Omens and Interest

Alright, we are going to pray and we will get started. Lord God, help us to grow in the knowledge of Your dear

Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to remain firm in the confession of His blessed Word.

Give us the love to be of one mind, to serve one another in Christ, and then we will not be afraid of that which is disagreeable, nor of the rage of the arson of Satan, whose torch is almost extinguished.

Dear Father, guard us so that His craftiness may not take the place of our pure faith.

Grant that our cross and our sufferings may lead to a blessed and sure hope of the coming of our

Savior Jesus Christ, for whom we wait daily. Amen. We have been working our way through the book of Exodus, and we are in Exodus 22, part of the way through it.

And a little bit of a note ahead of time, and that is that some of the material that we are going to cover today is a wee bit on the dark side.

And unfortunately, some of this darkness has crept into the church, and we'll have to address that and talk about that today.

So, where we last left off in Exodus 22, let me pull this up.

The next verse that we need to cover is Exodus 22, verse 18, which says, you shall not permit a sorceress to live.

It's important to note under the ancient theocracy of Israel, sorcery, and this is a broad term, there's a lot of things that hinge into this, sorcery is a capital crime.

And there's some very important reasons as to why it is. And so, we're going to take a look at some of the implications of this regarding the cross references.

And we're going to note here that verse 20, we're going to do these together, verses 18 and 20.

Verse 19, I think is pretty straightforward, so let me read it out, and then we'll focus on 18 and 20.

Verse 19 says, whoever lies with an animal shall be put to death. Like I said, that's pretty self -explanatory.

But when it comes to sorcery, you should not permit a sorceress to live. And then verse 20, whoever sacrifices to any

God other than the Lord alone shall be devoted to destruction. Devoted to destruction.

So, you'll note the civil laws of the ancient theocracy of Israel, capital crime for idolatry, capital crime for sorcery.

Now, let's take a look at some cross references to Exodus 22, 18. And our first cross reference is going to be found in Leviticus 19.

And let me do this. I'm going to open this up in another tab. There we go.

Leviticus 19. Specifically, we're going to look at verses 26 and 31.

You shall not eat any flesh with the blood in it. You shall not interpret omens or tell fortunes.

Now, I remember back in the day when I was growing up in high school, there seemed to be a huge rise in Southern California where I lived of people setting up shops where you can go and have your fortune told via tarot card or whatever.

There were mediums and spiritists and people like that who set up different shops for the purpose of you going to them and them contacting the supernatural spiritual realm in order to tell you what your future is.

You know, will I be able to have her as my wife or him as my husband, or will

I be rich and handsome and successful and all these nonsense things, right?

And it's fascinating to me how many people avail themselves of such a thing. But if I were to ask you just straight up, and I will ask you, do any of you know what an omen is?

Okay, yeah, it is like a sign. Can you explain a little bit more by what you mean by a sign, okay?

A sign of doom, it could be. Are they those little? No, that's something different.

That's a charm, okay? But an omen. Okay, yes, there is.

Okay, let me give you an example of it. Let's say while we're teaching

Sunday school today, all of a sudden an unexpected thunderstorm popped up and the winds were howling and the rain was beating against the church and stuff like that.

And somebody says, I think that's a sign of impending doom for Kongsvig or Lutheran Church.

That's the reading of an omen. And so if you were to say, you know, there

I was, I was at my farm and this owl came up and flew up and sat on a tree. And I saw that owl as an omen, a bad sign that something of those is gonna happen or this or that or the other thing.

And so what an omen is, is kind of looking at natural things that occur, you know, with birds or weather events or things like this, and somehow interpreting them as God communicating through them or the spiritual realm communicating through them and revealing to you what the future will be.

Does it have to be bad? No, it can be good also. Yes, it can be bad or good.

As I've heard of somebody, they're at a funeral or at the cemetery and a dove or something came over and oh, that was that person that had died, their spirit and.

Yeah, that's terrible theology. Yeah, that's an example of that. So the reading of omens is strictly forbidden by scripture and it's a breaking of the first commandment.

You will have no other gods. God has not promised to speak to any of us through omens at all.

Where's the place where God has promised to speak to us? The Word. So what happens is, is that people who are into omens and things like this, they're opening themselves up to an alternative form of communication, but that communication is not coming from God.

Can I give an example? Sure. So back when gay marriage was being voted up in the church, there was, everybody was freaking out because in the church, where it would be a sudden tornado or whirlwind that came down and knocked their cross down.

Yeah, now let's talk about that. That's not an omen. I'll explain why that's not an omen. Everybody thought that it was.

Okay, no, no, it's not an omen. Let me explain. So if you remember, this is now going on more than 10 years ago.

The ELCA was meeting in Minneapolis and on the docket was their voting to recognize same -sex marriage and to ordain people who are homosexual priests.

All right? All of this is wicked and evil. And what's fascinating is that literally while they were taking the vote, a freak tornado hit downtown

Minneapolis and the ELCA church that was across the street from the convention center where they met, the cross was torn off the top of the steeple but was left dangling upside down.

Now, I would say that's an act of God. That's consistent with God acting in judgment.

And you can connect it and say whether or not you believe God acted in that way because when we talk about weather events, we'll say that's an act of God.

You can sit there and say, it's fascinating that that happened concurrent with them taking the vote.

But you're gonna put the emphasis not on that, but you gotta put the emphasis on, and of course, you are making yourselves liable to God's judgment because we know this, that weather events and freak things that happen in nature are a form of God's judgment.

That's strictly taught in scripture. So we know this for a fact, but can you definitively say that that was not just a coincidence?

No, but nothing is a coincidence when it comes to God. But what I'm talking about specifically is nothing connected to anything like that.

It's more like akin to fortune telling. There's a bird sitting on a post and it's a dove and so you think that things are gonna go well for you.

That's something different. So I know you're sitting there going, I don't know if you see the difference, but there really is a difference.

And you have to come back to the fact that the EL say at that time was literally basically standing in defiance, standing stubbornly with their fists up against God saying, we refuse to obey you and your word.

Emphasis on their vote, not the other thing. The other thing just becomes a good symbol of what they did.

Literally turning the whole church upside down. Do you see the difference? It's hard.

I mean, think of Katrina and what it did to New Orleans. Some could say, well,

God did not like what was going on in New Orleans with all of that. See, that's a little too specific. See, here's the thing.

We know from scripture that destructive weather events are part of the curse.

It's part of God's judgment of sin in general. And so you can look at a weather event like that and you can sit there and say, yeah, as arbitrary and capricious as that might be and the millions of dollars that it costs, still this is part of God's judgment on our sin.

You think of Jesus. Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is talked about, he's asked about the

Galileans who Pilate had killed and mixed their blood with the sacrifices.

And Jesus says about them, he says, do you think that these men were more sinful than others, that they suffered in this way?

And he says, if you do not likewise repent, you will also perish. And then he says, what about the

Tower of Siloam? When it fell, a construction accident in Jerusalem, kind of a weird freak thing.

Construction accident occurred and Jesus said, and when the 18 died, when the Tower of Siloam fell, were they any worse sinners than you?

And you will likewise perish if you do not repent. And so we look at freak accidents like that bridge that fell or big weather events.

That's all part of the judgment of God against our sin. And you're gonna note that oftentimes those events are very capricious.

They don't seem to be connected to any one particular thing. So we can talk about how

Katrina and large hurricanes and destructive floods and things like this are part of God's judgment against sin in general, our collective sin in the world.

These things would not exist apart from our sin. These are a consequence of it.

To tie it to a specific sin or a specific thing, that gets to be a little dicey, all right?

I think the closest thing you can talk about is maybe the tornado at the ELCA. But again, the emphasis has to come back on, these people are standing in defiance of God.

They are literally shaking their fists at Him and saying, we refuse as a church body to let Christ be our

King and let His word have His way with us. And so you can talk about, fascinating thing that tornado was.

Weird that the only destruction was it knocked down a cross. It's like you guys did that, not he did, right?

Because that's what they were doing. So it becomes a visible symbol of it, but it's not an omen in the sense where it's fortune telling or things like that.

Also, wars, consider wars in this bigger category then. Since I was 18,

I've suffered from insomnia, which is why I do a lot of reading. It's like a family genetic thing.

So what I found sometimes is that when I'm having trouble sleeping, Ken Burns' Civil War series.

Put that on my iPad and put the earbuds in and for whatever reason, that thing puts me to sleep. But I love it.

But in the last installment of the Civil War series, what's fascinating is the people who survived it, they make a point of quoting several of these people.

They all saw the Civil War itself as a judgment from God against the sin of slavery in the

United States. And I think that's the right way of understanding it because literally the millions of lives that were destroyed or lost as a result of that war, and that was the war that literally purged the

United States of slavery. In some way, you can talk about that as God's judgment. And that's consistent with what

Scripture says, but you can't go beyond Scripture. You can say that God's word reveals that these things are a result of our sin.

And so you can talk about God's judgment in that way. And again, the call is going to be to repent.

So, and that's really kind of the issue. When you look at destructive events or destructive things, whether events or wars or whatever, that's a call in general for repentance.

And that call goes out to all of us. Whereas omens have nothing to do with repentance or anything connected with God's law and the gospel, omens have to do with really kind of believing you're receiving special communication from God apart from his word.

And that's strictly forbidden. Strictly forbidden. You look like you had a question,

Don. Yeah, it's going on in the charismatic movement of all of us. Yeah, I do need to talk about that.

So, for my weekday job, I monitor a lot of what's going on in evangelicalism and in the charismatic movement.

And unfortunately, the reading of omens has actually become a standard practice within certain facets of the charismatic movement.

And it's overt. It really is overt. And it's taught to people as if this is what they're supposed to be doing.

No, I haven't. I can. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, it is all of that. It is all of that. And the other part is that churches associated with, and people associated with a particular church out of Redding, California.

The name of the church is Bethel. Bethel Church out of Redding, California. Bill Johnson is their apostolic father.

That's literally how they talk about him. Not just a pastor, but their apostolic father. And people who are connected with them and what is called the

Bethel School of Supernational Ministry. They are taught the reading of omens. And some of the people associated with them, down in Australia, they have developed what they call destiny cards.

And I'm not making this up. You can actually find this on our YouTube channel. I don't want to show you, but if you want to go to the

YouTube channel for Fighting for the Faith. One of our very first dumpster fire episodes. Yes, that's the name of a video series that we do.

It's called Dumpster Fire. But I demonstrate and show you from their own website, the video of them going to New Age festivals and them giving tarot card like readings for people.

And it's supposed that they claim that the power behind these destiny cards is not the devil, but God.

God's trying to communicate to them through them. It's straight up. This is sorcery.

This is the reading of omens. This is the occult. And it's been given a Christian veneer, but it's a very thin Christian veneer and it's not from God.

And so we as Christians are not to look for, is God happy with me today?

Oh, look, a rabbit just ran across my path. I love rabbits. That means God loves me. Yeah, you know.

That's not how that works. But rabbits are really cool. I'm just saying. Here's some more of our cross references then.

Verse 31 in Leviticus 19. Do not turn to mediums or to necromancers.

Necromancer, highfalutin word. Somebody who communicates with the dead. With the dead.

And let me kind of put it this way. One of the things I've noticed as a consistent, and I mean this, consistent temptation when somebody loses a close relative or a husband or a wife, especially if their death was untimely and unexpected.

I've known many people that have similar, these types of things happen in their lives and it is an extreme temptation.

Somebody will come up and say, I know a person who can talk to your deceased relative.

And you know, you think of like the Long Island Spiritist. You know, they even have television programs on cable that the whole premise of them is a guy will stand up in an audience and he'll do like a cold reading.

He'll say to somebody, you know, does the name Margaret mean anything to you?

And they'll say, yeah, that's the name of my aunt who passed away a couple of years ago. Yeah, well, she's talking to me right now and here's what she has to say.

It's on television. It's on television. And here's the other piece of this. I have video of people who claim to be

Christian pastors who do that exact technique during a church service where they'll be claiming, they'll have somebody stand up and say,

I'm getting a message from your dead sister. That's necromancy. It's strictly forbidden by God.

And by the way, there's a reason why this is all forbidden. And the reason why it is forbidden is not because it's not real.

You're gonna see this. The reason why it's forbidden is because it's real. And there's, when you're talking beyond the veil, that's what they call it, with the spiritual, you don't understand what's on the other line talking to you on the phone.

It's not God. And if you saw it, you would absolutely be terrified, but it's pretending to be something that it's not.

And scripture makes that also clear. So don't turn to mediums or necromancers. Do not seek them out and so make yourselves unclean by them.

I am Yahweh, your God. So Leviticus 20, next chapter, talks about in the civil laws how we are to, what is the punishment here?

Leviticus 20, 27. A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death.

They shall be stoned with stones. Their blood shall be upon them. So not only is it a death penalty, but in the ancient theocracy of Israel, they were rocked to death.

They were stoned. Deuteronomy 18, 10, another text worth considering in this.

And then we're going to look at 1 Corinthians 10, but Deuteronomy 18, 10 first. Starting in verse nine, when you come into the land

Yahweh, your God, is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.

There shall not be found among you anyone who burns a son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortune or interprets omens or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead.

For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And you're going to note that there's just kind of a select handful of sins that reach abomination status before God.

This is one of them. And so the Lord says you need to be blameless before Yahweh, your

God. So God forbids all communication with the spirit realm, all reading of omens, all fortune telling.

When you get the newspaper and it tells you your horoscope, just skip that section altogether.

None of that is even true at all. But I want you to see the reason then for this.

And the reason is going to be found in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. And we're going to read out the chapter in context.

Now remember Exodus 22, 20 said, whoever sacrifices to any God other than Yahweh alone shall be devoted to destruction.

So the reading of omens and listening to spiritists and having your fortune told and all this kind of stuff is also connected then to the breaking of the first commandment.

And along with it oftentimes will go idolatry and the sacrificing of things to false gods.

And here's what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10. I do not want you to be unaware brothers that our fathers were all under the cloud, all passed to the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

Good exegetical point here. You're going to note that the baptism of Israel occurs in the Red Sea. And that's actually type and shadow of your baptism.

So we can talk about the Red Sea crossing as a baptism because 1 Corinthians 10 teaches us to do so.

All ate the same spiritual food, all drank the same spiritual drink. By the way, that's type and shadow pointing again to the

Lord's supper. They all drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them,

God was not pleased. They were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.

Do not be idolaters as some of them were as it is written. The people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.

We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did and 23 ,000 fell in a single day.

We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and they were destroyed by serpents nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer.

Now these things happened as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come.

Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. Scripture encourages, in fact, this same epistle encourages us to flee idolatry and to flee sexual immorality.

Those are two sins that our motto is run away.

Get out of town. Don't hang around for it. Don't allow yourself to be tempted. Flee it.

Run as fast as you can. Get away from it. Flee from idolatry. I speak as to sensible people.

Judge for yourselves what I say. Now watch what he says then in regards to the Lord's Supper. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

Notice the question mark. What's the answer to the question? Yes, yes.

Why is that? Because Jesus said, this is my blood, right?

The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? What's the answer to the question?

Yes, it is. Why? Because the Lord said so, this is my body, right?

Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

So you'll note this is a wonderful text that teaches us that the unity that we have as a body of Christ, is not merely a unity of confession, which is very important, but it's a unity of the fact that we all participate in the

Lord's Supper and we all receive the body and blood of Christ. And this is a participation in the sacrifice of Christ then, this is how

Paul is talking. So our unity is around what we receive that we can't see.

What we see is bread, what we see is wine, or what we see is grape juice. And so you think about all the

Christians around the world who are having the Lord's Supper. Some people are having like pita bread, other people are having those thin wispy things that are kind of pre -manufactured that it's harder to believe that that's actually bread than the

Lord's body, but it gets on your tongue and it just disappears in a second because it melts.

And other people, they get something a little bit more chewy. Today when we had the Lord's Supper, there were two types of bread.

Did that matter? No, because it's not the bread physical that we see that's the important part that unites us, it's the part that we recognize is there and we believe it by faith because Christ has said it, his body and his blood.

So that's what unites us together. And that's kind of the point that Paul is making. But in the context then of rebuking idolatry, because there is one bread, we who are many are one body for we all partake of the one bread, which is

Christ. So consider the people of Israel. Are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?

This would be the priest and the answer is yes, they are. So what do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything.

Listen to what he says. Or that an idol is anything. No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God.

I do not want you to be participants with demons. Consider the implications.

There are places today in the world where idolatry is still rampant, still rampant.

If you were to travel to the East, travel to Thailand, travel to China, travel to Japan.

In, you know, you think of all the different countries that are out there. In Thailand, they have this pantheon of gods that exists.

In fact, they have kind of a God who's in charge of like partying and the good life. And if you want to receive his blessings, you offer him a sacrifice of whiskey and cigarettes.

Not making that up. So you bring whiskey and cigarettes to this deity and he'll bless you.

What's behind that idol? The demonic, straight up.

It is the demonic that animates and gives life to and controls and dominates idolatry in all of its forms.

From kind of the gateway drug into it, like fortune telling, tarot card reading and things like this, or omen reading, to the full blown practice of idolatry itself.

All of this is demonic. You realize there's no such thing as safe or neutral idolatry.

So I imply that with pagan sacrifice, I offer demons, not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the

Lord and the table of demons. Shall we provoke the

Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he is? No to both questions.

So all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

Eat whatever's sold in the meat market. And here's the issue. Now, this is where it becomes a thorny question.

So in the ancient world, they didn't have L and M meats, which

I think actually fell from heaven itself. I'm just saying, they didn't have L and M meats.

They didn't have butchers like we have today. And they had, when people would go to purchase goods, vegetables and food and produce and spices and things like that, they were the outdoor markets.

They were called agoras. The agora is the place where you went. And in the ancient world, the temples that were set up to the

Greco -Roman deities, people would bring bulls to sacrifice to Zeus or sacrifice to Athena or whatever.

Those bulls, after being slaughtered, would be butchered and sold in the agora.

And this is where you get your steaks and your ribs and all the other stuff that's tasty.

But here's the issue. So it becomes an issue of conscience then for the Christian. As a

Christian, that's the only place to purchase meat.

What do I do? And so Paul now is gonna make a very clear distinction. Since we know that an idol is nothing and the demonic is behind it, if that's really the only place you can buy your meat, if you can do so without it being an issue of conscience, do so because an idol is nothing.

But if you can't do it without it becoming an issue of conscience or causing your brother to stumble, then for his sake and for the sake of conscience, you cannot.

This is where it kind of gets to be a fascinating little dichotomy. The answer is it's not a definitive right or wrong one way or the other.

It's right or wrong depending on the issue of circumstance regarding one's conscience. So this is where it gets interesting.

For instance, let me ask you all a question. Thanksgiving, do you all cook turkeys?

Yeah? Have you noticed that some turkey brands now that they are halal compliant?

Have you noticed that? Read the packaging. Read your packaging. Did you know that certain brands now sell turkeys and all their turkeys are compliant with Islamic law and the halal beliefs regarding how to properly kill an animal?

So do they have a imam? Yeah. So we do have like a rabbi, an imam?

Oh yeah. Kind of watching over us? Oh yeah. So I mean, you probably have been eating halal compliant turkeys for several years now.

Did you know that? It's on the packaging. Do you ever read those things? It's in the fine print. Usually there's a little, there's a tiny little icon.

It'll say like - You can't read the fine print. Yeah. Would that also comply to some of the

Jewish beliefs? Yeah, some of the Jewish beliefs. My grandfather years and years ago, when he was alive, he would tell me he'd love to travel to California because in California, when you ordered a steak, you would still, the steak would still have the blood in it.

So he'd love to get in like a medium rare steak, but he lived in New York. And so the major food distributors, meat distributors in New York are controlled by Jewish.

And the Jews make sure that those animals are bled out in order to be compliant with the Mosaic covenant. So my grandfather would always complain, yeah, it tastes good, but it's always so dry.

So I come to California to get a good juicy steak. You know? So. Okay. I'm a,

I retired from American Crossing in Crookston. And the sugar that we produced in Crookston was cultured.

We didn't use any animal fats or anything in our plant. They came and inspected the plant. So all the sugar coming out of our plant meets their specification.

So does that mean that we're not producing bad sugar? You know,

I think there was some, some would argue that all sugar is bad. You know, now I'm not of that opinion, you know, but, but you kind of get the idea is now.

So, so let me ask you, I mean, if you knew that the turkey that you wanted to buy, you know, that 15 pound turkey for next year's

Thanksgiving and you're thinking to yourself, you know, now that Pastor Roseboro mentioned it, I'll look on the packaging and there it is, the halal sticker.

Would you buy that turkey or would you pick a different one? We'll eat ham. Huh? We'll eat ham.

You'll eat ham. Yeah, that's right. There are no halal hams. I'm just saying, not one.

Yeah. This is maybe cutting it a little fine, but let's say you go to like a funeral at an

ELCA church. Yeah. And the woman pastor is, the homosexual woman pastor is handing out the communion is, and you know this, are we sitting to take communion there?

There's no way we could do that. So here, this is, you're gonna note that, is that, and this is just so you know, the official stance between the

AALC and the ELCA right now, several years ago, we actually wrote a document calling them to repent of their sin regarding homosexuality and other things.

Their response, although this is a paraphrase, was something to the effect of go pound sand. So they did not joyfully receive our communication in the call to repentance and repent.

So we're still officially on record as calling the ELCA to repentance.

And so here's the thing. We are not in fellowship with them, and it would not be appropriate for us to have the

Lord's Supper in an ELCA congregation because of their defiant idolatry against what is clearly a sin and refusal to bend the knee to God's word.

So we wouldn't, it would be inappropriate for us for what we just read in 1

Corinthians 10 because taking the Lord's Supper is an actual physical sign of unity with another church body.

So a church body that we are in full alternate pulpit fellowship with is the LCMS. So you can go into any

LCMS church and have the Lord's Supper. When my grandmother died, she was staunch

Irish Catholic. When she died, they had mass, and I abstained.

And what's fascinating is that Rome recognizes that this is a visible sign of unity.

And so when the priest at my grandmother's funeral, right before the distribution of the elements at the mass, he said, if you're not a

Roman Catholic, you are welcome to come up and receive a blessing. And I thought that was nice.

And he said, all you have to do is do this, and we'll know that you're not participating, you can receive a blessing. There's somebody at our congregation who does not have the

Lord's Supper with us, and every time he comes to the rail, he does this. So, and the reason why is because he has a different set of beliefs, and he's excluded himself.

So, but when it comes to the EALCA, yeah, as politically incorrect as this sounds, it would be inappropriate for us to have the

Lord's Supper with them. It really would. Because right now, we've called them to repent.

So, is it okay to go up to the altar rail and be blessed? I would say, if you...

Or have a fellowship with them. I wouldn't do it. Yeah, see, I wouldn't do it. Especially if the scenario was female, lesbian, pastor.

You know, I'm sorry, but I can't see anything that she can offer me by way of blessing.

What if it was just an EALCA pastor? It depends on his confession.

There are some guys in the EALCA who are still solid. And so, you know, and I know a few of them.

But if you don't know what the pastor's... Yeah, if you're not sure, don't. Yeah, err on the side of caution.

So, and they'll accuse you of being an uppity and all this kind of nonsense, but the reality of the situation is that I don't want to give the misimpression that somehow you are in a right standing with God when you are defying him in his word and you're blessing sin.

I can't do that. That's not me being loving to you. The most loving thing

I could do for you in that situation is actually get up in your business and call you to repent. Doesn't sound

Norwegian, but it is consistent with what God's word tells us to do.

In fact, we'll see this in Nehemiah 5 when we get to some of the other commandments. But let's keep working through our text then.

I want you to kind of see what's going on. So, Paul is saying, we'll go back to verse 23.

All things are lawful, not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, not all things build up. So let no one seek his own good, but seek the good of his neighbor.

Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience. For the earth is the

Lord's and the fullness thereof. If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.

But if someone says to you, hey, this was offered in sacrifice to Zeus or something like that, don't eat it for the sake of the one who informed you and for the sake of conscience.

I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else's conscience?

If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?

So you're gonna note that everything belongs to the Lord. Idols are really nothing. And even though something was sacrificed to an idol, that doesn't technically defile it.

But the person who believes that that really is special because it's been sacrificed to an idol, if they offer it to you as a meal and they make that point, then at that point you can't have that meat for the sake of their conscience, not yours, theirs.

You don't want to send the wrong message. Is that interesting?

So as Christians, we have liberty, but we have to practice our liberty responsibly, always with the other person's conscience in mind, and they're good.

Okay, I have a question. But something labeled halal or kosher doesn't mean that it has anything demonic or anything that's just done differently?

Nope. Yeah, there's a certain process that it goes through. It still tastes really good.

I mean, and if you put sage and butter and stuff on that, wow, it's amazing. But yeah, so it doesn't really impact the taste or the quality.

But for some, though, it could be an issue. For some, it can be an issue. So using this text, then, as kind of the template, let's say you receive an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a

Muslim in town. They say, we would like to invite you to Thanksgiving at our house.

We've decided we're going to embrace this American cultural tradition. We're going to have Thanksgiving at our place. And so you go.

And there's all the fixings, with a little bit of food you may not recognize. And your host brings out the bird.

It's been carved up. And he says, and the best part about this is that it is compliant with halal.

Here, have some. Now he's made that the issue. That's a different thing altogether, isn't it?

It's like, I'm sad that you said that because now this becomes, you've made this into a religious issue.

Before, it's one thing when it's a meal together with a neighbor. But when you make it into an issue regarding our religions, now because you've made the point of saying this is halal compliant, and that this is somehow a good thing, and you want me as a

Christian to somehow bend the knee to this, I can't. That's where you would cross the line.

And 1 Corinthians 10 literally kind of sets that border up. And you do so not because of your conscience, but for his.

Because you do not want him to think that somehow the differences between Christianity and Islam are immaterial.

They're everything. And if you want to be blunt, 1 Corinthians 10 teaches us that Allah of Islam is an idol, and what's behind it is demonic.

That's the blunt aspect of it. So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks, or to the church of God, just as I try to please everyone in everything

I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many that they may be saved.

So when it becomes an issue of religion like that for the sake of their conscience, not yours. For the sake of their conscience, not yours.

You're not seeking an advantage. You then can't do certain things. Because at that point you send the wrong message.

Coming back then to Exodus 22, verse 21, you shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.

You know, I see this commandment in the civil laws of Israel, and it reminds me of what we pray in the

Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. This is a kind of a form of the golden rule, if you would.

And it's a golden rule informed by the fact that at one point

Israel was sojourning in Egypt, and so when somebody sojourns in their land after they arrive in their land, that they're not to oppress the sojourners the way that they were oppressed.

So it's kind of fascinating. It's kind of in that same genre. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.

This is a strong commandment, verse 22 through 24. And let me explain.

Throughout human history, two groups of people have been the most susceptible to exploitation.

Two groups. Widows, orphans. Women in a patriarchal society who do not have a husband.

They oftentimes become destitute, and they have no means of survival.

And caring for the widows, by the way, like was first order of business after the day of Pentecost.

Read in the book of Acts. They were immediately caring for the widows. But orphans are the same way.

Orphans who do not have a father or mother to protect them and to guide them and to bring them up. Over and again, human history, it is widows and orphans who have been horribly, horribly exploited.

And it's just absolutely tragic, but shows you how sick and twisted our sinful nature is.

That we take those who are the most vulnerable and we exploit them the greatest.

It's terrible. And so God here literally is saying, kind of a good way of paraphrasing this, is that don't mistreat the widow or the orphan because I'm going to be their father and I'm going to be that woman's husband.

That's kind of how He's talking. So you shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them and they cry out to Me, I will surely hear their cry and My wrath will burn and I will kill you with a sword and your wives shall become widows and your children fatherless.

This is the closest thing to karma that you're going to see in the Old Testament. But it's kind of along those lines.

So the best way to look at it is, is that the widows and the orphans,

God has a special place in His heart for them and we need to recognize what

His heart is towards them and see them the way He does. That we are to care for them because they are our neighbors in need and not exploit them.

And the one who doesn't fear God and exploits them and they cry out, God will act in wrath against them.

Exodus 22 -25. This gets into a whole interesting discussion then.

The entire economy of the United States doesn't seem to be based upon savings anymore, does it?

What's the economy of the United States based upon now? What? Debt. Uh -huh.

Debt. Debt. People don't save up anymore.

They get credit cards. Or they take out loans. So what ends up happening is that you're never really ahead.

You're never in the black. It seems like you can go your entire life as an adult in the United States and everything seems to be geared towards you spending more and more and going into debt to do it.

And is that debt free? No. That debt costs a lot of money.

It costs a lot of money in interest. And you're going to note here that this commandment and its cross -references make it clear that it is debt that is often used in order to control and take advantage of people, especially when there is interest involved.

Something that costs $5 at the end of paying off the debt costs you $25. And what that does, that debt cycle, keeps people down.

So in ancient theocracy of Israel, interest is forbidden. If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a money lender to him.

You shall not exact interest from him. If ever you take your neighbor's cloak and pledge you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering and it is his cloak for his body.

And what else shall he sleep? And if he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.

Let me read a couple of cross -references. Leviticus 25, verses 35 -37 reads,

If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you.

So you've got a relative who hits the skids. Guess what?

They're coming to live at your house. This is what God wills. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your

God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

In other words, you get to use your resources for the benefit of your brother. Period. And you don't get to gain from it.

Deuteronomy 23, verses 19 and 20 reads, You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother.

Now, a little bit of a note here. When you read Deuteronomy 23, verses 19, to your brother, who's that referring to?

Brother who? Israelites. You've got to think of the context. So people who are

Jewish, people who are Hebrew. But remember, we who are in Christ, we have been grafted into Israel.

Right? So who's your brother? Who's your sister?

Right. Welcome to a big, large family. Again, it is very beneficial for us to think of ourselves as being

Israelites. Don, atah Yisraeli. You are Israelite. Okay?

Huh? Marilyn, atah

Yisraeli. You are Israelite. You all are Israelites. We're all Israelites.

We're all brothers. This applies to us in this way. So we do not charge interest. You should not charge interest on loans to your brothers, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest.

Now, you may charge the foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest so that Yahweh your

God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.

Now, I want to end off on this text. Take a look at Nehemiah 5. I made the claim that charging people interest is a form of exploiting them.

And we see an example of this in the history of Israel. And I want you to consider it. So Israel, the nation of Judah and Benjamin and Levi, they were literally scraped out of the land of Israel and sent into exile in Babylon because of their persistence in idolatry.

God said, enough is enough. I've sent prophet after prophet after prophet to get you guys to repent and be forgiven and steer away from these false gods.

You refuse and you're stiff -necked and you're stubborn in your sin. So God says, that's it. I'm going to call Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar comes in, wipes out the southern kingdom. 10 % of them survive. 90 % of the

Jews living at the time of Nebuchadnezzar in the land of Judah died. The remnant goes to Babylon.

They're there for 70 years. When they come back to Israel, everything is in shambles.

They don't have much of an economy. Everybody is teetering on the edge.

I mean, even the walls of Jerusalem were not even built up properly. And they had to fix all of this.

And in the midst of the story then in Nehemiah, we read that a famine, while they're still kind of in the infant stages of getting back on their feet, a famine strikes

Israel. And in that famine we see that those who had money ended up using that money to take away from those who couldn't survive.

Charging them interests. And when they couldn't make the payments on the loans, putting their farms in foreclosure, and selling some of their own daughters into slavery.

And all of this because the guys who had the resources rather than share them or not charge interest chose to charge interest.

And watch what happens. Fascinating thing. Nehemiah 5 .1

There arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers.

For there were those who said, With our sons and our daughters we are many, so let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive.

There were also those who said, We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our houses to get grain because of the famine.

So things are so bad they had to take out a mortgage on their farms in order just to buy groceries.

That's how bad the famine was. And there were those who said, We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards.

Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children as their children.

Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves. They're selling their children into slavery at this point because they can't make the payments on their loans.

And some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it for other men have our fields and our vineyards.

So you'll note that charging interest in this time was literally forcing people off their properties, causing them to lose their ability to care for themselves at all.

They were totally destroyed by this practice of charging interest. So Nehemiah says,

I was very angry when I heard their outcry in these words. I took counsel with myself and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials and I said to them,

You are exacting interest, each from his brother. And I held a great assembly against them.

Yeah, look at that. Talk about Nehemiah. I mean, in their face, it's like you imagine putting posters.

We're going to have a great assembly. We're going to meet at such and such a hall and we're going to basically condemn the people who are loaning money at interest within our own community.

Could you imagine if we did something like this against Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover? We think that they're helping us.

They're not. They really are exploiting us. So I held a great assembly against them and I said to them,

We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us.

They were silent and could not find a word to say. Notice Nehemiah is up in their business.

So I said, The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our

God to prevent the taunts of the nations and our enemies? Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain.

So let's abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, their houses, the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.

Think about this for a second. Nehemiah is literally saying, What you did is wrong.

You need to make restitution. So everything that you've gained by this practice, you've got to go into your accounting books, figure out what that is, and give it all back.

Are rich people known for doing such things? Not at all. But watch what happens.

It's very fascinating. So return to them their fields.

Return it all. Verse 12, they said, We will restore these and require nothing from them.

We will do as you say. And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised.

I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise.

So may he be shaken out and emptied. And all the assembly said, Amen. And they praised the

Lord. And the people did as they had promised. Look at that.

Somebody used God's law to call somebody on the carpet for their sin. And you know what they did? They repented.

And who got all the praise? God did. And God was praised in the fact that these people repented and all of these things were restored and the crisis was averted.

Yeah. No, not at all.

Okay, so we will say for sure the idea of meeting the needs of our brothers and sisters applies.

And here's the reason why. Because this same driving principle is taken up in the

New Testament. Remember last week we talked about the fact it's not robbery that is condemned in the

New Testament. It's miserliness. The not giving away of your resources to help your brother.

And so that principle still is in play. In fact, it's not a principle. It's a command. It's an exhortation to good works.

So among the community of faith, we are to meet each other's needs. And you have options.

You have an option to just give them what they need or you have the option to loan them but not an interest.

And the purpose of the loan is to help them, not to exploit them. Now, in the grander world, this is where we have to kind of pay attention to something.

There are lending practices that are predatory. This is absolutely true.

I remember being led like a sheep to the slaughter when I was 18 years old and went to college because guess what?

When I went to orientation the first week my freshman year of college, there were institutions all so happy to give me credit cards.

And like an idiot, I used them. And it took me years to pay them off. That's a predatory practice.

That's a predatory practice. And you think about the places. There are places in town.

Go into Grand Forks. A couple places on Washington where if you're a little low on money right now, that's okay.

Bring them your pay stub. They'll give you a loan in advance of your next paycheck.

But take a look at the interest on that thing. And then I would take a look at some other predatory practices.

Have you considered like the place that will rent you furniture? Have you ever figured out what you end up paying for a coffee table that you rent from a place like that after it's all said and done?

Way more than what... You could have bought yourself ten coffee tables or whatever at Walmart for the price that you will pay at the end of that.

That's exploitive. And the reality is that those people put on the pretense, oh, we're just offering a service to the community.

Hogwash. They are not offering a service to anybody. They are engaging in legal theft.

And justice requires us to call them out for this sin. And justice also requires us to help meet the needs of those in our community who are the most vulnerable and have the least so that they do not fall prey to these exploitive practices.

This still exists to this day. And here's the thing. Part of the cycle of poverty, the reason why people can't break out of it is because of money lenders.

That's a reality. And that's an injustice in our society.

That as citizens of this country, we have an obligation to address.

And as citizens of the kingdom of God, we have an obligation to each other to make sure that none of us falls prey to these things.

So, yeah. Isn't it fun studying God's law? I love it because you really begin to get a real interesting picture of the nature of God, His compassion, who

He cares for. And you can see all of these different ways in which by not allowing the love of God to have its way with us, we then in turn fail to love our neighbors.