Deuteronomy 15 | Kingdom Economics

Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin.

You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando.

At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer.

For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Join with me in praying this prayer of illumination.

Almighty God, you are the great provider.

By your Holy Spirit, open our hearts and our minds to the truth and beauty of your life-giving word.

Through Christ we pray.

Amen.

Now a reading from Deuteronomy chapter 15.

Deuteronomy 15 · chapter mention

At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release, 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 of the Lord's release has been proclaimed.

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 to an inheritance to possess.

For the Lord your God will bless you, as he has 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.

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, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.

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.

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.

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.

You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your wine press.

As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.

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.

This is God's word.

Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

Our vision here at New City is to see our Father answer the Lord's prayer.

And a good vision statement should be a few things.

One, it should be biblical.

Check.

I think it's biblical.

Two, it should be Jesus approved.

Lord's prayer, Jesus approved, check.

It should probably be memorable, and I'm hoping that that you could tell me if it's memorable to pray the Lord's Prayer over our church and our city.

But three, a good vision statement ought to be actionable.

And some of you might take up the Lord's Prayer and go, what does it look like for me to live into this?

Well, Jesus says right in the center of the Lord's Prayer, give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors.

And I think that's something Deuteronomy 15 can make actionable for us, tangible for us today.

Now let me just warn you up front here.

Today in church, we're gonna talk about money.

All right?

I know that that does something to some of you.

Um, no apologies.

Why?

Because the Bible tells me so, okay?

So get Deuteronomy 15 in front of you, whether you've got a Bible, a device, or the worship God, because we're gonna look at this verse by verse, and uh and it's gonna be tight.

I'm gonna try to fit in basically three sermons into one, uh, and that is open your hand to release the debtor, to give to the poor, and to free the slave.

Open your hand to release the debtor, give to the poor, free the slave.

Look with me if you have a Bible or device, get Deuteronomy 15, verse 1 in front of you.

Deuteronomy 15:1

Let's see what it means to open your hand to release the debtor.

It says this at the end of every seven years you shall grant a release.

Now, whenever you see the number seven in the Bible, like this, every seven years, assume it's a hyperlink.

Assume that there's an echo there of Israel's Sabbath pattern, where you work six days and you rest one.

You see, any any religion, any God can sanctify space, holy temples, holy mountains, that's that's junior varsity.

The God of Israel, Yahweh, can sanctify time.

That's where it's at.

And he has said, set apart 24 hours every week that you do nothing that you know to be work.

This is called the Sabbath.

But in Israel's life, the Sabbath is far more than a day, it becomes a way of life.

Okay?

And so we see here there's a Sabbath principle that's actually intended to restore God's created order.

It's where you can cease to be a human doing and become a human being again.

The Sabbath is meant to be a weekly sanctification of time, but here we see that there's a sanctification of money too, a setting apart, a year of release.

That's why every seven years you shall grant a release.

This is a social safety net, it's an economic reset, it's a fresh start for the down and outs.

And everybody in this room, I can assure you, knows what it's like to wish you could get a do-over.

That's what the year of release is.

It's a do-over for the people of God.

Look with me at verse two.

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.

Let me quote someone real quick, says this the law restrained wealth, so that a few persons of immense wealth should not oppress the general body.

Since therefore the rich, if they had been permitted constantly to increase in wealth, would have tyrannized over the rest of us.

God put by this law a restraint on immoderate power.

Some of you hear that, and you're like, what kind of socialist?

Was this like Zoran Mamdani?

Like, who's he quoting up here?

Um, John Calvin.

John Calvin, the great Protestant reformer.

That's who said this.

So, what I want you to hear for a moment is if you will open yourself to the teaching of Scripture, I promise you, biblical economics will always cut against your economics.

Always.

Let me just make this plain.

Socialism has never worked in practice.

It works really well in the mind of a socialist.

In real life, it's never worked.

But even capitalism seems to be the best of a bunch of bad options.

There's a 20th-century feminist named Camille Paglius, she says this capitalism has its weaknesses, but it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world, and enabled the emancipation of women, end quote.

Now it's not bad, but listen, capitalism without a conscience is an economics of self-interest and greed.

It's not God's economic vision.

And so what I want you to hear in this, what I said already, is wherever you are, whatever your beliefs on economic policies, I'm not an economist, I'm a preacher, but I want to invite you to being checked, affirmed, yes, but challenged by the biblical economics that we see in our text this morning.

And so what that means is I asked a leader in our congregation who I would describe as someone who has spent himself on behalf of the poor.

So I reached out to him.

I said, Hey, tell me what you see going on in Deuteronomy 15.

To which he said, The point is not that you should get as much as you can, the point is to be generous and to bless others as much as you can.

That's a great summary of biblical economics right there.

And so listen, Israel's economy is interrupted on a regular rhythm so that debt cannot compound indefinitely.

Because you know this, if if you have a financial advisor, they will tell you something.

They will say, hey, listen, if you have investments, time is your best friend.

All you need is patience.

But listen, if you have debt, time is your worst enemy.

But what you really need is a release.

You need a release.

Why weave debt release into the social fabric of Israel on a recurring schedule?

Because the Lord has an ideal.

Look at it in verse 4.

But there will be no poor among you.

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.

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.

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.

Imagine this for a moment.

Imagine a nation with a decent GDP, a high quality of life, and absolutely no one in poverty.

That would be a witness to a watching world, would it not?

This is God's vision, this is his intention for Israel among the midst in the midst of the nations.

But listen, the astute listener here is going, okay, Ben, yeah, but is that taxes or tithes?

For Israel, the answer is yes.

They were a constitutional theocracy.

Deuteronomy 14, right before this, is a tech, one of the texts about giving your first and best to God.

The training wheels of generosity in Scripture is what's called the tithe.

That's what this says in Deuteronomy 14.

But but for us, it it's not taxes.

I don't believe so.

Look, just imagine for a moment, would you want an institution who is in debt for more than $40 trillion to oversee the release of debts?

I wouldn't.

So then whose job is this?

Well, I imagine that this is a church.

This is the church.

Imagine if the church in the United States of America was known for some weird ethics around sex and some weird ethics around this, that, and they believe this Jewish dude rose from the dead, coming back on a horse, weirdos.

But man, there's no poor among them.

You join them and there's zero poverty.

Imagine if we were known for this.

What witness would that give to a watching world?

So, what would it look like if business owners deliberately created jobs for members in their church?

What would it be like if the wealthier members in a congregation pooled together their money in order to make sure no one had debt in that congregation?

Jesus teaches us to pray, give us this day our daily bread, right after he says, when you give to the needy.

You see, these are inextricably linked in Jesus' imagination for his church.

I believe this.

I believe that there is enough to go around if everyone is generous.

And so God's economic vision, to summarize this, is to eliminate poverty inside the church and to alleviate poverty outside the church.

I see it actually in the text.

Look at verse 3.

Of a foreigner you may exact debt, but whatever of yours is with your brother, your hand shall release.

Do you see this?

Two groups of people.

Why is it that foreigners are excluded from the release?

Because they don't have Yahweh as their God.

They're not in the covenant community.

It doesn't apply to outsiders.

Oh, but for insiders, we take good care of insiders.

People who are in the covenant community of God, they they receive generosity, they receive freedom, they receive liberality from the people of God.

Imagine if this were true, and and just imagine how attractive the people of God would be on planet Earth.

So we open our hand to release the debtor, but we also open our hand to give to the poor.

Look at verse 7 with me.

If among you one of your brothers should become poor, let me pause for a moment.

I wonder what your definition of poor is.

Now, if you're conservative politically, you tend to think that poverty is primarily a result of personal irresponsibility or individual failure.

If you trend progressive politically, you tend to view poverty strictly in terms of unjust social structures and structural inequities and systems of injustice, things like that.

But the Bible starts with creation.

It starts with the way that things ought to be by divine design.

And in creation, God made humans to have four relationships.

We relate to God, self, others, and creation.

And so what that means, Brian Fickert, who I think is the best person to read on this topic, Brian Fickert says fullness of life exists when we experience deep communion with a loving God, understand our inherent dignity and worth as image bearers, live in positive, giving relationships with others, and actively steward God's creation, both caring for it and being able to work and to support ourselves as a result of that work.

But listen, in the fall, after chapter one, creation comes chapter two or chapter three in Genesis, which is the fall.

And in the fall, all four relationships were ruptured for all of us.

We experience alienation from God, which results in the poverty of spiritual intimacy.

We experience disintegration of ourselves, which results in the poverty of being.

We experience estrangement from others, which results in the poverty of community, and we experience exile from creation, which results in a poverty of stewardship.

Listen, most of us think poverty and the poor, and we think about material poverty, and that's good and right, that's true in the text here.

But material poverty is a symptom of something deeper, this underlying disconnection, this brokenness in these four key relationships.

So look with me again at verse 7.

It says, If among you one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God has given you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.

You see, the fundamental problem isn't scarcity.

The fundamental problem is the heart's instinct to say, mine.

This is mine.

The heart of the problem is always a problem of the heart.

And what the text here says is your hand reveals your heart.

Jesus, we know, says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And so listen, show me your bank account and I'll tell you what you love.

Or said differently, where your money goes is both a thermometer and a thermostat.

As a thermometer, it it reveals where your heart is.

As a thermostat, it can direct where your heart is going.

So to make that plain, if you want a heart for the poor, if you want a heart for the nations, if you want a heart for the Lord, open your hand and give.

Because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The same hand that opens to receive grace is the same hand that opens in generosity.

Look with me at verse 8, it says, But you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.

Giving is not a whole people helping broken people, it is broken people giving assistance to other broken people.

Poverty alleviation, it's a process in which people, both the materially poor and the materially non-poor, are empowered to moving closer to right relationship with God's self, others, and creation.

Now, this text, you might say, if you look closely, it's actually about lending to the poor, not giving to the poor.

And I would say, yeah, but these loans are going to be forgiven, which is basically giving in the long run.

So that creates a problem.

Look at verse 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.

The question here is, why lend now if repayment may soon become unenforceable?

Let me just confess this and ask you has anybody else in here uh used economics to rationalize lovelessness?

C.S.

Lewis, uh, there's a story of him going on a walk with a friend one day.

They were walking down the road and a beggar asked for money, and Lewis's friend kept walking, but Lewis stopped and emptied his wallet.

And when he caught up to his friend and they continued walking, the friend said, What are you doing giving him your money like that?

Don't you know he's just gonna go squander it all on beer?

To which Lewis paused and replied, That's all I was gonna spend it on.

You see, Lewis's response, there's something deeply human and level setting about that response.

And we see that in verse 9.

And you give him nothing, and he cried to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin.

If you know the story of Scripture, you recognize this language.

Israel cried to the Lord against Egypt, against Pharaoh.

And to make that plain, what what Moses is saying here is if you have a hard heart toward the poor, you've become like Pharaoh.

That's like telling people who live in Middle Earth that they become like Sauron.

That's like telling the rebel alliance that they become like Emperor Palpatine.

It's not a good thing.

But instead, verse 10, you shall give to him freely.

How much?

How much am I supposed to give when I give to him freely?

C.S.

Lewis again is so helpful.

He says this.

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give.

I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.

In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, vacations, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.

If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.

There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

End quote.

Verse 10 again, you shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this, this is key, for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.

I read that to be that the Lord makes up for the losses incurred.

I think Jesus doubled down, doubles down on this.

In Matthew 6, he says this, when, not if, when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.

There is obedience and there is reward on the other side of obedience.

There's no other way to plainly read Deuteronomy 15 or Matthew 6.

So the question is, will Israel trust, will Israel trust the Lord's generosity enough to become a people of generosity?

Will New City trust the Lord's generosity enough to become a people of generosity?

So verse 11 says, For there will never cease to be poor in the land.

Now, the attentive reader goes, wait a second.

I thought verse 4 says, There will be no poor among you.

So why does verse 11 say there will never cease to be poor in the land?

What's going on here?

Moses must just be a buffoon and contradicts himself a paragraph later?

I don't think so.

I think verse 11 describes the ideal that is created by the Lord's abundant blessing.

And I think verse four recognizes the real caused by Israel's unwillingness to give freely.

Let me make this plain.

I believe that God has given enough to his people so that none of his people needs to be poor, provided his people are marked by open hands.

That's what I think it's saying.

Now, I don't mean the poor out there.

I mean the poor in here.

Remember, the church is God's social justice.

Look with me at the language in verse 11.

For there will never cease to be poor in the land.

Therefore, I command you, you shall open your hand to your brother, to the needy, and to the poor in your land.

Here the poor is not a number, a case, or an abstraction.

The poor is not a bother.

The poor is your brother.

That's what the text says.

Look at verse 7.

If among you one of your brothers should become poor, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother.

Verse 9, take care lest your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother.

Covenant belonging overcomes socioeconomic status.

That's why when we open our hand to release the debtor and give to the poor, we also open our hands to free the slave.

Look with me again at verse 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.

Now, if you look down at verses 15 and 17, the word slave is used.

Now, modern Westerners, we read the Bible and we get to texts like this and we go, see, I knew it, the Bible condoned slavery.

Let me just do a quick sidebar, three points why I do not believe the Bible condones slavery.

Number one, because what's being talked about here is not the same thing as the race based chattel slavery of the Atlantic slave trade.

Super important to know.

Now, I love my country, I love being an American, but America was founded with some catastrophic contradictions.

And let's just bring it home.

The PCA is a Southern Presbyterian denomination that.

At the founding of our country, the white Southern Presbyterians had a really strong emphasis on keeping the Sabbath day holy.

And yet somehow never insisted on the sabbatical year of release for black slaves.

Now, before you jump at that and go, those idiots way back then, so glad we're not them.

The question actually is, oh Lord, have mercy on our catastrophic areas where we're overlooking.

Places your your scriptures are speaking to us, and we are either willfully rebellious or just ignorant.

That's the right response.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Now, number two, the Bible doesn't condone slavery because the Bible speaks clearly against man stealing and enslavers.

In 1 Timothy 1.10, Paul speaks against the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

This word enslavers is someone who takes someone captive in order to sell them into slavery.

The Bible's clearly against that, always has been.

In Revelation 18, we just read this in our Bible reading plan, says this, and the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for Babylon, since no one buys their cargo anymore.

Slaves, that is, human souls.

Babylon the beast trades in human lives.

That means that any nation who does this is more like Babylon than the New Jerusalem.

Now, the third and final reason why I don't think the Bible condones slavery is because Christians are the ones who ended the Atlantic slave trade.

Like most moderns, we read this and we think about slavery and we go, how could people have accepted such a monstrosity?

That's a fine question.

It's just not the way that historians think.

If you know human history, historians ask this question considering the fact that it was universally believed by all societies that we had the right to attack and enslave weaker people, and since everybody had always done it, the real historical question is why did it occur to anybody that slavery was wrong?

Whoever had that idea first?

To which one Yale historian replies, the first voices in the 4th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries who called for the abolition of slavery were all Christians.

People of this book.

So the Bible does not condone slavery.

But that being said, what's going on here?

Well, you see, an Israelite could enter servitude because of an inability to pay their debts.

They could step into that role.

And so the law, what it's addressing here is what we would call debt bondage or indentured servitude, and yet it's acknowledging there's a real loss of freedom, which is why the point of this text is to move people from slavery to agency.

Look at verse 13.

And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed.

You shall, this is the slave owner, shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your wine press, as the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.

You see, the law here is that slavery was not meant to be punitive, it was meant to be restorative.

The Lord knew what Bible-believing Americans during the Reconstruction era of our country ought to have known, which is it's not enough to merely liberate a people.

Liberation is fine, it's just not enough.

You need to give them the means of production that enables them to re-enter into economic life.

Look at the text.

It says, furnish him liberally out of your flock.

That's that's livestock, out of the threshing floor, that's grain, out of your wine press, that's wine.

This is, you're you're actually equipping them to enter back into society and use the means of production, work hard to make a living.

Something we failed to do.

So I want to do a quick sidebar here.

Notice that the threshing floor is what you take what it takes to make bread, and the wine press is what it takes to make wine.

Bread and wine together, these are the elements that we see on this table right here, which was then and is now a symbol of how the rich and the poor are brought together through Jesus Christ.

The point of this text is not to give a hand out, but a hand up, to say, brother, you belong.

You're one of us.

End of sidebar.

Now it says to furnish him liberally, how much is too much?

The text says really clearly, as the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.

Verse 15 goes on, 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.

Israel ought never to have a permanent class of slaves.

It was not an option for them.

Because that's Egypt.

And Israel is the redeemed of the Lord.

They're not Egypt by definition.

But as we've seen in Deuteronomy already, it's easier to get Israel out of Egypt than it is to get Egypt out of Israel.

Said differently, how do you prevent a redeemed people from recreating Egypt?

One word, remember.

Remember.

The Exodus must reshape Israel's economic imagination.

And likewise, our salvation has socioeconomic implications.

Look with me at verse 16, it says, But if your slave says to you, I will not go out from you, because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, 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.

What would it take for someone to consent to lifelong slavery?

There's a story, I think it's probably a legend, but there's a story by Abraham Lincoln, who's walking past a slave auction one day, and he saw a girl that's being bit on by a crowd of men.

And he hears the auctioneer yell, What is the bid?

And the crowd with greed and lust is shouting different numbers.

Lincoln was horrified at the scene and he was terrified at what this meant for this little girl.

So he entered the auction, he bit on her himself, and he won.

Now the girl was brought to him, and he said to her, You are free to go.

She stood there stunned and said, I can go anywhere, to which he replied, Yes, of course.

And she said, Then I'd rather stay with you.

You see, what would it take for a slave to choose to remain in voluntary permanence?

Verse 16 says, But if your slave says to you, I will not go from you, because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you.

Listen, in the New Testament, at least 40 times believers in Jesus are referred to as slaves of Christ.

You know how many times it has the word Christian?

Three.

So why don't we put on our, you know, Instagram profiles slave of Christ?

Because it's in it's offensive.

It was offensive then, it's offensive now.

But listen, if you are a slave of Christ, you begin to learn over time that his service is perfect freedom.

You begin to learn if you know Jesus, you can turn to him and say, I will not go out from you because I love you and your household, and I am well off with you.

But if you're not a slave to Christ, to quote the great prophet Bob Dylan, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody.

So let me ask you just reflection for a moment.

What is it like being your own master?

Like, how's it worked out for you?

Most people I know, including my own experience, the experience of being your own master, being a slave to your own wants and whims is like a greyhound.

You ever seen a greyhound race?

All these dogs chasing after this rabbit.

Guess what?

There's a winner, cool.

No one gets the rabbit in the end.

That's what it's like being your own master.

Constantly, relentlessly, restlessly trying, striving, never arriving.

Now, some of you are slaves to yourself, some of you are slaves to other people's expectations, but some of you this morning are slaves to the love of money.

And you don't want to look at Deuteronomy 15 and think that this is a chapter for the poor.

It is for the poor, but it's to the rich.

It's addressed to you and me.

And commentators will point out there's a progression here from debts to poverty to slavery.

And I think there's a progression for the wealthy here too, which is we go from a heart that's hard to a hand that's closed to a life of slavery.

2 Peter 2.19 says, Whatever overcomes a person to that he is enslaved.

Let me ask you, have you ever been overcome by the pursuit of making money?

Just a little bit more.

John D.

Rockefeller said, I've made many millions, but they have brought me no happiness.

Vanderbilt said the care of $200 million is enough to kill anyone.

There's no pleasure in it.

Henry Ford said, I was happier when I was doing a mechanics job.

Andrew Carnegie said, millionaires who laugh are rare.

My experience is that wealth is apt to take the smiles away.

Throughout history, the most universally acknowledged problem with money is that its pursuit is insatiable.

You'll never have enough.

You'll never have arrived.

So let me just ask you, diagnostic.

How do you know if you're enslaved to the love of money?

Do you give eagerly, sacrificially, and cheerfully according to your level of prosperity?

If the answer is no, you're probably enslaved to the love of money and you don't even know it.

But listen, good news.

The Lord wants to set you free today.

How do you become the kind of person who has open hands to release the debtor, to give to the poor, to free the slave?

You need a change of heart.

Look at verse 7, it says, You shall not harden your heart or shut your hand.

Verse 9, take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart.

Verse 10, you shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging.

And the only thing that can make a heart that is hard, like adamantium, tender and supple and soft again, is grace.

It's grace.

And that's what we see here.

We see the grammar of grace in our text.

Notice that all of the commands flow from promises.

The imperatives follow indicatives.

What you do flows from what is true about what God has done, is doing, and will do.

Look with me at the text.

This is going to be fast.

Bear with me.

Verse 2, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed.

Verse 4, for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess.

Verse 6, for the Lord your God will bless you as he has promised you.

Verse 7, your land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Verse 10, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.

Verse 14, as the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him.

Verse 15, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you.

Verse 18, so the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do.

Notice here, God's saving action becomes the pattern for Israel's social action.

Those whom God has released become a people of release.

So the question is, does what you give fit what God has done for you?

And this isn't just the Old Testament, this is true in the New Testament as well.

2 Corinthians 8 9 says it like this for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake, for your sake, he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

Jesus talked about money more than faith and prayer combined, more than both heaven and hell.

And it's not because he was fundraising, and I'm not talking about it because I'm fundraising.

The reason he talked about it, because he knew that the love of money is the greatest rival for the affections of your heart.

So he had to speak to it.

He was compelled to speak to it out of love for you and me.

But it's good news because in Jesus Christ, the Lord's release is proclaimed, verse 2.

To proclaim the gospel is to announce release from all debts to God, released from all fear of death, released from the slavery to sin, released from slavery to Satan and even self.

To proclaim the gospel is to be released from the prison of wealth, to be released from alienation from God's self, others, and creation.

You see, Jesus Christ had open hands so wide that nails were put through it.

Why?

To create a people with open hands to the needy.

Jesus was literally marked in his open hands so that you and I could be marked by open hands.

This is the gospel.

It's intended to produce this.

If you don't believe me, look at again at Deuteronomy 15, 4.

It says, God's ideal here is there will be no poor among you, which is directly quoted.

Talking about the early church in Acts 4, 34, it says this God's ideal is realized there was not a needy person among them.

Let me read that in its full context.

It's beautiful.

Acts 4.33 says, And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

You see, only Pentecost could produce an open-handed community.

Why?

Because Romans 5:5 says that the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who's been given to us.

Romans 5:5

Only the gospel can create a generous community because Jesus alone has the power to address individual behaviors and exploitative people and oppressive symptoms and demonic forces.

Like I prepared for this sermon knowing that to preach against mammon, against the love of money, is to kick a hornet's nest among the powers and principalities because the love of money has been enthroned in the church in America.

This will not go without resistance.

And so listen, Jesus alone has the ability to heal the broken relationships at the heart of poverty.

And so what the poor need is Jesus.

What the rich need is Jesus.

There's a saying that says that the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

Why?

Because that's the place where there's no earning, there's no deserving, it's all of grace.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we receive you now as the Lord's release.

Proclaimed to us as good news.

Holy Father, would we receive from your hand all the good that you have to us?

And will we give with open hands all the good that you have through us?

Spirit of God, you alone can turn a hard heart and make it soft again, supple before your word.

We submit our wills to your will even now afresh.

Jesus, would you pour out the grace of your Holy Spirit such that we become a people known before a watching world as a people of generosity with open hands to give.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.