Predatory Economics | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

We're going to continue on in our series of messages called uh the prophetic anthology.

Uh what we're looking at are the six major themes of the 12 minor prophets.

Um the 12 minor prophets start in the book of Hosea and they go all the way through um to the book of Malachi.

So it's Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, uh, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Hagi, Zachariah, and Malachi.

And instead of teaching each one of them, I'm going to teach them together.

And they're actually designed to be studied together because their themes and their um uh messages of each of these books are interrelated.

And so that's what we're doing.

Uh, I want to uh give just a little bit of foundational teaching before so we can kind of get everything we need to get out of today's sermon.

Um I want to start with a kind of a little bit of a summary of a couple books that precede the prophets.

So if you go to the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, those tell the story of the rise of the monarchy in Israel.

So you have King Saul, who's the first king, King David, who's the second king, and so those first and second Samuel tell that story.

The next two sets of books, which would be 1 and 2 Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles, those tell the story of the fall or the decline or the demise of the monarch and the monarchy and the nation.

And uh each of those books tells the same story.

So you'll see the same books in King or the same stories in Kings as you do in Chronicles, but they come from a little bit different angle, and they're both designed to answer the question: what happened?

Why did this monarchy collapse?

Why did this nation go into bondage and captivity?

And as a summary, first and second Kings say the reason that happened primarily is because of idolatry.

Because we turned away from worshiping Yahweh alone.

We did what we talked about last week when we talked about idolatry of syncretism.

So we brought in these other theologies, these other gods, and created our own concoction instead of staying true to who God is and worshiping him alone.

So that's King, first and second Kings.

First and 2 Chronicles says that the main reason for the collapse was not just idolatry, but it was a lust for empire.

So, in other words, we looked at the big dogs around the world.

We looked at the big nations around us.

Israel is this small little nation surrounded by empires, and we saw the empires and we were seduced by their prosperity.

We were seduced by their wealth, we were seduced by their military uh might.

We were seduced by their cultures and their architecture and their art, and we wanted to be like them.

So instead of um following the Torah, following God's law in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, we we were distracted by these powerful nations and we wanted to mimic them.

We wanted to be like them.

So it was a lust for empire.

And what you're gonna see with the prophets, when we talked about these six themes, last week we looked at what would be kind of story A, the king's version, which is idolatry.

But you're gonna see that the in the lust for empire, it leads into some things that are so practical.

Like it almost doesn't feel like things you talk about in church.

Today we're gonna talk about the theme that runs through several of the minor prophets.

We're gonna look at three of them today.

We'll jump back and forth between three of the minor prophets.

But the theme is they had an intense aversion and a call-out, a prophetic call-out of predatory economics.

Predatory economics.

You probably didn't think you were gonna come to church and listen to a sermon on predatory economics, but you you probably haven't heard a series on the minor prophets, so we're gonna just handle the word appropriately.

All right, we're people of the word, and this is what a big theme that the prophets had an issue with.

Now, uh let me kind of set this up for you uh in understanding what was God's intent as he set up uh not only expectations for the economy, but conduct for the community.

Uh it says in Leviticus 19, again, when we're looking at Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus Numbers, or Deuteronomy, we're looking at the law, we're looking at the Torah.

Leviticus uh 25, 23 says, the land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.

Okay, now he's saying this to the children of Israel, and he's establishing a mindset around the land.

He's saying, hey, when you look at planet earth and you look at the the the ground, the land, please understand it's mine.

God owns it, and we steward it.

So he says, now you're stewarding my land, and and uh as my people, I want you to know I own the land, your family steward the land, and every family in the nation receives an inheritance, and no family should permanently lose that means of production.

Okay, so when they saw the land, they saw uh not just earth, they saw food, uh, income, housing, family identity.

In many ways, this was their place in God's covenant, and it was an inheritance they would leave to their children.

Now, when God builds in, again, community and theological expectations of the law, he builds compassion into the law.

So look at this Leviticus 19, 9 and 10.

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.

Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.

I am the Lord your God.

He says, when you're on a farm, and again, most of their land was subsistence farmers, which essentially were, you know, sowing and reaping to feed our families.

Uh, and then whatever we have left over, we're able to sell and build up a little bit of margin.

But most of them didn't they these weren't wealthy people.

They were farmers that were taking care of their families.

But he says, listen, when you have your farm, he says, leave the perimeter unharvested.

Okay?

When you go through and you harvest and there's some left on the ground, don't go back and get every single piece of fruit.

He said, leave the perimeter so that the so that people who are in need in the community don't have to come knock on your door and ask.

They can actually just go pull it out of some of the trees on the perimeter and and they can go through and get when they're hungry.

And he says, and also the person who isn't from this community, or in other words, the foreigner.

So what you see is, again, a value system, if you think of it like concentric circles.

You have at the center, this is your family.

Of course, communities are built on stability of the home.

So in a mom and dad within their family are going to take care of their kids.

We have to do that first, and eventually, these are the people we're gonna leave everything to, we're gonna leave an inheritance.

So if your neighbor, okay, your neighbor is in need, I want you to make sure that there's some provision for them.

Now, you can't provide for your neighbor the same way you provide for your children, but I don't want you to forget about your neighbor.

And he says, even the person who's not from the community, the foreigner, don't forget.

Just because they're not from here, doesn't mean that they're not made in my image.

Please don't take their humanity.

And one of the ways that you'll be generous to them is to leave the perimeter of your land for them.

Okay?

So it's this idea, and again, I think this is something in our world, as we'll just say Americans, we have to kind of hold two realities.

One is we do put a huge value on individuality, on individual freedoms, okay, and there's some really good with that.

It's very good for someone to be able to be who they are, um, you know, to be a unique individual and not to be controlled by everybody else.

Okay, so we have individual freedoms.

At the same time, you're part of a community.

So you're an individual, but you need to never forget and get so lost in your individualism that you forget that it's not all about you.

Okay?

And if everybody just functions by themselves and I harvest everything, when someone's in need, they don't have it because I've consumed it all.

In fact, frankly, some of it probably rotted.

And so they're going, it's built, God builds it into the law.

I want you to think about the fact yes, you're an individual, yes, you take care of your home, but don't be so absorbed in your home that you forget that there are people that live outside of your doors, outside of your property, who need some help.

So don't harvest the edges and make sure that there's some extra for them, including the person who isn't even from here.

Uh Deuteronomy 24, 19 through 21.

It says, When you're harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it.

Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

Verse 20.

When you beat the olives from the trees, do not go over the branches a second time.

Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.

When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again.

Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow.

Now, when you look further into the Torah, you'll find two other concepts.

One of them is in Deuteronomy 15, the other is in Leviticus 25.

Deuteronomy 15 lays out what's called the sabbatical year, which is every seven years, every seventh year, debts were released and fields rested.

Okay, so how does somebody end up in debt?

Well, they end up in debt because they're a subsistence farmer, and for one reason or another, um, they may not have been able to get a good crop.

There may have been a drought.

Um, someone who's very important to the harvest work may have gotten become ill, they got they were sick, um, the the harvest may not have turned out well, or somebody might have made really poor financial decisions or poor business decisions.

So for one reason or another, we find ourselves in debt.

So in that seventh year, it says that those debts are released.

And if you've gotten so far in debt that you've had to actually turn your land over to somebody else, in the year of Jubilee, which is every 50 years, the 50th year, you get your land back.

So the idea is this if somebody, either because of drought, because of illness, or because of really boneheaded business decisions, ends up losing their land, we're not going to punish their kids, their grandkids, and their great-grandkids for what this person did.

They're gonna get a shot to be in the covenant.

They're gonna be in a shot.

So it is probably, if you take it and compare it to other ancient Near Eastern legislation at that time, it is the most aggressive anti-generational poverty legislation in all of the ancient Near East.

It was the idea that God said, when you're part of this community and this covenant, even when you make decisions you have to pay for, at some point we're gonna get you out of this generational poverty and and give some, give your offspring a fair shot.

Okay, so again, this is this is the spirit of the law.

Now, fast forward to the 8th century BC, we have what we've talked about last couple weeks, the Levant period.

The Levant period essentially is when Israel experienced unprecedented wealth because the Assyrians and the Egyptians were dealing with internal issues and they had completely backed off.

And so you have now Israel, both the northern and southern kingdom, are they have this influx of money.

So it's like the market's hot, this thing's taken off, all of a sudden we've got money coming in.

They take control of the King's Highway, which is the toll road of the ancient Near East, and here's what happens: they realize global, essentially global supply and demand.

So they realize okay, we can make a ton of money with cash crops.

And the two cash crops that there is a global demand for is olive oil and wine.

Olive oil and wine.

Now we have a small country, we only have a little bit of land, but if we could get as much of this land as possible to make olive oil and wine, there is a global market.

We can't make enough, we'll make money hand over fit.

One problem subsistence farmers.

Subsistence farmers who have generational land that's been handed down from since Joshua, okay, to walls of Jericho fell down.

We took the promised land.

We have generations of subsistence farmers.

We've got to figure out how to get them off their land so that we can go buck wild with these cash crops during the Levant period.

So what happens is predatory economics, okay?

It's the unholy trinity of debt slavery, unjust courts, and rigged scales.

Okay, so I'm gonna talk through each one of these.

The first is predatory uh debt slavery.

So if we go back to the Torah, Exodus 22, 25 says this, and this is talking about community.

If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal, charge no interest.

Okay?

So this is saying you have a neighbor.

Don't forget, you're an individual, but you're part of a community.

Concentric circle.

Your children are gonna get everything and you give to them.

Your neighbor needs help.

Don't see your neighbor's vulnerability as an opportunity for you to capitalize.

As a good neighbor, the point is this neighbor's hurting.

I'm not trying to keep my neighbor down so I can capitalize.

I'm trying to get them out of trouble.

Now, you probably don't have enough to just give them everything they need, but it says lend it to them and don't bury them in interest, otherwise, it's counterproductive.

So if you have a person in your community that needs this help, just help them get out.

Take it as a duty of being a good citizen in a healthy community to get them out of it.

Well, what happened during the Levant period is uh Micah 2, too, Micah calls us out.

He says, um he says, they covet fields and seize them and houses and take them.

They defraud people of their homes and they rob them of their inheritance.

So, in other words, what they were doing is when they saw somebody who was in need because of a drought, the crop wasn't good, you have a subsistence farmer that needs a loan to be able to buy grain and seed for the next harvest and to take care of his family.

So now instead of going, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna be a good teammate, a good citizen, help him get out, they saw it as an opportunity to exploit them.

So now the people who had the capital would essentially go and lend to them at really high interest rates.

And they knew at some point these people aren't gonna be able to pay.

The crop's not gonna come in right, these interest rates are high, this is pushing them right to the edge of their affordability.

And when they can't pay, now I am legally able to come in and to seize their land.

They had to put their land up as collateral to be able to get enough seed to survive.

So instead of thinking like a covenant community, they thought like an empire that's willing to exploit for ambition.

And so they did this.

This was a way to get the subsistence farmer off of their land so that we can make more cash crops.

Uh, what's even worse about it is who do you think's gonna work that land?

Okay, what they would do is essentially have the person whose land they had just basically gotten them out of, and they they would then have to work to work off the debt.

So now you have somebody paying for the interest on paper that they owe interest, so now they're gonna essentially work for free, and so your pockets get bigger while they are working for free to pay off a debt on the land that their grandfather gave their father to give them.

So it's it was debt slavery.

Bad harvest means I need to borrow money, can't repay, it means I lose the land, still can't repay, which means I need to sell labor, still can't repay.

I sell my children and or myself into servitude.

Amos 2, 6 and 7 says, they sell the innocent for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.

Okay, this is uh this is uh uh kind of a colloquialism for uh selling the needy for a pair of sandals.

It would be like us saying, yeah, they sold them for for beans.

They sold them for nothing.

So they're they're saying you you have these people that you sell uh a needy person and you sell them for like you treat them as if they're nothing.

Verse 7, they trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.

Amos 5, 12 says, uh, for I know how many of your offenses and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts, which this brings up the second thing, which are the unjust courts.

Now, before I get into this, uh there is a word in okay, the Old Testament's written in Hebrew, and the Hebrew words are rich.

There is a there is a word that comes up in Genesis and it's used over 200 times.

The word's mostly translated in English as the word justice, okay, but it's the word mishpat, mishpat.

And the word mishpat is beyond just getting a court to rule in your favor or winning in court, it's the idea of seeing justice the way that God does.

So here's a working definition: it's the practice of setting things right.

Okay?

So when you look, even in the New Testament, when Jesus says, he who hungers and thirsts for righteousness, okay, and when he's talking about righteousness, it means doing right by, setting things right.

When you see things wrong and you hunger and thirst for it to be right, he says, they will eventually be filled.

God says that's a good instinct that you want things to be set right.

So Mishpat is the practice of setting things right, fair and restorative justice.

Again, not using a court to exploit, okay, seeing justice the way God sees it, ensuring equity and particularly protecting vulnerable people.

And it upholds the well-being of the community.

All right?

So, what again, what you have here is they veer away from Mishpat and setting things right, and they're doing things that they were able to maneuver legally, but it's not right.

This is one of those things that's like, if you ever, it's like, yes, uh, some people are rule keepers and some aren't as much, and we know rules matter and they're there for a reason.

But if you've ever seen something that was within the rules or within the laws, but it's wrong.

It's just wrong.

You're like, you know what?

Come on, let's not get too cute with it.

It wrong is wrong, right is right.

That's wrong.

That's wrong.

Like, I, yes, you got away with it.

Yes, legally, some way you you maneuvered it, but it's wrong.

And so Mishpat is a deeper sense uh of right and wrong, and of course, trying to line the legal system up with that as best you can.

But what they were able to do is maneuver because they saw this greedy opportunity at the expense of the subsistence farmer who they could take advantage of if they worked together.

Okay, they did something that violated Mishpat, even though it satisfied the courts.

Micah 7, 2 and 3 says, they hunt each other with nets.

Both hands are skilled in doing evil.

The ruler or the person, the government, demands gifts, the judge accepts bribes, and the powerful dictate what they desire, and they all conspire together.

Okay, so he's painting a picture of the government, the judicial system, and the leaders in the marketplace working together again to capitalize at the expense of the vulnerable.

Hosea 5.10 says, Judah's leaders are like those who move boundary stones.

Okay, boundary stones would be like property lines.

It's like they take the property lines and they just make their property bigger to the detriment of others.

And he says, I will pour out my wrath on them like a flood of water.

The third issue of predatory economics was rigged scales.

So Hosea 12, 7 says, the merchant uses dishonest scales and loves to defraud.

Uh Amos 8, 5 and 6 says, skimping on the measure, boosting the price, and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.

Okay, so here's what they were doing.

At this point uh in civilization, they didn't have minted coins uh or dollar bills like we would have that were essentially established uh by by the government's bank.

Um so what they would do when you see like a shekel, a shekel is a measurement of weight.

So if you're buying, in fact, if if if you're if you just read the verses I read in the King James or the New King James, uh Says in Amos 8:5, they made the epha small and the shekel large.

Amos 8:5

So essentially it was like this you're going to buy wheat for your family, or you're going to buy seed.

And so what they would do is they would they would make you believe, they would claim that this shekel is the weight of a shekel, but they would adjust the scale.

So when you're buying wheat, you're buying less wheat, and when it came time to pay for it, they would do a different shekel that made you pay more.

So it's it's the ultimate shrinkflation, right?

It's the idea that you're I'm gonna make you pay more for less.

And then it says they even sweep up the dirt off the ground, mix it in with the wheat, so you're not only paying more for less wheat, you're paying more for worse wheat.

Okay?

The quality has gone down, and again, it was another way.

Now, what are you gonna do if you're a an i uh uh illiterate farmer?

You come in to do this and and you're getting taken advantage of.

Number one, a lot of them took advantage of these people because they could.

I can.

I see an opportunity, they're not gonna know any better.

They're not gonna know any better, some of them didn't know any better.

And you know what?

Some of them did know better.

But what are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do?

Take me to court?

I've already paid the judge.

I've already paid the judge is bought and paid for.

So you have now, again, people being exploited, okay, who can't really do anything about it.

And ultimately, this is what the prophets are calling out.

By the way, this is why Amos, the prophet Amos, is one of my all-time favorites at this point.

Because Amos, we remember, was not a poor farmer, he was actually an agro businessman who had a ton of money.

Somebody who, frankly, could have seen that whole racket, participated in it, and probably made a fortune.

And he said, Wrong is wrong.

I know the heart of God, and I'm gonna be a voice to the voiceless.

I'm gonna stand up.

Yeah, I can participate in this and line my own pockets, but I know that it grieves the heart of God.

I actually believe what I say I believe about God.

I actually believe this is God's land, not mine or yours.

I think we're stewarding it, and I don't, and I think that just because we're prosperous today doesn't mean God has turned a blind eye to the person who's a subsistence farmer.

God didn't change his mind on people having their place in the community.

So a guy who frankly could have taken advantage of it stood up and spoke out against it.

Now, just to be clear, the prophets are not speaking out against having wealth.

Okay, the prophets are not anti-wealth.

If you look in the Bible, there are a lot of people, okay.

There are people in the Bible who don't, you know, God uses who don't have wealth, and but there are a lot who do have wealth.

Abraham had wealth, Job had wealth, Boaz had wealth.

I could go on and on.

There's a lot of people, it is not anti-wealth.

It's not even saying that everyone should have the same amount of money.

Not everybody's gonna have the same amount of money.

In fact, Amos is a great example because Amos built his wealth, but he built it the right way.

And he's saying, look, if you're doing this and you're doing it to actually keep somebody in poverty, keep somebody in bondage, to capitalize on vulnerability, that makes God hot in the nose.

That makes God angry, and so that's what they ultimately call out.

You know, this totally rings true.

You look in the New Testament when you think about being a citizen in a community.

Yes, being an individual, but being a citizen in the community, look at Philippians 2, 3, and 4.

It says, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Okay?

Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.

Now don't get weird with that.

That's not saying that you should have some sort of inferiority complex.

But it's saying don't get so caught up in you and yours that you forget and you harvest the whole thing.

Help your neighbor out.

Help somebody out.

Don't forget about other people's humanity and that God cares about them.

And so he says, listen, value others above yourselves, not looking out only for your own interest, but uh for the interest of others.

Romans 15, 1 through 3 says, uh, we who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

Each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up, for even Christ did not please himself.

Now, the prophet Micah is one of the ones out of the twelve that speaks up about this.

And when he speaks up and he calls out the predatory economics, there is a response from the people who are the violators, they realize they had done something wrong.

Now, here's the reality: most people, when you get end up in a bad place, very rarely does it happen overnight.

Most of the time, you start off doing the right thing for the right reason, and you end up in a bad spot.

So he calls them out and they realize, oh goodness, we have veered away from what God cares about, and we've we've got to get right with God.

Okay?

So look what they say in Micah 6, 6.

They're trying to figure out how to get right with God for all of the predatory economics.

And they said, With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?

Should I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old, which was again prescribed by the ceremonial law?

Look at this.

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams and 10,000 rivers of olive oil?

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, for the fruit of my body, for the sins of my soul?

These people who had been exploiting their fellow man with predatory economics, um uh slave lending, um, you know, uh unjust courts and rig scales, they're trying to get right with God by offering to bribe God.

They bribed the judge, they've they bribed the governor, they bribed the king, and then they go to God.

Hey God, what'll square, what'll square this up?

Do you want a thousand rams?

Do you want 10,000 rivers of olive oil?

Do you do you want do you they're trying to bribe God?

And look, look what this says.

He has shown you, O mortal.

He has shown you, O human, O steward of the land, not owner of the land.

I own the land, God owns the land.

He has shown you, O human, O mortal, what is good?

What does the Lord require of you?

To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

In other words, I don't want your rams, I don't want your olive oil, I don't even want you to sing me any songs.

I don't want you to march up out of here and make it right.

Go make it right.

Go do some justice.

Go do some mishpa.

You see what's wrong?

Go make it right.

I don't want any more pomp and circumstance.

I don't want you to fire off any cannons in my name.

I don't want you to make a big deal.

Don't do any streamers or I don't need anything.

I need you to go walk out of here and bring my heart into my world and do this the right way.

Do it right.

So I want to give four questions for self-examination because what we're not gonna do is go, you know, these uh 8th century BC, Levant period, how dumb could they be?

How crooked, how wrong.

No, we're gonna turn the mirror on ourselves for a minute.

And I wanna I want to give you four questions to start thinking about now, but to bring before God in some quiet moments of honesty and courage.

The first question that I think all of us need to answer, and all of us may not have the same answer, probably won't, but you need to ask it.

The question is this when is enough enough?

When is enough enough?

If the answer is, I don't know.

Like you're you're probably ambitious, you've got something you're going for, someone in this room may be especially ambitious, and you've got this thing in your mind's eye, and I want to, you know, I've got goals.

I'm I'm not telling you don't have goals, I'm not even telling you don't have ambition.

I'm I'm not saying don't swing for the fence.

I'm just saying at some point, if you are trying to quench a thirsting of your soul with more economic success or more zeros on the check, and at some point you need to ask yourself when is enough enough?

Because if the answer is I don't know, you might live under a compulsion that more is always more, and so I'll devour more earth, I'll move aside uh and exploit more vulnerability, I'll get the subsistence farmer on their land because I see an opportunity and I lust for that opportunity and I covet their land and I want to have it and I want to have more, and guess what?

That one won't be enough because there's one next door, and there's one next door.

At some point in your life, you have to do what Paul talks about where he says, you know, I've learned the secret of contentment.

It's not complacency.

I still have a work ethic, I still have a mission, I'm still working hard.

But no, at some point I go, you know what?

I'm good.

I'm good.

I've got enough.

I'm I'm taken care of.

I'm gonna be okay.

And and to not try to make more extraction, more, more, more affluence, more, more I guess the question, when will it be enough?

When will it be enough?

When is enough enough?

The second question is do I see vulnerable people the same way God does?

How do you see vulnerable people?

Don't answer that too quick.

Pray over it, meditate on it, think on it.

Because there may be some vulnerable people that you have a lot of compassion for, and that may be where your mind goes right away, but there may be some vulnerable people that are just kind of in the way for you.

There may be some vulnerable people that you kind of wish you we could go away, or I'd just like to get them off their land, or whatever it might be.

Like, what who are the vulnerable?

Like, let the Lord start to populate what how he sees vulnerable and how you see vulnerable.

Maybe you're a student here.

I know this isn't youth service, this is adult church, but I want to talk to the students.

Maybe, maybe you go to school and and and you have people in your neighborhood in their teens and maybe in college and and and they're vulnerable people, and you start to realize, like, I don't even really need to pay attention to them.

I don't need to pay attention to them because they don't have any social clout, and so they're very easy to overlook and very easy to mistreat, very easy to make fun of, and very easy to let them sit alone.

And maybe you allow God to give you a set of eyes to show you how he sees that person.

Do I see the vulnerable the same way that God sees the vulnerable?

The third question I have for you is have I in any way shifted from meeting needs to exploiting vulnerability?

I do think most people, when they pick a career, pick a major, or start a business or do something, most of us start off on the right track.

I want to be a good citizen, I want to please God, I want to serve the world, I see a need, and I see an opportunity for a win-win.

I can meet a need and provide for my family.

I can meet a need, do right by people, and take care of my inner circle.

And that's good.

Most start off that way, but often people start to, once they get in and learn the game, start to learn how to exploit vulnerability instead of just meeting needs.

And we see it sometimes a large scale, every so often on the streaming platforms, there's a documentary that pops up, and the documentary is like uh here's how you know companies are genetically modifying food to offer more food with less nutritional value, and they actually engineer it to make you want more of it.

So you're eating more, you're getting less nutritional value, you're getting more sick and more unhealthy, and they know it, and they're doing it anyway because they're not trying to make you healthy, they're trying to make some money.

Okay, and we see that and we go, ugh, and then and then we watch another documentary, and it's about the pharmaceutical industry and how the pharmaceutical companies are partnering with the healthcare providers to get them to write more prescriptions to things that are addictive, and so you end up with an opiate crisis.

And we go, these people who took this Hippocratic oath and said, I actually want to help people get healthy, at some point start getting a kickback and start getting a little uh blessing on the side from the pharmaceutical company.

So now I'm lining my pockets all the while.

I'm making people addicted to something and I know it, but I'm doing it anyway, and we all go, uh and then we watch another one there where it's a uh the algorithms and what they're doing on social media and what it's doing on the internet, and the fact that they have no interest in bringing people together.

None.

In fact, the whole point is to keep you on the platform, anything.

If I gotta rage bait you, that's exactly the best way to do it.

Angry people are like, let me see the comments.

And so they stay in there and I can't click off.

In fact, I'm gonna watch another one, and it gives you one even better, and the next one's better, and then you send it to your wife, and you're like, see how bad they are, and then I just get back in the mix, okay?

And so they know this, okay?

And they're not trying to bring people together in the new covenant unity.

They're trying to keep you on the platform so that they can sell ads for more money.

The whole point isn't make the world a better place.

The point is line the pockets of people, okay.

We're like, ugh, so so we know the pharmaceuticals got it wrong, and we know the food people got it wrong, and we know the algorithms got it wrong.

Well, what about your business?

What about your neighborhood?

What about your community?

I'm not saying let's turn a blind eye to this, let's call it out.

But at the same time, maybe maybe there are some, maybe this message doesn't apply to you at all.

I really hope it doesn't.

But maybe there are some of you that are in a position to make decisions, strategic decisions, employee decisions, client, customer decisions, visionary decisions for a company or a business or something, where you have, and if you would just step back and look, we started off so good, so good.

We were trying to meet a need and get a win-win, and somewhere along the way we learned how to exploit a vulnerability.

And in that vulnerability, we realized that if we set them too free, they won't need us anymore.

And so instead of their freedom or their health, we've decided to try to keep them on the hook for ourselves.

And somebody have you is there anywhere, maybe for a few of us, that the idea of meeting needs has morphed into exploiting vulnerability?

And the last question that I want to put in front of you is Am I willing to confront injustice when I see it?

The first confrontation starts in the mirror, the second confrontation might be within an inner circle, and there may be confrontations calling out or confronting injustice over the line or somewhere else.

You know, the good thing is, you know, nowadays there's a lot of ways to do this.

In Amos's day, he had to go into the public court and call out Amaziah and call out Jeroboam the second.

Yours might start with a private meeting, it may start with an email, it may start with some communication.

I guess my question is when you start to see something that doesn't pass the Mishpat test, it's not right.

I'm gonna put it right, I'm gonna do everything I can.

I may not have full control, but I'm gonna confront the injustice in myself.

I'm gonna have an inner prophet, I'm gonna confront the injustice around me when I see it.

Do you have the courage to call it out?

Just take a moment and pray.

I'm gonna invite our prayer team to come up at this time and make themselves available.

Take a moment to lead us in a prayer.

At any moment, if you'd like someone to pray with you, I'd encourage you to step out anytime now and come up and receive prayer.

In a moment, we'll dismiss and people will be walking out, so it'll be a little harder to get up here.

So you now would be a good time.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

And I think of that old song we used to sing that break my heart for what breaks yours.

And Lord, we know that uh with the same voice that the prophets called out idolatry, they called out predatory economics, they called out debt slavery and unjust courts and rig scales, and we have our own version of those problems today, and then some.

We don't live under the illusion that we somehow have some uh ability to go out and fix it all with a snap of the finger.

But Lord, we as the body of Christ can live Philippians 2, 3, and 4 to um not just look out for our own interests, but for the interest of others.

Help us to live, Lord, in that balance of uh individual freedoms and rights and individuality at the same time being constantly mindful that we are citizens in a community.

In a community, Lord, that desperately needs the body of Christ functioning and the values that we see cover to cover in your word.

So, um, Lord, as we wrestle with these questions about when is enough enough, and do I see vulnerable people the same way you do?

And is there any way that we've shifted from meeting needs to exploiting vulnerability?

And maybe you even show us some things that need confronted in our worlds.

Pray, Lord, you give us the faith and the courage to walk in obedience for your glory in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.