Morning Light – Deuteronomy 15

[Deuteronomy 15] God Hates Poverty! In this chapter, the people are reminded to care for the poor. This is more than giving your cast-offs and a few dollars to the local thrift store. God hates poverty, and He looks to us as His covenant partners to be a part of the solution and not part of the problem. When we give to the poor, we enter into a contractual obligation of blessing from God. God will bless you when you act on behalf of those who are struggling and suffering in life. When we neglect the poor, we will ourselves suffer unnecessarily. Poverty is everywhere around us, but in this chapter, God paints a picture of a society where poverty is non-existent.

[Deu 15:1-23 KJV] 1 At the end of [every] seven years thou shalt make a release. 2 And this [is] the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth [ought] unto his neighbour shall release [it]; he shall not exact [it] of his neighbour, or of his brother; because it is called the LORD’S release. 3 Of a foreigner thou mayest exact [it again]: but [that] which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release; 4 Save when there shall be no poor among you; for the LORD shall greatly bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee [for] an inheritance to possess it: 5 Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day. 6 For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee: and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee. 7 If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: 8 But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, [in that] which he wanteth. 9 Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee. 10 Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. 11 For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land. 12 [And] if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. 13 And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: 14 Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: [of that] wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. 15 And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day. 16 And it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee; 17 Then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust [it] through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever. And also unto thy maidservant thou shalt do likewise. 18 It shall not seem hard unto thee, when thou sendest him away free from thee; for he hath been worth a double hired servant [to thee], in serving thee six years: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest. 19 All the firstling males that come of thy herd and of thy flock thou shalt sanctify unto the LORD thy God: thou shalt do no work with the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep. 20 Thou shalt eat [it] before the LORD thy God year by year in the place which the LORD shall choose, thou and thy household. 21 And if there be [any] blemish therein, [as if it be] lame, or blind, [or have] any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto the LORD thy God. 22 Thou shalt eat it within thy gates: the unclean and the clean [person shall eat it] alike, as the roebuck, and as the hart. 23 Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof; thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water.

Verse 4 of our chapter promises that there will be no poor among us. Some believe that it is vulgar to think that God involves Himself in everyday matters such as finances or supply. The maxim “God expects you to take care of the small stuff” or “God helps those who help themselves” is very common in the church’s thinking. If that were true, then there would be no salvation and no redemption. We cannot truly help ourselves. In every area of life, we need a savior, Jesus the Righteous, who withholds no good thing from us through faith believing.

[Rom 8:32 KJV] 32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

The scriptures give the promise of provision and intervention even into the mundane affairs of our lives. The logic of Rom. 8:32 is if God gave us Jesus, why would He withhold any lesser resource to meet any lesser need? This verse implies that the need from God’s perspective is already met when it reads, “how shall He not WITH HIM also freely give us all things?”

Where does the thinking come from that God does not provide, does not heal, does not intervene in our daily lives in regard to creature comforts and temporal needs? In the early centuries of the church, men like Clement of Rome and Augustine went to great lengths the reconcile Christian thought and Greek philosophy to quell the view that Christians were ignorant and uneducated. They hoped to appeal to Rome for relief from persecution, but there was an unintended consequence. The Greek philosophers were agnostics. They could not prove God and, therefore, at best acceded that there might be a God, but if there was, He was too lofty a being to be at all interested in the least in the sufferings of man. That thinking has permeated the church. Rather than think that our unbelief results in unanswered prayer, we tend to conveniently conclude that our faith isn’t deficient; God just isn’t interested in meeting our temporal needs. The response then of leaders is to encourage followers to endure suffering in life because if they were truly good Christians, they should put their hopes only in heaven and “understanding it better by and by…”

In this chapter, God establishes a unique feature of the theocratic economy of Israel. All debts were to be liquidated every seven years. There is no record that Israel EVER obeyed this mandate. Seven is a number associated with rest, completion, and perfection. God hates debt. He hates it so much He sent His son Jesus to pay the sin debt we owe in the court of Heaven. Notice the plan of God – it was expected by God if the people obeyed that there would be times that there would “be no poor among you…” God places no premium upon poverty. There is nothing we know of God that reflects poverty. He lives in a city with gold streets, with gates of pearl and foundations of every precious stone. Everything we know of God speaks of wealth and unlimited resources. If God is limitless, He wants us to be unlimited because when He gave Jesus to us, He gave us free access to every lesser gift by the occasion of your faith. It is true that Jesus said in Mark 14:7 that the poor are always with us – but that is not the same as saying that God wants us to be poor. God’s heart is to eliminate poverty, and forgiveness of debt is part of that plan.

There will always be those that are less fortunate than you are. Notice that the mandate is to open your hand to the poor, not to the organizations that serve the poor. These ministries have their place, but it is a fact that of every dollar given to assistance organizations, only a fractional percentage reaches the intended need. We cannot assuage our conscience by saying, “I gave at the office…” when we see people around us in need and ignore their problems. Notice also there is no requirement to only give to the deserving poor. We often refrain from giving because “it’s God’s money – I don’t want it misspent…” Does God withhold salvation from us even when He knows many of us will spend our salvation unwisely?

Notice also that when the poor cry out, God hears. When the poor cry out, God holds US responsible, not the government. We complain and adopt political viewpoints that condemn food stamps and entitlement programs and claim that God is on our side, and we are the party of God and country. For myself, my conservative values were severely challenged in my home state when they adopted policies that crushed the lives of the poor and ground their faces with suffering, all in the name of fiscal responsibility and conservative values.

Consider the following verses:

[Psa 112:9 KJV] 9 He hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor; his righteousness endureth for ever; his horn shall be exalted with honour.

[Pro 19:17 KJV] 17 He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.

[Pro 22:9, 16 KJV] 9 He that hath a bountiful eye shall be blessed; for he giveth of his bread to the poor. … 16 He that oppresseth the poor to increase his [riches, and] he that giveth to the rich, [shall] surely [come] to want.

Giving should always begin with the poor. To tithe to the church and ignore the poor negates your blessing. Giving to the poor according to Pro. 19:17 is entering into a business contract with God Himself – you will be bountifully repaid. When the Pharisees asked John when the kingdom would come, he asked, “do you have two coats? Give to him that has none…” In other words, the righteousness, joy, and peace of the kingdom are poured out upon you when you identify and liquidate your surplus on behalf of the poor. If the church understood this, it would give to the poor every time an offering was passed. Remember, the difference between goat and sheep nations were identified in “as much as you have done it unto the least of these you have done it unto me…”

There are many instances when others come into positions where they owe us or are obligated to us. Our chapter stresses that we cannot oppress those who owe us contractually, morally, or spiritually. We don’t have indentured servitude in our culture, but what about marriage covenants or how we deal with our children? Many families are bound and miserable because of a dictatorial person who oppresses and controls, and manipulates those in the house till there is no joy and no happiness to be found. Many times, family members conduct themselves like little Hitlers in their home life, all the while taunting the family or the spouse with a scriptural pretext supposing that God requires them to put up with the abuse. Nothing can be further from the truth. God requires compassion and mercy to be shown in our dealings with our fellow man beginning with those closest to us and extending out into every relationship or connection we have. It is an unfortunate truth I learned in the business world that it is commonly known that Christians can be some of the most difficult, obnoxious, and difficult people to deal with.

In these injunctions to give to the poor and care for the poor, there is a reminder that giving to God is also important and not to be neglected in preference to meeting the needs of those in poverty. There are many offerings prescribed by the law, including the law of first things. Israel’s response to this was mixed. Usually, what they would do was to bring defective or deformed calves and offer that or any animal they would find dead they would bring that and offer that to God. The nation suffered because of it. In our culture, spiritual values are being trampled and spit upon all in the name of personal liberty. The truth is that in our lifetime, we have now come to see suppression of Christian freedoms that our grandparents would have never thought would come to pass. Psalm 9:17 says that the nation that forgets God will be turned into hell. As Western nations’ policies have become aggressively more secular, the problems our nations face have become more and more difficult, and the downward spiral more steep. Christian values have now fallen into a “remnant” mentality whereby we must demonstrate to a disinterested, secular society what putting God first looks like.