolish. But what I'm counting on is that God keeps His promise. I will take care of you. So, the idea of what God is trying to get across is, my provision is always adequate. But at a time, it will look to you as if it isn't. Can you think of ways in which God asks us to do things that sometimes look financially dangerous? Tithing. Was that hard for you? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was at first because it looks foolish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why does God make this promise to these people? All the land is His. He gave it to these families and He has the right to tell them how they manage it. See, that's a fundamental principle. If you don't believe God has the right to tell you how to manage your money, then you're going to resent that. And you're going to say, I think I can make this work better myself. But if you think that God is going to ask you to do something that jeopardizes your financial future, you will resent that idea. But what God is trusting is that we believe His promise. The promise of His overwhelming commitment to take care of His children. And what He asks us to do is to do things that are risky in common economic sense and common sense sometimes because He wants us to understand that trusting Him is a secret to a life that He wants to give us. That's the secret. Now, God gives people choices in the financial world. And this one is true too. That's one of the principles here. God says to somebody, this is the principle you should have. But if you choose not to do it, you can say no to this. But I want you to understand that you will bear the mark of a disobedient person. And so the brother and his family will always be called the family of the unsandled. Kind of a rough name to give to somebody. But what it said to all the world was, here is a man too greedy to do what God told him was the right thing. We can even think of a different name for that. The family of the unbelieving, maybe. The family of the disobedient. What comes from that? It comes from the mark of seeing that God has not, that the person has not received the blessings of God because of their lack to trust God for what He says is really right. What God is doing throughout the scriptures is giving us a part of His nature. What is His nature? I take care of my people. Now, in this regulation, He is showing us that He has not only taken care to make sure the father's inheritance is passed down. But He has also taken an opportunity to make sure that the person who refuses to do it is also dealt with. There is another important principle by God. When you start living your life for God, He has already thought of everything that can come up. He has already thought of all that. We haven't always thought of it. But in the end, whenever the situations come up for us and we say, Oh, my goodness, I never thought this might have happened. And we get panicky about obedience to God. We have to remember this story. God has worked everything out so He is ready for these things. Life does not surprise God. And in every situation in which we find ourselves, God has somewhere in the scriptures a way by which we are to face and deal with that issue. All of these Old Testament regulations give us an insight into the meticulous care that God has in planning how we ought to live. So many things are taken care of. What happens if I get started in a family that doesn't work out the way I thought it would? My husband dies. God has a plan for that. What happens if I start out and my family around me abandon me? God has a plan for that. Everything we face, God knows how to deal with it. What we're looking for is to say, Okay, God, what do you want me to do? That's all we have to ask. What do you want me to do? And then do what He tells you, one step at a time. And you'll find out that God's plan unfolds exactly as He planned to take care of His children. That's the key. This is given to those who trust God. It doesn't happen for everybody in the world. That's why there are so many people in trouble. They don't know how to get out of it. God has a plan. But you have to sign up to listen to His plan. To say, I place my life in your hands. I place my job in your hands. I place my home in your hands. All of this. And I'll live as you tell me I should live because you told me you're the kind of God who takes care of His people. And I'm going to trust you for that. Would you bow your heads, please? I'd like for you to think of the time...