Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

to a couple of days after St. Patrick’s Day to sing a musical version of his confession of faith as he was used by God to show mercy to those who had persecuted him and killed members of his family and enslaved him. Yet, he goes back and is an evangelist to those wild men up in what’s now known as Ireland and evangelizes that nation with that great confession of his, a paraphrase of which we sang, the Lorica, the breastplate, you know. The Celts are very superstitious people had songs or incantations to protect them against everything.

And St. Patrick said, “This is my breastplate. This is my Lorica. This is my guard wherever I go. It’s my faith in the triune God who has created all things for his glory. And everything is mediated to us through the saving grace and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Praise God for that. And that has a lot to do with what we’re talking about right now because God created this world around us as a true expression—although symbolic expression—of attributes of himself.

And so what we’re speaking of now—greed and covetousness and debt—results when we cut that tether between an understanding of the created universe and the Creator himself who gives true symbolic expression to his attributes in those things.

So we’re continuing on today in Hebrews 13. I’ll read verses 1-6. We’re focusing on verses 5 and 6. The warning against covetousness. So please stand once more for the reading of God’s word.

Hebrews 13:1-6. Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers. For by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Remember the prisoners as if chained with them, those who are mistreated since you yourselves are in the body also. Marriage is honorable among all and the bed undefiled. But fornicators and adulterers God will judge. Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for your indwelling spirit. May you, Lord God, illuminate our hearts to understand this word and more than that, transform us, Father, through the power of the spirit that we may become more and more mature followers and disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, and spread his gospel wherever we go and live in the glorious truths of that gospel. In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom, not ours. Amen.

Please be seated.

These are very pertinent verses to us. And you know, while we’re treating them somewhat distinctly as we go through here, this last couple of verses have to do with covetousness. We will see as we continue our view, our overview of what the Bible teaches us about debt.

One of the most important reasons to stay out of debt is so that you can entertain people and help those who are in need—who are, you know, who have come into difficult circumstances. We want to be a provident people so that we have net assets that we can help other people with. And the more we become indebted as a people—and that’s what’s happening in this country—the less able we are really to minister to people the grace of Jesus Christ in view of financial gifts.

So this picture as we come to the end of Hebrews, which we’ve been working our way through for a long time, of how to live in heavenly community here on earth—your vocation and your use of money, what you do with it—is quite important in the context of that, very pertinent and very topical.

Just last week the United States Congress Senate voted to increase the debt limitations of the United States from 8.2 trillion to 9 trillion. Now, my upper-level math is not that great, but I think that’s about $30,000, not per family, but per every man, woman, and child. So if you have a family of maybe four or five kids—typical in this church—you got six people in the family. Your share of the national debt is $180,000.

Now, I tried to find out this week the relationship of that to personal debt. You know, it’s hypocritical for conservatives to want to get rid of national debt if we’re not willing to say that the scriptures are right, we ought to attain toward, move toward debt-free living ourselves. I have seen estimates and I know they’re wildly varying, you know, but from as little as 4 trillion dollars of personal indebtedness in our country to as high as 20 trillion dollars. So, you know, maybe we’re a little better off in our corporate nature in the government. Maybe we’re a lot worse off.

But the point is debt is now prevalent and common in the context of our lives. And you know what we’ve said here is that one of the reasons for this is covetousness—a love of silver, which the early church always taught was manifested in either just a desire to hoard things or desire to spend things. Both you know—the hoarder and the waster were two sides of the same coin. People that had cut the tether between the created symbols of God’s attributes and God. And so we delight in them apart from God, and that’s idolatry—that’s practical idolatry.

The Sabbath—the Christian Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath, as the old confessions have called it—you know, is a day that we at RCC at least believe is a day to put aside not just making money through vocation. If you can, now some people can and there are necessary tasks that must go on seven days a week—hospitals, etc.—but normally Christians are supposed to refrain from not just making money, but Nehemiah makes it quite clear, we’re supposed to refrain from spending that money, too.

So both the obtaining of money and then the spending of money, we kind of just stop one day out of seven and re-prioritize our lives. And otherwise, what we end up with is a kind of an obtaining-and-spending frenzy as a culture that leads to, and has led to, an ever-increasing cycle of tremendous trillions and trillions of dollars of indebtedness. There’s almost a spending frenzy that goes on. And if we haven’t—if we feel that God is, you know, going to call us at least one day out of seven not to spend—you know, it’s somehow how are we going to get along with that? How do we get along without spending money? Somehow, so it’s a good discipline to build into our lives to remind us of the dangers of covetousness manifested in several different ways—both in terms of hoarding and also in terms of wasting.

Words said that getting and spending lay waste our powers. So an inadvertent attention to getting money and spending money he said lays waste our powers. They’re supposed to be subjugated. Christ within me, Christ beside me. That great confession of St. Patrick really helps us to avoid covetousness as we see Christ and his attributes linked to all these things and put them in their proper perspective as a counterbalance.

Dante referred to them as wasters and hoarders. So wasting money—Dante says that he saw, on this in this picture of purgatory, which we don’t believe in but it’s a literary thing that he talked about—in this he talked about men whose primary sin was avarice or greed. And on this level he saw those that spent money and wasted it. And he said: “I understood then our hands could spread their wings too wide in spending and repented of that and all my sins in grief and dread.”

Well, that’s what leads to most of our debt as a people in America: you know, spreading our hands too wide in spending.

There was a man named Lyman Stanford—Lyman rather—who wrote a book on the seven deadly sins. And this is what Stanford Lyman said: “The goal of enjoying the possessions of an object is preceded by two steps. First the possession of money and second, the expenditure of money for the desired object. For the miser, the first of these grows to be a pleasurable end in itself. And for the spender, the second. Two of the faces of greed. There are two faces of greed, that of the miser and the spendthrift,” said Lyman. “And they are mirrors of the sin that encourages their anxiety.”

So the two sides of this coin—and the spending is what leads to the sort of debt that we’re warning against in the scriptures.

Now at the heart of avarice in both of these cases—in spending and hoarding—is waste of the resources God has given us to demonstrate his value and given to us for proper stewardship, to be used for kingdom work and productive ventures. One hoards, one spends; both waste because both are fixed on temporal gain and pleasure instead of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Hoarders and wasters—it’s what Dante pictured. Neither are givers to others or givers ultimately to God and for the benefits of his kingdom.

So this is what we’re warning against in this section where we’re doing an overview of debt based on the scriptures. Again, the warning of avarice and the two fundamental evils of avarice: it means that we’re to be warned against the means that are used to acquire one’s possessions—they’re likely to be sinful. Okay? So if you are a lover of money, then you’re going to use illicit means to obtain that money. And if you’re a lover of spending, and if you get too much of that money, then you’re going to spend it on things that are sinful.

Robin Williams said that cocaine is God’s way of telling you, you’ve got too much money. Too much money. Our culture can engage in all kinds of sinful things because of the amount of money that they have accumulated to themselves. Okay.

So what we’re doing then is looking through an overview of what the scriptures say about indebtedness, a related topic here. And we’re now at Deuteronomy 15:1-5 on the outlines. Oh, before I go to that, at the top of the outline, I mentioned this GLAD acronym: G-L-A-D. Now, we’re looking not at how to help the poor here, but we’re looking at biblical laws of indebtedness and teaching on indebtedness: wisdom literature, case laws, commentary.

And those case laws—the ones we looked at last week—deal with how we engage in poor loans to people that have great necessity, real problems in their life, short-term problems. You’re supposed to loan to them. Your hands not to be restricted. You’re supposed to loan at no interest. And you’re supposed to loan—at least in the context of this when these verses were given—there was a sabbatical cycle and in the seventh year of the year of release, you had to let go of the debt if they couldn’t pay it back by then.

So this is one way to help the poor, but it’s only one way. Don’t misunderstand what I was talking about last week. The primary way the poor is helped is gleaning. You put them to work at lower rates of pay than typical vocation. And this is a way to accomplish their working ability to feed themselves. You let them glean some portion of your business or enterprise. The Salvation Army began fairly self-consciously as an attempt to apply gleaning in an urban setting. And so you have resources you don’t need. You give them to Goodwill. People sell them, do things with them and you employ people as a result.

So gleaning, and then loans are part of it which we’ve talked about here. Alms—simply giving people money—is another part of helping the poor, and the scriptures certainly commend that in circumstances as well. And then finally, D: GLAD—gleaning, loans, alms, dues. Dues is your tithe you owe to God. And as we’ll talk about next week when we talk about tithing, an element of that tithing is to be used to support the poor—the so-called poor tithe, whether it’s a part of the tithe or one tithe, we’ll talk about that next week—but an element of your tithe also is almost a symbolic reminder that you’re to help the poor in the context of your community. So those are things we can do to help the poor. And this is one of those four things. It’s just one of those four things. But it is one of those things.

Why would it be better to loan a poor person money than to just give it to them outright? Well, you know what we’ll see here when we get to the wisdom literature: it says the borrower’s servant to the lender. And that’s a truth that may not be obvious today that’s the case, but it always is.

If you’re going to borrow money from a bank to do anything—credit card, you know, home purchase, car, whatever it is—there’s going to be stipulations put upon you. You know, one immediate thing is your credit score has to be so good. You’ve got to be employed. They’re telling you what you have to do in order to loan you money. Now, the requirements may be getting less and less as they attempt to indebt more and more people, but the point is there’s always some requirements.

If you have a home, that means if you want a loan to get a home, that means the master is going to tell you: “Here’s what your finances have to look like and here’s the documentation you have to have,” etc. This is very evident with the World Bank. The World Bank is going to go into a country in Africa, for instance, and loan them money or give them no-interest money or whatever it is. They’re going to attach conditions to that country’s economy—standard accounting practices, certain levels of reserves, rules on how much money their banks can loan out. They’re going to be the master to the countries they loan to.

And that is an evidence of what the Proverbs tell us is true: the borrower is servant to the lender. That’s a good thing, be it usually, because what it means is that there are going to be conditions applied from the master who has accumulated money typically through good practices. He is discipling the people under him how to be wise stewards of their money. “Don’t spend more than 38% of your income on your home mortgage.” See, that’s a discipleship factor that the bank is bringing into the life of someone who otherwise may be undiscipled and doesn’t know sound economics anymore.

So the borrower is servant to the lender, and that can be a very good thing. It’s a way to impose and train people in financial discipline. So if you take that into the context of the church community and the community of Jesus Christ, no—it’s not always best to just give somebody money. It’s not always the case that the poor person needs financial discipline, but it frequently is.

So, you know, unless something has happened—an emergency situation—if you come to the church here for a benevolence need, the deacons are going to work with you. And what they’re going to try to do is be your master to help you get a budget, pay back your debt in a responsible way. And that’s going to be part of the condition for them working with you. And in some cases, they’re going to loan you money as an encouragement for you to get, you know, stable and established and all that stuff and pay it back.

So sometimes it’s not good just to give people money. Sometimes it’s good to be a master over someone—not an evil master, but the same way that Jesus is our master. And we have dads in our homes that are masters and elders in the church and bosses at work. And the idea is we’re supposed to be helping you mature and grow in that particular area.

So, you know, we’re talking about debt, but this is not the only way to take care of benevolent problems in the church, but it is a way and it should be in the tool box of any church of Jesus Christ because the scriptures tell us it should be, and there’s obvious reasons as to why.

All right, so let’s go back now to the outlines and continue on through this very fast overview of all the scriptures that I could find that deal with debt in the Bible.

Deuteronomy 15:1-5 talks again about the sabbatical year of release. We spoke about this last week, but in Deuteronomy 15, “at the end of every seven years, you shall make a release. And so everybody’s set free and the debts are set free. Every creditor that lends ought unto his neighbor shall release it.” Verse two says: “He shall not exact it of his neighbor or his brother because it is called the Lord’s release.”

So the sabbatical year was the Lord’s release. And of course this picture the coming of Jesus Christ who ushered in the great jubilee. And of course there’s this relationship being taught between debt and sin. And the year of release—consequences of sin are there. Debt is a consequence of sin. Maybe not of the individual debtor’s sin, but of sin and its manifestations in a culture.

So what we should see in the flow of history is less debt over time because debt is linked to a position that’s supposed to be released in the sabbatical year. This is important to understand. It means that in our modern world when we see an increase of debt, that’s going contrary to what the scriptures talk about as the flow of history. When Jesus comes, debt’s supposed to decrease progressively. And it’s only because a culture—when a culture turns its back upon Jesus and gets wiser in its own eyes than it should be and smarter than God about debt and how to use debt—that culture then turns around and goes retrograde in terms of levels of debt.

I mean there’s a one-for-one correlation between this country moving away from Jesus Christ as the source of meaning and ending up with our complete own definition of what money is these days and then using that definition to increase the debt of the United States and the whole world. There’s a one-for-one correlation, I believe, in that movement, you know.

So the year of release is a reminder first of all to be benevolent to people and to the poor—to let go of them at some point in time. They have hope that seventh-year release. But beyond that, the big picture is again this connection in the scriptures between debt and sin and its release in Jesus.

Deuteronomy 15:7-11 says: “In spite of this coming sabbatical release, poor brothers are to be loaned to cheerfully.” So the rest of Deuteronomy 15 says: “Well, you know, you’re in the sixth year of the seven-year cycle, and some poor guy wants you to loan him money, and you know that he probably won’t be able to pay it back next year. Maybe you’re six months out. It’s coming up quick, and you’re going to have to release him.”

The release from debt was not a six-year limitation on debt. I mean, it practically produced that, but the idea is that every seventh year was a total release. And so, you know, if you’re a smart guy and you can figure things out, you know, if you’re going to loan some guy money in the sixth and a half year, you’re probably not going to get it back. And God says in the case laws: “Well, that’s okay. You be provident. I’ve given you excess resources to help that person out. Don’t close your hand against them. Don’t harden your heart.” And so you should have this willingness to just let it go if that’s what happens in the year of release.

So again, you know, debt is something that we’re supposed to help people with. We’re supposed to be able to help them and then release the debt if it seems appropriate at the time. So there are these restrictions against hardening your heart against your brother.

And then in Deuteronomy 23:19 it says: “You shall not lend upon usury to your brother—usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lend upon usury. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother, thou shalt not lend upon usury, that the Lord thy God may bless you.”

So there’s a general restriction. Generally, we’re not supposed to be loaning money to brothers at interest. Now, you can loan it to people that are not Christians. That the case law, the implication of it seems to be: well, how does a Christian businessman then start his business? Well, in the modern day, you know, one common way to do it is through debt. You get a loan from the bank or from other believers and there’s a fixed rate of interest.

But it seems like biblically a better way to do that is to loan money to people—not loan it, but to invest in their business and you get part of the returns if it grows or you will suffer losses if it doesn’t grow. And you know, that way you have more of an interest in determining whether the venture is good or not than if you just loan money and insist on a fixed rate of interest.

So the scriptures make a statement that generally we’re not supposed to be loaning. We’re certainly never to loan to poor people at no interest. And we’re not really supposed to be loaning to a brother at interest either, but you can loan to people outside of the faith. And also this also prohibits usury of not just money interest—usury of money—but usury of property as well. You can’t, so whether your system of valuation is coin or sacks of grain, you can’t say: “I’m going to loan you five sacks of grain and you pay me back six.” That’s usury of property that’s prohibited.

Deuteronomy 24:6, 10-13, 17 are various laws governing pledges. And so here again—we talked about this already in Leviticus case laws—most loans are collateralized in the scripture, maybe all, with some at least small token of a pledge. And there are laws governing those pledges: what you can take, what you can’t take. If it’s really important for the man’s well-being, you’ve got to return it at night. His cloak, for instance. Of a widow, you can’t even take her cloak as a pledge. So a widow, it seems like—you’re required to loan her money in need without a pledge, even a cloak.

So those are case laws involving debt. And then we have some commentary found in the Pentateuch on debt.

Deuteronomy 15:6: “The Lord your God will bless you just as he promised you. You shall lend to many nations. You shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you.”

So there’s a connection here in Deuteronomy 15 between debt and being a servant to someone else, slavery. And it’s a general description of what happens when you’re obeying God. So we could say that debt—whether you’re loaning to people or borrowing from other nations—is a trailing indicator of obedience to God on a covenantal national level. Okay?

So he says if you get in a position Israel where you’re indebted to the nations around you, you’ve been doing things wrong. You know, this is not a law. This is descriptive. This is a description of what happens when you break God’s laws. So there’s no law that says “don’t go into debt.” But these laws say that generally if you’re in debt, you ought to say: “How did we offend God? What did we do in disobedience to God?”

Deuteronomy 28 says the same thing over and over again. And I’ve got several verses listed there. Deuteronomy 28, verse one: “It shall come to pass if you will hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day that the Lord your God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. All these blessings shall come on thee and overtake thee.”

I mean if you obey God, if you disobey God, hardship overtakes you. And if you obey God, the blessings of God—you can’t outrun blessings even. There’s that much that comes forth to the nation that loves him. And that’s what America was at one point in time: blessings upon blessings. Blessings overtook us.

“If you shall hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, the Lord shall open unto thee as good treasure, the heaven to give the rain into thy land in due season, to bless all the work of thine hands. Thou shalt lend to many nations. Thou shalt not borrow.”

So if you please God, he will bless your commerce. Now, next week we’ll see that one of the ways to displease God is to steal his money. And if you steal his tithe, he’s not happy with you and he puts holes in the pockets of your coat. So no matter how much money you make, it just keeps leaving you. See? So these are not abstract truths and principles that we’re talking about here in the Bible. These are personal laws, personal things that are going on with God and his people.

It’s not, you know—I heard talk years ago: “Well, if we just apply the right principles, whether we’re heathen or Christian, things will be better for us.” Well, there’s some truth to that. You know, if you jump off a building, whether you’re a Christian or a pagan, you’re going to fall. But these scriptures make it quite clear that in economic commerce, whether you’re blessed or not, is not a result of following certain laws that God gives us abstractly. He is personally involved in your commerce, in your vocation. At least on a national level here is what’s being talked about.

So if we please God, our commerce, our things that we do, put our hand to do better. The rain comes down and the crops grow big. And as a result of that blessing, we’re able then to loan to other people and not always be a debtor nation or a debtor.

So again, you know, apart from the case laws, the Pentateuch commentary on debt says that when we have debt, we’re probably doing something wrong as a people or as a nation. And the way to get out of debt is not—I mean certainly you want to apply yourself to pay down your loans—but one big way to get out of debt is to recognize maybe you’re not hearkening diligently into the voice of God. Okay.

So that’s what the Pentateuch says.

Moving on, we have historical pictures of debt. 1 Samuel 22:1-2. This is an interesting verse. I remember an article written by Gary North a long time ago. The cave of Adullam. “David therefore departs. David’s on the run. David departs then and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brethren and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone that was in distress, everyone that was in debt, everyone that was discontented gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain over them. And there were with him about 400 men.”

Wow. Interesting verse. Probably could have a whole sermon just on that. But you know, here the historical picture is that people who are in debt are linked up with people that are discontent and ready to make revolution. Debt frequently precedes revolution in the context of a political structure.

Now David is, you know, God’s answer to people that are prone to revolution. These debtors and discontented folks—he teaches them contentment. He teaches them patience. “We wait till the Lord God removes Saul from being king. We don’t take it into our own hands.” David, the greater David, Jesus, trains his people who are likely to want revolution as a result of the indebtedness that they find themselves in, whether it’s their fault or whatever it is. And Jesus says: “No, no, no, no. Be careful. I’m gathering together a people that the world thinks are goofy, but I’m going to make, you know, these—you’re my people. You’re my host, and I’m going to change the face of the earth. I’m going to change the face of the world through people who are committed to freedom and to try to move away from indebtedness, discontentment, and to obedience to the greater David.”

So this historical picture is that debtors are redeemable. Debtors are close to being revolutionaries, but they’re redeemable through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Kings 4:1-7. I think we mentioned this last week, but you know, if you’re in debt, don’t think that I’m a horrible person. We read in 2 Kings 4 that “a woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets called out to Elisha. So now with the times of Elisha, they’re these sons of the prophets, a group that are traveling with Elisha being trained. They’re good guys. They’re like pastor guys.”

And this wife of one of them said: “Your servant, my husband, is dead.” So one of these sons of the prophets dies. “You know that your servant feared the Lord. So okay, and the creditor is coming to take my two sons to be his slaves. Okay.”

So here’s a very important historical reference that tells us we shouldn’t jump to conclusions when people are in debt. Here was a guy who feared the Lord and yet for whatever reason he’s in debt. Okay? And the creditors are coming. He’s died and now the creditors want to enslave the two sons to pay off the debt. Okay? So it’s an important story—historical reality—that not all—I mean many people who love and fear God will find themselves in a position of debt.

That is particularly true in our culture. I mean it is almost now—Hank Gartner did it. Praise God. It is almost impossible—you know, maybe that’s too strong—but it is a very difficult thing to attain to purchasing a house without going into some form of indebtedness. That has become increasingly true. Since I’ve been around in the last 30 years, we’ve gone to two-income homes for the most part.

And you wonderful people are trying to, you know, have mom take care of the kids when you got kids and all that stuff, and you’re trying to not get her to distracted from that. You’re trying to avoid that two-earner income thing for the most part. It’s not sinful, but you’re trying to have mom assigned other tasks—homeschooling, whatever it is. And you’re out there competing in an economic marketplace with people that have twice your income.

Now, they’re bidding up the prices of goods and services. That’s the way it works. You know, everybody goes out to the market and some people will pay this and some people will pay that. And one way to think about it is it is a giant supply and demand sort of thing. And people are bidding on the goods and services that are being sold. And families with one income, Christian families, are trying to bid against families with two incomes. Okay? That’s a hard thing to do. That’s very difficult. We need God’s help in a big way.

But see, so you know what I’m saying is: you may find yourself indebted. And I don’t want you to go away feeling like you’re some kind of horrible person that doesn’t love God. “Must be sin.” I want you to think about that. I want you to try to become provident in lifestyle, but I don’t want to put false guilt on you because here the word of God tells me that people that fear God—and not just people that fear God, a son of the prophet, right? One of the sons of the prophets, some dedicated, consecrated guy—has debt.

So that’s important. And then, of course, the way he gets out of that debt is Elisha tells the woman to get all these containers and he gives her this super abundance of oil which can be sold then and her debts are paid off. And so oil is always tied in the scriptures to the Holy Spirit. And so as we try to find our lives filled with the Holy Spirit, the Lord God may miraculously or just ordinarily—so-called—prosper us so that we can move into a debt-free position.

So on one hand feel okay because you know there are sons of the prophets who feared God who have debt. But understand the end of the story was they got out of debt. Okay, the wife and her children get out of debt.

So that’s a historical picture from the historical books of a particular party involved in debt and it has important information for us.

There’s also a story in 2 Kings chapter 6:1-7 of debt. And here we have again the sons of the prophets and they’re out building and chopping down things. And in verse three, one said: “Go with thy servants.” And so Elisha goes with them. “So he went out with them. When they came to Jordan, they cut down wood. But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water and he cried and said, ‘Alas, alas, master, for it was borrowed.’ And the man of God said, ‘Where fell it?’ And he showed him the place, and he cut down a stick and cast it in thither, and the iron did swim. Therefore said he: ‘Take it up to thee.’ And he put it on his hand and took it.”

So here again, now we have debt of property, not debt of money, but another son of the prophet who’s in debt. He had to borrow an axe head from somebody and he’s helped in that debt by the man of God.

Again, in Nehemiah 5:1-13, we have a historical account of debtors. And again, here these are not bad people. In fact, these are people. We won’t go, you know, verse by verse through it, but these are people who say: “They’ve mortgaged our lands and our vineyards and our houses that we might buy grain because of the famine.”

So this is a famine-induced debt. And God’s people have become debtors to people that had resources. And that’s not a bad thing. And the problem is that the people that are loaning them money to buy grain—and also to pay the taxes, by the way—the people that are loaning to them are making them servants. They’re taking away their kids to make them servants.

So here we have a direct violation of the case law: people who are loaning to other covenant community members, other Israelites, are causing them to become enslaved if they can’t pay it off. So here we have an abuse of debt—not on the part of the people obtaining debt—but on the part of the people loaning to their brothers and sisters. And this is one of the great problems that happens in this period of time that leads to, that actually led to the exile that they’re coming back from. This is what had happened: the enslavement of one another and using at times the mechanism of debt. This enslavement is what God had judged them for. One of the two big sins—idolatry and enslavement of their brothers—and taken them into exile for.

So at the heart of exile is people who are not being kind and generous to those who actually need money loaned to them.

Then I have some cases of wisdom literature and debt in the next section of the outline, point five.

In Job 22:5-6, he’s going to be accused. “Why are you suffering so horribly? Well, they say, ‘You’ve taken a pledge from your brother for naught.’” So they accuse him of violating debt laws and they say, “This is why you’re getting all this judgment and curse from God.”

So we can get a sense from this text of the importance—as the last text as well—of observing compassion in how we loan to one another in the Christian community. We can see the importance of that in this text because the violation of that was seen as bringing great distress upon Job.

And then the Psalms and debt. We read responsively Psalm 24 earlier. We did that because it’s part of the framework, the textual basis for the day in which we sang “The Lord of Glory.” But Psalm 24 and Psalm 15 are entrance psalms. They are psalms that you were to sing coming into the worship of God. It says: “Who can do that? Who gets to come to church on Sunday?” That’s what Psalm 15 and Psalm 24 are about. Okay, their entrance requirement psalms.

Psalm 15: “Yahweh may abide in thy tabernacle, who shall dwell in your holy hill? Who gets to worship with you, God?” And one of the requirements is verse 5: “He that puts not out his money to usury, nor takes reward against the innocent, he that doeth these things shall never be moved.”

So what seems like something inconsequential—loaning to a brother at interest, particularly a poor brother—here God says, if you do that, you can’t even come to worship. You’re supposed to be excommunicated. You are excommunicated in God’s sight if you violate that, if you have resources and loan to a poor brother and try to exact interest from him.

So that’s pretty important.

Psalm 37 in the wisdom literature tells us something very important as well. We read in verse 21 that: “the wicked borrows and pays not again, but the righteous showeth mercy and gifts.”

What’s the solution to people today? If their debts get too big, they go bankrupt. They borrow and they pay not again. But the Bible says, you know, now maybe there’s some basis for bankruptcy laws in the sabbatical year of release. It’s a complicated thing, but in general, God’s people are to be people who love to pay back. If they’ve had to incur debt, the righteous pays again. The wicked borrows and doesn’t pay again. The righteous shows mercy and gives.

So this is like the Deuteronomy 28. If we’re going to be righteous, we want to have resources to give. And the wicked are the ones who are borrowing. And not only borrowing, but then they don’t pay back as well.

“For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth. They that be cursed of him shall be cut off.”

We love that, right? “Blessed are the meek, but they shall inherit the earth.” But inheriting the earth is tied to a provident lifestyle. What happens when Jesus comes is his people are supposed to more and more have assets to loan to the wicked and then make them pay back in a disciplined way. So again, the wisdom literature says the flow of history is toward less debt on the part of God’s people.

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not utterly be cast down. The Lord upholds him with his hand. I have been young and now I am old, but I do not see the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread. He is ever merciful and lends and his seed is blessed. Depart from evil and do good, dwell forevermore.”

That’s all one string of verses. And we sort of take a couple out of there and make plaques on them. The righteous won’t have to beg for bread. But what the point of that whole section is, is that in general, covenantally, circumstances will happen. Sons of the prophets are indebted. Poor people are indebted. This isn’t every individual, but covenantally, God’s people, the righteous, are supposed to be merciful and have resources to lend. And we’re to depart from evil. We’re to want to be able to lend to people.

So the wisdom literature says: one of the reasons to stay out of debt is to accumulate resources to loan to people and be merciful.

Psalm 112:5: “the righteous lend. A good man shows favor and lends. He will guide his affairs with discretion.”

We want to be able to help people. And if we’re going to help people, we can’t do it if we’re in debt. You don’t want to use other people’s money to supposedly help somebody in a benevolence need. God says you’re supposed to have accumulated those resources, and those resources are to be used to help your brother.

And then as I mentioned earlier, Proverbs 22:7: “the borrower is servant to the lender.”

You know, if you’re in debt—most of us are—if you’re in debt, one big reason God is doing that is to train you in financial stewardship, is to teach you. It’s for the bank to impose: “Don’t borrow more than 38% of your monthly income in terms of a home loan.” See, they set these things up. And it’s good. You know, it’s a way to discipline what has become increasingly an immature population.

I’m astonished. I was reading correspondence this last week from church leaders and good churches that we would like. And I’m astonished that sometimes they read like fourth-grade boy journals, you know, fourth-grade men or boys blogging—is what some of this stuff sounds like to me. Honestly, we are just an immature people. As we moved away from Christ, the standard and source of maturity, we’ve become less and less mature. We become childish.

And in our childishness, we need people to restrain us. I’m only half upset about the gun laws. The other half of me is happy that we don’t let the stupid fourth-grade boys who now are living in 30 or 40 year old men’s bodies run around with machine guns. Now, I know what the Constitution says. I understand that argument and I agree with it. But you see, what’s happened is, as I said, as we’ve moved away from Christ, we’ve become immature.

You know, it’s so important. I’ve asked Eli to come up with a list of resources, some books to give to you dads to work with your sons from the time they’re little. I remember an old—I haven’t read it for years—but a comic book by Dick Lochman on economics or Christian money or something. I thought it was pretty good. We used it in our homeschool. We need to train our children, you know, their ABCs, but we need to train them too in how to be mature financially and to get a hold of their finances—to train them from their earliest days to tithe, to save, to use money for spending and then yes, to use some for rejoicing too.

That needs to be done. And that’s why the borrower is servant to the lender. He’s immature and he needs a master. And in our country, you know, the whole—one of the problems with trying to fix this through a state solution is that the immaturity just increases. Right?

The problem with it is that as you pass more and more laws to cover these things, then the population sees less and less of a need to exercise maturity and discipline because the law is doing that for them. So you know what we’ve done here, it seems to me at least, is that we’ve exchanged the gentle yoke of Jesus for a harsher yoke of the civil government.

And God isn’t going to bless that. It won’t work long term. What we’ve got to do is raise up a godly generation who can be provident, content, saved—try to avoid indebtedness as much as possible—who are fearing God and as a result being prospered in their vocation. You see, that’s a big part of this. We need to raise up that kind of generation and talk about the reign of Jesus Christ rather than the reign of the state. The state just produces further immaturity. But Jesus produces maturity.

So this text tells us that the borrower’s servant to the lender, that’s an observation that the wisdom literature is making. And we can say beyond that we can see why that’s a particularly good thing.

In Proverbs 28:8, there’s an eschatology to all this: “He that by usury and unjust gain increases his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.”

Long-term, the world will become increasingly the assets of the world become increasingly given over to the people that are merciful and lend—not the ones who try to through interest, usury, and loaning accumulate wealth to themselves. The covetous are cut off. They get wealth in the short term but it’s being saved up for the righteous. You know, we don’t want to sit around and hope the rapture will happen to get us out of the economic problems we’re in. The Bible says that long-term the economic problems are solved as people become obedient to Jesus Christ, have merciful hearts and provident lifestyles and they inherit the earth. They’re the ones who are meek.

You know, meek means broken to harness. It doesn’t mean weak. It means broken to the harness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And those who are who please Jesus in their lifestyle, in their piety, and in their love for their brother and their how they run their businesses and vocations—the meek inherit the earth. We get it all. But and so if the church is not in a position of increasing stewardship and instead is increasing debt, it means we’re not meek. We’re not under the yoke of Jesus. So much of our lifestyle as Christian people in this country at least is given over to other things. Okay.

Then I have a section on the outline about the prophets and debt. And I think these are instructive also.

Of course, in Ezekiel 18, it’s describing—Ezekiel 18 is a text that says: “well, if you raise your kid 100% right, he still may go bad. And if you raise your kid 100% bad, he still may go right. And when that happens, the onus is on the son. So you’re responsible, right, heads of households? But at the end of the day, God says, ‘Don’t think you’re sovereign. You’re not. He is. He’ll bring things to pass.’”

So it’s describing really wicked people and really righteous people. That’s kind of what’s going on here. And in the context of that, the righteous one is the one who, in verse 7: “if he’s not oppressed anyone, but is restored to the dead or his pledge has robbed no one by violence, but has given his bread to the hungry and covered the naked with clothing. If he has not exacted usury, nor taken any increase, but has withdrawn his hand from iniquity, that’s the righteous guy.”

Now, my point is that your relationship to debt and to physical assets and to a desire to accumulate assets to show mercy—that is given as one of the few marks or standards of what a righteous guy is about. This isn’t just one little virtue that’s tacked on to the rest of our Christian lives. This is pretty core. That’s the point of seeing this in Ezekiel 18. That’s core, you know, to what we do.

Again, in later on in that chapter, in verse 15: “Here’s the bad guy being spoken of. One who hasn’t eaten on the mountains, nor lifted his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel—idolatry in terms of God—nor defiled his neighbor’s wife. He not oppressed anyone, nor withheld a pledge, nor robbed by violence, has given his bread to the hungry, covered the naked with clothing, who has withdrawn his hand from the poor, not receive usury or increase.”

Remember we said the picture early on of the first debt was in relationship to sexual sin. And in Ezekiel 18 when it describes holiness or evil, it describes it in terms of giving to people and accumulating assets or, you know, enslaving people through debt—and it also relates that back to a proper relationship to sexuality just like Hebrews does in the verses we just read.

So the prophetic texts describe the person who does not obey the truth—that we’re to be provident, loan, and we’re not to exact usury—these are used as prime indicators of a man’s heart toward God, whether he is existing in idolatry or not.

Again, in Ezekiel 22:12: “In thee Jerusalem have they taken gifts to shed blood. Thou has taken usury and increase. Thou has greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion and hast forgotten me sayeth the Lord God.”

So again, the description in the prophetic text—God’s judgment comes upon a people because they’re exacting interest from one another.

And then in Habakkuk 2:6-8, I mentioned last week how Babylon, you know, would loan and pyramid debt and then come in and destroy nations. And they’re talked about in that way in Habakkuk 2:6 and following.

“Shall not all these take up a parable against him and a taunting proverb against him?” This is Babylon. He’s talking about. “Say woe to him that increases that which is not his. How long and to him that wadeth him who laideth himself with thick clay—shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee and awaken that shall vex thee? And thou shalt be for booty unto them because thou hast spoiled many nations. All the remnant of the people shall spoil thee because of men’s blood and for the violence of the land of the city and of all that dwell therein.”

So he says that you know, you’ve reaped up what isn’t yours through usury. You’ve bit people with interest. You’ve dominated and conquered nations through pyramiding debt in them. And as a result of that, the judgment will be that they will bite you. The same word for usury—usury is to bite or to attack or to nip at. So you know a country that seeks to indebt others will itself ultimately be the recipients of God’s judgment.

So again, anti-usury.

Now in the New Testament. New Testament debt: Jesus’s discourse is first in Matthew 5 and Luke 6.

Matthew 5: “Of course, you have heard it was said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, resist not an evil person. Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away.”

So you’re to be a provident people that are able to loan to others. Repeated by our Savior. And then in Luke 6, he says the same thing. That you’re supposed to, in verse 35: “love your enemies, do good, lend hoping for nothing in return. So even to our enemies now Jesus says that our desire is to try to show them the grace of God, lend to them, which puts you the head over them, of course, right?”

So Jesus says the same thing. He confirms what we’ve read in the wisdom literature and in the Old Testament. And then in his model prayer, of course, we pray every Lord’s day: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And the parallel prayer is that in Luke verse four: “forgive us our sins, and we also forgive everyone who has sinned against us.”

So sin incurs debt. Debt is related to sin. Debt is a result of the first sin of Adam and Eve. And as we seek to be obedient to God long term, debts will be forgiven and the world will become more and more debt-free. So that’s how we pray. That’s how God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

And then the parables—of course we have illustrations of debt in Matthew 18. You know, a guy is forgiven a whole bunch of debt and then he won’t turn around and forgive those people who owe him money. And Jesus says: “If you don’t forgive others the way you’ve been forgiven in terms of debt, then you get thrown into the place where there’s eternal gnashing of teeth.”

So our Savior says the same thing: that he kind of connects up debt and sin, redemption from sin and release from debt.

And again in Luke 16, he talks about the men of this age being wise in money. They go around, a guy’s got to get an accounting by his master. “Give me an accounting of your stewardship.” He knows that it’s not going to be good. He’s going to get fired. So he then goes to everybody that owes the master money and he reduces their debt, which he apparently had the authority to do. And he’s trying to make himself friends out here. He’s reduced their debt so they’ll be kind to him if he has need.

Well, what happens is the master says: “That’s pretty smart. Matter of fact, I’m going to keep you a steward of my resources because you know how to work this stuff.” And Jesus commends that. You know, he doesn’t say that’s bad. And that’s a picture again that as we’re gracious to other people, as God has been gracious to us, then when we have need, they’ll be able to help us, whether it’s financial or other ways.

You know, in the epistles, the rich help the poor, the poor pray for the rich, and there’s a transaction of money for prayer going on that’s positive and good. What you’ve got minister to other people, and as you do that then people will minister to you in their particular way.

So our Savior said a lot about debt. And you know, it encourages us to be gracious and able to loan. And then in the epistles, Romans 13:8. Oh man, “anything but to love one another.”

So you know, I’ve had—if you read the Septuagint, this word owes translates the term for normal debt in the Old Testament. So this “owing no man anything,” the immediate context is the honor that’s due to civil governors. But he goes from the specific—the honor due to civil governors—to now making a general statement: “owe no man anything.”

So at the end of the day, you’re not supposed to owe people money. You’re not supposed to be a debtor. That’s the goal, you see, is a provident lifestyle that gets us out of debt. Now, if you put things on plastic, and at the end of the month you pay your bill, that’s not owing them anything. We’re talking about an ongoing debt here.

And the Bible says that, you know, we’re not to owe people anything. The goal is a provident, content lifestyle that moves us toward a debt-free position and pays all of our bills as they come up and moves ahead from them. So, you know, on the other side of it, to the extent that our debt is reduced, we can then fulfill our obligation—our continuing debt—to love each other. That’s the true debt we have toward one another: to love each other. And to the extent that we’re able to reduce indebtedness, we can minister financial resources in loving other people.

You see, also, to the extent we reduce indebtedness, you take the amount of time you spend trying to pay that off and instead you convert it into actions of involvement in the lives of other people. So the Bible tells us that the goal here is a debt-free life—apart from the debt to love one another.

And then texts here that we’ve already talked about somewhat in Hebrews: Acts, the relationship of debt to materialism. Paul chides the men at Mars Hill because they’re essentially materialists. God, you know, is identified totally with the creation. So they’re worshiping the material aspects.

In Matthew, Jesus tribes the Pharisees who want to swear by the gold of the altar or the sacrifice on the altar or the gold of the temple. They see the material representations of God as more important than the dwelling place of God. So the Pharisees are at their core materialists, secularists who are lovers of silver—of the actual created things. That—the whole purpose is to take us back to an attribute of God.

So the Bible, the New Testament, attacks materialism as being at the core of these problems. And this is why, you know, again in education, whether it’s at home, private school, public school, that teaches secularism—that teaches that all the sun is a nuclear furnace—this leads to an improper relationship to the created order. It leads to this kind of materialism.

In Hebrews 12, he says: “You know how that after it talks about Esau, right? Don’t have any fornicator or profane person as Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright”—secularist. All that mattered to him was not covenantal blessings but his immediate needs of the moment to satisfy himself with the material things around him.

When we indebt ourselves for consumer sort of debt, that’s what we’re doing: we’re not thinking of the long-term position of stewardship, resources of the Christian church being amassed together over time. Instead, we’re going for short-term pleasures and as a result forgetting the long-term covenantal implications and loving that stuff.

So what we have in the Bible are some stern warnings against debt and also against pledging for other people. We have an admonition to all that can be summed up in Romans 13:8: “owe no man anything but the continuing debt to love one another.”

We have a provident lifestyle. Debt is connected to slavery. We’ve seen: debt is linked to the curse and the manifestations of the curse. Debt and dominion have been opposed in these texts. We’ve looked at debt and slavery are linked. Debt and—is—the goal is to live free, apart from the sort of indebtedness that the scriptures talk about, and actually to amass resources over time. The meek inherit the earth.

So you know, the Bible is quite clear that our goal is to be debt-free living. And we’re to do that through the promotion of godly character. All this comes back to not being a lover of silver, rather to be content with such things as you have. The text from Hebrews 13 says things are good, but you’re to be content with what God has given you.

Contentment, the Christian characteristic of contentment, is a key to avoiding indebtedness. Secondly, a provident lifestyle, which I guess goes with contentment, but it means taking hold of the physical resources. The two sins, the two ditches, are one: to love them so much that we don’t think about the warnings about debt and all that stuff. And the other is to say: “Well, they’re not important and I’m not going to attend to them.” And that’s the other problem because God says that the assets are good and proper and created by him, given to his people for his purposes and to be used to build the kingdom with.

So a provident lifestyle tries to earn money and then tries to use that money for purposes of the kingdom. It neither is a hoarder of those resources nor a waster of those resources before God.

Contentment with godliness, a provident lifestyle—this is the key to avoiding long-term debt. A compassionate heart—you know, if we want to be in a position to minister grace to others, right, and to reach out to people whose lives are in real struggle and trouble—then we should have a goal in our lives to become a people that are not in debt but actually have assets by which we may be properly, honestly, and legitimately compassionate in resources to other people.

Recognizing the sting of debt—perhaps long term—we want to take away some of the illusions that debt is not a bad thing. I mean I don’t know—maybe it be a good thing to consider legislation to support some people’s legislation to get rid of the home mortgage as a deduction. You know, as long as it’s there, it increases indebtedness. It increases an incentive to become indebted. So long term, there’s probably public policy things we can think of in terms of shouldn’t we want to have some sting to debt to help us to avoid that kind of lifestyle?

Rushdoony in his article called “The Economics of Death” said this: “A debtor society is death oriented. It makes savings, thrift, and future oriented planning difficult or unprofitable because it encourages consumption. Moreover, the moral order is reversed. Debt becomes an asset to statism.” And that’s the sort of world we live in. Everything that is up is now down. Everything’s twisted around. Debt is now the good thing.

I heard a—connecting this back to sexuality—you know, I heard—if I mentioned this last week or not—but a man on the television saying that, you know, we used to be worried about illicit sexuality, that life might come forth. This is back in the 30, 40 years ago, pregnancy in other words. Now people worry that death may come forth from that place. The culture has moved from a life culture and fear of life to now death culture because death is chasing us. And death and debt are connected and they produce a consumer orientation that is bad and gets in the way of helping anybody.

May the Lord God grant us grace to not ignore what we’ve seen here. It’s so hard to face reality, right? But the scriptures make it clear that the reality is that a Christian people are to strive to be debt-free, to strive to have resources, to think long term, and to build the kingdom of God by being content, provident, and loving him—and not ultimately loving that which is a picture of him in the context of our world.

May the Lord God give us the grace, understanding, vision, and long-term generational planning to produce a people who are once again provident, content, and debt-free.

Let’s pray.

Lord God, we want to help other people. We want, Father, each one of us here want to be able to assist other people with difficulty. And we know that there are people here, Father, who because of their commitment to debt-free living are mocked and made fun of by this world that espouses layer upon layer of debt, pyramiding up of debt as a way to become wealthy.

Help us, Lord God, as a people to be content and also content with the abuse and with the humility that comes upon those people who try to live simple, provident, content lifestyles in the midst of an age that is given to consumerism and to a debt culture.

Help us, Lord God, once more to look forward to the time when all the people here at Reformation Covenant Church can say that we’re debt-free and raising up a generation to be debt-free as well.

Father, we thank you that we can write a check. We are writing a check this week to pay off the debt on this building. We thank you, Father, for showing us what you can do—paying off this debt in less than seven years. Help us, Father, also now then to try to be an encouragement to each other to pay off the debts in our homes—for those homes and whatever other debts we have.

Help us, Lord God, to shoot for the goal of being a people that owe no man anything but that continuing debt to love them.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.