The Economics of the Kingdom of God - Part 1

Well, I give you greetings this morning in Jesus' name. Elam and Zach both prayed about opening the Word, and I think that's a very important thing to keep in mind. What is our task when we get up here? It is to open God's Word, not our own word, not our own thoughts, but to try to understand what God is saying to us through His written Word and what it means for us and how we are to apply it to our lives.

In my last sermon the other week, a couple of weeks ago in the evening, I talked about the Word of God, and this morning that sermon was somewhat, in a sense, foundational for everything that I want to say or do or express in my teaching and so on because it just cannot simply be our thoughts or our ideas. We have to bring those to them and so on, but the thing that we need to focus on is what is it that God has said to us? What is His will for us? What has He taught us?

This morning I want to preach the first of perhaps three sermons on the economics of the Kingdom of God, and this was prompted by a conversation I had with Brother Cedric a little while ago, and he said, "You know, we haven't heard much about this. I'm not sure what I believe. I think we need some teaching on this." And I reminded myself it reminded me that, you know, for some of us older ones who thrashed through this thing years ago and so on and have it formed in our mind and so on, that we have perhaps taken it for granted that the younger generation has simply gotten this by osmosis or that they absorbed it through the air or the aura around us older men, and you know that's just not so.

It just isn't so, and that perhaps we have been somewhat negligent in communicating to the younger generation really what is the scriptural, biblical basis for the things that we have taught and what we have believed. I was not here when our brotherhood was started back in the mid-80s, but one of the things that I was struck about as I listened to Brother Lynn and John and Marvin and others talk was that the conclusions that they came to was based on a study of God's Word and a desire to implement what Jesus said and to take it seriously. I'm reminded also of what Dean Taylor says over and over again in his messages, "What if we took for what if we took seriously what Jesus said as though He really meant it?"

And I think that oftentimes when we look at situations like this we try to figure out how to get around what Jesus has said. How can we soften it? How can we lessen it? How can we make it less radical?

That's our tendency because what Jesus said and what the apostles taught, and even as I think we'll see here in the Old Testament, there are things that go against the flesh. There are things that go against what we really would rather do. There are things that go against the easy way, and one of the things that I think we will see in both the Old and the New Testament is that God calls us to do what is right and to do His will and to follow His Word and to follow Christ's example.

So, the economics of the Kingdom of God, and this morning I want to look, first of all, at a definition of economics, and then I want to look at the economics of the Old Testament covenant, the economics that God spelled out in the Mosaic Law and how that worked out in the experience of the children of Israel.

Okay, first of all, a definition. What is economics? Economics concerns itself with the production, the distribution, and the consumption of goods and services. That's a very short but to the point, covers all the bases. Economics concerns itself with the production, the distribution, and the consumption of goods and services, and there are various types of economic systems that exist in our world today, and all of them address themselves to how things are made, how they are distributed, and how they are consumed, all right?

And one type of economic system is a command economy. An example, probably the clearest example for us of that is communism, which is interesting because in its classic form it is less common today in our world except for the fact that there's this behemoth called China that is still communist, the Soviet Union which is no longer, the Eastern European countries are no longer communist and so on, but this was a system that originated back in the 19th century by a man by the name of Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels, and they decided that there was something wrong with capitalism, and the problem with capitalism was how things were distributed. It was a problem with distribution.

They noticed that there is a lack of equitable distribution, and so the way that they came up with this, it's much more detailed than this, and I have three seconds to tell you how the 30 seconds how this works, okay? But what they came up with was that somehow or another the distribution they believed the distribution had to be handled by what they called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat is just simply a fancy word for the working class, for people who are for the workers.

As they saw it, the economies were controlled by the capitalists or the owners of the means of production, and oftentimes those means were unfairly distributed, and so you had in the 19th century, particularly with the rise of industrialization, you had people working and working hard for very little benefit, all right?

And somehow or another Marx and Engels thought that that was wrong, and their solution was the dictatorship of the proletariat where you would put the workers in charge of how not only of production but also of distribution, and then also they would be the consumers.

Now, the theory was that everybody should produce according to their ability, whatever abilities you have should go into this production, and then everybody would receive according to his need, okay? Whatever your need was, and I think the assumption was that needs would be somewhat similar. You know, if you had five children as opposed to three children, your needs might be different there, but that was the theory.

It's a nice theory. It often even in its working out in the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and then in China and East Asia and so on, and like Vietnam and Cambodia at one particular point and Laos, it often didn't work out quite that tidily. In fact, normally what you have happening was you had an elite who controlled the means of production, made all the decisions, and interestingly enough they did the same thing that they faulted the capitalists for doing. They controlled these for their own advancement, and so they lived higher on the hog than most other people, and the system was geared to benefit them actually at the expense of the majority. That in the end is why it didn't actually work, particularly because then you have this very rigid system of control.

Now, it is still functioning in China.

Now, the second type of economic system is capitalism, and I only mean second. I don't mean ones. I don't mean this in order of better or anything like that. It's just that's the second one I'm looking at. This is based on a free market economy.

Production and distribution are based are decided by the consumers. What is made and how it's distributed is

generated by what the consumers want. Consumers decide by their purchases what is to be produced. Goods and services are distributed to those who have the money to buy them, okay? If you don't have the money to buy them, you don't get them, all right?

And the driving force behind this whole system is profit, making money, and the idea is the more money you make, the better it is, okay? The better it is for you. Now, there are certain advantages to this system. It fosters a strong work ethic, and it eliminates inefficiency.

There's also disadvantages. There are inequities in compensation. You can there are some people who can work very hard, but because of how the what's important and what people perceive in the economy as being important or not does not mean necessarily that they make a lot of money, all right? So there's inequities in compensation.

I was struck by this a couple of years ago when I was helping my colleague Steve Knoll take a class of his on a field trip. I was driving a van, and I had several young men. They were freshmen, their first year and so on, and I think I had six young men. Four of them, I asked them, I said, and Justin Carnes says, "Well, what are you majoring in?" And four of them were majoring in business, and I said, "Well, what do you want to do?" And they all wanted to be financial consultants.

You know what a financial consultant is. He's a person who tells you how to invest your money, all right? So they weren't talking about they weren't talking about, you know, starting a business that would generate a product and that would, you know, that people then would buy and it would produce jobs and stuff like that. They were talking about helping people or advising people on how to invest the pile they already had so it could become a bigger pile, all right? These are young, 18-year-old guys who want to spend their life doing that. Ah, now I understand you can make a lot of money doing that, okay? You can make a lot of money doing that.

There was one young man who said, "I want to be a schoolteacher." I thought, "Oh, well, that was that's what I went to college for is to be a schoolteacher," so. But that's not why most people are going to college anymore. They're going because they think they can become something like a financial consultant.

The other problem with it is that profit trumps everything. The bottom line is the profit, and if there's something that curtails the profit, then whether it's a question of whether that's a fair practice, whether that's a just practice, whether you've compensated your employees sufficiently or not, okay? The bottom line is how can I make the most profit, okay?

And then the other thing is the consumers.

Capitalism works on creating desires and needs on the part of consumers. That's how it functions, you know? You see all these advertisements, and the purpose of those advertisements is to make you think you want something or you need something, and they're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it because they want to sell you something.

My wife and I recently bought new cell phones. We actually bought used cell phones, and we went to this website that I think our daughter told us about and ordered these things, and they're not really that old, but you have people in the world you have people who they have to they feel the need to have the most latest thing. Six months down the road they're changing their cell phones, and then they get done. That is not that is simply a created a felt need there rather than actually what they need, but that kind of stuff is driving the economy, okay? I knew a man down in Delaware. He was an older man. Every two years he got a new vehicle.

Every two years he traded the old one in and got a new one. Every two years. And why? The old one was doing fine, but somehow or another he got into his mind that he wanted to have a new car every two years, and so one of the things that capitalism does is it uses a lot of advertising to make people think they need things that they really don't need or they should have things that they don't really need, and they connect that with all kinds of things, you know? They say, "If you buy this, you will be this," all right? Tells you all kinds of lies, all right? Then a third type of economy is a mixed economy that combines aspects of a command or controlled economy with a free market economy, with capitalism.

Socialism is an example of that. Now, I want you to understand this is important because people throw around the terms communism and socialism and act as though they're the same thing. They're not exactly the same thing, all right?

Socialism is when the production and distribution is either owned or strictly regulated by the government, and it's normally strictly regulated.

In socialist systems, big industries like steel production and coal production and oil and all those big kinds of industries are often owned by the government. There are some other things perhaps like transportation that are owned by the government.

That's one of the reasons why in Europe they still have a very good rail system. The trains in this country I mean, there are thousands of miles of train tracks that are no longer being used and have been torn up and made rails to trails things. Why? Because there's no longer a demand for them. Why? Because in our economy we switched from trains which were a major form of transportation to tractors and trailers, okay? Why? Well, because it was more convenient and didn't cost as much. That was why the switch initially happened, okay? In Europe what they did is they decided to subsidize. The government decided that they were basically going to control that form of transportation.

So you can get you can go to Europe and get on a bus and go anywhere. You can get on a train and go almost anywhere. You can get on a ferry and go almost anywhere. Now, you have to pay for it. There are tickets and stuff like that. You have to pay for it, but it's because the government controls it and manages it that they still have that system, okay? So big industries are owned by the government. Smaller businesses are privately owned, but they're strictly regulated.

You know, here in Pennsylvania, if you want to be a carpenter, what do you have to do?

Is there anything legally you have to do? No. You just if you want to be a mechanic, there's nothing legally you have to do. Now, hopefully you know something about what you're doing because otherwise people won't hire you to do the thing, but often in socialist countries the trades are strictly regulated, okay? You have to get certain prescribed training for that and schooling for it. You have to pass certain tests and so on. You have to have licenses and so on. You have to meet various qualifications. That's typical of a socialist economy, all right?

And it is concerned with making sure everybody has enough, all right?

But there are disadvantages to it. There's bureaucratic inefficiency, and it hampers a vital work ethic, except there are exceptions to this. There's something, for example, in both the Japanese and the German culture that even though they have somewhat socialistic systems, they still have very strong work ethics, okay?

Now, American capitalism is also a form of mixed economy because we do not have we do not have a completely free market economy.

Unlike socialism, almost all industry and businesses are in private hands, okay? But government regulates it to curb some of the excesses, and it's interesting what it has tried to do over the years. For example, back in the 1880s, I think it is, the Sherman Antitrust Act was passed, and the purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act was to make sure that what they saw happening was that there were certain industries like in oil production, steel production, some of these big industries where you had people you had businessmen like Carnegie and Rockefeller and so on who were capturing so much of the means of producing steel and oil and stuff like that that they could basically rig the system to charge what they want, and they would use somewhat rather cutthroat practices and so on to do that, and what would happen is it would crowd out other people, and there wouldn't be competition.

The theory of the free market system is that competition keeps people in line, but when you eliminate competition, which is what can happen, all right? And that's one of the big things that people are talking about now about Amazon and some of these other kinds of things that are there's talk about, you know, is this a monopoly that should be broken up?

And so you had the Sherman Antitrust Act was a piece of legislation that attempted to not basically to break up these large conglomerates and these big businesses so that there would be competition and it would keep them in line, okay? So they regulate that.

Quality regulations and stuff like that, you know, labeling unfair trade practices and stuff like that, those are all examples of a government regulates it to curb some of the excesses.

Now, the question is, which is more Christian? Are any of these systems Christian? And can a Christian operate how can a Christian operate in any of these systems, all right? Well, I would like to suggest to you that none of them are particularly Christian in all their aspects. There are ideas within them that seem laudable and commendatory and so on. There are other ideas which are not, and one of the things I think that we are faced with is how can we live as Christians in the way God calls us to live in whatever economy we find ourselves, okay? How can we do that? And of course, we're talking here about living in this country in an economy that is mixed where most of the means of production is in private hands, but the government regulates it in an attempt to curb some of the excesses.

That takes me to my second point, the economics of the Old Testament covenant.

This goes back to the Garden of Eden, all right? When man was God granted to man dominion over the earth. In Genesis 1:27-30 he says, "So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds, the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.' And God said, 'See, I have given you every herb that yields seeds with it on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed to you it shall be food.

Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps in the earth in which there is life, I have given every green herb for you,' and it was so," okay? So in the first instruction that God gave to man, he said, "You are to have dominion over this earth. What you see here is for you to use," but also that idea of dominion is not just only for your use. That's part of it, but it also has the idea of caring for it, caring for it because in Genesis 2:15 it says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend it and to keep it."

So God gave man not only the ability to use the earth but also the responsibility to tend it and to care for it and to make sure that he uses it properly, and with the understanding that that is not just simply something for his to use and misuse and abuse and waste and pillage and destroy, but it's all very good. It's to be used in a proper way, and it's to be used for our needs. Every herb is there for you. Now, of course, this is before the fall, and apparently at this particular point before the animals had a fear of man, at this particular point everybody was eating vegetables and fruits, okay?

That makes me always curious as to when we got these canines here in the front. Did that happen before the fall or after the fall? Because they're meant for eating meat, all right? I'm not making any argument for vegetarianism, okay? Because I don't believe in that, but man's labor became burdensome because of sin. I mean, the thing you think about is in the New one of the things in the New Heaven and New Earth, what do you think we'll be doing? Well, some people have this idea we'll be playing arps and stuff like that and so on, and that's the sort of sentimental 19th-century idea about heaven and so on which we do best to just discard, but in the New Heaven and the New Earth?

Well, in the Old in the early in the earth before the fall, what were there? I mean, people ask, "Will there be pets in heaven?" And I think they have this sentimental idea about, "Can I take Phyto with me or whatever or Tilly or so on?"

You know, I don't think it's going to be quite that way, all right? But you know, the New the Old Heaven and the Old Earth was a garden with plants and animals and so on, and God was given this task of tending it.

I think now, I'm not going to push this some very hard, but I think the New Heaven and the New Earth will be a place where there will be work for us to do. There will be tending for us to do just as God intended originally, but the difference will be is that that tending will not become burdensome. You know, how many of you like to work? Good. I like to work. How many of you get tired of working?

Yeah, I get tired of working, okay?

It's a little bit like worship. How many of you like to come to worship? Okay, how many of you if the preacher gets too long would rather he sit down and be quiet? Yeah. Why? Because you're getting worrisome. I'll try to do that, okay, here eventually, all right? So you have this the difference between what Adam and Eve were doing in the garden before the fall and what I think the New Heaven and New Earth will be is that this job, this task, this work that God has given us will have all the joy that work gives us now, all the satisfaction, but none of the burdensomeness of it. That's a beautiful to me, that's a beautiful imagery.

I get much more excited about that than strumming our harp, okay? I just really do, all right? So but man sinned, and God said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commend you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it. Curses the ground for your sake, and toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field, and the sweat of your face shall sheep bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.'" Notice the change.

In toil, okay? Thorns and thistles, there's going to be opposition. It's going it's much more difficult now. You have to pull the weeds, all right? I remember a number of years ago when we lived in Pannolan, had garden down at what was then Niyomis.

I was planting potatoes and corn down there, and partway through the summer before they were supposed to, my potato stalk started wilting and dying, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. It's too early. I had sprayed them and been very careful with them. I really like growing potatoes and so on like this, but I couldn't figure out. Well, I finally looked and noticed that there were these little holes bored into the stalk of the potatoes, and I took my fingernail and cut down through a thing, and here was this little worm, and I took it up to Nelson Baer, my neighbor Nelson Baer. I said, "What is this?" He said, "That is a corn burrow."

Well, I looked it up. Well, corn burrows are supposed to attack corn plants, but they will attack potato plants too in case you're wondering, and Nelson said something to me. He said, "Where there's life, there's opposition," and that is the reality of the fall. Where there is life, where there is opposition, and that's why our work has become tollsome.

Now, that's the foundation. We're going to have to work to be able to provide for ourselves, and it's not going to be easy necessarily. Then there are other things that when it looks at the economics here of the Old Covenant. When God gave to the children of Israel His law, which is summarized in the Ten Commandments, He says two things that have to do with economics. One is you shall not steal, okay? You shouldn't take what doesn't belong to you. Now, interestingly enough, under the Old Covenant, they didn't have jails or prisons where they put people away for years and years and years and so on. Their punishments were fairly expeditious and to the point, and if you stole something, you were to restore it.

In Exodus 22:1, it says, "If a man steals an ox or a sheep and it slaughters or it sells, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep," okay? So there's an economic cost to stealing something, okay? You have to restore it fifold or fourfold depending on what it is. Then in Exodus 20:17, it says, "You shall not covet." It gives you a whole list of things you're not supposed to covet. You're not supposed to covet your neighbor's wife. You're not supposed to covet his servants, his donkey, and so on, his cattle. You're not supposed to covet.

What's it mean to covet? It means you want it, okay? You want it, and I would not doubt that coveting is probably the root thing behind stealing or behind taking it, but one can covet something. One can covet something and get it in a somewhat legitimate sort of way, all right? Now, one of the things that's interesting is that the Apostle Paul says the example that he gives, okay? The example that he gives when it comes to the law, all right? And how, you know, he couldn't overcome he needed something more than just a prohibition against something, but he talks about how the law actually instructed me in unrighteousness because it told me to do something, and I hadn't even thought about doing it until it told me to do that, and I'm summarizing what he said, but the thing that he focuses on is coveting.

He talks about coveting. Now, what is coveting? I think that one of the tendencies that we have is to make coveting completely subjective and inward. It is inward, okay? It is inward. It is a disposition of the heart. It is an attitude, but it's not only a matter of the attitude.

We have a tendency to relevize this sin and to say that, you know, what really matters is what is in my heart. How do I feel about these things that I have here? Well, if we look at the other things that Jesus and Jesus does talk about coveting too, but if we look at the other things that Jesus says, He says, "How the heart proceeds such sins as murder, adultery, and covetousness." They do begin in the heart, and they are but they are also real things. They don't only lodge there in the heart because Jesus says, "How the heart proceeds." That means they go forth from, and they express themselves in various ways. Now, you may for a while be able to hide what is in your heart, but invariably it manifests itself.

It really does, okay? And they result in real actions, okay? Killing means dead bodies. Fornegation and adultery are actual physical acts. Stealing means that you take something that isn't yours. Lying and blasphemies are actual words that you speak, and covetousness is not only an attitude of the heart, but it is an objective reality.

When you see a person pursuing riches and laying up treasures here on earth, he is being covetous. That's the objective reality. I want to say that again. When you see a person pursuing riches and laying up treasures here on earth, he is being covetous.

Now, there are certain people that are covetous and can't carry it off. They don't get it accomplished, okay? They're equally covetous. You can see what the pursuit is. There are some people who just don't have the wherewithal or the smarts or the abilities to power up what they'd like to.

Now, the question is, of course, how much is okay? How much can I have? A cardboard box and sackcloth? I don't think that's what any of us have ever talked about. I don't think it's what Jesus was necessarily talking about and so on, but I like what Aggar says in Proverbs 38 and 9, "Remove falsehood and lies far from me. Give me neither poverty nor riches.

Feed me with the food allotted to me, lest I be full and deny you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God," okay? Aggar's prayer is, "I don't want to be rich. Don't make me rich, Lord. I don't want to be impoverished. Give me enough to live on." That's his prayer, and that should be our prayer too.

I don't want to be rich. I don't want to be impoverished, but Lord, give me enough to live on, and that should be our focus, all right? Later on, as we look in the New Testament, what does Paul say should be our motivation? We are to work with our hands for two reasons.

One, to provide for our families and to give to the poor. Those are the two reasons that he gives us, all right? And so when he talks about I think the King James says, "Give me what is convenient." That's a lovely word. That's a lovely word, but it doesn't mean the same thing now as it did in the 17th century I mean, the 16th century or 17th century when the word was trending. It has the idea of what is necessary and talking about the necessities of food and shelter, clothing and shelter.

Okay, then I want to look here then at how God provided for Israel. What was the kind of economy? Those are kind of the some of the things you're not supposed to do. You're not supposed to steal. You're not supposed to covet. You're supposed to work, and one of the things I think you'll see as we go on here, it's very clear. In the Old Testament, what was the basic economic unit?

The basic economic unit was the family, each household working together to provide for its needs. That was that's the basic economic unit, and I think that we will see throughout the Old Covenant and then also in the New Covenant in the Kingdom of God that that is still the basic economic unit, but that it ties in then with a corporate element, but the means of production is mainly through the economic unit of the family.

Now, when God took the children of Israel into the Promised Land, He divided it, and He allotted it. In Numbers 26, He says, "Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'To those to these the land shall be divided as an inheritance according to the number of names. To a large tribe, you shall give a larger inheritance, and to a small tribe, you shall give a smaller inheritance. Each shall be given its inheritance according to those who were numbered of them, but the land shall be divided by lot. They shall inherit according to the names of the tribes of their fathers. According to the lot, to their inheritance, shall be divided between the larger and the smaller.'" Okay, notice what's happening here.

First of all, Israel, like all societies until probably 100, 200 years ago, were primarily agriculturally based economies. Most of the people made their living by farming. Today, it's a very small percentage of people in this country who make their living by farming.

I should have looked it up, but it's a very small percentage. The land was divided among the tribes according to the population of the tribes, and you read through numbers, you can see that some of the tribes are larger than others.

They then were divided among the families according to lots, okay? The land each tribal area was divided into parcels for each family, and what parcel you got was decided by lots. Now, how they cast the lots, I don't have any idea, and they were divided equally, with each man having enough to provide for his family.

Now, there was this special provision for the Levites because the Levites were to essentially make their living from the offerings that the other 11 tribes brought, and they had cities within the land of Israel, several cities, where they were to live.

So there was a special provision made for the Levites, but for all the rest of the Israelites, there was this assumption that each person, as the prophet says, shall live under his own vine and fig tree. That was the idea, and the way to accomplish this was to divide the land out by population and accord each family their equal part, and this is the promise that God made to them when He gave this instruction. Deuteronomy 28, He says, "And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to you," and He made that promise based on whether or not they were obedient to Him. "If you obey Me, you will prosper," and one of the things that you see in the Old Testament is a very clear correlation between obedience and natural or physical prosperity.

There's a very direct correlation there, and one of the ways in which God judged was to take that away. Now, I think that part of what's going on there, okay, is that God wants is getting through to these rather thick-skulled people, not that they were any less thick more thick-skulled than anybody else. In fact, one might say they were probably less so than anyone else, but to get through their heads that if they did what He said, that would be the best way to do it. It would that's what would work, all right?

Now, the other thing, though, that He says, "So you shall observe My statues and keep My judgments and perform them, and you will dwell in the land in safety. Then the land will yield its suit, and you will eat your fill and dwell there in safety." Now, one of the things that's interesting in the law is it wasn't just simply the distribution, but God knew that things have this tendency to get out of kilter and that there would need to be periodic readjustments. Yes, it isn't just enough to give this to the children of Israel, divide it out evenly, and do everything and so on, and as though it's going to then be a clock that just runs on its own.

As my uncle will tell you who works on clocks, you do have to sometimes adjust clocks too. They often sometimes need to be readjusted, and one of the things we see in the law is that God's giving to the children of Israel is a periodic readjustment of the balance.

There's because things are going to get out of kilter. There's going to be an inequality rise. There's going to be some people who prosper more and some people who don't. There's going to be rich, and there's going to be poor, and God knew that despite His initial provision, this inequality would rise up, and the chance for oppression would also come alongside. Now, why the inequality? Why the why? Well, sometimes it's simply misfortune.

You know, if a woman lost her husband, if he died young, okay, what was she to do? Well, she did not have a man to take care of her and to do the hard work, and you had to work hard back then. I mean, this is before the days of tractors. I mean, when you're talking about farming, you're talking about going out there with a wooden plow and an oxen and a hoe and hand tools, and it's hard backbreaking work.

So a widow might find it a little bit hard going, and if she had children, what would she how was she going to provide for them? What if a man had all girls, which is a good thing? You know, girls are good, but what if a man had all girls? Well, girls cost them money. Boys made them money, all right, because boys could work in the fields, could help their fathers and stuff like that. So if you had a lack of sons, you know, to have more sons who could be good workers and help you along is going to be an advantage.

What if you had bad health and you simply weren't able to? And of course, there's always the fact that some people are better workers than other people. Some people are lazy, okay? Some people are lazy and through their own inattentiveness and so on. I think I'll skip the passage where it talks about going to the land and be sluggard and so on.

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little falling in a handsome sleep, so shall your poverty come upon you and on you like a prowl in your need like an armed man. But another reason is simply oppression. You know, people will be cheated and taken advantage of.

I'm reminded of that story with Ahab who wanted his neighbor's vineyard and how he and Jezebel connived to get that, okay? There are some people, even in the best of systems, who know how to play the system and so on to their advantage and to other people's disadvantages, you know?

And so sometimes, as a consequence, whether it was through lack of means, maybe through poverty, maybe through oppression, people found themselves a person found themself in a difficult situation. Now, he had an alternative. He could sell his land or he could sell himself and his family into slavery and place themselves at the mercy of another person, but God realized if those inequities continued that He would not have a people that would exemplify His character and His justice and His rule, and so periodically there needed to be a readjustment. And so in Leviticus 25, we have this readjustment spelled out. First of all, it's predicated on the principle, the foundational principle, that the land shall not be sold permanently.

Why? "For the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me." Who does it belong to? He says, "It belongs to me. It does not belong absolutely to you. It belongs to me. I'm giving you the use of the land," is what God is saying to the children of Israel, and then there's also the principle of not oppressing your neighbor. He says, "You shall not" in Leviticus 25, "You shall not oppress one another, but you shall fear your God. For I am the Lord your God, for they are My servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over them with rigor, but you shall fear the Lord.

Regarding your brethren and the children of Israel, you shall not rule over one another with rigor, for the children of Israel are servants of Me. They are My servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God."

Now, there are several principles that govern how God wanted people how God wanted people in the Old Covenant to relate to each other when it came to economics. One of the first things is, He says, "You are to have a wide open hand to the poor, a wide open hand to the poor," not a tight, you know, we use the term even today, a tight somebody's tight-fisted. What's that mean? Well, they have their money in their hand, and they clamp down on it, and they don't let any of it go. God said, "You are not to be tight-fisted. You are to have a wide open hand to the poor. If there is among you a poor man," He says in Deuteronomy 15, "A poor man of your brethren with any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God has given you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs."

Now, along with that are three laws that have to do with lending, gleaning, and redemption, and Exodus I mean, Leviticus 25, we look at the law of lending, and it says, "If any one of your brethren become poor and has sold some of his possessions and of his redeeming relatives come to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, then let him count the year since it was sold and restore the remainder to the man to whom it's sold, that he may return his possession." And then in verse 35, "If one of your brethren becomes poor and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him like a stranger or a sojourner that he may live with you, take no usury or interest from him, but fear your God that your brother may live with you.

You shall not lend your money for usury nor lend him your food at a profit." Again, there's this idea of lending and not lending at usury. And you know what usury is? What do we call it? We call it interest today, all right, and the children of Israel are not to charge interest.

And you know, one of the things that's interesting to me is there some of us recently attended an informative session out at Lancaster about fraud with a couple of FBI agents spoke to a group of 300 people there from many different kinds of playing groups, and there were 2,000 people on the phone line listening in, and you know what?

If they followed this principle, not one of them would have needed to be there. Not one of them would have needed to be there, but why were they there? It's because they had laid up treasures, and they wanted to get interest and return on that, and they put their trust in persons who promised them something they could not deliver, okay? Now, do you think if you look at if you look at the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the New Testament, is there a lessening or a rolling back of what God expects? If God said in the Old Testament, "No usury," do you think He's now saying in the I mean, He said that in the Old Testament.

Do you think He's now saying in the New Testament, "Oh, you can charge interest"?

What does Jesus say? He says, "Lend, give, expecting what? No return, no return." Now, you can interpret that to mean, you know, not getting it paid back, but you can also interpret it as being not what do we call when we when people loan out their money? They want a return for it, okay?

So in fact, that Psalm that was read this morning, what did it say? Was one of the markers of an upright, just person who can stand before God? They not charge usury. They not charge interest, okay?

Then the law of gleaning in Leviticus 9:9-10, God said, "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest, and you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger, and I am the Lord your God," okay? So when you harvest, you leave the corners.

You leave and if something falls by the wayside by it, you leave it. Why? So that the poor, those persons who have lost their land, can come in, and they can gather it up. Now, notice here, I want you to know something here, okay?

It's the responsibility of us all. It was the responsibility of all the Israelites not just to take every crumb off, every blade, every stock was to leave some there, but who was to do the gleaning? It was the persons. It was the poor. They were to come in and do the gleaning. They had to work. It wasn't just simply handed over to them. They had to come in, and they had to work.