Dennis Tuuri

The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God. They have done abominable works.” The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men. They are all gone aside. There is none that doeth good. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? There were they in great fear. He shameth the counsel of the poor. Oh, the salvation of Israel will come out of Zion. When Jacob shall rejoice, Israel shall be glad.

I have not withheld the poor from their desire or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail. Or have eaten my morsel myself alone and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof for from my youth he was brought up with me as with a father and I have guided her from my mother’s womb if I have seen any perish for want of clothing or any poor without covering if his loins have not blessed me and if ye were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep if I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless when I saw my help in the gate then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade and mine arm be broken from the bone for destruction from God was a terror to me and by reason of his highness I could not endure.

We’re going to return this week to the subject we were at last two weeks ago on alms. And there’s a couple of reasons why I thought it’d be good to return to this and make sure we understand what we went over in a very rapid fashion two weeks ago. One reason of course is that as I mentioned last week there is a correlation between a correct perception and obedience to the laws of almsgiving and the other means of relieving the poor in our society between that and reformation.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the reformers were noted for their string of benevolent activities and I just like to read a couple of things out of the book that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago written by Hughes Olafson called The Old Reformed Tradition of Worship. As I said, he devotes a whole chapter to almsgiving and then talks a little bit about the historical thrust of this in the reformed church.

Olafson said the following. He said that Nuremberg for instance was among the most cosmopolitan centers of Germany and from the very beginning of the reformation Nuremberg took a strong stand for Protestantism. Hand in hand with their writing a new baptismal rite and a translation of the liturgy into German, the city published a new order for the care of the poor. And so you see the relationship there—to the poor, to the reformation, caring for the poor and also to performing one’s worship or one’s liturgy.

Strasbourg followed the lead of Nuremberg very quickly. Gerard Russell, the chaplain of the Queen of Navarre, reported after his visit to Strasbourg in 1526 that the care of the poor was one of the most impressive aspects of the reformation. Much of the reorganization of the charitable institutions of Strasbourg goes far beyond the scope of his book, but there are a number of these reforms which are clearly liturgical in nature.

In Geneva, where of course Calvin was, he drew up some ordinances for the city and for the church in terms of care of the poor. And this is what I’m going to read as a result of that. In Geneva, they had a hospital built. Now, a hospital wasn’t quite like we think of it today. A hospital was somewhat different. In Geneva, it was housed in a large building in the center of the city surrounded with stables, barns, courtyards, and gardens.

Several dozen people were cared for in that building. They ranged from orphan children to elderly widows too feeble to care for themselves. This hospital was presided over by a hospital teller and his wife. Several servants cared for the extensive gardens in the large kitchen. This was important because the garden and the kitchen provided a considerable amount of food for needy families who did not live in the hospital.

There was even a resident tutor who was usually a theology student. The tutor’s job was to help care for the children in the hospital. The hospital was under the care of the deacons. It was their job to see to it that the hospital was well funded and well administered. In his concluding paragraph in this study, Old writes, “The ancient connection between the Lord’s supper and the giving of alms is patently recognized in the reformed standards of the Westminster divines.

In the Westminster Directory, it provided for the giving of alms and it provided for this in the chapter on the observing of days of public thanksgiving.” This is from the Westminster Directory for Public Worship. Now, there we read, quote, “At one or both of the public meetings that day, a collection is to be made for the poor that their loins rather may bless us. And that’s, you know, kind of a direct quote from what we were reading a couple of minutes ago in the book of Job, that the loins may bless us and rejoice the more with us.

And the people are to be exhorted at the end of the latter meeting to spend the residue of the day in holy duties and testifications of Christian love and charity one toward another and a rejoicing more and more in the Lord as becometh those who make the joy of the Lord their strength.” End quote. Old wrote that it is significant that for the Puritans, almsgiving belongs to thanksgiving. It is a way to express holy joy.

It’s a way of rejoicing in all the riches of grace and all the benefits of salvation which we have received from God. And so it was quite important in terms of the reformation. Gordon Rupp rather wrote, quote, “Poor relief and the concern for philanthropy was to become an important stress running through the reformation story like a gold thread among all too much venality.” And so people have recognized for many years the importance of almsgiving and the care for the poor in the reformation.

And if we’re in the midst of a new reformation today, we would expect that same thing to be true. We read last week from Isaiah 58. And Isaiah 58 makes that correlation. He says, “If you want to rebuild the walls, you ought to move from darkness to the day shining upon you. Then share your resources with the poor. Obey the command, the royal command to take what God has given us, graciously and mercifully pass that on to others.” Calvin also wrote of the importance of alms in this quote I’m going to read. I’ll be quoting several times from this particular book this morning.

It’s called Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation by Ronald Wallace. And a lot of you are familiar with Wallace’s books, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Word and Sacraments and Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life. And this is an excellent book. It came out about 6 months ago. In any event, Calvin in the ordinances in 1541 drew up the idea of the communal hospital which we just read of—what that hospital consisted of—and he insisted it had to be well-maintained and suitable for work and he saw it as an essential part of the reformation in Geneva.

So one of the reasons I want to return to this subject today is because it’s important in terms of reformation. Another reason is because it’s going to be increasingly, I think over the years to come, for our church, for our families, for our communities, a very important and practical application of much of what we’ve talked about. We, I think this subject that we’re talking about this morning will be extremely important to us as the world moves further and further away from Christianity and the effects of that are made known economically in the world around us.

Now of course one of the reasons for the need for distribution of alms or mercies to people without is the scarcity that accompanied the fall. The other reason of course is man’s sin, which also produces a great deal of problem in terms of economic problems on the part of man. And as man continues to sin, I guess is the point, and as this country is wrapped up in its rejection and rebellion against God, we can expect to see more and more economic results of that.

And so more and more of a need for the church to move in and do what’s right. I thought in this particular light of Friday’s occurrence, the Dow Jones fell 190 points. Everybody’s waiting with baited breath to see what will happen tomorrow morning. Will it continue down or will they pull out of it? It’s hard to say. But in any event, we know that eventually the puffed up system of inflation, fractional reserve banking system that has increased indebtedness in the land—all these things will eventually take their toll and one day the balloon will pop and when it pops there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to try to look around to figure out how they can take care of ourselves. And so we need to understand what the scriptures say.

Now it’s very important that we look at almsgiving as having God’s goal in mind and also having God’s means to achieve that goal. Now, I’m going to say something here that may not strike you as real good to begin with, but think it through a little bit. The secular state in America today right now is much better at providing for the needs of all the poor than the church will ever be. Okay? It’s better at providing for the needs of all the poor in terms of their physical needs than the church will be because the secular state is committed today in America and across the world to man as the measure of all things.

And that means they’re committed to helping every poor person non-discriminatorily. God discriminates. We’re going to talk about this a little bit later, but God tells us quite clearly, for instance, in the New Testament, if a man won’t work, he shouldn’t eat. And so, the Christian church, when giving returns to a voluntary program based upon the church, the teachings of Christianity in this country, there will be some people who won’t eat because they refuse to work.

The secular state is committed to feeding everybody regardless of whether they’re going to work or not. See, because their goal is the well-being of man. Very important as we begin this topic this morning—we understand that our goal is not the well-being of man. Our goal is the glory of God. We have a different end. We have a different goal then for our charitable programs than the world has. We have different means to that end as well.

In the beginning to our little booklet, What is Christian Reconstruction? we pointed out that there’s two ways the church can respond today to the problems that we have. I don’t think the church is any longer going to put its head in the sand. Portions of the church will, but the two ways we can respond is either biblically or non-biblically to the problems of, for instance, poverty. We can take the world’s means and try to achieve God’s ends with it.

Or we can turn to God’s ends and second, God’s means as well as God’s ends. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 says that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. And so if this is good works, we’re talking about almsgiving and the care of the poor. We want to turn to God’s means as given to us in the scriptures to achieve God’s goal, which is God’s glory and not man’s glory for our the way we’re going to go about doing our benevolences.

My goal this morning then I assume that we’re all here because we understand the glory of God is primary in terms of our goal, but that we also want to think about the means this morning. And by the end of today, the end of the sermon, I hope all of you are equipped to understand what “pepper side glat” means. That’s three words from your outline. They’re in bold letters. I’ve titled—I’ve changed the title of the sermon.

I apologize to Becky who does the labels. I’ve changed the title of the sermon this morning to “How to Help the Poor.” I want it very simple. And I’ve given you a six-point set of steps you can go to. They’re not the end of the discussion, but they’re a good place to start. And those six points, if you make the first letters, results in “pepper side glat”—also the outlines. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. I’m trying to produce these little words you can try to remember in your mind to help you remember this stuff as we get into a need that we see or we come across a person who wants money or assistance or whatever—to remember these things and then go about God’s means to assisting poverty in our land.

Now, I’ve also given you this for one other reason. Most of us are parents here. We have lots of kids. Very important that we teach our children what these things mean and how they should evaluate their own needs and the needs of other people when times of assistance are required—either for them or for somebody else. And so it’s real easy for you to take, for instance, the four sisters of mercy that I talked about last two weeks ago—the acronym spelled “glat”: gleaning, loans, alms, and tithe. The as poor aspect of the tithe, the mercy aspect. We’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. But it’s very easy to teach your children what those four things are, and to teach them the little title for all that: “glat”—help remember “gleaning, loans, alms, tithe.”

And you want the children to think through those things. So the goal is so you understand these things well enough to turn around this week and the next couple of weeks to teach them to your children and prepare them for works of benevolence.

Additionally, I would like to see—I mentioned this before now on the verge—we’ll be ordaining Kent Canoy in the next few weeks. I would love for us to begin to think through and think how to implement a system of biblical benevolence and poor relief in our church.

Now, for myself, I’ve made myself rich instead of God providentially doing this using my efforts. Say, I made myself rich and therefore I’m going to be prideful and not help somebody else because they should just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Well, you see, that’s the sin of pride and we want to avoid that and do a perception check to help ourselves avoid that.

Now, Job tied his kindness to a lack of pride in this text that we’ve just read. Must thus the attitude are both important. As we said last week, you know, pride will lead you to treat somebody harshly. Even though you may try to obey the external command to help people in need, you may treat them harshly with your words. Remember, I think we quoted Gregory the Great last week as saying that our loving affections must always be shown forth at once by respectfulness of speech and by the service of all good works. Okay.

And so we want to be very careful that we don’t have our pride that when we come across a person who has need to put a do a perception check and check our own degree of sinfulness and pride. Again Gregory said the following. He is less in need who is without a garment than he who is without humility. The opposite of pride. Whence it follows that when we see those who are sharers of our own nature without external things. We should reflect on how many good things of the interior are wanting to ourselves. That so the thought of our heart may not exalt itself above the needy so that it may see with the eye of penetration that we ourselves are the more really in want in proportion as it is more inwardly.

So the point is when we see somebody we harden our hearts against them because he’s poor we think we’re better. Gregory is saying that our need is greater than his need because we have a need of humility because of our pride. And when that happens to us and we do a perception check and find that sin residing in us, he says, “Look at the other person’s lack of clothing, for instance, or the lack of fineness of clothing and realize that you’re not clothed with humility, which is the true virtue from God. And instead, you’ve got pride, which is worse than filthy garments.” Okay?

So, our perception check first of all is to keep ourselves from pride. Secondly, related to pride, our perception check should also consider that when we give according to God’s word, we are paying a patron. In the words of Gregory the Great, paying a patron, Gregory said this, “But it is very great efficacy for taming down the pride of a person in giving. If when he gives earthly things, he considers with good heed the words of the heavenly master who says, quoting from Luke 16, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when you fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.

For if by the friendship of those we obtain everlasting habitation, Assuredly we ought to reflect when we give that we are rather offering presents to patrons than bestowing gifts on the needy. Hence it is said by Paul that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want and their abundance may also be a supply for your want.” That’s a quotation from 2 Corinthians 8:14. Greg went on to say that it is that we may heedfully consider that those whom we now see in need, indeed we shall one day see in abundance and we who are bedecked about if we neglect to bestow alms shall one day be in great need and we can talk about Lazarus and the great gulf between him and the rich man. His master.

The rich master failed to take care of Lazarus and failed to give him alms and he was in greater need than Lazarus then in the eternal state that we are all headed for. Ecclesiastes 11:1–2 says cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days. Give a portion to seven and also to eight for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth. So the point of this is we do a perception check first of all to rule out pride.

And to help us root out pride, we should recognize that when we give alms to the poor and in the terms of the Westminster Directory or the book of Job, the poor bless us from his loins that we receive blessing from God for what we give to the poor. And so we’re actually benefiting from the transaction if you want to look at it that way. We are in Gregory’s words paying a patron rather than giving to somebody in need because he will turn around and bless us.

Now it’s very interesting in Webster’s 1828 dictionary a couple weeks ago, I looked up the word alms. And among other things, he had a quote in there from Blackstone’s law dictionary where Blackstone talked about a tenure of alms, a tenure by free alms. It was called a legal arrangement at that time. And a tenure of alms was one in which a person would give or finance a charitable work, a hospital, an orphanage, whatever it is.

And the person that received that alms and lived in that facility that was financed by alms of the rich people were obliged then to pray for the soul of the people that gave the alms to the institution. Okay, and this was a long-standing thing in English law and many orphanages, monasteries, etc. were funded by this tenure of free alms in which there was an actual arrangement, an obligatory arrangement upon the person who received alms to pray for the soul of the one who gave the alms. And that’s a good illustration of what Gregory was talking about and of the blessings that the poor give to the rich when the rich shares his abundance with the poor.

And so our attitude check should help us in our perception check to avoid pride. And in avoiding pride to think about the fact that we’re paying a patron and that person will turn around and bless us to God and God will bless us for what we’ve done. And so we receive benefits, eternal benefits for the temporal goods we’ve bestowed on somebody. Now, as I said, we also need to keep in mind the purpose of our aid.

That purpose being the glory of God not the assistance of men ultimately. And this means that in terms of our perception check, the third thing I want you to remember besides the pride check and paying patrons, the third thing in our perception check is to think on God’s way of helping people. God’s way. Now, we’ve talked about the fact that God says you got to help the stranger because you were a stranger.

But does God help every stranger in a country? No. Did God treat all nations like he treated Israel? No. Does God treat everybody in the world the way that he treats his church? No. Again, God elects certain people and decides to bestow his grace upon them. Okay? And so, God chooses whom he will help and who he will bestow his gifts upon. God’s election means that we are not to think of ourselves as trying to help every poor person in the world.

Again, it’s for the glory of God ultimately, not for the well-being of man ultimately. Okay. In addition to God’s election to people, he gives us in the New Testament certainly and in the Old Testament as well, he gives us some circles of aid. And the ones we’re supposed to help first and foremost with our money is our immediate family. And then the next circle of aid are those that are church family.

Remember we talked before about the fact that Jesus said, “Who are my brothers and my sisters?” And the ones who believe my word and walk in obedience to it. It’s the church, he said, is the new family of God. And so God says to a person, if you don’t take care of people in your own family, you’re worse than an infidel. But the same thing can be applied to the church. If you don’t care take care of people within the church first before you help people outside the church, you’re worse than an infidel.

God’s election in grace and compassion extends first to the household of God. We talked about the almsgiving that Paul did in terms of worship two weeks ago. He took up a collection for who? For the saints in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is in a time of famine. But did Paul take up a collection for everybody in Jerusalem? No, he took it up for the collection of the saints at Jerusalem. And so in our perception check, we have to think in terms of God’s election.

What kind of a person am I dealing with here? Is this the kind of person God wants me to show grace to? Is this my first priority in helping? Does my family have needs before this person? Does the church have needs before this person? And then is this person a rebellious reprobate? What state is he in? We’ve got to think through who we’re dealing with in our perception check. Now to place the in perspective, the fourth element of our perspective check is to pray that we’d have a good attitude toward helping people.

Remember last two weeks ago, I quoted this from Calvin at length and Calvin said, “In one hand, you can’t help everybody cuz they would take up all your resources and plus there’s a lot of evil lazy people about. On the other hand, don’t be so concerned about finding just the right guy that you never end up giving anything. Covenant in your heart to give ones and to help people if you have the means to assist them. And so the fourth thing in our perception check to be should be to pray that God would give us the right attitude and we’d have a great desire to help those who are needy in our midst. We should pray for a demonstration of who God has prepared to receive those alms.

In the book of Acts, there was a man who needed alms and he was begging for alms. Two of the disciples come up and say, “We can’t—we don’t have money or silver, but be healed in the name of Jesus Christ.” Now, I thought of that in terms of—remember they asked at one point in time, why is this man born blind from birth. Was it for his sins or his parents’ sins? And Jesus said it was so that the glory of God may be manifested. So why was this person begging? Person was begging so that the glory of God might be manifested. And we should pray that God would lead us to people with needs like that. That might the end of it might be as the end of the book of Acts was that this man who begged for alms, he would rise up rejoicing and thanking God and praising God and going to the temple to worship.

Cotton Mather in his Essays to Do Good in 1710 wrote that men and women acting either as individuals or as members of voluntary associations should engage in quote perpetual endeavor to do good in the world. Cotton Mather, good reconstructionist theonomist, etc. said that all Christians should engage in perpetual endeavor to do good in the world and that’s a balance against God’s election and our need to elect certain people.

We got to be prepared to help somebody. And so there’s that balance thing back and forth. Now it’s interesting to me—I mentioned two weeks ago the first thing we should start to do is to pray for needs to be made known to us. Bob Black called me a week ago about two widows. Two widows—the specific sort of people we’ve been talking about who have nobody to help them. And these widows are in need of assistance.

They need—one of them needs somebody to live with them and to help take care of them. The other one needs somebody to come, I think, to rent an apartment to or something. And so, if you have a desire to help a widow, call Bob Black this week. See if the need has been I guess you can’t call Bob. Call me and I’ll put you in touch with Bob. I live pretty close to him. Additionally, last week at the Bible study up in Seattle, Linda Rogers, who of course is a widow covenantally.

Her husband is excommunicated. So Linda, if you know her, is a widow. Her children are fatherless. And that’s what the term means in the scriptures. It doesn’t mean orphan, means fatherless. Her children are fatherless. Linda has been placed in a position where she works. She’s a personnel administrator to disperse the company’s charitable funds at Christmas time. Done this for 2 years now. So she has to find needy families.

And so Linda was having us pray last Monday night at our Bible study in Seattle that she might be able to find truly needy families, a bunch of them, ’cause they have a lot more money to give away this year. See, Linda is doing the thing we’ve been talking about here. She didn’t even hear the sermon. But the only reason I bring that up is you know, if I’m going to ask Ken—who I’m asking you now, I didn’t talk to Ken about this before—to contact Linda.

I think she might have done some of the leg work and trying to find out people in an urban area that the existing social service agencies aren’t reaching and have somehow fallen through the cracks. Linda apparently is finding some of those sorts of families. And so the perception check is the beginning of helping people. It’s the “P” of the “Pepper.” You ought to check yourself for pride. Check yourself to realize you’re paying a patron.

Check yourself to see if they do things God’s way, electing some and not others on the basis of God’s requirements in scripture, the concentric circles. And then finally, pray and have the right attitude and a person comes to you and say, “Yeah, God wants me to help some people, and I’m going to pray that God leads me to the right people.” Okay? So, first you do a perception check. Secondly, you evaluate their needs.

Deuteronomy 28—I won’t turn to it now. Most of us in this church know Deuteronomy 28 is the book of covenant bless the chapter of covenant blessings and cursings. Part of covenant cursings is poverty okay and failure of crops etc. And so in terms of evaluating needs I want you to think in terms of this acronym “SIDE”—S-I-D-E. These things aren’t mutually exclusive but it’s a good way to think about it. First S for spiritual.

There are spiritual needs to the people we come in contact with. Deuteronomy 28 points out that much of poverty in the world is a result—direct result of God’s curse, God’s curse upon an individual or God’s curse upon a nation as they turn their back upon God. Perhaps they have intellectual needs. I—spiritual, intellectual needs. Maybe they have no marketable skills in which they can get gainful employment.

Maybe they are illiterate and don’t have the ability to read and so can’t get a job or can’t support themselves. They might have intellectual needs. It’s interesting that in the Plymouth Colony regulations, I’ve shared this with most of you before, but in Plymouth Colony you had a teacher child two things. One, to read so that they could read the Bible. Two, a trade so they could support themselves. And if you didn’t teach your child to read and to have a trade, the state would have a CPS worker come to you from Plymouth Colony now, okay?

Not from the state of Oregon and say, “We’re going to take that child away unless you get on the ball with them.” They would find you first. They’d find you again the third time. They’d take the child away and put them with parents who would teach them to read and to exercise vocational calling to have a trade. You see, because Plymouth recognized children don’t belong to the parents ultimately. They belong to God.

And a parent who is such a slothful steward as to not teach their children to read the scriptures that are necessary for eternal life. And to not teach their children a trade so that they can get by in life and support themselves, that parent has not exercised proper stewardship. Now, it’s interesting that we have today a school system. And yes, Keith, I’m going to bring up the public school system. Give him a few kicks again.

And we always bring about that up a little bit. Well, what do we have as a result of the public school system? A higher rate of illiteracy in this country than probably has ever been known. They can’t read. So, they can’t read the Bible. And of course, these people are well-prepared for vocational calling. Right? All these classes that they get in public school, the high schools and junior high are really vocationally oriented, aren’t they?

Wrong. 90% of a public school education will get you nothing in terms of vocation. They’re not taught trades anymore. People end up not being able to work. They don’t have a trade. Very important. Calvin in writing on the need for vocation. Calvin is writing about the verse where in the case law, you weren’t supposed to take an upper millstone from man and pledge for a loan. And Calvin explained why that was.

He said that God speaks here of millstones, but it’s an illustration of a universal principle. You cut the throne of a poor man, you deprive him of the tools by which he gains his living. Millstone is a tool by which he gave his living. So he said, if you take that away from him, you cut his neck off and you take away his right to means of making a living. If a man is deprived of his work, he is degraded.

If a man’s deprived of his work, he is degraded in our sight. And unfortunately, that’s what the public school system has done is deprived people of work, vocational calling. Boy, let’s really think through teach. Let’s just not—let’s not just mimic the public school system that fails to teach vocation and trade to our children. So, okay. So, evaluating the needs, spiritual needs, intellectual needs, dominion needs—dominion, government.

There may be needs, probably will be needs in terms of self-government. First of all, there may be debt involved. There may be a long-term perspective that’s missing. The person may be present oriented as a result never think through to next week or next year or 5 years after that. And they may end up in debt being short-term oriented. And so their slavery may be a relationship to their debt. And uh they may have a need to learn self-government.

Before God. It’s interesting here that, you know, I don’t think it does enough good just to tell somebody you shouldn’t be in debt. It’s kind of like I thought in terms of the Emancipation Proclamation, you know, one day all the slaves were freed. You’re now free men. But many of those slaves had grown up as slaves. How do you change a person’s mind overnight? It doesn’t just click. You see, they were used to working in a particular fashion.

And people that we’re going to run across, most people in need today are going to have some kind of debt. They’re going to have some kind of attitude into slavery that has been ingrained in them for long periods of time. And you know, it doesn’t work just to tell them, hey, you know, if you become a Christian, you’re free now. No, their mindset still is debt oriented. It’s still slavery oriented. And we got to teach them the elements of self-government from the scriptures.

We got to teach by teach start teaching them in terms of dominion to exercise government over themselves. We have people today, I mean, I don’t know if you see any of these shows on TV about some ghetto areas. You got third and fourth generation welfare recipients. Now, now that person’s born into that family, it’s not his choice to be born into that family. And he has got a great deal of spiritual darkness that has wrapped him up in terms of enslavement.

Most of the world today, most of this country today is enslaved. If you see debt as slavery, which the scriptures say it is, and many of them have been in slavery for generations in terms of debt, and they just don’t know how to be self-governing. And so, you’ve got to recognize there may be dominical needs that this person has apart from his daily bread. Laziness. Laziness is a dominical failure in a man.

He fails to exercise government, self-government by being lazy. Proverbs are full. I’ve listed some of the references there in your outline. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come on thee that travaileth and thy want as an armed man. Proverbs 10:4. He becomes poor that deals with a slack hand, but the hand of the diligent, or the diligence rather maketh rich.

Can the hand of the diligent maketh rich. And so normatively speaking, people are poor because they’re lazy. That doesn’t mean everybody who is poor is lazy. It means that if you’re lazy, you’re going to end up being poor. And so there may be a need in a particular person’s uh as we evaluate them in terms of their need, there may be a need to teach them to be self-governing and to teach them to be a good hard worker.

I think that’s more and more true as the society continues to deteriorate. It’s interesting in relationship to that Proverbs 12:24 says, “The hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be under tribute.” See, there’s a relationship between laziness and economic poverty and also as a result of that laziness and being under somebody else’s rule. And there’s a relationship between teaching our children to be diligent.

They’ll get riches that way. And they’ll also have riches in terms of rule on the earth. We all know Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child the way he should go when he’s old he won’t depart from it.” But the very next verse, the application of that is the rich ruleth over the poor and the borrower is servant of the lender. And so what do we want to teach our children? Never a borrower be. See, we want to teach our children that from the very earliest days.

That’s part of the way we want to train them with the way they should go. Okay. So there may be dominical needs in terms of laziness. Another—okay, let’s see. There may be other dominical needs that you can’t do a whole lot about. By that I mean apart from self-government, you’ve got civil government as well and the civil government exercises policies that we’ve already mentioned in terms of the welfare policies etc that may be a contributing factor to a person’s lack of self-government and those are long-term things you have to work on okay and then the finally the fourth evaluation of need is of course the economic need so you start by doing a perception check you move to evaluating the needs the needs are spiritual intellectual dominical and then also economic needs.

I might mention here the first economic need and if this is a believer you’re dealing with the need to tithe. I don’t know how many times I’ve told people this. It is the truth. It’s God’s word. If you fail to tithe, the scriptures say you earn money to put into a pocket with holes in it. Holes in it. God says that he will curse you financially in your pocket where your money is supposed to be if you don’t tithe. So you try to help somebody that’s not tithing, you may end up giving him lots of money or even increasing his working skills, but where does it go?

It goes through the holes in his pocket. So you got to evaluate his economic needs in terms of his need to exercise dominion and pay the tithe. There of course are other reasons for economic difficulties apart from sin in these various areas. Oppression due to race or to station in life is a reality in life. And it’s foolish of us to think that non-Christians are not going to try to oppress each other or dominate each other either by way of race or by way of economic status or nationality or whatever it is.

Illness of course can bring great poverty upon a person and through no fault of their own. The illness may be just from God. Again he might have prepared that person just to exercise your mercy toward them and then demonstrate the beautiful gift that is to him and the person gets his life together and is profited and becomes profitable in terms of his work again. Natural disaster. These are things all poor people are not poor because of sin.

There’s other conditions that God sovereignly brings into their life to put them in that state. In terms of their economic needs, of course, the scriptures repeat the theme throughout the scriptures of food and raiment. Food and raiment—nourishment and gardening, food and clothing. Those are the economic needs of a poor person who comes to you. Okay? The economic in terms of the scriptures being benevolent to people does not mean helping them get a better TV set or something.

It means essentially the requirements that they have for life, which the scriptures repeatedly talk about food and clothing. Okay. So, you’ve evaluated the needs now by going through the SIDE acronym: Spiritual, Intellectual, Dominical, and Economic. And by the way, of course, if you’re thinking with me here and you familiar with those last three elements, you know what they’re really talking about. Prophet, priest, and king or prophet, king, and priest.

I guess prophetic needs are intellectual needs. Kingly needs are dominical needs. Priestly needs are economic needs. Okay? And so, man has those three natures to him. And as a result, we want to look for those areas and see what kind of needs the person has in addition to his economic needs. Okay? So you evaluate his needs and then you prioritize his needs. James 2 says somebody comes to you starving without clothing on his back and you just tell them be filled.

I’ll give you instruction of the scriptures how to do these things. You haven’t helped the person. Faith without works is dead. James says there’s a prioritization. If a person’s coming to you is on the verge of dying, you’re not going to start giving them a lecture on self-government. You’re going to get him some food to brighten his eyes. Job says in the passage we read last week and then two weeks ago today again, he didn’t cause the widow’s eye to fail.

He took care of that problem. He guided her intellectually with counsel, yes, but he also didn’t cause her eye to fail. He fed her if she was in need of food. And so we prioritize the needs. We want to keep a person alive. It’s the first prioritization of need, of course, and then work through these other things as well. Okay? And then we pick the means. You do a perception check. Evaluate the needs. Prioritize the needs.

We’re at PEP. And now we go to “pepper.” The next P is pick the means by which to help the particular person. Pick the means. Spiritual. And we’re going to use the same SIDE thing here on the means to help the person as we did in the evaluation of the needs. There are spiritual means. Romans 2:4 very important verse for charitable work. Romans 2:4 says that you despise thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance of longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.

Romans 2:4 says, “The goodness of God is given so that you might be led to repentance.” And so, if we’re going to help somebody who has a spiritual need, the physical sustenance we give him, the goods we bestow on him that God has given to us should lead him to repentance for any kind of sin in his life, if he’s not a Christian, should bring him to salvation in Christ. If he has areas of disobedience.

That doesn’t mean we don’t help them at all. Means we help them and remind them this is the grace—the grace of God that brings gifts into their life at this point in time and it should lead them to repentance then before the God who gives them these great gifts. There’s a spiritual means that we have to provide for. Secondly, intellectual means and these things are pretty explanatory once you realize this.

We have a person who can’t take care of himself is illiterate. We should teach him to read. Then we should meet those intellectual needs. And we picked the needs then to meet those needs. Dominical needs I mentioned before that one of the great dominical needs of people in terms of being self-governing is getting a future orientation back into their lives instead of being present oriented—to be future oriented, to think not just of themselves but their children and their grandchildren.

And you know the scriptures have a have a built-in mechanism to accomplish that in our lives and it’s the sabbatical cycle. We have a long-term need. Monday we’re thinking about Sunday. Our week is focused on a 7-day pattern according to God’s grace and God’s creative work. And God then says in the explanation of the entire sabbatical cycle, there’s seven-year rests. The debts we’re talking about today, if we loan people money, they’re released in the seventh year.

And then there’s a year of jubilee the scriptures talk about as well. And so God gives us a time cycle. He gives us a pattern to make ourselves think in terms of something other than just today. See, if you’re always thinking of just today, you’ve never thought about the Sabbath. If you’re always think just this year. You’re not thinking about the seven-year cycle in the scriptures. Now, I know the implications of that.

The implications of that are we need to set up a seven-year cycle in this church. And I believe that’s accurate. I believe that we ought to have a sabbatical cycle and get ourselves to think in terms of six-year projects, the seventh year rest at the end. One of one of the things that all of us are doing that we can implement that right away in our homes. We can’t do it at work yet, but we can do it in our schools.

We can take six years of schooling and let our children know that in the seventh year things are going to be different. There’s going to be a different thrust to the schooling. There’s going to be a rest in some of those maybe more tedious academic subjects. Maybe spending a year in teaching the children art or music or something that is more leisure oriented and rejoicing before God oriented directly as opposed to productive oriented.

And so a sabbatical cycle right now can be implemented in each and every one of our home schools. And what’s the value of that? It teaches our children to think in terms of long-term. Get them with a long-term perspective, get them to save money, save resources for the future instead of spending them all today. And it helps in terms of teaching self-government and dominion. So we pick our means—spiritual, intellectual, dominical means as well.

And then economic means. And here I got a visual I have a visual aid. My wife—I’ve been blessed by God with a with a great wife who makes things real practical in our house. And I’ve talked to some of you about these boxes. And I’m going to talk about them now. I was talking to Robert Jones a week or so ago after the last sermon and he said, “Well, now how do you decide which where does your money come from to do gleaning or alms or whatever it is?” And I explained that we have these boxes.

And so what I’m going to try to do is help you to think through these boxes that we’ve set up for our kids and have you then make application to the four economic means God has given to us to help people in need. Now the four economic means are glat again, right? Gleaning, loans, alms, tithe. What we do with our children is every time they get paid, which is every other week, the way I get paid or twice a month, we have them take their money and the first thing we have them do with that money is put 10% a tithe into this box with the crown on it for the king, right?

That’s the king’s tithe. That’s his tax. So, we put 10% in that. And I pay them in you know, change and stuff so they can do that. I make it easy for them to do it. Another 10% goes into savings. This one in the bottom has an oak tree painted on it. My wife has painted on it and you know big oaks from little acorns grow—to think long-term again and we put 10% into a savings box for themselves. Don’t spend that ever.

You save that money—tithe, savings. We put 20% into a dower fund. And of course that would be the one with the heart on it, you know, for marriage. So we take 20% and put it into a dower fund. Now I’ve got two boys and two girls. Now ideally what I should only have to do is put the 20% into the boys box, right? But I trust all of you to get your boy squared away or that isn’t really true. They may well marry people outside of the church of course or who will be then brought into the church of course but in any event I don’t necessarily think that God will necessarily bring us boys who have dowries saved up and so the girls are also saving 20% of the money into a dowry fund and you know that Robert asked me also if I could re-stress that dowry fund idea. And I’m doing that now.

It’s very important. Dowry is very important for what we’re talking about this morning. It’s a way to protect widows because if your wife has a dowry and you die, she’s protected say by that dowry. Remember we said a dowry is two to three times your annual wage. That will help her to get her own business started or whatever. Dowry then we take 30% and put it into living expenses which is the house. So they like have to pay for their shoes or clothes whatever it is that 30% and the 30% goes into spending.

Okay? So, we got tithe, dowry, spending, living expenses, and savings. And we break it up that way. And this is a nice visual aid to help them remember. I’d encourage you to do something along this line. Now, the question is, as we go through these four economic means that God has given to us to evaluate or to help people who have economic needs, what box do they come out of?