Lesson 29

War on Poverty – 15:1-11

 

This part of Deuteronomy, from chapters 12-26 includes how to love the Lord thy God with all thy life, or with all thy soul life, or soul.  What this means is the details of life as distinct from chapters 5-11 which are how to love the Lord thy God with all your heart.  Love in Scripture always has content.  This is something that is misunderstood today when people talk about the love of God, etc.  They tend to equate this with a mysticism, some sort of an inner feeling with some subjective experience.  This may or may not be true, but the real thing is that true love always has some objective criteria.  In the Old Testament God took the pain to define what He meant by these two things. 

 

We found that loving the Lord with all your heart in chapter 5 meant that we are in a personal relationship with a God of definite characteristics, that He is absolute righteousness, He has absolute justice and no how matter how much he loves us and no matter how much we love Him, these standards are never going to be violated without someone getting hurt.  This is what gives love its backbone in the Bible.  It always has content.  This would give a lot of marriages backbone, if people would get the concept that love is not some sentimental experience but it’s something rooted in the objective.  So chapter 5 is very crucial.  That is the chapter in the Bible that has the Ten Commandments in it, and not without reason.

 

In chapter 6 we found that the emphasis there on loving the Lord with all your heart is to be absorbed with the Word of God.  This simply means that you pay attention to the Word, you live in the Word, the Word is your life as a believer. 

 

In chapter 7 we found that loving the Lord with all your heart, with all your mental attitude, means that you will necessarily be involved in conflict.  You can’t help it; the world is moving one way; out entire society and culture is moving one way and we are moving the other way.  Thus we find that as Christians we’re the only real rebels left in society.  All the student rebels and radicals, etc. aren’t radical at all because at the base and heart of the whole matter they share the same basic framework of beliefs that the entire culture shares.  It is only the Bible-believing Christian that is at heart a 100% rebel. 

 

In chapters 8-9 we found two problems that every one of us as believer face. Chapter 8 dealt with the problem of forgetting that we’re creatures and saying that we’re our own god in some way.  For example, people that disbelieve in eternal security do this. They think that their volition is such that it can challenge the volition of God, so people that deny eternal security are placing themselves as gods.  In chapter 9 we found that we can often forget not only that we’re creatures but that we’re fallen creatures and in need of God’s righteousness and grace. 

 

Chapters 10-11 told us that the issue before us always an either/or, are we going to be in fellow­ship with the Lord or not, there’s no middle of the road ground. All of these are characteristics of attitude or love of God in our heart.

 

In chapters 12-14, which we’ve covered so far, in chapter 12 we started to develop the details of life.  We found, for example, that you can love the Lord with all your heart, here’s in the inside, these are the inner attitudes, but these inner attitudes are going to overflow into various details of life. We said that the details of life include fellowship with other believers, your relationship with loved ones, sex, money, job, health, recreation, relationship with law and government, and friends.  And all these details of life, these are things that every one of us has and these are challenges to us to love the Lord in these areas, and this is what it means in the Bible when it says “thou shalt love the Lord with all they life, with all thy soul.

 

In chapter 12 through 16 the first section of this part of the Bible deals with the unity of the nation Israel.  These are all details but they are broken down in certain categories.  Here we have the unity of the nation.  Here’s how a nation is actually unified.  Notice, for example, when you come to chapters 17-23 where the righteousness of a nation is given, righteousness follows after unity. It’s no good to talk about righteous standards unless you have a unified nation.  In chapters 12-16 we have the cement of society in the Old Testament, the thing that held the nation together.  In chapter 12 we found the things was a centralized worship. There was no freedom of religion in Israel.  The people were commanded to worship in God’s presence, which was wherever the sanctuary was. 

 

In chapter 13 we found there was no freedom intellectually to drift all over the place, rather people were to adhere to one doctrine and only one doctrine, the doctrine of Moses.  This was the unity of the nation.

 

Chapters 14-15 which we’re on tonight, deal with various practices.  We say that these practices have three general characteristics.  These are religious practices that unify the nation; their three general characteristics are joy, freedom and purity.  We might say it another way, that this is the good life as looked upon in the Old Testament.  This is what it means to live the good life.  The (quote) “good life” (end quote) is what held the nation together.  Here is where you have the good life defined.

 

Last time we dealt in chapter 14 with the problem of funerals and death and we found out in verses 1-2 that God does not want us to be unduly sorrowful over the tragedies of life.  We found out that it’s not meritorious to go around expressing all the grief that the Canaanites used to, slashing themselves, etc. out of suffering. God does not want His creatures to suffer and it does not give God pleasure to allow you or anyone else to suffer.  Then in verses 3-21 we found out there were certain dietary regulations. We found these dietary regulations were due to two reasons; first the food in that day was manifested through mutations as a result of the biological effect of the curse of Gen. 3, certain forms of life are memorials to the curse.  For example, in Gen. 3 weeds, thistles, etc. are said to not be the result of God’s original creation but to be a mutant form introduced into the biological creation by the curse.  Here you have real scientific, biological repercussions of the curse of Genesis.  Then we found that certain foods were simply poisonous and these poisonous foods would harm the people, etc.  God did not want them to eat it, so these were two reasons for these dietary regulations.

 

We found in verses 22-39 a third principle or third religious practice, not only funerals and death and diet, but also we found the problem of tithing. We saw that tithing was not a system of Christian giving; tithing was a system of Old Testament finance, it has nothing to do with Christian giving. Don’t be snowed by some clergyman who comes to you and tells you, brother, did you hand in your tithe for the day, or did you get your tithing pledge for the year?  The man is off base; if he comes to you and says that you say yes I did, on April 15th I gave my tithe to Washington DC and you will be Biblically correct because the tithe in the Old Testament was the means of financing what little government they had. 

 

We’ve come to the interesting problem of how poverty was solved in this country.  We’re going to get into the causes of poverty and the Christian’s attitude toward poverty.  I might say at the beginning this is an area of truth that is often not covered in fundamentalist circles.  Liberals over the years have majored in the prophetic books of Scripture and have drawn out many of these things on poverty, etc. and have used them to support various forms of socialism.  This is a mis­application, but still the point is that fundamentalists would do well to examine what God has to say on poverty to at least understand the causes and the mechanics behind it.  Let’s begin at 15:1 and this section will extend to verse 11. 

 

“At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.”  This word “release” is crucial because there’s a debate; release can mean two things, I’ll show you what the two alternatives are and then I’ll show you the correct one.  The first alternative is that the people who are indebted, for example, you want to go out and buy a hot chariot so you take a loan for $2,000 to buy yourself a chariot and during the year of release the issue is if the principle on the loan cancelled so that you never have to pay the loan back, or is just the payments cancelled.  In other words, is it a cancellation of the entire loan or is it just the fact that over that seventh year you don’t have to pay it back.  There’s a difference.  If it’s the first one, then you never have to pay the $2,000 back again; if it’s the second one you have to, but you don’t do it that year, you have a whole year moratorium on your debt payments.  Which is it? We’ll get into that and find out. 

 

The word “release” means to let go, the year of the release, to see how this operated, hold the place and turn to Deut. 31:10.  In the young adult class we’re discussing doctrine and the nature of doctrine, and it’s interesting to watch the emphasis the Bible places on doctrine.  Too often in fundamental circles they’re placing the emphasis on legalism, don’t do this, don’t do that, etc.  This has a place but when you say that and you say it outside of a doctrinal framework and people do not understand why you’re saying that and sometimes you don’t understand why you are saying that, you are off base and asking for trouble.  This is what has ruined fundamentalism; people saying you shall do this and you can’t do this and all the rest of it.  I don’t chew bubble gum, this and that, etc. and this is fundamentalism?  Bologna!  Fundamentalism is a theological position and it has nothing to do with legalism.  You can be a liberal and be a legalist.  Legalism and fundamentalism are two different things. 

 

For example, in some circles it’s taboo to smoke; I don’t smoke and anybody who smokes is somehow unspiritual.  My personal opinion is that someone who smokes is stupid, but I’m not going to say what the Scriptures say on this because the Scriptures don’t say anything.  What do you find, the 11th commandment, thou shalt not smoke? It’s not in there.  So I have no authority to get up here and say God tells you not to smoke. God tells you to treat your body is right and if you think smoking is right then go ahead.  The point is that in some circles fundamentalism says oh, you shouldn’t smoke.   And one of the greatest stories is to go back to Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest fundamentalist preachers in Europe, and one day he was met on the street by a believer who came along and pointing to his cigar said, “Sir, that offends me.”  To which Spurgeon who was never lost for words, tapped this person on his rather corpulent midsection and said “Brother, that offends me.”  And Spurgeon had just as much right to attack this person because this person had an uncontrolled appetite as this person had to blame Spurgeon.  These things are the trivial things, but the real things, the basis things of the faith, are always neglected.  Therefore we find that when we come down to doctrine and these things that that is what is emphasized in Scripture.  The patterns, the behavior patterns, etc. are important but they’re results, not causes; they are results of doctrine. 

 

So in Deut. 31:9 we have Moses writing the Law, delivering it to the priests, and telling them something in verse 10, “And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of Tabernacles,” now what’s he saying?  He’s saying something to these priests, every seven years is going to be a year of release in this nation.  When this year of release happens, I want you to do something; I want you to call a national convention of all the citizens of the nation.

 

Verse 11, “When all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which He shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. [12] Gather the people together, man, and women, and children, and thy stranger who is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law.  [13] And that their children, who have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land,” etc. etc. etc. What is Moses’ point?  Every seven years they are going to have a national convention of the citizens of the nation and guess what they do?  They read the constitution of the nation, and they read it in the public hearing of every citizen of that nation. So every seven years, at least, of course in between this time the country priests are supposed to be teaching the Law to the people, but at least every seven years every citizen was forced to review the heart and constitution of their nation.  It would be analogous in our nation if every seven years we had to personally review the United States Constitution, something they used to teach in the public schools; now they’re too busy teaching sex and other things and they haven’t got time for teaching the Constitution any more.  But in past days when the country was great people understood what the Constitution meant and they realized that it had certain limitations and it was a source of much blessing and freedom to this land.

 

It’s the same thing here in Deut. 31, at this feast of Tabernacles in the last part of the year on the seventh year this was to happen.  Now it was at this year, on the seventh year, sometime during the ceremony, after they got through (or before) reading the Law, they suddenly proclaimed a release, and this is when the release was proclaimed.  Freedom was proclaimed to the citizenry of the reading of the Law.  Now let’s look at what the freedom was that was proclaimed.  Back to chapter 15, “At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.” 

 

Verse 2, “And this is the manner of the release: every creditor who lends anything to his neighbor, shall release,” drop the italics, they will only confuse you if you have a King James Version, “every creditor who lends anything to his neighbor shall release.” Period.  “He shall not exact of his neighbor, or of his brother, because it is called the LORD’s release.”  Let’s first examine the phrase “every creditor that lends.”  This includes two items that you should be aware of: one, a creditor and a lender.  Here’s the creditor and he’s loaning a certain amount of money to this person.  Let’s look carefully at what this transaction is because this is what gives you the key to what’s going on here.  He is loaning the person money, not for a business; these are not business loans.  This will be evident later on in the context.  These are loans for emergency situations in which the family has run out of money, the people are desperate and they need funds.  That is the kind of loan that is meant here, not business loans, these are personal loans for family work, etc.

 

In Deut. 23:19 we read that there can be zero percent interest and only zero percent interest.  There could be no interest charged on personal loans.  This is amazing; this may not seem like much to you but do you realize that the going loan rate in the ancient world, you think it’s bad with our loan rates going up to 9%, in the ancient world they were 20-50%.  That was the loan rate in the ancient world, and then for God to come along and tell His people, listen, when you see a family in trouble you loan them money at zero percent interest.  Can you imagine what a revolutionary type of thing this was in that day of high interest rates?  So there are two things to remember, one, they had zero interests and they were philanthropic loans, not business loans.  Those are the two things to remember.

 

Now this has bearing, and later on we’ll see how it works out but turn to Matt. 5:42, as we go through Deuteronomy I always like to point to the New Testament to show you how the New Testament really isn’t very new.  We’re right in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.  One of these phrases that everyone says Jesus introduced the Sermon on the Mount; this is something new with Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount is not new; Jesus simply clarified the Old Testament Law to His generation.  And in Matt. 5:42 you find Jesus saying, “Give to him that asks you, and from him that would borrow of you turn not thou away.”  Now Jesus isn’t talking here in the context of a business loan.  If you were a banker and you applies this you’d go broke tomorrow. That’s not what the Lord is asking.  This must be taken in the context of the Old Testament Law, what was the kind of loan the people would have understood Jesus to be talking about knowing the Law? Philanthropic loans.  Is there any new principle from Deuteronomy in verse 42?  Not one.  All Jesus is doing in verse 42 is reiterating the Mosaic Law, that’s all, just reiterating it, nothing new.  So at least therefore in Matt. 5:42 that phrase that you may have puzzled over in the Sermon on the Mount becomes very clear when you understand the background in Deut. 15. 

 

The next phrase in 15:2, “And this is the manner of the release: every creditor who lends unto his neighbor,” we understand what kind of a loan this is, “he shall release it.”  What is the release?  The release is not a release from payment, the release is an end to the loan and this is even more revolutionary.  The loan was to be dropped, not paid back, permanently; it was a permanent release from this loan, so that at the seventh year, however much funds were outstanding on this personal loan they were considered a gift at that point.  For example, let’s work out a little problem here.  Here you are and some family is in trouble and you’ve loaned them $100 and they’re poor and they can’t pay this back to you, so the first year they pay back $20, the second year $20, the third year $20 and it just so happens the fourth year out happens to be the seventh year of the cycle.  So they’ve paid $60, $100 – $60 is $40 and at the year of the release they have been given $40; there’s $40 outstanding on that loan that they haven’t paid back and the year of the release they are free from ever paying that back to you.  You might say you lose $40 at the seventh year.  If for example you loaned $100 out and it was the sixth year of the cycle and they only paid back $20, at the year of release you would lose $80.  $80 reverted back to that family. 

So this is the way the release worked.

 

Verse 2, “…he shall not exact it,” and this proves that this refers to a permanent cancellation. Why?  Because if the writer had intended to say you’re going to just stop the payments for a year he would have said “thou shall not exact of it during the seventh year,” but he doesn’t say that, he says “thou shall not exact of it,” period.  There is no time qualifying phrase, so therefore this is a permanent release from the loan.  “…he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother, because it is called the LORD’s release.”  The word “called” here is the word which means to proclaim, and this gives us the hint that drove us back to Deut. 31 before, and that is that the word qara is the verb to proclaim and it means a public proclamation.  So when it says “it is proclaimed the Lord’s release,” it means that there was an official announcement.

 

And here’s something amazing, that official announcement came at the Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh year.  Do you recall something amazing about the Lord Jesus Christ at one of those Feast of Tabernacles?  Turn to John 8 and you will see an amazing thing, when the Lord Jesus Christ in His ministry proclaimed a release, and it was evidently during the seventh year, possibly not, but it certainly amplifies the type that I’m about to show you here.  It was definitely during the Feast of Tabernacles, John 8:30, this is the Lord Jesus Christ at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in these feasts in the Gospel of John Jesus is fulfilling the types of the Old Testament.  This is why John presents Christ always at the feasts.  Why does the Gospel John present Christ always at Jerusalem when the other Gospels present Him in Galilee?  Because John wanted to show that the great signs that He did at these feasts were to show people and alert people of His day, listen, I’m the Messiah, the things that I do in these feasts are the things that amplify and bring to fulfillment the original reason for these feasts being designed in the first place.  So in Jesus ministry in John 8 He gets into a little discussion.  It becomes very hot, by the way, as you read through chapter 8 and you realize that the gentle and meek Jesus wasn’t so gentle many times.  He called these people the servants of Satan, etc. and He got a little rough with them. 

 

But in verse 30 He said, “As He spoke these words, many believed on Him.”  Verse 31, “Then said Jesus to those Jews who believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed.”  And what He’s saying is that you people have been saved, you have trusted in Me, but if you want to be My disciples and really show forth for Me in this life, continue in My Word, stay with doctrine.  Verse 32, the most misquoted verse in all of Scripture, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  I don’t think there’s a college campus that doesn’t have this on the cornerstone somewhere, totally misquoted, totally out of context.  Look at the context, this is a proclamation of a release that the Lord is saying, Christians, if you will stay with doctrine and if you will appropriate it moment by moment, then you will know, and the word “know” here is not intellectual knowledge and intellectual perception per se.  The knowledge here means knowledge by experience, it means you’ll actually have an experiential understanding of this in your life. 

 

And the “truth shall make you free.”  Free from what?  And the people said that, verse 33, “They answered Him, We are Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man.  How sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?”  It’s very interesting to notice the Lord’s restraint; that is a lie, they were never in bondage.  Who was the Roman soldier that was standing guard in the Temple while this was going on?  Jesus could have said oh, you’re free are you Jews, look at the Tower of Anthony up there, who are the guards that are up on top of that tower, you’re free, you’re never in bondage to any man, what is that Roman battalion doing up there guarding the Temple if you’re free.   Jesus could have refuted them just like that.  However, in verse 34 Jesus refutes them a different way, “Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever is committing sin is the servant of sin.”  And the word “commit sin” here means habitually practice.  “Whoever habitually practices sin is the servant of sin. [35] And the servant abides not in the house forever; but the Son abides forever, [36] “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. [37] I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. [38] I speak that which I have seen with My Father, and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. [39] They answered, and said unto Him,” notice how this dialogue heats up now, you’re about to see one of the hottest arguments Jesus Christ ever got into. 

 

“They answered, and said unto Him, Abraham is our father.  Jesus said unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. [40] But now ye seek to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I have heard of God; this did not Abraham. [41] Ye do the deeds of your father.  They said unto Him, We are not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. [42] Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love Me; for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of Myself, but He sent me. [43] Why do you not understand My speech? Because you cannot hear My word. [44] You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it.” 

 

Now was that a very diplomatic thing for Jesus to do?  Do you notice what Jesus is doing here?  In the biography’s that you see of Jesus in the movies have you ever seen that scene?  You could bet your last dollar that you haven’t; you’ll never see it portrayed because this is a picture of Jesus Christ that most people don’t like because it shows Jesus Christ for what He really was, a man who stood on principle and He didn’t care who opposed Him.  Here we have the situation of true freedom and what is Jesus saying, He says you people think you’re free, you big hypocrites, listen, you think you’re the big people around town because you’ve got religion, you think you’re free because you have all this ritual, don’t kid yourself, you’re in bondage to it.  It’s like a lot of people today in America; do you think you’re free?  Look at the Supreme Court; look at some of the things that have come down.  Who’s taking your money and spending it and throwing half of it all over the place.  Are you free to spend the money the way you want to?  You’re not free at all. 

 

This is talking about true freedom, a freedom that springs from the grace of God, it includes, for example in our Christian lives the freedom to be what we really deep down want to be.  No unbeliever can really be what he wants to be.  Deep down he always has gnawing feeling of guilt and a Christian is the only person who can have freedom from guilt.  This is the greatest freedom that you can ever have.  You can be in a prison, you can be in a cell, people can be beating you to a pulp but you can be free on the inside and no man will ever take the freedom from you.  That’s the freedom that Jesus promised, know the truth, doctrine, appropriate it moment by moment, and you’ll have victory in your life and you’ll understand what freedom means. And when you under­stand what that kind of freedom is you’ll never give it up for any other (quote) “freedom” (end quote).  This is the great freedom.  This is the freedom, by the way, that the Christian slaves had in the first century.  They didn’t go marching around in demonstrations saying we want our freedom, they got their freedom as a result of Christianity and Christian slave owners, like Philemon and others, who later released these people.  But the freedom that these slaves had was freedom on the inside.  And that is what saved them, that is what made their life worth living and that is what gave them the concepts that eventually came down in our time to be political freedom.  So the freedom in the Bible starts on the inside, it means freedom from your old sin nature, it means freedom from the bondage of sin, and that, though it sounds trivial to a modern mind, is actually the source of all freedom.

 

All right, this is the release that Jesus proclaimed and ironically, or was it ironic, maybe it was by design, that Jesus proclaimed that in the very feast in which the release was proclaimed.  Turn back to Deut. 15 and look some more at this release.  Verse 3, “Of a foreigner thou may exact it; but that which is thine with thy brother, thine hand shall release.”  The foreigner here is nakar, nakar as we have said is the traveling businessman.  This is not the stranger that took up citizenship in the nation, this is the man who happened to be traveling through and maybe he had a flat tire or something and they had to loan  him to get some air in it, a patch, this kind of thing; they could get that money back.  But to one of their own kind they could not.

 

Verse 4, “Save [except] when there shall be no poor among you,” now, there’s a seeming contradiction in this chapter because it says the poor are always with you and then it says there are not going to be any poor with you.  How do you understand it?  Just how we understood other passages like this in Deuteronomy.  Verse 4, “However,” not save when, “However, there will be no poor among you; for the LORD shall,” now greatly bless is not “greatly bless.”  “Greatly bless” here is a mistranslation of the King James of this infinitive absolute that I’ve talked about. What it is is that you have the verb to bless, plus the infinitive to bless, and when you have the infinitive repeated with a verb in the Hebrew you emphasize the mood of the verb.  What is the mood of the verb here?  The mood of the verb is the certainty that God is going to do it, so therefore this is a prophetic mood and the prophetic mood is heightened by the addition of the infinitive and we have “for the LORD will certainly bless you in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee for an inheritance to possess it.” 

Now the Lord is going to do that, but continue because verse 5 is part of the same sentence, “Only if thou carefully hearken” is another infinitive with a verb and that is a mood of condition, so there­fore once again, verb plus infinitive heightens the mood, the mood of the verb in verse 5 is a conditional mood, “if you will hearken” so since it’s a conditional mood the conditional mood is heightened and it means “if you be careful to hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all these” things, in other words, he’s saying that your nation will have no poverty in it if you obey the Word of God.  Now this is an amazing insight into the cause of social problems.  This is amazing because remember these promises in the Old Testament are physical; they’re not some ethereal spiritual thing, this literally means that the society of Israel would not have poverty if the conditions in verse 5 were fulfilled. Verse 5 is the condition, but the promise of verse 4 is like many of the promises in the Mosaic Covenant and that is a conditional promise, therefore cannot be taken as a straight prophecy.

 

All right, now we come down to one of the prophetic verses, that is down in verse 11.  Skip down to verse 11 and you’ll see the other part of it.  “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 the land.”  There we have a prophecy.  This is an unconditional prophecy of the future.  In other words, the Lord is doing this.  Going back to our diagram of the blessings and the cursings of the Mosaic Law, the blessings were fourfold; the cursings were fourfold.  In the Mosaic Law God promised victory if they would obey Him.  All this was “iffy,” if they do these things God would give them victory, God would give them prosperity, God would cause them to occupy the land and furthermore, God would make them a testimony to the world.  If, however, they disobeyed as a nation God would bring cursing, so victory would be turned to defeat, prosperity would be turned to calamity, occupation of the land would be turned to the Diaspora or the dispersion, and the testimony would be an abomination to the nations.  This is the either/or, the blessings and the cursing, given to the nation under the Mosaic Covenant, but the prophecy of verse 11 is an absolute statement about what’s going to happen from the omniscience of God.

 

This thing we have seen again and again, it was in chapters 4 and 5 where we had the same kind of think, you have a conditional blessing and then you have the prophetic cursing.  God says if you’d only do this Israel, I’d give you blessing, but I know what you’re going to do, you’re going to disobey so therefore you’re going to receive cursing.  And that is how to explain verses 4 and 11. 

 

Now let’s look at verse 6, “For the LORD thy God has blessed thee,” this is all past tense, “has blessed thee, as He has promised thee.  And thou will,” this is future, “will lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.”  In verse 6 we have an interesting principle that comes out of Deut. 28:1 and others, and it has to do with economic prosperity.  Notice something, notice the fact that some of you have recently become aware of, and that is that economics is the key to victory in national and international life.  In other words, it’s not really the military, it’s in the area of economics that the real issues lie, and God’s Word recognizes that when it says this in verse 6, if the nation is economically prosperous, it will be ruling over other nations, because if you’re in debt to someone, that person rules over you.  This business of going out and buying everything but the kitchen sink for your house and it’s oh, I can just take a few pennies a day, etc. and you add a few pennies a day, a few pennies a day, a few pennies a day and a few pennies a day and you’re going to find something, after four or five months of this thing that bill at the end of the month gets awfully big and you suddenly discover you’re lost your freedom because now you either have to fork over the money or you lose the whole thing. This is how Christians, like everyone else, get into the installment buying racquet and finally get themselves into… now installment buying is not bad, the point is when it’s misused. We have people reigning over Christians because of this, when they should be smart enough to understand the issue.

 

So that’s what is meant in the end of verse 6, they “shall reign over many nations,” Israel is to be the most economically prosperous nation on earth and the other nations shall never reign over her if and if verse 5 is fulfilled. 

 

Verses 7-8, this clarifies something I said before and I noticed a look of doubt on many of your faces, and that was what kind of loans are these?  Are these business loans?  Or are these personal loans?  In verse 7 you find out it’s talking about poverty so therefore it is personal loans, it’s not talking about business loans per se.  “If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren of any of thy gates,” remember what does “gates” mean?  Gates means cities, so you know the gates, “within any of thy cities in thy land which the LORD thy God gives thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother,” and this is the mental attitude toward poverty on the part of believers in that day.

Now I’m going to change the translation in verse 8, you will see this in modern translations, they’ve made this correction.  “But when you open your hand wide unto him, you will surely lend him sufficient for his want,” you see that, “when you open your hand,” this is to accompany the giving, “when you open your hand unto him, you shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wants.” 

 

Verse 9, “Beware that there be not a thought in your wicked heart,” now isn’t that a wonderful evaluation of the human race, “a thought in your wicked heart,” because God knows that the human nature is a sinful nature.  “Beware that there be not a thought in your wicked heart, saying,” oh-oh, “The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother,” what’s it saying here?  This guy comes up to you and he needs a hundred bucks; it’s December, next year is the year of release, and you don’t have to be a student of advanced math to figure out what’s going to happen.  You know what’s going to happen; you’re going to lose your hundred bucks.  And all of a sudden it hits in the wallet, it always hits harder there than any other place.  So all of a sudden the issue is what’s the mental attitude going to be on this and the Lord says you just go ahead and give it.

 

Verse 10, “Thou shalt surely give him,” and “surely give” is another infinitive and a verb, amplifying the mood, increasing the mood and heightening the mood, the mood here is a mood of command and therefore you must certainly give to him, “and thine heart shall not be grieved when you give unto him, because for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that you put your hand do.”  This is a principle of giving that is given again in the New Testament.  Do you know where?  2 Cor. 9:7-8, hold the place and compare for a moment.  Again, notice, the New Testament really isn’t new; the principle here is a principle that was taught back in the Old Testament.   And the principle of giving that Moses suggested to the people was exactly the same kind of principle that Paul says in 2 Cor. 9:7-8, “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver.”  Notice verse 8, what is the principle God uses; what we are to remember, “God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.” 

 

Let’s not get so fancy with the theological language we forget what is Paul talking about in verse 8?  The grace mentioned here is money.  And what he’s saying is that if you give and it’s within the Lord’s will for you to give, God will supply that need.  And you look at the hundred dollars and say oh, good night, there’s a hundred dollars right down the tube.  And what does the Lord say?  I’m going to supply it.  Look, who is the one that told you to give in the first place?  The Lord.  So the Lord, always when He tells us to do something is going to supply the need and He says listen, I told you to give, I’ll take care of it, you just follow Me at My word, you mind your business and I’ll mind Mine, I told you to give so I will supply this.  This is not a sermon on giving; I’m just simply presenting what the Word of God has to say here in Deuteronomy.

 

Back to Deuteronomy 15, “Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved,” remember God was able to supply and He simply said to the citizens of this nation, I’m going to bless you if you will trust Me.  Verse 11, “For the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command thee, saying,” in other words, this will be a perpetual problem that these people would have. 

I want to conclude by showing certain principles from the Bible that control the problem of poverty; the basis for poverty, the solution to poverty.  Here’s the poverty problem that we face.  The first point on the doctrine of poverty is that poverty is spiritually caused ultimately.  I don’t care what you say about the economic organization of society, I don’t care all of the arguments presented for the socialist organization versus the capitalist system, I’ve heard all of them, read all of them, and I’m not impressed because God’s Word says that the poverty comes through spiritual conditions as taught in Deut. 15:4-6 and verse 11.  Poverty here is a function of the spirituality of a nation.

 

Let’s amplify this a moment.  Why is poverty related?  It’s nice to get up and say oh yeah, poverty is related to the spiritual condition, but in what way is it related to the spiritual condition?  How do you get the cause/effect?  Let me suggest four cause/effect illustrations of why poverty results from poor spirituality; this is all under the first point.

 

First reason: God has to discipline a nation, according to Acts 17:26-27, world history is designed so that God plays off one power block against another, basically to have balance of power, according to Acts 17, so that if one part of the world becomes spiritually corrupt He will take another part of the world, and destroy that civilization and replace it with another one.  For example, take the confrontation between communism to the East and you take capitalism in Western Europe, let’s not kid ourselves, capitalism in Western Europe destroyed itself spiritually in the 19th century.  There hasn’t been a great spiritual revival in Europe in over 100 years.  And the communists in the East are almost in a position, and many Christians have commented about the irony of this, as though God is simply saying something, I’m going to put a mirror here and you Europeans, and I can say this of the Americans in the 20th century, you people love your materialism, I’m going to raise up a nation that’s going to be materialist from top to bottom and I want you to see what it really leads to.

 

And if communism never goes a square foot and gains a square foot of territory, it’s going to show the Western world one thing, you guy like materialism, how do you like this.  Here’s a system that’s grounded on it from top to bottom; you want materialism, you may just get it rammed down your throat.  Just like the Israelites, they loved idolatry so God said oh, you like idolatry, well here, let me take you on a 70-year safari over to a land where you’ll do nothing but worship idols, and when you come back from Babylon you’re going to be so fed up with these idols that you won’t want to see one within a thousand miles.  That’s how God cures lust; he puts it right down a believer’s… and rubs his nose in it for a while and says how do you like it, do you really like it believer?  And it’s as though God is doing that with communism; you people like materialism, well fine, I’m going to give you a system where you can have all the materialism you want. 

 

To get back to Acts 17, the point is that when God goes to discipline a nation, those who are poor at the start get poorer, because usually how He disciplines a nation is through deprivation of natural resources, through military catastrophe, through upheaval of homes, etc.  The rich are able to get out of the way and able to make provisions for this, therefore the poor tend to have their poverty increased by God’s discipline on certain national entities that He must do according to Acts 17:26-27. [“That they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us; [28] For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.”]

But more important than that is another cause effect, it’s a little closer to home and I think this basically is why we have a lot of poverty and that simply is the lusts of the flesh.  I am not saying the poor have more lust of the flesh, don’t misinterpret. What I am saying here is that you have a factor that destroys our national wealth by the draining off of millions and millions of dollars of American currency into a lot of these hood organizations, and you know how these hood organizations operate—prostitution, alcoholism, drugs, and how come they can exist? Because people love it, that’s why.  You have twenty billion going out every year in the United States through alcohol, (this is not a sermon on booze, I’m just pointing out a little cause/effect here).  It’s spent on alcohol, it’s spent on welfare because you have to take care of the wives and children because the idiot men go out and get stoned, are irresponsible and who is supposed to pick up the pieces?  We’re supposed to spend all the money to help out while this man gets bombed out of his mind and blows some more money.  It happens with women too.

 

The third reason for poverty under this first area, and that is that it’s spiritual cause is a simple little mechanism that is operating in our country and this one mechanism is driving us into socialism faster than the best planned conspiracy.  How is it operating? Just simple lust of voters; voters want a program so the politicians are artists at satisfying lusts, and he says if you’ll vote for me I’ll give you that program.  How do you think some of the idiots in Congress stay elected?  How do some of these people get elected again and again?  Perfectly good citizens would say I know he’s bad but we’ve got to keep him because he has seniority on the Senate so and so committee and if we voted him out of office our state would never get the projects.  Politics aside, that’s one of the real reasons these guys keep getting elected.  This is disrupting our nation, every time you have an increase in government programs it sucks wealth away from the general economy and here’s the third reason for it.

 

A fourth reason on the international scale, and here it is largely due to the fact that we have people who have lost a sense of peace, a sense of accomplishment, etc. and have therefore prostituted their desires for some human viewpoint scheme, like socialism or communism, etc.  These people see no hope for man but this, and if you talked with them they’re not sinister people, it’s just that they’ve lost all hope and they can’t see the hope any other place so therefore they think it’s communism, communism is the big hope for them. 

 

Here we have at least four areas that I can see in our country where spiritual reasons are really behind the drain off from out national economy, and the real reason that ultimately leads to tension. It’s not saying that the poor necessarily are the ones who do this, it’s simply saying they are the victims of what happens eventually in the situation.

 

The second area under the doctrine of poverty and that is that we have Christians in our society, or we as Christians should see our poverty as a symptom of a deeper spiritual illness that can only be resolved by a back to the Bible movement.  If you’re concerned about poverty there are a lot of things you can do, and legitimately as citizens, but you want to put first things first.  When you think about poverty, let’s not get a guilt complex, oh, what shall I do about poverty, without at the same time saying have I personally desired to witness to anybody this past week, to introduce them to Jesus Christ so that at least one more citizen of our country is on God’s side.  I’m not saying have you witnessed, I’m saying have you even desired to share the gospel with someone else.  Has that been a desire with you recently? 

Some of you smirk and say a back to the Bible movement is not going to solve social problems.  Let me prove to you one town that got so shook up that it did, Acts 19:21, I just want to show you one example from history where there was an economic, an immediate strong economic result from a back to the Bible movement.  And I would say that if some of you have doubts about the economic implications of a back to the Bible movement, go back and talk to the silversmiths here and he’ll give you a big lowdown on the economic implications of Paul’s revival.  [Verse 18, “And many that believed came, and confessed, and showed their deeds. [19] Many of those also who used magical arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. [20] So mightily grew the Word of God, and prevailed.]

 

Verse 21, “After these things were ended, Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go into Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome. [22] So he sent him into Macedonia two of those that ministered unto him, Timothy and Erastus; but he himself stayed in Asia for a season. [23] And about that same time there arose no small stir about that way.”  Don’t you love the way the King James says it, “no small stir,” what it means is a riot.  Verse 24, “For a certain man, named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsman.”  Diana is not his girlfriend, Diana is a goddess, and this fellow’s profession was to make these silver statutes of Diana.  “…and they brought no small gain to the craftsman; [25] Whom he called together, with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. [26] Moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus,” not watch verse 26, he’s called all the businessmen together, the bankers and everybody else on this one, they’re having a big conference.  Look what happened in verse 26, “Moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia,” that’s all of what is now Turkey, Asia Minor, “this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying that there are no gods which are made with hands; [27] So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also that the temple of the great goddess, Diana, should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom al Asia and the world worships.”

 

And it goes on and tells how they arranged with the police to have this guy arrested.  Was that an economic result of a back to the Bible movement?  You bet it was, and these people weren’t irritated over spiritual things, they were just irritated that they couldn’t sell any more.  It was a fantastic economic impact of this thing, people said forget it, I’m not interested, and these people were thrown out of a job, and that led to one of the greatest persecutions in the book of Acts, to the jailing of Paul

 

So the second point on the doctrine of poverty is that if we had a back to the Bible movement it would result in economic straightening up.  If you want an illustration from modern history I refer you to the time of English history, shortly after the French Revolution and during that period when England was down low.  England had been tremendously demoralized, she lost America, our colonies had revolted and that was a deep humiliation to the English because these little tidbit colonies over here telling the great British Empire what to do. They couldn’t stand this, and it really got to them, and they did a national face-lifting job in the first part of the 19th century and they said what is wrong with out country, we are going down and down, and the French over across the channel had had a tremendous revolt, what’s going to happen to us.  And there were a few men that stepped into the gap, both in the 18th century and in the 19th.  In the 18th century it was Wesley and other men.  But you had a back to the Bible movement in the 18th and 19th century in England, in the middle part of both those centuries and that is what saved England and England and England went on to be the greatest Empire the world has ever seen so that they could proudly say that the sun never sets on the British Empire. And don’t ever forget that when the British Empire collapsed the missionary enterprise from England also collapsed with it and just prior to it, so it is intimately related to the fact that the country that shares the missionary enterprise that emphasizes the Lord, etc. is always the one that is blessed.  Germany, a nation of tremendous education, by the way everyone says education is going to solve problems; Germany was one of the best educated nation in the world and look at the monster it produced in World War II.  There’s what education will do for you, education will just make evil worse and good better.  That’s the only thing, but it won’t make evil good or it won’t make good evil. Spirituality is what determines that, education just makes you go further whichever way you happen to choose spiritually. 

 

The third thing in the doctrine of poverty: we reject the idea of a naturalistic millennium.  There are three ways you can look at history.  You can look at a gradualistic millennium, that’s socialism; you can look at a revolutionary millennium, that’s communism, or you can look at a Biblical millennium and that’s our position.  All three views have a millennium in view.  If you want detail academic background on this I refer you to Norman Cohen’s book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, in which he has shown that both communism and socialism have come out of the premillennial doctrine of Scripture.  Isn’t it interesting that Karl Marx historically was influenced by a belief that can be traced back to the Middle Ages which was a distorted view of the Millennium of Scripture?  This Millennium, the idea of a future golden age was not in existence in the ancient world.  I have studied many of the ancient civilizations and you just can’t find it.  You can find evidences of a past golden age that has been lost, but nowhere in ancient history do you come across the idea of a future golden age. That is only found in the Bible.

 

What happened during the Middle Ages, you had the Roman Catholic Church follow Augustine.  Augustine was an amillennialist and Augustine cancelled out the idea of a premillennial view of Christ, in other words, his view was that you have history going along, Jesus Christ is risen, after the Church Age He’s going to come again and that’s it, no Millennium.  Our view, Jesus Christ rises from the dead, we have the Church Age, Jesus Christ comes again and sets up the Millen­nium, a thousand years of perfect environment.  It is the premillennialism that permeated the grassroots of the Church during the Middle Ages, although the official structure was amillennial and followed Augustine.  The grassroots was what led to the social reformers of the later Middle Ages who had written many things, and these men later were picked up by Karl Marx and others.  And so the cause, ironically, of the vision of a future world has come from the Bible, and that is the root from which you can historically trace it, Norman Cohen does it in about 600 pages if you want the details.  We have therefore the historical idea that the idea of a future age golden era has come from the Bible. 

 

Going back to these three options, what has happened?  Gradualism, here’s the socialist, he wants to legislate, legislate, legislate, until he brings in the Millennium; that’s his view. Communism says no, we’re not going to legislate, legislate, legislate, we’re going to have a revolution and destroy it all, then there will be the Millennium.  What is our criticism?  Our criticism simply is that socialism and communism cannot provide assurances that once this process has happened the Millennium is really going to be there.  You see, communism and socialism do not have a philosophy of history that has proved itself and they can provide you and me with no evidence that after they get through the process it’s going to really work.  What proof do we have that when we get through our process it will work?  2 Peter 1, “We have a more sure word of prophecy,” that you would do well to take heed.  What did Peter say?  You can be absolutely sure that the Millennium we look forward to is going to happen because Jesus Christ proved it in His ministry.  He proved it when He went to the Mount of Transfiguration and gave the disciples a few minutes glimpse at that future golden age.  So we know, we have proof inside history that our Millennium is going to come about.  The communists and socialists can present none and we say to both the socialists and the communists that when you get through with your process you’re not going to have a golden age, you’re going to have a ruin, you’re going to have a wreck, and you’re going to have destruction of all civilization.

 

Therefore we come to the end of this section, next time we’ll deal with the problem of slavery.  It’s interesting that one of the greatest, I think, one of the greatest conservative theologians of our day, Alva McLain wrote in his book, The Greatness of the Kingdom, page 79, of this thing that we have studied in chapter 15, (quote) “It is allowed,” considering this way of fighting poverty in Israel, “it is allowed on one hand considerable room for the play of individual initiative and energy with their proper rewards, but at the same time it guarded against the evils of great concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few with the consequent impoverishment of others.”  What McLain simply said is that at every seven years when this would happen, do you see what would happen; the people would have the debts off their back so they could start over again.  It wasn’t a perpetual handout on the part of the government that would cause the people to become dependent on the government, but it was relief so that at least the people could catch up with themselves and at least have a fresh start.  And the person who really wants to work, the person who wants [can’t understand word], oftentimes can do it if he can just get a fresh start, if he can just get rid of his past mistakes and start fresh. 

 

This is what the program the Bible offered Israel did.  Every seven years the debts would be erased and the persons could merge to the surface and start fresh again, and that was the divinely designed war on poverty.