August 26, 2020
The message of Deuteronomy is one that the church desperately needs to hear today. These final words of Moses given to the children of Israel as they prepared to enter into the Promised Land serve as a warning, an encouragement, and a charge. Through them, God exposes the idolatry of our hearts and calls us to give all of our love, worship, and devotion to Him alone in every area of our lives! Moses warns the people that when they enter the land there will be things that compete with God for their attention, their affections and their worship. We, too, have hundreds of things that compete for our hearts each and every day. In this book, God teaches us how to properly respond to the amazing grace He has given us by giving Him our undivided allegiance, our whole hearts and our whole lives. Over the next 34 days, let’s seek this ancient way together as a church!
Moses continues explaining the Covenant Law to the people of Israel. In this chapter, Moses continues to lay out practices of worship, generosity, and social equity that would have very much distinguished them among the neighboring nations. Their way of life was to put the glory and holiness of the God they served on display, and that Law was the means of doing that!
Moses specifically speaks to the matter of the Sabbath year and the generosity which was to characterize the people of God. In reverence and worship towards God, without a grudging heart nor a fearful one, everyone in Israel who had lent to another was to release them from that debt in the Sabbath year. It didn’t matter if the person had paid or not, whether they had the debt for six of the seven years or only a couple of weeks; all debts were to be forgiven in the seventh year.
The Lord also commanded His people to give generously to all their Israelite brothers or sisters who became poor in the land. They were not to harden their hearts in greed nor even consider how close the Sabbath year was (and therefore how likely they were to actually get repaid for the loan); they were to live with an open hand and a soft heart towards those who were in need around them.
If the people of Israel obeyed these commands, the Lord promised to bless them. The very same expectations, along with the very same promises, exist for God’s people today; in light of the incredible generosity of God towards us in Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 8:9), we are to be people characterized by generosity and open-handedness towards those in need, especially those within the church.
In Acts chapters 2 and 4 we see descriptions of the radical generosity that the life-transforming power of the Holy Spirit and the gospel produced in the lives of the early believers in Jerusalem. They gave as there was need among them, so that “There was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:34). What would it look like for us to really live this way, in this radical kind of generosity that the Lord calls us to?
Just like it was for the early church, this kind of genuine love demonstrated through generosity is one of the most powerful witnesses to the world of the reality of God’s presence in and among us as His people. In the end, the call of God towards this sort of generosity is a call to trust Him and His promises. If we truly believe that He is who He says He is, and we truly trust that He will follow through on His promises to bless us when we live this way, then that frees us to walk in radical open-handedness towards those in need!
Deuteronomy 15
The Sabbatical Year
15 “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. 2 And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor. He shall not exact it of his neighbor, his brother, because the Lord’s release has been proclaimed. 3 Of a foreigner you may exact it, but whatever of yours is with your brother your hand shall release. 4 But there will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess— 5 if only you will strictly obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment that I command you today. 6 For the Lord your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.
7 “If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, 8 but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. 9 Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. 10 You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’
12 “If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. 13 And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. 14 You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today. 16 But if he says to you, ‘I will not go out from you,’ because he loves you and your household, since he is well-off with you,17 then you shall take an awl, and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And to your female slave you shall do the same. 18 It shall not seem hard to you when you let him go free from you, for at half the cost of a hired worker he has served you six years. So the Lordyour God will bless you in all that you do.
19 “All the firstborn males that are born of your herd and flock you shall dedicate to the Lord your God. You shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock. 20 You shall eat it, you and your household, before the Lord your God year by year at the place that the Lord will choose. 21 But if it has any blemish, if it is lame or blind or has any serious blemish whatever, you shall not sacrifice it to the Lord your God.22 You shall eat it within your towns. The unclean and the clean alike may eat it, as though it were a gazelle or a deer. 23 Only you shall not eat its blood; you shall pour it out on the ground like water.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Family Discussion Question:
- What are some excuses that we sometimes make for not helping the people we see around us who are in need? Is it possible that those excuses say more about our own hearts than they do about the needy people we see? How does the command of God towards the people of Israel, as well as the example of the early church, challenge you to live with greater generosity towards others?
Thank you for the blog. If we would do these commandment today we would not have the poor and needed peoples, Lord help me be more generous to my neighbors in need.Amen
Father,
I am a child of the Father who teaches and chastens. Forgive me, Father, when a fail you. How you must cry over my soul.
Help me to walk this day in submission to you.
Humbly praying in the name of Jesus my savior.
Amen
It is interesting that V. 4 says that there will be no poor and V. 11 says that there will always be poor. There seems to be a contradiction but there is none. V. 4 is conditional: complete obedience. In V. 11, God knows that people are sinful and there will not be complete obedience, hence there will be the poor.
During these current troubled times in our world it is encouraging to know that things that are out of our control are not out of God’s.
AMEN and HALLELUJAh!!! Lord please take care of us during these trouble times. Take care of us during hurricane Laura. I understand to give to people who are in need. So I will be working on that as the Lord commands. I have been a person in need and was surprisingly taken care of. I want to thank the person who was generous. You are my Lord and Savior. I pray to you today in Jesus name Amen
Thank you Lord for your generosity toward me, and forgiving my debts. Help me be generous with my time, resources and gifts, and forgiving toward others, drawing them to you.
I will listen obediently to the voice of the Lord my God, and observe carefully all the commandments He has commanded of me.
Dear Heavenly Father,
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves and do unto them as we would want others to do unto us. Please help us to see them through Your eyes and soften our hearts and make us more generous and caring people. If we each do our part, then we can show a Christlike spirit that will set us apart from the world. Then others will be drawn to You, which is our ultimate goal. Heaven is meant for all. Show us how to do our part to bring as many as we can with us. In Jesus name, Amen.
Our Father who art in Heaven, we humbly bow our heads with grateful hearts. Thank you for your teaching us through your word.
~Amen and Amen~