Our passage this morning deals with the issue of poverty and aid, of giving and forgiving. The Law of Moses had some rather specific ways in which debt was handled and what was to be done, of how the poor were viewed, and how they could be helped. In this middle of Deuteronomy, Moses expands the Decalogue. While one may consider the issue of money and poverty under the guise of the Sixth Commandment, that is, aiding the poor is a means of protecting their life, or the Eighth Commandment: the positive statement of the prohibition against stealing is giving, as Ephesians 4 tells us, Moses, under the direction of our Lord, looks at the issue of debt and poverty through the 4th Commandment, the Sabbath. Giving flows from Resting - verses 1-3 The first verse lays the foundational command: every seven years debts must be cancelled. I would suspect each of your interest is peaked by this. You can imagine how wonderful it would be to be totally debt free every seven years. But we need to examine what this means. First, it flows from the 4th Commandment regarding the Sabbath rest. The one in seven principle flowing from Creation is reflected in one day in seven in which we are to rest: one year in seven and then a special year of Jubilee, after seven periods of seven years. As Deuteronomy is the restatement of the Law, we need to turn back to Exodus 23 where it is first mentioned. In verse 10 we are told that on the seventh year the crops are to lie fallow. Here we see the agricultural ramifications, but in Deuteronomy 15, it is the economic sphere that is important. But both of these passages use the same terminology. In Exodus 23, the ground is to be unused. It is to be given a rest. During that time, the poor will be able to glean from the land while it rests. This word for fallow or unplowed in Exodus 23 is semittah and the same word is used in our passage, but translated as cancelled. What does it mean to cancel debt? Scholars are divided as the text doesn't clarify what it means to cancel the debt. When it comes to the land we know that for that year, the farmer was to leave it sit and then the next year to return to the soil. When the term is used in our passage, some say that it means that the debt need not ever be paid back, that one can only borrow for seven years and that at the end of seven, what is not repaid is no longer owed. But just as the term refers to the land, I believe it is not so much of the setting aside of the account, but that for that year, there is no payment on the debt, no accrued interest. It would be like buying at American or Colders with no payments due, no interest till next year. In the seventh year, when the land was left fallow, many people would not have been in a position to repay a debt because of the temporary interruption of the normal source of income. Hence, to have insisted on the repayment of debt during the year of release could have resulted in a particular hardship for the debtor. There is a correlation then, between resting and giving. Once a week, on the Lord’s Day, we rest. We cease the hectic activity of getting, hoarding, producing, and recognize that life is more than what we hold in our hands. Life is far more than the balance in our checkbooks; it is far more than the size of our home or our 401K. When we rest that one day in seven, we say to ourselves, to our world, that life is more than getting, doing, working. That principle is transferred then to the sabbatical year. This law, which was given to Israel as a nation, is applicable to us, not as a law we need to re-institute in our nation, but that we see is fulfilled for us in Christ, so that its principles may still guide us today. Giving flows from obeying - verses 4-6 The call to rest the land, to cancel the debt (or at least one year’s payments) – is a call to obedience. What is important here is not so much what we get from the rest, but what we are then able to give to others by our resting, by our obedience to the command. The benefit of the sabbatical year is the abolition of poverty. That is a mighty strong claim, one which politicians and religious leaders have sought to accomplish through legislation and morality. Moses understands that if we are willing to forgo the collection of debt, if we would just obey God and give, poverty would be wiped from among us. But for this to happen, the condition of obedience must be meet. Where there is obedience, there is blessing, not only to those who receive, but to those who give. Where there is full compliance with Covenant requirements there would be prosperity in the land. When this was achieved, not only would Israel be blessed but, in line with the ancient patriarchal promises, they would be the means of blessing the whole world and having dominion over the nations. We need to take seriously that we can have an effect on poverty. We must not ignore the assumption this passage makes that we must not be so quick to blame the poor for their poverty, that our obedience in giving to those in need must never be forgotten. More than 40,000 children in our world under 5 years old die each day from malnutrition and related causes. That's one child every TWO seconds. 40% of the children of some countries die before reaching age five, mostly from contaminated water and nutrition related causes. But the problems in our own country can not be ignored. This is not just a global problem; it is a national problem, a local problem. 31 million Americans, 12 million of them children (10% of households) lived in households where it is uncertain there will be adequate food to meet basic needs. 7.8 million people (5.1 million adults and 2.7 million children) lived in households in which one or more members experienced hunger. 30% of households of single mothers with children were food insecure The latest U.S. Census poverty statistics report that despite this time of record prosperity, one in every six American children is poor – one in three children of color. No other developed country has anything approaching U.S. child poverty rates. During the 1990s, CEO pay increased 535% and is now 475 times that of the average worker. If the minimum wage had increased at the same rate in the last decade, it would now be over $24/hour. In 1989, there were 66 billionaires in the US and 31.5 million people in poverty. In 1999, there were 268 billionaires and 32.3 million people in poverty. In the last 8 years, 86% of the benefits of the stock market rise has gone to the top 10% of households, with 42% going to the richest 1%. 90% of the value of all stocks and mutual funds is now owned by the richest 10% of households. What is the answer? Is it for the federal government to set greater penalties for the rich and reallocate money? That is not what this passage says. The response is not to punish those that have. It is not a Marxist redistribution of wealth by government fiat. Nor is the answer collective suburban guilt over God’s blessing. Rather this passage calls us to obedience that flows not from duty, not from threat, but from a heart changed by God’s grace. At Cornerstone it is our desire to increase not only awareness of needs, but opportunities to meet needs. The work of the deacons here is not about maintenance of church property, but reaching out to those in our church and local community in the name of Christ to make a difference. On the first Sunday of every month the Deacon’s offering is a gift specifically for this kind of ministry. As next week is the Lord’s Supper, the time each month we have the Deacon’s Offering, the blue envelopes will be available. This month’s offering will go toward the Joy House, a division of the Milwaukee Rescue Mission. The Joy House is a Christian based shelter which offers a six week program in various life skills for single mothers, including Christian discipleship, literacy, parenting and job skills as well as time and financial management. Last week we heard from Pat Vanderburgh, the director of the Rescue Mission and you may be interested in personally giving your time to serve there. Our kids’ Sunday School classes collect money each week for six year old Ramiro Aguilar, a Bolivian child who, for $28 a month given through Compassion International enables him to receive a Christian education. This coming weekend a group from our church will travel to Atlanta for the Sharing Christ, Showing Mercy conference put on by our denomination. Paul Guebard, one of our deacons, and several of our ladies who are a part of W.I.C. will learn how to better implement mercy ministries in our congregation so that we can serve those in need more effectively. Giving flows from the Heart - verses 7-11 How then should we do this? Again, the passage says nothing about government demands, but rather it is done by a sinner’s heart, changed by grace. By way of example, Moses spells out how this is to work. If a poor person comes to you – don’t be hardhearted or tightfisted. The motivation for giving is hinted here – a reminder of the basis on which we are able to give. We give, because God first gave to us. The land which would produce the goods so that they could give was land given to them by God. For that reason, our attitudes should reflect grace. The relationship between the heart and hand is clear – a soft heart results in an open hand. Why must we be the givers? I suppose some will say, "We must be the givers, because we have so much. We have a responsibility to share because we have homes and cars and food and others do not," and there is truth in this; there is great truth in it - but there is not much grace in it. It makes our giving a matter of duty, of obligation, of command, and quite frankly this kind of giving is a pain in the neck. There is nothing here of the letter of the law, of duty done out of necessity. Rather the generosity laid out here flows from a genuine concern and love. This is not charity, in the sense of almsgiving, that is advocated here; it is a charitable attitude to be expressed by lending the poor man whatever he needs for himself, while he is pledged to repay the loan in due course.But this attitude may be tested at times. In Israel, if a poor person came the year before the sabbatical year arrived, in need of a loan, would you still give it? Whether the debt was cancelled outright or was set aside for that year, it would be tempting to tell the person to take a hike; you would distrust his motives, coming at the last hour. That would not be a loan, but a gift! But notice what is said: to do that is to show ill will, literally the phrase is "give him the evil eye," a synonym for a curse. It is to cast him aside and do nothing. In the real world of fallen humanity there will always be the poor (verse 11a), but there must also always be, among God’s people, a spirit of generosity to them (verse 11b). This phrase should sound familiar. In Matthew 26:6-13, a woman enters the house of Simon the Leper in the town of Bethany where Jesus and the disciples have gathered shortly before His betrayal and death. She breaks open an alabaster jar of perfume and pours it over his head. The disciples were indignant at the waste of this perfume, knowing the money could have been far better spent on the poor. Jesus’s response seems to nullify Deuteronomy 15 when He pronounces in verses 10-13:
Jesus’s words point us back to this passage and forward to what is about to take place. Deuteronomy 15 tells us that perfect obedience would end poverty, but since the presence of poverty in Deuteronomy 15:11 is a given, poverty serves as a constant reminder of our sin but also as an opportunity for grace. The key though is not in just dealing with the poverty, but going to the heart, having that changed. The reason Jesus accepted this gift is that the woman knows what the disciples did not: she recognized that Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection was central for a changed heart. Our calling is not just the end of poverty, not just the sense of duty, but our calling is to believe that our hearts are changed by God’s grace and with the work of Christ at the forefront of all we are and do. Then we can respond to those in need. The existence of poverty is not an excuse for doing nothing, but should convict us that we are not doing enough. Yet the answer is not just to do more, but first look to Christ and repent of not trusting Him more. Just as Jesus was anointed at the conclusion of His ministry, that He, as the Messiah, the Anointed One who would be the means by which our sins would be removed, so also His ministry began with that same reminder. His first public appearance was in His home town of Nazareth where He entered the synagogue one Sabbath and read from Isaiah 61:
That which the prophet Isaiah referred to was pictured in the Sabbath rest and the year of Jubilee. But it was fulfilled in the work of Christ. As Christ came to fulfill the Law, He did not come to abolish the Old Testament practices as antiquated rules of a by-gone era; rather in Christ they are understood in their truest light. The year of release is what you and I have today in the Gospel. This is now the year of the Lord’s favor. The Sabbath rest we enjoy each week is but a picture of what Christ has done. That which we give to the poor is but a pitiful reminder of all that Christ has given us. The key idea in Deuteronomy 15 as well as in Luke 4 is that of release, of freedom. That word, aphesis, freedom, is the common word throughout the New Testament for another kind of cancellation of debt, another freedom which we enjoy because of the gift of Christ’s death in our place. That word is forgiveness. You and I have been set free from the debt we could never repay. Having been bound by the chains of sin and guilt, wracked with a poverty beyond any means of getting out of, Jesus Christ paid our debt and set us free so that we could serve our Savior out of the riches of His infinite grace. It is out of that freedom from God’s judgment that we now can help those in material distress as well as speak to them of the good news of a poverty far worse than homelessness, far more devastating than hunger – a poverty of our sin. The answer to that greatest need is Christ’s work on the Cross for us. |
