Clough Proverbs Lesson 65

DI #1: Law of Money: Loans

I’d like to answer some of the questions that have been accumulating the last two or three weeks. Would you explain 1 Chronicles 21:18 in terms of eminent domain? If one man owned his property and chose to use it as he wished by giving it for use of making a burnt offering, why then did David refuse to accept this witness without making payment. Let’s turn to 1 Chronicles 21:18, this is another illustration of the doctrine of eminent domain as understood in Scripture. And it doesn’t require a genius to see that this doctrine is being violated all over the place. In fact, modern state and federal government, and local government for that matter, basically operate on an utter denial of biblical Christianity at this point. Eminent domain, you recall, that God only is the absolute owner of property, that the state can own property and individuals can own property but there are spheres of authority and the state does not have the unhindered authority to usurp private property and here we see it again. In the Bible, in other words, eminent domain is an attribute of God, not of the state. In American law at the present moment eminent domain is the property of the state, not of God. So we’re at two different, completely points of view here on this one.

Verse 18, “Then the angel of the LORD commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto the LORD in the threshing floor or Ornan, the Jebusite.” Private property. The ideal was for a government institution on private property, he had authority from God Himself. Verse 19, “And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spoke in the name of the LORD. [20] And Ornan turned back, and saw the angels; and four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ronan was threshing wheat. [21] And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshing floor, and bowed himself to David, with his face to the ground. [22] Then David said or Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar in it unto the LORD;” so you have the state approaching the individual citizen for transferring title of property from the individual to the state for a state function; “thou shalt grant it to me for the full price;” and this is David respecting eminent domain, that even under God’s authority he must give full price, that means fair market price for the property that he buys, but he asked for it, he doesn’t tell him. He asked Ornan’s permission for it. [23] “And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord, the king, do that which is good in his eyes;” so the private owner said okay, this is fine with me, and turns his property over to the state. He offers to give it to the state, but David in verse 24 says, “No, but I will give you full price for the property.”

Why does David insist on this? Because David respects the two different spheres, divine institution four, divine institution one, and David knows that when you transfer property from one institution to the other there must be certain procedures adhered to, regardless of whether the person wants to give it or not. David respects the divisions between the institution’s authority and is not interested in creating any kind of illegal precedent. For that reason David goes ahead and pays him anyway. It’s true, the individual decided that he wanted to give it to the state but in this case David wanted to refrain from any kind of pressure because if he allowed Ornan to give him the property, next time, with more vicious kings they could say, after they strong armed somebody, well he just gave it to me. So David keeps the issues between the divine institutions clear, something that American law in every area is not doing today. American law in this area is very, very apostate.

In Acts 5:1-10 was this also theft? If it was so, was the death of Ananias and Sapphira a judgment or a punishment from God, or was this judgment only severe because of the beginning of the church. Why the severity. There, you remember, there was sin of theft and the point there of God’s severe judgment on the sin of theft was that at the beginning of each dispensation, at the beginning of each dispensation God is very clear to enforce His Word. He does not enforce His Word with such rigor throughout the rest of the dispensation. You see this with the dispensation of Law, you see it with the dispensation of the Church and so on, it’s repeat. And of course, obviously if God enforced the law that way today it would reduce the population of Christendom considerably; we wouldn’t have to worry about new buildings.

All right, the next question is: Couldn’t the argument be forwarded that the government is taking up the slack of the negative volition of its people in its attempt to provide for the poor? If the people will not provide for the poor the state takes up the ball by utilizing forced tithing. That’s correct. Where you have the state involved in welfare programs it’s only because the people individually didn’t take care of it at first. And it’s too bad but that’s just the way it goes, and the state has moved in to these spheres because private groups have moved out of them, and once the state gets its foot in then the private groups can’t survive and it’s just one very quick step into total welfarism.

If the state does not have the power of eminent domain, what recourse does a citizen have in the face of government theft of his property? What righteous means does God’s Word allow? And there is none, except by revolution, or if you have… by prayer, by just simply praying that this injustice would fall upon the heads of the government. This is a legitimate prayer that a Christian can make towards illegitimate government, when the government thieves you ask God to punish the government. And this is a legitimate prayer for a Christian to make so that would be one righteous way where the Christian could pray.

Now we have some questions about the money that we dealt with last time. The first question is: If you have a friend or relative in dire need do you give your money to the person or to the church; the church is also in need but if I have only so much to give where is my first obligation in God’s eyes. Your first obligation in God’s eyes is within the third divine institution, not the church. 1 Timothy 5:8 is your verse, where it says that “if any man provide not for his own,” he’s worse than an infidel. And it means when you have pressing obligations to your immediate relatives, in that situation those needs come first. And after that you give to God; this business, this racketeering that goes on in the name of Christianity, where people in this city have been asked to tithe to their local church when they can’t put food on their own table and are not taking care of their own people and so on is unbiblical.

The next question dealing with money is: I’m curious about Rev. Witherspoon’s contention that money should be scarce; this would seem to imply that money value is contingent on its distribution. If God imputes value to gold is it not beside the point whether or not gold is abundant or scarce? The point is that all money is scarce, whatever medium you use for the money is scarce, and that’s what raises its value, one of the things that raises its value, the law of supply and demand. Now the point is that God has deliberately made gold in short supply and He’s simply recognizing that man’s valuation of gold is correct. There’s no conflict between the two; it’s just that God is simply recognizing man’s judgment in the situation.

Today we come to the second part of the law of money and with this lesson we finish the first divine institution in the book of Proverbs. We have dealt with the first divine institution, once again, notice the area we’re working in, and the laws of money have to do with the first, not the fourth. Many of you are so used to thinking of money and monetary policies in terms of government regulations you misunderstand the point here. We haven’t even got to government regulations, this has nothing to with government regulations, this has to do with money that preexisted government. Which came first? Government or money? Money did, government didn’t happen until after the flood. So obviously economic policies are policies of free market dynamics, not the result of government, originally. And we have dealt with the many areas in the first divine institution, and last week we dealt with money.

We made two basic points about money last week. First, and according to Scripture money is a highly valued commodity and since Adam has generally been gold and silver. That is until we had the whiz kids take over the United States with all their brilliant ideas. But before the smart ones took over everybody since Adam held to a currency that was convertible to gold and silver. And as the man that we quoted last week said, as you can tell a person by the company he keeps, you can tell a government by the currency it issues. And so gold and silver go back to the time of Adam.

The second point about money is that since it is a commodity it must be traded honestly with true value. And so therefore you can tamper with money and you saw verse after verse after verse in Scripture that dealt with God’s attitude toward debasing currency; that is one of the worst sins that any national entity can do. But you take the average fundy and he’s so concerned whether somebody is showing dirty movies down the street that he fails to realize that one of the dirtiest things in God’s eyes is the entire banking system in the United States. That is far more filthy in God’s eyes than some dirty movie that some fundy is worried about. And we’ll have committees and go protest and everything else to get some movie censorship thing across and not one fundy will raise his voice about monetary policy. That shows you where the education is today; that shows you how much Bible doctrine is known in fundamentalist circles. When back in the days of the Revolution John Witherspoon could write a tract for distribution on the streets of Boston that I read part of last week and it was known by almost everybody that picked up the tract.

So those were the two things about money. Now to transition to what we’re going to do today, concluding area of economics, we have to review the sin of theft. Last week we showed you the chart on what is happening to U.S. money and showing you how the backing our currency is so low, that paper money, fiat money, is hanging in thin air and does not have a backing; it doesn’t have inherent value. One of the great leading economists of our day who’s very unfavorably looked upon by most people, except those who recognize that he’s the closest to the biblical position is Professor Ludwig Von (?) of Austria. And he pointed out that government is the only institution known to man that can take something that was once worth something, paper, print it and make it worth nothing. And this is a good illustration of paper fiat money.

Now, the sin of theft; if you will recall when we dealt with the sin of theft we said two kinds of entities can commit this sin: we can say the individual can commit the sin of theft and we can say that the government can commit the sin of theft. So both can commit the sin of theft. Now by most American principles, because they violate the Word of God, the government makes the laws and therefore it can’t break them. I have to laugh at all the liberals worried about Watergate. I think it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to this country, frankly; I laugh at it because it’s just application of situation ethics, that’s all, and who’s been teaching those for all these years. They have, so the birds have come to roost. Now I’m just sitting by the side, I think it’s very funny, I’m enjoy it, because this is exactly where everything is going and it’s just coming out in the open, that’s all, and in our liberal position that begins with something other than the Word of God, you haven’t anything to say about Watergate; all you can say is you don’t like it. But you can’t say it’s wrong, you don’t have any standard for right and wrong.

So on the basis of the Word of God however, we do have standards, and on these standards both the individual and government can sin. Now in the area of money, what do we call the sin of theft, when it’s committed by the individual? The debasement of currency or the sin of theft of money is called counterfeiting. So if the individual sins we have a word for it; it’s called counterfeiting, and that is the list of debasing currency, it’s selling false goods. But, when government commits the same sin then what do we call it; it’s actually the same kind of thing, we call it inflation, because in inflation what is happening is the government is printing fiat currency that’s no good. And so therefore it’s the same sin except one is committed by the government and the other is committed by the individual and both incur people who are getting robbed. When you have somebody counterfeiting currency people get robbed and hurt in transactions. When the government promotes inflation people get robbed and hurt.

We have older people in our congregation here who are on fixed income and they are being robbed. In fact, one great prestigious economic research institute calculated that since 1939, due to inflation, one trillion dollars of American savings have disappeared through inflation. That is one of the most massive thefts on record. No individual has ever stolen this much but that’s what inflation has stolen. Inflation is a sin. One trillion dollars of American savings and do you know who it’s hurt; it’s hurt the people who are operating on biblical principles, the people who save, the people who have put their money away so they wouldn’t be a burden to their children when they got older, and who is it that gets faked out? Those people, the widows and the orphans; the same kind of class that always get faked out every time a government violates biblical norms. So you have a trillion dollar theft and it’s called inflation. And you have both democrats and republicans whether inflation is good or bad. To the Word of God both are wrong; obviously inflation is not to be tolerated, but to be fair, to be perfectly fair to politicians today, if you and I were the politicians we’d have much fear at ever doing anything about it because if they started killing off inflation and started throttling it down you would have joblessness, you would have a temporary recession and depression type situation, and no politician in his right mind is going to set one of those off. So we’ll just keep on with inflation until one just comes naturally. Someone has defined depression as economic diarrhea, it clears the track.

We come now to the second part of the biblical doctrine of money and that has to do with something that involves everyone, the problem of loans. And so we have to deal with the biblical doctrine of loans. So to start turn to Proverbs 22:7. I know to some of you it’s a shock that the Word of God has something to say about these areas but just stick by, you’d be surprised what the Word of God has to say. You thought it could be confined to your own private devotional life and it shouldn’t interfere with these other questions.

Proverbs 22:7, let’s get the basic picture behind loans first and then we’ll go into the principles governing and controlling loans. “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.” Now notice the last part of verse 7, “the borrower is servant to the lender.” Here’s why. You have these three steps: capital or property, labor, money. That’s the way we’ve handled in this section on the laws of property, labor and money. We handle it in this order because labor always needs property to function. Labor is a creative thing. And you can’t ex nihilo anything; you can’t create from nothing; God alone can do this. So every creature has to be a capitalist; every creature has to be a capitalist. You say the communists aren’t capitalists; oh yes they are, they’re state capitalists, the state owns the means of production so they’re still capitalists. Every creature is a capitalist. Now let’s watch what happens. You need capital in order to function. Where you going to get the capital; only one of two ways, you can save or you can borrow, it’s that simple. You’ve got to get capital, you’ve got to get capital to move, to work with, and you normally get it either by saving it or by borrowing it.

Now the principle is that while you are borrowing capital and working on borrowed capital, you are working for the one whose capital it is. And that’s the principle of Proverbs 22:7. When you work with borrowed capital you are simply working for the one who owns the capital. That’s the principle. So it’s not saying that loans are all bad; the Bible is going to deal with it in a moment. But the principle is that the borrower is a servant or worker of the lender; the lender is the one whose capital it is. So the worker can’t get out here and think he’s autonomous; he is not. When you go for a loan you have to convince the bank of your credit. You have to operate under certain restrictions; you do work for the bank who has loaned you the money. So don’t kid yourself, when you borrow money, whether it’s MasterCard or any other system, you are still working for the one whose money you have borrowed, you’re not working for yourself. And so this why it concerns the Word of God, because you can destroy the first divine institution by loans. What is the essence or the heart, or the guts of the first divine institution? Individual responsibility and you kill it by constantly getting involved over your head in this area.

Now, let’s move to the passage in the Old Testament that relates the principle of Proverbs 22:7 to the national life of the nation; then we’ll say more about the flavor of this overall view of Proverbs 22:7. Turn to Deuteronomy 28:12, the blessings and the cursing passages given to the nation. The last part of verse 12 and verse 13, this is a sign of blessing, “and thou shalt lend unto many nations, and thou shalt not borrow. [13] And the LORD shall make you the head, and not the tail;” in other words, the one who loans the money is the head; the one who borrows the money is the tail, and that’s the idea, and that’s the divine viewpoint of borrowing money. This is the principle.

Now if you look at Deuteronomy 28:43, here’s the cursings, here’s what would happen under negative volition when the nation Israel was operating in rejection of Yahweh, what He would do to them. Verse 43, “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high, and thou shalt come down very low. [44] He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.” So again you the principle that the Bible warns us that whoever you borrow from, that person is your boss. If you want to borrow, go ahead, but you’d better be aware what you’re doing. You are indebting yourself to some person and thereby are destroying your freedom that much. Any time you borrow you must sacrifice your freedom.

Now we’re not saying that in this situation it’s not justifiable to borrow; we’re simply saying that if you do you’d better be aware that you’re sacrificing your freedom in order to borrow. Now people will say well, that’s okay because under modern law I can always file for bankruptcy if I get over my head, I don’t have to worry about that. Here is where a Christian banker, we have some people in our congregation that work in various banking institutions and they often have a problem that Christians who work in these institutions have, and that is because they are a Christian every bleeding heart believer in Lubbock comes trotting into their office wanting a loan… oh, you’re a brother, sob, sob, and then they come in and they want a loan or something. And they take advantage of these people’s allegiance to Jesus Christ to kind of worm their way into their affection so they can get a loan. But all the while these people, if they’re smart believers, will say at that time “no” and it will be the greatest thing that these Christian bankers can do to other Christians is to say “no,” because by saying no they’re actually protecting them; they’re actually preserving their freedom because if God is leading you in a business transaction, if you have a business transaction, if God is really leading you, from what we know of these kinds of laws does it stand to reason that God would lead you to get overly indebted. Is that a leading of the Lord? Can that possibly be a leading of the Lord from what we know of the Word regarding finances. No. So when a banker recognizes this he’s simply one more parameter that a believer who is thinking ought to think about. When he comes up to the banker and the banker says no, you don’t have enough credit for this kind of thing, instead of getting hacked he ought to think well, maybe I don’t, maybe this whole thing is not of the Lord to begin with; the pieces don’t fit together. So this may be a ministry.

Now just in case you are one of those people who are so plentiful today who think well, it doesn’t make any difference, I’ll just borrow the money and if I can’t pay it back we file bankruptcy, no problem. There’s a verse for you; turn to Psalm 37:21 and I don’t think it needs any comment. “The wicked borrow, and pays not again;” that’s your favorite verse. All right, that cuts off that kind of attitude, well, I’ll just file bankruptcy. Huh-un, you can get away with it under the law but the point remains is, should you ever have gotten involved with it in the first place. Is that the leading of the Lord, to get into a mess like that? And especially with that attitude. All right, that’s the basic picture then; the basic picture of loans is that it’s a giving up of freedom to accomplish something. It may be or may not be justifiable but borrowing is giving up freedom.

Now, our second point in the biblical doctrine of loans is that loaning at interest is not charity. Turn to Leviticus 25:36, the difference between loans and charity and we’d better pay careful attention here because if you’ve been a Christian any longer than 4 or 5 months and if you’ve gotten your name on some money raising list you have undoubtedly received in the mail recently or in the last few weeks notices from various organizations requesting that you buy Christian annuities, requesting that you invest your money in these Christian organizations because in this way you can be giving to these people and at the same time making money while you’re giving. In other words, is it really true that you can mix charity and interest loans or usury? The word “usury,” a nasty word in the Middle Ages, but the word “usury” meant loans at interest, that’s all, usury.

And the question we are faced with in Leviticus 25:36 is this: can usury and charity ever be mixed. Every major Christian organization believes it can be because they issue Christian annuities in which you lay up your funds for their particular organization. This is Christian concept, these organizations all believe that usury and charity can be mixed. Now can it; again let’s turn to the Word of God as our standard. Leviticus 25:35, “And if thy brother hath become poor, and fall in decay with thee [cannot support himself among you], then you shall relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you. [36] Take no usury [interest] of him, or increase [profit], but fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee. [37] Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury [profit], nor lend him thy victuals [food supplies] for increase [profit].

That’s not saying you can’t loan him but you can’t loan him at interest and loaning at interest is usury. And so at Leviticus 25 we have a sharp line drawn that in Israel you could not mix usury and charity, the two are mutually exclusive categories. Loans at interest are not charity and it was forbidden under Old Testament law. If you doubt this turn to Deuteronomy 23 where you have the same kind of demand in this law. This will save you a lot of grief, incidentally; if you have a friend don’t ever loan him money; give it to him or just forget it but don’t loan friends money or they won’t be your friends any more. Deuteronomy 23:19, “You shall not lend upon usury [interest] to thy brother; usury [interest] of money, usury [interest] of food, usury [interest] of anything that is lent upon usury [interest.” [20] Upon a stranger [foreigner] you may lend, but not unto thy brother.” And the point that is made here, it is not fitting for the redeemed to be enslaved financially in the light of the fact that they’re not enslaved spiritually. Their outward economic life should be a reflection of their inward spiritual life. And therefore within the nation usury and charity could not be permitted together. Another verse reference is Exodus 22:25. So usury and charity were not mixed and for Christian organizations to involve themselves in Christian annuities is a fraudulent claim. This is nothing more than Christian huckstering and it’s a violation of the Word of God. Either give or invest but you can’t do both.

Now we come to the third principle involved in the area of loans and that is: is usury permitted at all? Turn to Luke 6:34, it was on this verse that Thomas Aquinas and other thinkers of the Middle Ages said that the Catholic Church would not permit any usury whatsoever, and during the Middle Ages this is why the Jews became bankers. They were the only ones permitted to engage in usury. It was, said Aquinas, a sin to charge any interest for any loan whatsoever, all usury is wrong. And these men turned to Luke 6:34 to justify that point. Now you may think that it’s small potatoes and this is not too relevant but I just point to you that if you study medieval history, for centuries your forefathers lived under an economic situation that was set up by an interpretation of these verses. So this is not just a little Bible verse; this is a verse that historically controlled European finance for centuries.

Now let’s look at Luke 6:34. “And if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thanks have you? For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. [35] But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again,” and so these words of Christ were taken to mean you should lend your money at zero percent interest, you shouldn’t expect interest back. Usury, then, was a sin under all conditions. Now as usual, when you take one verse of Scripture and use that as your norm, you get in trouble, like a group of people that seem to build their Bible on Acts 2:38 and 22:16. You get in trouble when you build out of just a few verses of Scripture. Now if these men had just seriously noticed that in the very same Gospel, in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 19 you have Christ commending the use of usury, they would never have made the ridiculous laws they had during the Middle Ages.

Luke 19:23, in this parable Jesus Christ commends the banking institution for charging interest. This is legitimate; usury is alright. In fact, in the parables the man is condemned for not… it says in verse 23, “Wherefore, then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury,” in other words, with interest. So obviously Jesus is not condemning all uses of usury. The point he was making back in Luke 6 is the point of personal relationships on the grace principle, that where you’re involved in a Christian testimony, where you’re involved in a person to person relationship, there may come times when you use the grace principle and you don’t insist on interest. It may be at times you turn the other cheek but turning the other cheek has nothing to do with the fourth divine institution of government power, and that is a misapplication. Passivism does not grow, or cannot grow, out of the statement, “turn the other cheek.” The Israelis today are not turning the other cheek and they are following the Word of God exactly in their battle against a bunch of thieving Arabs.

All right, so usury is permitted in Scripture under certain conditions. Now we come to the principles of loans and borrowing in Scripture. What are some of these principles; some of them are very obvious; some of these are things that if any of you have what we call common sense you know these already, but since so few have common sense this will be a startling revelation. So let’s pick these principles up and they are three fold. The first principle that controls borrowing money is the principle of Romans 13:8, “owe no man anything,” that’s the ideal. The first principle is avoid all borrowing if possible. Avoid the borrowing if it is possible. The ideal is don’t borrow if you can help it. That’s the ideal, taught in Romans 13:8. Other things are taught in Romans 13:8 beside that but that’s one of them. So that first principle is easy, that’s your ideal in Scripture, is no borrowing if you can help it. We have some young people in this congregation that have caught onto this principle and they are staying out of college to earn money and those that have gone through college and have been counting debts are getting jobs that are going to pay these off so they can have freedom to do what the Lord wants them to do in their life. This is very good. But the ideal is don’t borrow if possible.

Now the Bible is realistic and is going to know there are the times when you have to borrow so all borrowing is not bad and that comes to the second principle, and that’s taught in Deuteronomy 24:6. What is this second principle: The principle is borrow within your credit where credit means your ability to repay; it includes your present assets, your ability to earn money in the future, your reliability and so on. Borrow within your credit; your ability to repay. Now to show you how sticky the Word of God is about this, we’re going to take you to a very interesting passage. To interpret this passage you have to have a little background, I’m going to give it to you but when we get finished I want you to see that God is very sticky about this point of extending your credit beyond its legitimate means.

In Deuteronomy 24:6 it makes a very interesting phrase. “No man shall take the nether [lower] or the upper millstone to the pledge; for he takes a man life to pledge.” Now what has that got to do with loans and credit? Well, let’s look at the word “upper millstone, the “nether” or the “upper millstone.” What was the millstone? The millstone was used in the family kitchen to grind the grain and hence to feed the family. So the first thing you want to know about this verse is that we’re talking about something that is essential to feed that family unit. The woman, the wife of the household used the upper and the nether millstone to grind the grain. So this was a basic tool of the woman in the kitchen. Without this tool she couldn’t grind the grain to feed her family, so this particular tool, a very valuable one, every ancient family had to have. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing is, “take it to pledge,” this means to take this away as collateral. So let’s look at what we’ve got. We have the person wanting to borrow a certain amount of money; we’ll says X dollars. In order to borrow X dollars this person is so hard up that they have to, for collateral take something worth X dollars which is the millstone. It turns out the millstone, however, is the thing that is the essential to life, literally, they can’t make the bread without it. So what has happened is that you have a person in such heavy debt that the only thing they can put up for collateral is the most expensive thing they own and that thing they own that they’re putting up for collateral is the millstone. Now God forbids that kind of borrowing and He says you will not take the millstone for credit. In other words, this restriction of verse 6 was upon two people. The restriction of verse 6 is written as though it’s a restriction only upon the borrower; not so. Verse 6 also restricts the lender; if you’re in a position where you want to borrow a lot of money from me and the only thing that you’ve got left is your millstone, verse 6 in ancient Israel would prohibit me from taking that and therefore your loan would be rejected.

So what is verse 6 doing? It’s establishing an upper limit on credit for a family; it is saying that this family cannot, unto God, over indebt itself beyond these points. There are certain maximum points of a family unit and it is a sin before God to borrow beyond that point.

Let’s look at Deuteronomy 24:10, same principle. “When you dost lend your brother anything,” in this one, pay attention now to verses 10-13 because it gets a little complicated so let’s read the verses together rand then I’ll explain them to you. “When you dost lend thy brother anything, you shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge. [11] You will stand outside, and the man to whom you dost lend shall bring out the pledge to you.” That is so that… he has to bring something that’s going to satisfy you but that’s to preserve the freedom within his house. Notice, the freedom of the third divine institution, how that third divine institution is protected. It’s symbolized by the fact that the banker can’t walk into the house; the banker has to stand outside the front door because that house is an autonomous unit, so to speak, away from the banker’s authority. The Bible preserves the freedom and dignity of that family unit. The banker and the creditor cannot come into the house; they have to stand outside the house.

Now, furthermore, Deuteronomy 24:12, “If the man be poor, you will not sleep with his pledge.” Now what does that mean? Verse 13, “In any case you shall deliver him the pledge again when the sun goes down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless you,” now what has that got to do with banking. All right, again we go back to something very interesting. He wants to borrow X dollars; here it’s not the millstone, here he has to put up collateral and the collateral here is his coat; that’s the last possession he has. So this shows you the man is in a bad shape economically, very bad shape. And so in order to gain up a loan he has to put up the very last possession he has as collateral, which is his coat. But now why this strange thing about giving him the coat at night again? Doesn’t this mean that it wouldn’t force him to repay the loan? Why this trading forth of the collateral every night.

All right, the banks in the ancient world would be open during the day; there were no nighttime 24 hour deposits or anything else in those days. There was just daytime service. All right, if during the hours that the bank was open the collateral was always held by one banker, it would prevent this man from going and using his coat as collateral on another loan. If he was able to keep his coat for both the daytime as well as the night, he could secure another loan for X dollars and so have 2 X dollars borrowed. He would be multiply in debt; he would have made two or more loans with the same piece of collateral. On the other hand, notice what the law does here; it’s very deftly designed. It’s the poor man’s coat, he is down to that last thing in his life and so the Bible says you should at least not freeze at night, you should have use of this last piece of collateral, partially, but not in such a way as to allow to him to indebt himself beyond a certain limit. So this verse prevents multiple indebtedness; he could not secure another loan once one banker had that coat during the day, another banker couldn’t have the coat at the same time. So this again cuts off multiple indebtedness.

And then in Deuteronomy 24:17, at the end of verse 17, and that’s an interesting thing about the widow, “You shalt not take a widow’s coat to pledge,” now what does that mean? That means the widow, her credit would be less than that; that widow could not borrow even on her coat at all. Why? Because God wanted to leave her with this because the persist economy of the widow was very insecure in the ancient world, and so this is one of those many, many little tiny details in the Mosaic Law that shows God’s tender concern for those who are economically underprivileged, the people God’s law does take care of them and the widow was not permitted to indebt herself beyond this at all. So these restrictions on collateral were not just directed against the banker or the lender; it was directed also against the borrower or the person wanting the loan.

So the principle of the second law… the first one was avoid debt, all debt if possible. Secondly, God has an upper limit to credit and it is a sin to transgress that. Now you’ve got to figure it out yourself with the aid, perhaps, of a person who is financially trained, a banker who knows his stuff, who is trained in the area of finances can estimate where your position of credit lies. And he isn’t going to do you favor by over estimating your credit, and some bankers will but the banker that is morally sensitive to (?) will not permit people to borrow over their credit. And it’s tough to be that kind of a banker. You can imagine how it would be; every body is angry at you for not loaning them the money. Actually, they’re the one that is doing you the favor because it should cause you to think, is this really of the Lord.

Now from what you already know of these two principles what does that tell you next time you’re involved in this kind of a situation… well, what is God’s will??? Well, you’ve already got two laws to help you determine what God’s will is. God’s will is not that you transgress the principles He gave in the Deuteronomic Law for Israel, the general principles. Will He be leading you contrary to those principles? No. So it’s not God’s will to be leading you into multiple indebtedness where you get completely over your credit. That is not God’s will. And any person that you see that is over their head in debt, beyond their credit, their legitimate credit worked out, is out of the will of God. That is the conclusion. Now a lot of the ulcers and everything else that comes about because of this kind of thing, you see how much easier it would be to just stay in the will of God. So you don’t have five Cadillacs in your driveway, just relax, get a horse, better mileage. So the point is that if people were following the Lord’s will you see how it cuts down all sorts of other problems that come up. God would never have permitted them to do it in the first place. If Jesus Christ sat in your living room and you walked in one day and said Lord, do you think I ought to borrow this kind of money, you know what it is pretty much from this passage; if it’s over your credit, huh-un; but I need it; too bad.

All right, there’s a third principle with debt and that is found in Deuteronomy 15:1, this is the hardest principle; the easiest principle to understand, one of the hardest principles to apply, as is so often the case. I don’t think there’s any great theological difficulty with the first two principles and there isn’t with the third one but try to apply consistently and you’ll see that there’s a spiritual problem. Today we are schooled, trained by all the propaganda in the phrase that debt is a way of life. That’s the rule of the government, that’s why the government is issuing, the Federal Reserve Bank system is issuing more paper dollars than they’ve got backing for. This has become the dogma of Americans today, that indebtedness is a way of life. Now that’s a commonly accepted thing. Now you could guess there’s something wrong with that from the first law. Remember what the first law said? Avoid debt if possible; second one, don’t get in over your head in credit, but just to make sure that we understand this God gives us a third principle, because if you have those first two principles you could rationalize it and say well God, I always stay within my credit, I’m always in debt but it’s always within my credit to repay, so I’ll just keep in debt and when I pay one loan off I’ll just go borrow some more money and we’ll keep on going this way. In other words, indebtedness has become a principle of your life. Now that is cut off by this passage.

Deuteronomy 15:1, “At the end of every seven years you will make a release. [2] And this is the manner of the release: every creditor who lend anything unto his neighbor, shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother, because it is called the LORD’s release. [3] Of a foreigner you may exact it again; but that which is thine with thy brother, thine hand shall release.” Now this is a complicated passage. I explain it more carefully in my Deuteronomy series; today we’re not interested in the detail, we’re just interested in the concept of verses 1-11 and following. The point this passage is making is that there is not to be long-term indebtedness. Under the economy of Israel all debt ceased after six years; it was cut off. Just to make this stick, what the Mosaic Law said was if you loan someone $2000 and they, at the end of six years have paid off $1200, so that left $800, you lost it. After six years the debt would be erased. And if you got stuck having loans for $2000 to someone and they only repaid $1200 by the sixth year, you took the loss. But God would not permit indebtedness to go on and on and on and on and on, he would cut it off every six years.

Now He had another way of cutting it off, Deuteronomy 15:12, “If thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee,” this is what happened if a person were in debt; when they couldn’t pay they would sell themselves into slavery; slavery was a means of paying off debt in the ancient world. Now you think we don’t have slavery today; have you ever been in debt? Don’t kid yourself, this principle still works, we don’t call it slavery but you know how you feel when every time you get a paycheck it’s gone, there goes a whole wad to pay off somebody that you owe. Now that’s slavery, you’ve been working for another person, haven’t you? That’s slavery; you haven’t been working for yourself. All right, so this slavery goes on but notice the principle again. “…[and serve thee six years,] then in the seventh year you shall let him go free.” You see, the slavery could not last, it had to be cut off at the end of six years; that was the Mosaic argument against slavery, incidentally. Slavery was only a temporary thing to get out of debt and then it was cut off.

So the third principle of Scripture that we find is that all long-term debt is sin. Debt is not to be considered a normal way of life; debt is permissible, the principle is get out from under it; it is not to go on and on and on and on and on; there’s something wrong with your life if it is. It is being lived out of accordance with the plan of God. God’s plan cannot be, it can’t be leading you to violate these principles over and over and over. The Holy Spirit wrote these principles so how can he be leading you contrary to His own principles. It can’t be the Holy Spirit; a spirit might be leading you but not the Holy Spirit.

Let’s come, as I’ve tried to do every time with these principles; we’ve dealt the economic principles, we’ve seen what God has promulgated in the Old Testament, we’ve seen that these carry over into the New Testament, now let’s see the spiritual analogy of this. There’s a reason for this. If we understand that God is the Creator of all things and we divide life up this way, then the God who created the Church is the same God who created the first divine institution. If He created both doesn’t it follow that there might be some parallels of operation involved? Of course. And what is the one great doctrine that is parallel to economic debt. It is the concept of sin and redemption.

The doctrine of sin and redemption is just a spiritual version of the same idea of loans and indebtedness. To show you this turn to Exodus 12:35. In Exodus 12:35 you’ll find what the Jews did to Egypt. “And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed [asked] of the Egyptians,” now this is the word “borrow” but in this case it doesn’t mean borrow because they weren’t going to give it back, this just means take, “they took of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment. [36] And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians so they lent [gave] unto them such things as they required. And they spoiled the Egyptians.” Now what is the meaning of this? It means that the Jews were given money to start their nation with. The gold and the jewels were used for their coinage and it was melted down later on, they melted it into idols but it was supposed to originally have been melted down into ingots, gold and silver ingots that would have been traded on the open market. So don’t you see something interesting? When God redeems a person doesn’t He also redeem them economically? Yes. In history when God redeemed Israel it wasn’t just spiritual. It was also economic redemption. He redeemed them from indebtedness. The Jews left Egypt economically free, not just spiritually free, in all ways free. And that is redemption. And spiritual redemption is just a reflection of economic redemption.

And so the point remains as we’ve seen in Deuteronomy 28, Exodus 12, is that when a person is redeemed they are to be free from what they owe. Now sin is a slave market; sin is what we owe. The result of sin is a debt and the debt is death. Now don’t you see the analogy clearly? Surely now after this concept of why God doesn’t want us in debt, God doesn’t want us in debt spiritually. Our debt spiritually is death. Who takes death for us? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ pays off our loan and when Christ redeemed you He redeems you from all debt that you owe God…ALL debt, completely. That is redemption.

In the economic sphere then as believers our lives ought to reflect it. How can we be free spiritually and be enslaved economically?

Next week we’ll deal with the second divine institution.