Usury, Vows, Harvests

If you'll turn with me, please, in your Bibles to the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 23. Deuteronomy, chapter 23. Once again, before we look to God's Word, let us ask Him to bless our time together. Our Gracious Heavenly Father, once again, as we open your Word, we confess the need.

Of your Spirit.

We understand that there are so many things that can distract us. We understand our own inability to handle that which is truly spiritual. So we ask you to be with us this day. Meet with us by your Spirit.

May you bless your people. May we understand your truth. May we be better servants of yours.

We pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

I looked up on Sermon Audio when we began our study of God's law. We are calling it the Holiness Code, though we have actually technically gone well beyond what is specifically known as the Holiness Code in the book of Leviticus.

We started in August of 2014, so we're coming up on two years now. It hasn't been every time that I have spoken, but we have been seeking to make progress in a very difficult study. We have been tackling some of the most difficult texts in the Old Testament.

If you weren't with us as we began that study, let me just once again remind all of us, those who were here and those who are visiting, that the fundamental reason why we are dealing with these texts and really seem to be picking out some of the most difficult ones to work with is because of the fact that we live in a day when God's law is under attack, when the concept that we have a creator who can define for us the parameters of human behavior, including human sexuality and relationships with one another, that concept has pretty much been banished from the youngest generation now arising within us.

We are seeing the results of thorough secularization. It took us longer to get to this point than it did in Europe and in Canada, but now that we've gotten there, it seems that we have Greece under our feet.

I could not help but even think about the fact of what has changed since August of 2014. So many things have changed. In fact, the entire focus, I won't say the entire focus, but the focus of what is being pressed upon us has changed.

It seems to me, anyway, that with the Obergefell decision and the collapse on the part of the Supreme Court in regards to any kind of meaningful understanding of man as made in the image of God and that there are realities in regards to the establishment of marriage, it seems like the emphasis changed almost overnight as if, well, there is homosexuality, let's get this transgenderism stuff going.

And the emphasis now upon the autonomy of man, upon the idea that man between his own two ears has such sovereignty over his own existence that the physical reality itself, your very genetic makeup, no longer matters.

It's what you feel like. And we're starting to see things that in just a matter of months ago we just could not believe would be the case. I mean, it's one thing to have a former gold medal winner grandfather pretending to.

Be a female.

But now you have teachers getting $60 ,000 awards because their co-workers didn't use the appropriate pronouns that they demanded to be used of them. Now I don't know about you, but if you walk up to me and you tell me that I have to call you Zee and Jim and they, I'm not going to talk to you anymore, okay?

You're just going to become individual A to me. I'm not going to risk $60 ,000 trying to remember what pronouns you want used of you.

I'm really not, sorry.

And you'll probably get me for that too, I would imagine. And there are certain municipalities, states, cities that will stand behind you in what to me is simple insanity. It is insanity. And then you join with that video of interviews with people who dress in full body dog suits and wish to be treated as animals because they self-identify as a dog.

It's sad enough to look at someone like that. To me it's even sadder that they can find people that will adopt them and treat them.

That way.

I'm not sure which is crazier. Where does all this come from? Well, I've said it many times. We rarely thank God for the restraint that he exhibits and that he exercises upon the sinfulness of man. It is a great blessing, but because it's there, you don't see it.

When there are acts of evil that don't get committed because God's restraining the evil of man, we don't see those acts of evil. And so we are very, very slow, unless we have a biblical mindset, to be thankful to God for the restraint that he has placed upon, as a blessing, upon our nation over the experience of its 200 some odd years upon this earth.

But as that hand of judgment comes down, the hand of restraint is lifted, and very often the judgment, all God has to do is lift his hand of restraint. I've often said, I really do not believe that the eternally blessed God is going to be busily expending energy in eternity future, torturing his enemies, as if he's going to have to just be going, oh, listen, there's someone down there on the seventh level of hell and it looks like they found a nice spot, so I need to do something to get them out of that nice spot.

I just don't believe it's going to be happening. I think once God takes that hand of restraint completely off his image bearer, and that image bearer can't do anything to God, he turns upon himself, I don't think God's going to have to be expending anything at all.

I think man's going to be his own perfectly good self-torturer. When that relationship is finally broken, I think somehow, I don't think we can really imagine it, it is that self-degradation that will be the primary cause of suffering in eternity to come.

I don't think God's going to have to be sitting there firing arrows at people just for the.

Fun of it.

And the same way when he draws that hand of restraint, we are starting to see, well, dehumanization in the name of humanism. Since secularism, secular comes from the word meaning worldly, since secularism cannot give us a meaningful foundation for understanding ourselves because we're made in the image.

Of God.

Since secularism cannot do that, then the end result of secularism is of necessity the dehumanization of that which is the creation of God himself. And so, I believe it is absolutely dehumanizing for a man who is a grandfather to mutilate his body and embarrass himself in front of all those around him by pretending to be a female.

He will never have children, he will never be a grandmother. It is confusion and it is dehumanizing. And we will have to pay for making that rather obvious observation that every single generation before us would have taken as an absolute given in the not-too-distant future, in the not-too-distant future in this land, unless God in some way brings repentance and revival.

Upon this land.

To be able to engage this country and this culture, we need to understand the foundation upon which we stand. And so, we began, as some of you may recall, by a first, I think in any Reformed Baptist church ever in the world, I actually played a clip from the West Wing during a sermon using electronic mechanism.

That was the thing that probably was the straw that broke the camel's back on that one. And we listened as the law of God was abused and misused and why was it so effective? Because of the ignorance of God's people concerning that law.

Because the fact that the vast majority of people who call themselves evangelicals in our land have never actually read the entirety of the Bible. And hence, there are some difficult texts. And so, we began working through them.

And it's not easy. It's not easy to try to turn any of this into a sermon. I would imagine Pastor Fry would do better than I do with a lot of these. But we're muddling our way through as best we can. At the very least, my hope is that for everyone in this congregation, that at least a few if you find yourself in conversation with the people of the world, if you find yourself in the university campus, in interaction online with people, that you will never find yourself in a position where you read a text from the scripture and you go, Wow, I wonder why we never talked about that at church.

Never heard of that. Never even thought about it. We're trying to lay a foundation for even if it's not a text that necessarily, we can't cover everything. We'd be doing this for a long period of time.

Even if it's a text that we don't necessarily do a sermon on, or maybe you missed that sermon or something along those lines, or, and I know this never happens in our congregation, maybe you even forget what I said.

That you will have such a firm foundation in the concept of God's law, that in that moment you will be able to give an answer and be used in such a way as to be either a blessing to God's people or even a means of bringing God's elect into himself.

That instrument is in his hand, whereby maybe you'll be able to remove a barrier or explain something. We've often seen that type of thing happen. And so because of that, we pretty much worked through all the way to Deuteronomy chapter 22, and so what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be looking at sections in the rest of Deuteronomy, not verse by verse, but sections that would seem to have the most relevance in our study as we seek to try to wrap up this material and hopefully make it something that's useful to everyone.

So in Deuteronomy chapter 23, I want to look beginning at verse 19. Verse 19. You shall not charge interest to your countrymen. Interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen you shall not charge interest, so that the Lord your God, Yahweh your God, may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess.

When you make a vow to Yahweh your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for it would be sin in you, and Yahweh your God will surely require it of you. However, if you refrain from vowing, it would not be sin in you.

You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips, just as you have voluntarily vowed to Yahweh your God what you have promised. When you enter your neighbor's vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket.

When you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain. Now, keeping that in mind, go down to verse 19 of the next chapter.

Verse 19 of chapter 24, and I think we find a continuation of the thought. When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that Yahweh your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again. It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again.

It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, therefore I am commanding you to do this thing. Now, these two texts, once again, remind us of something that we should be very quick to recognize when people raise texts from God's law, that these laws were given to a covenanted people, a people who had entered into a covenant with God.

That's why I used the covenant name of God. That's why I used the tetragrammaton instead of LORD your God. When you see L-O-R-D in caps, that L-O-R-D is Yahweh. That is the name of God, which we have anglicized as Jehovah, but that's not how it was said in the ancient world.

That's why I used that term to remind us that once again, and it's very clearly laid out in the text, Yahweh your God commands this. You were slaves in Egypt. Yahweh seeks to bless you. This is how you are to behave if you desire the blessing of God.

And so that is necessary to recognize when it says, you shall not charge interest to your countrymen, interest on money, food, or anything that may be loaned at interest. You may charge interest to a foreigner, but to your countrymen, you shall not charge interest so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land which you are about to enter to possess.

And so there is a prohibition on usury, a prohibition on the charging of interest in loans amongst the people of Israel. Now, very clearly it is said you may charge interest to a foreigner. If you want to engage in some kind of business transaction with the people across the border, if they want to do something with you, you are not prohibited from doing that, and you may charge interest.

But within the covenant people of God, you are living in community. And so your living should not be derived out of taking from their living. And so there is to be a sense of community, there is to be a sense of belonging that has some kind of a different nature to it than what would exist between the Israelites and the Ammonites or anybody else outside of the borders of the nation of Israel.

Now, I should note just in passing that this is a text that does come up at times in our dealing with our Muslim friends. There is within Sharia prohibitions against the charging of interest. And it had, historically anyways, a very similar context and reason as this from Deuteronomy chapter 23.

Now, the result of that, however, has been, and this is interesting, that there is a great deal of controversy in regards to the establishment, for example, of Sharia-compliant banks. This is one of the reasons why Muslim communities tend to not assimilate real well into Western culture is because when it comes to, for example, the utilization of bank cards, loans, mortgages, and things like that, they try to avoid this issue of interest, which, of course, requires a completely different financial system.

So central is it to most Western thinking in regards to banking, the giving of loans, mortgages, car loans, all sorts of things along those lines. And that is one of the issues that is raised. But it is interesting, once again, that we have to ask the question, is this a normative moral principle that is to be applied to all nations?

Well, how would you do that in light of the fact that it is specifically oriented toward the people of Israel in the land of Israel, and it includes the specific statement that you may charge interest externally, outside of that covenanted nation of Israel.

And as we have mentioned many times, what we need to do when we look at the law of God is to ask ourselves, can we determine from what God is doing with His people, what is the moral principle that we can derive from this?

Now, obviously, within the body of Christ, within the fellowship of faith, the idea is we are brothers and sisters in the Lord, we do what we can to be of assistance to one another, and making money off of one another should not be the first thing we are thinking about.

And certainly, the making of one's livelihood by a charging of interest of one's fellow Israelites was not something that God allowed the people of Israel to do. But that did not mean that you could not engage in commerce, and it did not mean that you could not engage in the use of interest as a mechanism with those outside of the people of Israel.

And I think that we can put together the fact that first of all, God says, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all that you undertake, in the land which you are about to enter to possess. Remember, in so many of these texts, there is a promise that for obedience, God would bless in the material sense.

These people were people who lived primarily off of the land. It was an agricultural primarily situation. Yes, there were people who lived in urban situations, but the cities of that day would be considerably smaller than the cities that we would have today.

You simply could not support a huge amount of people for a lengthy period of time. I mean, during pilgrimages and things like that, people would bring their own sustenance. But as far as having multiple millions of people in a close space, where there is basically no production of food going on, which would be like Phoenix, that simply was not a possibility in light of transportation issues and things like that.

It wasn't until Rome comes along and you have the transportation systems that they develop and aqueducts and so on and so forth, that even for a period of time, anything like that can come into existence.

And so within this context, you're talking about a much smaller number of people living in cities. And so this is a very rural context, and much of it is focused upon trading and bartering in food, animals, and things along those lines.

So you don't have quite the same context. And what's important to recognize from my perspective is once you see what you have in regards to the moral concept of the law, the fact that the people of God are not to be making money off of the other people of God, and yet there's not something specifically wrong with the financial industry as such.

I think most of us can agree that when in modern days, with computers and things like that, the financial industry can be just as abused and turned into just as much of a sinful activity if it is coupled with greed, if it is coupled with hatred of your fellow man.

It is a cutthroat industry by anyone's recognition and understanding. But we're not talking about the same thing that we have here. And certainly even in the charging of interest to a foreigner, these would be people representing Yahweh, their God.

There would have to be honesty. There would have to be specific assertions of having equal weights. There would be things that would function as buffers that would keep even that charging of interest in such a way that it would be appropriate in God's sight.

But there is the promise of God's blessing that comes with obedience. And that is where the covenantal nature of many of these laws must be recognized. And that must be taken into consideration when asking the question, how can this then be applied outside of that historical context in which it was originally given?

And when you have a nation that is seeking God's blessing, then one of the things we can say to that nation is, well, we are to love our fellow neighbors. We are to have their interests before our own interests.

And obviously you and I know the only way that's ever going to be carried out in any full measure is when there's been a changing of the hearts and minds of those individuals through the work of the Holy Spirit himself, when the gospel itself has gone forth amongst those people.

But one thing we must keep in mind, we should be quick. We should be quick to tell our fellow citizens, when you hear somebody saying, God bless America, as believers that should be an opening for us to say to them, the first blessing that America of 2016 needs from God.

Is repentance of sin.

I mean, that's a wide open door, is it not? How many times do you hear people, I don't think Kate Smith sings it anymore, obviously,.

But, well, God bless America.

What do you mean by that?

What are you asking God to do? Are you asking God to give this nation unlimited material blessings and peace no matter what its citizens do? No matter how boldly we trample underfoot God's law and God's institutions, no matter how boldly we sin, God just has to keep blessing us?

Is that what you're asking? Sadly, for many of my fellow citizens, that's exactly what they're asking. God, continue to bless us, continue to grow my 401k, continue to let me have a new car every few years and a new iPhone every year and keep the gang to some other part of Phoenix.

And as to all the rest of that stuff, we're in Scripture. There is this relationship of obedience and blessing. No, we don't want to hear about that. We don't want to hear about that. We have a wide open door in those situations to say something straightforward on the subject.

Verse 21 through 23 speaks about paying of vows. Now, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this. I just simply want to emphasize that what you have here is freedom given to the people of God.

Verse 22 says, however, if you refrain from vowing, it would not be sin in you. In other words, you don't have to make vows to God. People did so in those days for a number of different reasons. Sometimes it would be to pledge one's honesty, to give thanks to God.

God, if you'll do this for me, I'll do that for you. And the point is, if you're going to make that kind of a statement, then you need to follow through with it. And how many times have we, in our hearts, maybe we didn't go to some temple and make a sacrifice or shave our heads or do the various sundry things that people did back then?

Though it might be good for us if we had done something like that because so often in our hearts we will make a vow.

Oh God, if you'll just get me out of this,.

I'll do this.

And how many times?

Does God actually grant us deliverance? And within 24 hours, it's in the past.

It's in history.

We've forgotten. And we don't follow through. Oh, at the time we may have really felt a strong urge to do something,.

But how often have we refrained.

From doing the things that we promised to God in our hearts we would do if he would just grant us deliverance in a situation? And the point is, God knows our heart. We may not have done something publicly.

And obviously the idea here is these were public vows that were made. And if you didn't follow through with a public vow, you were disrespecting the one to whom you had made the vow. And vows today mean nothing in our land.

I mean, how can they? We're just highly evolved accidents. And I made certain muscles move, and air came out and made sound. I mean, is there anything more to it than that? If you don't believe that we are made in the image of God, if you don't believe that speech is a gift from God and that speech represents the very heart and soul, then how can anyone be held accountable for anything?

I mean, I won't name names, but actually both of the candidates for our highest office in the land have serious speech issues. I mean, one just very colorful and just says about anything, and the other, as far as I can tell, belongs in jail.

So, I mean, we are in a real pickle here. And so the idea of words, I mean, I just hear the people in the media,.

It's just, well, you know, he said this, she said that.

You know, but that was last year.

As if, you know, once it gets far enough in history, it just doesn't matter anymore.

It doesn't matter anymore.

You shall be careful to perform what goes out from your lips just as you have voluntarily vowed to Yahweh your God what you have promised. You see, there is a reason why in the history of this land you placed your hand upon a Bible.

There is a reason for it. There is a reason why you raised your hand, why you made vows, you were making a promise as the image bearer of God. And it wasn't so much about who you were, though it reflected upon who you were, as the greater authority of the one to whom you were referring.

Well, if on our land there is no greater authority anymore, then it's no wonder that such vows of honesty, well, I don't think that the word honesty really has much meaning any longer within the district of Washington, D .C. and many other places as well.

Verses 24 and 25, and then the section in chapter 24. When you enter your neighbor's vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you are fully satisfied, but you shall not put any in your basket. When you enter your neighbor's standing grain, then you may pluck the heads of your hand, but you shall not wield a sickle in your neighbor's standing grain.

Now, I will have to admit that as a Scotsman, this would have bothered me if I had been a Jewish person. I'm not sure how you can be a Jewish Scotsman, but you allow me the rather strange mixed metaphor.

This would have bothered me,.

Because we like our walls and our fences and stay-off-of-my-land type situations, and when we live here in Phoenix, it's very strange that I go to certain parts of the country, there aren't that many of them left, but you know there's a lot of places you can go where houses just sit there, and the next house is a little ways away, and you know what's not between them?

A fence.

Believe it or not. Some of you have lived here so long, you can't even conceive of it. But in a lot of places, you actually know who lives next door. It's a strange and shocking thing. A little bit frightening to me.

Raises my blood pressure a bit. And you can actually see into your neighbor's backyard without standing on a stepstool. And the idea of the privatization, I have my own little spot, and you're not allowed here, and my dorm room will eat you if you come into my area, and things like that, didn't exist back then.

When you enter your neighbor's vineyard, then you may eat grapes until you're fully satisfied. And when you enter your neighbor's standing grain, you can pluck the heads. And for a lot of us, it's like,.

But those are my grapes,.

And that's my grain,.

And I'm not going to be able to sell that.

And the whole idea is life in community. Because, you see, the first thing across my mind is people are going to take advantage. They're not going to show love for me. Because, see, if I live next to my neighbor, if I love my neighbor as myself, we're living in community, I'm taking care of his back and he's taking care of mine, I'm not going to go into his vineyard and wipe out his crop.

But he isn't going to care if walking over to his house, I grab some grapes on the way, and I'm still chewing on them when I get to his front door. Because there is a trust, a relationship as fellow servants of God that would exist between us.

This picture is a positive community relationship that, let's just be honest, doesn't exist in a lot of places today. I think of my trips to South Africa, and I think of the fact that, especially when I land in Johannesburg, the first thing I notice as you leave the airport, everything, everything, is walled, fenced, razor-wired, cameras, security guards.

If you don't want it to walk off, it will be nailed down, screwed down, and someone will be staying there with a gun to protect it. Because it will leave if you don't do that. That, the Hebrew word for peace, we all know.

Shalom. Shalom.

When shalom prevailed in Israel, you could walk through your neighbor's vineyard and eat some grapes, and he's not going to have to worry about you destroying his crops. And he's going to be able to trust you to show restraint along those lines, and vice versa, because shalom is a positive wellness, a relationship that exists amongst the people of God in that place.

These things simply cannot be. If you had, in a nation where that condition does not exist, if you had a vineyard between Linasia and Soweto in Johannesburg that was not walled and guarded, I can guarantee you the vines would be absolutely empty within 24 hours.

No question about it. None. That's just the way it is. They have a hard time keeping robots. We call them streetlights. They call them robots. They have a hard time keeping robots on the roads in that area.

Because at night, the people will come out, and it's metal, so it's got some value, and they'll just tear them down.

That's just the way it is.

There's no shalom.

There's no blessing of God upon that relationship, because there's no community.

There's no community.

And so that's what this is talking about. It's a freedom, but there's also the restraint, because this is your brother, this is your sister. You're both in service to Yahweh, and so you're not going to mistreat them.

So both are seen there. Both are seen there. But then you'll notice in chapter 24, you have an interesting, it's a parallel, but it's not a direct parallel. Verse 19, when you reap your harvest in your field.

So okay, now, the grain has matured. You've reaped your harvest,.

And you've put them in the sheaf.

Now we've got machines that do it, but that's how it worked back in the olden days. And you have forgotten a sheaf in the field. So there's, oh, look at that. You know, maybe it was close to sunset, and it was, you know, just couldn't see it in the coming darkness, and next morning you look out, and oh, I forgot a sheaf in the field.

You shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that Yahweh your God may bless you.

In all the work of your hands.

When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again. It shall be for the alien, the orphan, and for the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again.

It shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, therefore I am commanding you to do this thing. And so here you have, in essence, once again, within the context of a covenanted community, within the context of the blessing of God upon obedience, the idea is God's blessing is going to be so rich upon the land that you don't have to go back out there and grab that sheaf,.

Leave it for the poor.

You don't have to go out there and get every single olive off that tree. You already got plenty of them. You don't have to have someone following along from the people that are plucking the grapes, examining every single vine, make sure you got every single last one of them.

There's going to be such an abundance of blessing that you can leave some behind and it provides for others, for the alien, the orphan, the widow. And so they would come out after the harvest time was done and they could provide for themselves.

It was a form of giving to others that simply required you not to be greedy. That's all required. Just don't be greedy. Trust that what you get will be sufficient for you and you leave the rest for those who don't have as much.

Now, notice a couple of things. It doesn't say go back out, get the sheaf, get all the rest of the grapes, get all the rest of the olives and bring them together and create a government bureaucracy to distribute them to the poor, the orphans and the widow.

The orphans and the aliens and the widow, well, they've got to do something to go get that stuff. They couldn't just sit in their houses and someone's going to bring it to them. They had to work. And in fact, obviously, it would be harder to get the gleanings.

Remember elsewhere in the law, it says you're not to go out to the edges of your field. You're to leave those to the poor as well. So there's a number of things along these lines. Remember, this is a rural culture.

This is an agricultural situation here. That's what the concept is. But you'd have to work. The alien, the orphan, the widow would have to work. And there's nothing here that says, and by the way, when you have the harvest, you should feel guilty that you have more than somebody else.

Nothing about that.

In fact, some of the festivals prescribed by God.

Were at harvest time.

Why?

Because you're thanking God for His blessings upon you. Nothing here that says that ownership of property, blessing of God and having a good crop, anything that would even begin to suggest that's wrong.

And there's nothing here about the new buzzword in our land, the new buzz term, income equality. Income equality. You know, the funny thing is, everybody in Israel is equal before God, but not everybody in Israel had the same amount of stuff because that's not what made you right or wrong before God.

Now, I'm not trying to tell you that, and this is, look, I'll just touch upon this very briefly because I think it needs to be touched upon. There are general guidelines in Scripture concerning how men are to be related to other men.

I'm not just talking about genders there. I'm talking in a very generic sense. How human beings are to relate to other human beings. But I don't think that there is an absolute one form of government that is laid out in the text of Scripture that you somehow have to enforce upon everybody else.

That's the problem with Islam.

Because since Islam is a religio-political system or a politico-religious system, depending upon the percentage of Muslims in a nation, Islam cannot be separated from the very specific Sharia and law that is part and parcel of its teaching.

And so it brings Sharia with it. And that Sharia represents 7th century Arabia. Well, that doesn't really work all that well outside of, well, 7th century Arabia. And so if we're going to recognize, yeah, it's not really the best way to go, the same thing, there are some people who have tried to say, well, the Bible gives us an absolute system that we just enforce it everywhere.