One Of The Least Remembered Commandments

Chapter 15, Deuteronomy chapter 15.

Deuteronomy 15 · chapter mention

And we're going to read the entire chapter.

It is unified, and so I want us to see the whole text this evening.

We'll just begin there with verse 1.

It says, At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.

And this is the manner of the release.

Every creditor that lendeth aught unto his neighbor shall release it.

He shall not exact it of his neighbor or of his brother, because it is called the Lord's release.

Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again, but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release, save or accept when there shall be no poor among you, for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day.

For the Lord thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee, and thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow.

And thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.

If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in the land which the Lord your God giveth you, thou shalt not harden thine heart nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother, but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanteth.

Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand, and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him not, and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee.

Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him, because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto.

For the poor shall never cease out of the land.

Therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, to thy needy in thy land.

And if thy brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee.

And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty.

Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock and out of thy floor, and out of thy wine press, of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee, thou shalt give unto him.

And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee.

Therefore I command thee this thing today.

And it shall be, if he say to thee, I will not go away from thee, because he loveth thee and thine house, and because he is well with thee, then thou shalt take an awl and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever, and also unto thy maid servant thou shalt do likewise.

It shall not seem hard unto thee when thou sendest him away free from thee, for he hath been worth double a hired servant to thee, in serving thee six years, and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all that thou doest.

All the firstling males that come of thy herd and thy flock thou shalt sanctify unto the Lord thy God.

Thou shalt do no work with the firstling of thy bullock, nor shear the firstling of thy sheep, thou shalt eat it before the Lord thy God year by year in the place which the Lord shall choose thou and thy house hold.

And if there be any blemish therein, as if it be lame or blind or have any ill blemish, thou shalt not sacrifice it unto the Lord thy God.

Thou shalt eat it with in thy gates the unclean, and the clean person shall eat it alike as the roebuck and as the heart.

Only thou shalt not eat the blood thereof.

Thou shalt pour it upon the ground as water.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, thank you so much for your word.

Give us understanding hearts this evening as we do the diligent work to uh interpret and to apply.

Father, let's pray and ask that you would help us to see this uh theme, this connective tissue of generosity that runs through this chapter.

May we understand how important it is to you and to us.

I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Chapter 15, like the previous chapter, is based on the relationship of the people of Israel to God as the children of the Lord.

If you remember, last time we were together, verse uh chapter 14 begins, you are the children of the Lord, and because of that relationship, then there were certain commands and demands that were placed on them.

And so I would posit that this also is an ex uh that this is an expression of their deck uh dedication to the Lord.

And so when we're looking at this chapter, reading these commands that's God's giving to them, and then we ask the question, why is God telling them to do this?

I would say it is also an expression of their dedication to the Lord.

And it is one of the things that sets them apart from all the other nations around them in this unique practice of generosity.

This chapter begins with a reference to the Sabbath year.

That year of release was also known as the Sabbath year, and God commanded that Sabbath year back in Leviticus 25.

And so if you'd like to do any background research, you can always go back there and look and see a little bit more.

But remember, this is the second iteration of the law.

Moses is reminding and retelling a new generation, and so sometimes he just kind of telegraphs or shorthands it.

And so he is talking to them about this year, this Sabbath year, this year of release.

When you think about the Sabbath year, you think about it like the Sabbath day.

The Sabbath day was on the seventh day.

It was one every seven, right?

Six days you work, seventh day you rest, Sabbath day, Sabbath year was every seven years.

And so, six years they worked the land.

The seventh year was prescribed to be a year of rest for the land.

And so God says, I bring you in, I'm giving you the land, but I want you to be good caretakers of this land, and I want you not to uh exhaust the land.

Uh there are certain crops that if you plant them repeatedly, they will actually take the nutrients out of the soil and change uh the chemistry of the soil to where it does not produce anymore.

Uh, if you remember reading in history about the uh the great uh the great uh issue with cotton in the South uh back in the 19th century, one of the issues was is that cotton would strip the soil of the nutrients it needed, so every year that they kept uh planting it, it would grow loose or less and produce less and less and less.

And uh and so George Washington Carver came up with the idea of planting peanuts.

Peanuts enriched the soil, and so if they alternate it, they would actually have a better outcome.

And so I would say that there is some of that ingenuity behind this, that God has a plan.

He knows what is best for the land, and he prescribes it as this year of rest for the land.

However, in addition to it being rest, it was also a reset.

And it was a year in which the lands were returned.

And so if you remember Leviticus 25, sometimes those lands got shuffled and sold between the families.

In the Sabbath year, it was supposed to have those lands returned back to the original family line.

It was also a year when debts were forgiven and indentured servants were set free.

So not only is it a rest for the land, it is a year when land is returned, when debts are forgiven, when indentured servants are set free.

This chapter consists of four paragraphs.

Each one describes a sub-theme, but the overarching principle in all of them is generosity.

And so if you're saying what ties this chapter together when God is talking about how you're supposed to give to your brethren and give to the poor and release the indentured servant and offer sacrifices, the connective theme that runs through all of it is generosity.

I actually refer to this as one of the least remembered commandments, the command to be generous.

And I refer to it because we find out later that Israel neglected this command for 500 years.

For 500 years, they did not obey this command to be generous, to have the Sabbath year, the reset year.

If you remember, the prophet Jeremiah told Israel that their exile was going to be for 70 years.

You remember that?

It's in the book of Jeremiah.

It's in the book of Daniel.

Daniel was reading the prophet Jeremiah, and he discovered it's going to be 70 years that we are in exile, right?

Exile from the land into a foreign land.

And then if you cross-reference that to 2 Chronicles 36, verses 20 and 21, you'll find out why God determined it to be a 70-year period, right?

2 Chronicles 36:20

Why not 50?

Why not 60?

Why not 100?

Why 70?

We'll listen to these verses from 2 Chronicles 36.

And them that had escaped from the sword carried heat away to Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbath.

For as long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath, to fulfill three score and ten years.

And so when you figure that out and you say it's one every seven years, and they had to do seventies of these years, that's that's 490 years that Israel neglected this command.

And you know, I don't think human nature changes that much.

I find people today also tend to downplay God's command to be generous.

For example, surveys show that just 21% of Christians sit there giving at 10% or more, while 75% of churchgoers view tithing as a biblical command.

So get that.

75% of churchgoers who were surveyed say, I believe tithing is a biblical command, right?

And a tithe means a tenth.

However, the average Christian gives closer to 2.5% of their income.

And so I'm not here, I'm not going to take up an offering.

I'm not going to tell you, you know, I'm not trying to needle you.

I'm just telling you that there's this tendency that we have to like downplay that generosity command.

Maybe we don't feel like the stakes are as high as it is on other issues.

Uh, and that certainly happened to Israel.

And so I just want to take a look at these four paragraphs in Deuteronomy 15 to see these four areas in which God commanded his people to be generous.

And so, first, uh be generous to God's people.

We find this in the first paragraph in verses 1 through 6.

The people of Israel are instructed to be generous with their fellow nationals.

And so that's the command.

Be generous with your fellow citizens.

Now, if they're a foreigner, hey, you can charge them interest and you can do those things.

But don't do that to your fellow nationals.

And mind you, this is not some kind of racial discrimination.

Uh it's it's not because uh they they were all the same ethnicity.

Ethnicity is actually secondary to the fact that they are the chosen people of God.

They are all the chosen people of God.

And so God says, these are your brothers and sisters in the Lord.

And as children of God, they're more closely related than they are through their DNA.

And since they are the children of God, their Father wants them to treat each other with the preference that we would give to family.

This principle is reiterated in the New Testament passages like 1 John 3, 16 and 17, where it says, Hereby, brethren, uh hereby perceive we love of God, because he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Pay attention to that word.

But whoso hath this world's good and sees his brother have need and shuts up his bows of compassion from him, how dwells the love of God in him.

I point that out because the reference in 1 John 3, 16 and 17 to brother and brethren clearly is not familial.

It has nothing to do with your blood relation.

It has to do with being part of the family of God, the spiritual family of God, regardless of race.

John said, didn't it just, hey, treat your kind with better kindness.

He says, if they are a brother or a sister in Christ, there ought to be a preferential treatment that you give to them in your generosity.

And this is confirmed in Galatians 6.10, where the same command is presented in different terminology.

Galatians 6.10 says, as we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially to them who are of the household of faith.

And so there's that clause.

Be generous, be kind, be good in general.

But there's a special dispensation that you are supposed to give of this to those who are of the household of faith.

That term household means belonging to a house or a family, and so it refers to those who are part of the house of God, the church, or those who are part of the family of God, being born again.

God wants us to be generous.

He wants us to take care of one another, he wants us to look out for each other.

And while God wants his people to be generous in general, he commands us to be especially generous with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

So there's that first paragraph, first area of generosity.

Be generous to God's people.

And by the way, I I I want you to know this when we um with the deacons uh work on our benevolence policy.

Uh we put way more money in the fund for people who are in the church than for transients who just passed through.

Because we think that's good stewardship.

Uh we could all tell you stories about people who rolled in here with some sort of wild sob story asking us to give them money that you gave to the work of the Lord.

And uh, we've all sniffed out those who were scamming, those who were simply making poor life decisions and wanting us to finance it.

And uh and we decided long ago that that we're not gonna give very much money to that.

We might give them a tank of gas, we might, you know, buy them a meal, we might get them a hotel room for a night.

But if it's somebody in the church and they have a need, we know that brother, we know that sister, well, those are people that we want to help.

Because we know that you would want to help them, that you would say, hey, that's a worthy cause.

And so we just simply think that this is a principle that God's laid out here where he says, listen, Christians are supposed to take care of other Christians, love other Christians.

And if we're going to be generous anywhere, let's be generous there in the house of God.

The second paragraph says, be generous to the poor in verses 7 through 11.

Interestingly, God did not task the government of Israel with helping the impoverished, but he made it an individual responsibility.

And I want you to notice that because this is the organizing of a nation.

They are having to deal, remember, with civil laws as well as moral laws and ceremonial laws, and he doesn't say, hey, we're going to establish this fund, everybody's going to pay into it, and then the hierarchy is going to distribute it.

He actually makes it an individual responsibility.

Now, I'm not saying that it's wrong for there to be government policies and programs for the poor, but what I am pointing out is that God wanted it to be more personal and more local.

Right?

He wanted it to be more personal, more local.

Notice uh the reference there in verse 7 that says, if there be any among you a poor man of one of thy brethren with any uh within any of thy gates.

That that's significant.

That term gate would have had to do with the wall around the city, and the gate was the place where the leaders of the city would often meet or the prominent citizens.

And so within the gate simply meant that they took care of their own town, their own community, that they were responsible for those who were in close proximity to them.

Another way to look at this is that God doesn't want us to outsource our generosity.

He doesn't want us to outsource it.

He doesn't want us just to give it here and let somebody else take care of it.

He actually wants human interaction that goes with it.

He wanted his people to actually see the situation, see the person that they are helping and being involved with and being generous to.

Here's another little detail that I'd like to point out to you.

In verse 11, the scripture says this for the poor shall never cease out of the land.

I would just simply tell you to pay attention to statements like these, because they reveal unchanging truth.

They reveal unchanging truth.

If God says the poor will never cease out of the land, in other words, there'll never be a time when there's not poor people in your land.

That's an unchanging truth.

Now, I understand the reason why motivated people would set as the goal for their campaign to eradicate poverty, right?

I mean, that looks good on a flyer.

I mean, that sounds good.

That's something that we can get behind.

But the reality is, according to God's word, poverty will never be completely eliminated.

Even in the most prosperous land.

Remember reading in that chapter, God says, Listen, you will lend to nations, but you won't borrow from nations.

Why?

Well, that means they're gonna have so much prosperity that they don't need to borrow.

And even in a country where God is blessing and he says, I'm gonna make you so prosperous that you're a lender and not a borrower, he says to them, You will always have poverty.

There will always be poor people in the land.

And if perchance you think that I am reaching, uh reading too much into this statement, really, Justin, is that you're basing all of that on one statement?

Well, I would just remind you that Jesus said the exact same thing.

He said it in Matthew 26, verse 11.

Matthew 26:11

He said it in Mark chapter 14, verse 7, and he said it in John 12, 8.

Mark 14:7

If you remember, the woman with the alabaster box broke it, anointed Jesus' feet.

Judas said, This should have been sold and the money given to the poor.

Do you remember what Jesus said?

The poor you will always have with you.

Hey, that's an unchanging truth.

And so while, yes, we're commanded to be generous, we're commanded to help people who are in need, but never let us deceive ourselves into thinking that we can eradicate poverty.

There is always going to be an element of that in every society.

And I'm not talking about reasons why or motivation or any of that stuff.

I'm just talking about the reality is that the Bible says it's always going to be there.

We'll never eradicate.

We'll never, right?

We sometimes have this modernistic view that if we can just get everybody educated enough, we can get enough government programs, we can get to a point where we don't have any people below the poverty line.

Um it's just not gonna happen.

For one, they keep moving the poverty line upward and upward.

So always poor people, always needy people in the world.

Uh and and therefore we're always to practice generosity, right?

That's the other side of that coin.

We're told to help those people who are in need, and there's always gonna be people in need, and so we have a lasting command.

Uh we find this being practiced by the early church.

Uh if you remember, there's an offering for the poor that's described in Romans 15, 25, and uh and then it's also described in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 that uh they were under affliction in Jerusalem.

They were deeply impoverished, and the churches uh uh of Asia Minor and of Europe were taking up a collection of money so that they could send it to the poor in Jerusalem.

And so we find that being practiced in the first century.

The third paragraph, we're told to be generous to indentured servants, or they're told to be generous to indentured servants.

That's verses 12 through 18.

And I say indentured because servitude in the ancient world was oftentimes indentureship.

And it's hard for you and us to imagine it in our culture, but throughout human history, there have always been people who have sold themselves into servitude.

I'm not talking about somebody being captured as a prisoner of war.

It off and sold.

I'm talking about a person selling themselves into servitude.

Think about it.

If you suffered such a catastrophic loss that starvation is a reality.

I mean, a reality.

I'm going to starve to death because I have nothing and I have no means, then selling yourself into servitude was a strategy for survival.

If I sell myself into servitude, what do I get?

I get a place to sleep, I get food to eat, I get that sort of care.

I get to survive.

Like I said, that's hard for you and I to believe because we have such abundance today that there's very few people, at least in our country, in our hemisphere, who are in danger of literally starving to death.

And yet that has been a reality in in the world and in history for a long time.

And so this was a reason for many of these people, especially the Hebrews, selling themselves into this indentured.

It's not the only way people ended up in servitude, but it was one of the ways, and servitude in the ancient world was a reality.

And so God speaks to his people where they are and the reality in which they live, and he commands his people to release their servants from uh from their servitude every Sabbath year.

Every seventh year you set them free.

But he says, listen, I don't want you just setting them free.

I don't want you to send them out empty-handed.

I want you to generously give to them.

And he says, I want you to give them of your flock, right?

That means herd animals, cows, goats, uh, lambs.

Uh uh, he says, I want you to give them of the floor.

That was a reference to the threshing floor.

So that would have been the field, the wheat, all those things that were threshold.

And he says, give them of the wine press.

That would have been of the vineyard and the olive yard and that sort of thing.

Uh the term that he uses here is liberally in verse 14.

Give to them liberally.

And that term, liberally, is a synonym for generously.

For example, it's used in Proverbs 11.25.

There is that scatters and yet increases.

There is that withholds more than is suitable, but it tends to poverty.

The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that waters shall also be watered himself.

Second Corinthians 9 13, they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them and unto all men.

Now, I know that uh conservative and liberal are trigger words in our society, and they uh conjure all kinds of thoughts that go along with it.

But I know this for sure, this is one area in which God wants his people to be liberal.

It is in their generosity, it is in their giving, it is in their helping of other people.

I surmise that this text may have been the precedent for why Paul petitioned Philemon to let Onesimus go.

And not only was Onesimus a slave, a servant of Philemon's, uh, but what every commentator seems to agree on is that it appears that Onesimus stole from Philemon in order to finance his runaway.

So not only was Onesimus a servant, but he also was indebted he had stolen.

And remember, Paul says, Count him as brother, count him as you would myself, give him his freedom, and if he owes you anything, I will cover the tab.

And so I know that the Apostle Paul was a Hebrew scholar, that he was well versed with the five books of Moses, and no doubt this would have served as a basis for his petition.

So generosity has an application to all situations in life, right?

He God tells us every situation there is opportunity for us to be generous.

Jesus preached about this in the Sermon on the Mount when he says, If any man will sue thee at the law to take away your coat, let him have your cloak also.

What is that?

Well, that's insanity, we might say.

No, that's generosity.

God says, if they're going to sue you for your coat, then give them your shirt too.

If they compel you to go one mile, go with them too.

You say, What do you mean, go with me one mile?

Well, apparently the law was that if a Roman soldier, which Rome occupied Jerusalem at that time, if a Roman soldier saw a Hebrew, he could say, Carry my bags, and by law you had to carry them one mile.

And Jesus said, Be generous.

Carry them too.

Right?

The law ended at mile one.

Generosity began at 1.1.

And so this application we find here is broad and applies to all areas of our life.

And now that brings us to the final paragraph in Deuteronomy 15.

And it may not look like it has an obvious connection to generosity at first glance, but I believe that it is the foundation of it all.

And this one I call be generous to the Lord.

Verses 19 through 23.

This paragraph gives commands about offering animals to the Lord in worship.

And I want you to notice that the gist of its instruction is that they were to give God their first, and they were to give God their best.

Give them the firstlings of your flock, right?

The first offspring.

The one that you have, what is it, the old saying, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.

And what it's saying is, give the animal you have in your hand, the first one.

Don't wait to see if that if that animal is going to produce more and you can afford to give one, give the first one to the Lord.

And then there is this stipulation if the first one has any sort of blemish, you don't give that one to the Lord.

You give to God the one that's without blemish, the one that is without damage.

Now, personally and financially, they they uh might rationalize that they should use their best animal for the market, right?

That's the one that's gonna bring the best money.

If it doesn't have blemishes or imperfections, I mean that's the one that's gonna bring the most money, and maybe I will use that animal to get to the market to get the most profit from me and my family, and I'll give the call to the Lord because, I mean, it's not worth that much anyway.

It's gonna be sacrificed.

I mean, why does it have to be that nice?

It's just gonna be butchered by the priest, nobody's going to be paying for it.

However, the command is to give their most valuable animals to God, not their least valuable.

The rationale of this radical generosity is explained in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9.

And I'll just kind of give you an explanation of that.

You might ask, well, why would we do this?

Why would you give that best to the Lord?

I mean, it's a sacrifice.

Just give the one that's got a limp or a blemish or a wound.

Well, one of the reasons is because God will bless you abundantly for your sacrificial generosity.

God will bless you when you actually are generous at a sacrifice, right?

When it costs you.

Listen to 2 Corinthians 9, 7 and 8.

Every man according as he purposes in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work.

Why should I be generous with the Lord?

Why should I give my best to the Lord?

Because God will bless me for it.

God will bless me abundantly.

Did you notice that when it says when they give cheerfully that God is able to make all grace abound toward them?

And that you always having all sufficiency in all things, man, that's a massive promise that comes from God, where God says, Listen, if you'll be generous with me, if you will give to me and you will trust me and you will sacrifice, I will bless you abundantly.

By the way, if you look through Deuteronomy chapter 15, you will find that God promises to bless his people's generosity in verse four.

Deuteronomy 15 · chapter mention

The Lord shall greatly bless thee.

Verse 6, the Lord thy God blesseth thee.

Verse 10, the Lord thy God shall bless thee.

Verse 14, the Lord thy God hath blessed thee.

And verse 18, the Lord thy God shall bless thee.

In the big picture, we get more from our generosity than we could ever get from our stinginess.

Human nature says, I gotta hold on to it.

I gotta pile it up.

I'm gonna don't know what's coming down the road.

I gotta be prepared for it.

I've got to amass this.

And God says, if you will live generously and you will practice generosity with me, I will bless you.

I will provide for you.

I will take care of you.

However, the biggest reason for our generosity doesn't come from the promise of God to bless us, right?

Because that can be way manipulated.

Well, you know, sow your seed with the Lord, the prosperity gospel says.

And if you'll just give a thousand dollars, God will multiply that and he will give thousands back to you.

Well, that's an entirely wrong motivation, is it not?

That I'm giving to the Lord because I am expecting a good return on my investment.

Well, that takes the worship out of it.

God never wanted them to be motivated by the blessing.

He wanted them to be motivated by the relationship, but he wants them to know that they can trust him, and if they will trust him in this area, he will bless them.

But I tell you, that's not the biggest reason to be generous with God.

The biggest reason for us to be generous with God is actually God's generosity for us.

Let me read a verse to you from 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, 8 verse 9, that uh that always gets me when it comes to me when I think about giving to the Lord.

It says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.

You see, Christ's generosity with us was so great that it is said to have impoverished him.

Isn't that astounding?

That he became poor that we might be made rich.

I'm telling you, you cannot find anywhere, anyway, that God has been stingy with us.

And so when we look at that, we understand that we have no reason to be stingy with him.

Our God has already proven that he will spare no expense to save our souls.

And by the way, it didn't end there, according to Romans 8.32, it says, He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

If God was willing to give us that, the sacrifice of Christ, while we were yet sinners, now that we are sons and daughters, do you think that he's going to be stingy?

How will he withhold anything from us if he didn't spare his son to save us?

And so let me conclude by simply saying be generous.

Because you can't outgive God.

You just cannot outgive God.

Now, I'm gonna walk around and ask to borrow some money and see if this message.

No, I'm just kidding.

But it is good to be reminded that we serve a generous God.

He wants us to be generous people.

And when we are generous, God does some amazing things in our life.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, thank you so much for your word.

Thank you for this reminder.

Uh we are uh such uh creatures, such self-pro preservationists, Lord, that we do oftentimes uh look at those calculations and try to plan against the worst uh when there are times that you simply want us to trust you, to, as you said, open our hand wide, to be generous and liberal in our distribution, knowing that you, Lord, are pleased, knowing that you will bless, and knowing most of all, that that's how you gave to us.

And so, Father, I pray and ask that you would help us uh to find the capacity to be generous to the extent that we are able to be generous in uh in this instruction.

I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you would stand with me and we'll sing sweet hours.