Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Leviticus 19 – Helping the Poor

This sermon for several months. The sermon text will be Leviticus 19. This will be more of a subject sermon, but we’ll start by reading Leviticus 19, the first 10 verses. Let me mention now as you’re turning there that pages two and three of the handout today simply show the context of what we’re going to read in Leviticus 19. It’s an overview of Leviticus that shows how it recapitulates all of the Pentateuch, and it’s at the top of the second page. Then the middle book, Leviticus, the book of law, is developed in this same five-part way, and the heart of that is a section directly on law in chapters 17 to 22. The middle of that is chapter 19. And then page three of the handout is an outline of Leviticus 19.

I only gave you that today not because we’re going to spend any time on it, but we’ve had a prayer request in the announcements and we’ll be talking about this later in the year too. I’m wanting to do a series of sermons on the Ten Words. This is what we’re supposed to be teaching our children very specifically: the law of God, the Ten Commandments and the implications of them. And of course, Leviticus 19 is a commentary on that.

So that’s why I have that. All right. So today’s text is Leviticus 19, and this is the opening of this 70 commands section recapitulating the Ten Commandments in Leviticus. So, please stand for the reading of God’s word.

**Leviticus 19:**

And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, “Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father and keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols, nor make for yourselves molded gods. I am the Lord your God. And if you offer a sacrifice of a peace offering to the Lord, you shall offer it of your own free will. It shall be eaten the same day you offer it and on the next day. And if any remains until the third day, it shall be burned in the fire. And if it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination. It shall not be accepted.

Therefore, everyone who eats it shall bear his iniquity because he has profaned the hallowed offering of the Lord, and that person shall be cut off from his people. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. And you shall not glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord your God.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you. Indeed, we confess that you are the Lord our God and you’ve saved us, Father, by the powerful work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And based on that, you’ve given us your law as a standard for how we’re to live out the grace that we’ve received from you. We thank you for this very practical provision of gleaning found here in this part of your scriptures, Father, as well as in other places.

Help us to understand it a little better today in terms of how to help the poor and help us to understand our responsibilities toward it. Bless us, Lord God, by your Holy Spirit. Help this text transform us in Jesus’s name and we ask it for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

Please be seated.

As I was preparing for this sermon, I received an email this week from Representative Dave Hunt, a Democrat from the Clackamas region, and he happens to be Speaker of the House. Now, I think I might have actually met him once. I think he might be a Christian man. Goes to a church, I think. I’m not sure. But he was writing—I just happen to be on his email distribution list as many people are. He was talking about the Oregon stimulus program.

You know, we’re going to start talking about today, and this is part one: the difficulty we’re in as a nation and some of us individually as well. You know, I was talking with some guys downstairs earlier. I was reminded that my wife years ago pulled a 20-foot-long trailer with a van. We were going down to California—I think we were going from San Francisco to Livermore. I’m not sure where. We’re on a freeway in California. Christine’s driving this van and this huge trailer behind it, you know, and she’s on this freeway and there’s two big semi trucks on either side. She’s going right between them. And she said it was all she could do to keep her eyes open. She just wanted to close, you know—ever have that feeling, you want to close your eyes? Frightened with these two trucks, you know, being on either side, a real tight space.

Well, we’re in economic times in this country when that’s what people want to do. They just—you know, our natural instinct when we get in a really dark place is to close our eyes, pretend it’s not there. It won’t work. We’re in real difficult times economically in this country and around the world. And you have responsibilities—I have responsibilities for my family and household or our own finances and what’s going on there. So, this is what we’re trying to do with this series of sermons: address the pressing financial needs of the country and of various people.

Now, you know, we believe that Isaiah says that you got to turn to the law to the testimony. If you don’t speak according to the word of God, there’s no wisdom to be found in that. That’s just, you know, fortune tellers and stuff. And we want to look at what the scripture says about how to help the poor.

Now, Representative Hunt wrote this in his email to me—part of it: “Oregon families are struggling to hold on to or purchase their own homes.” So, the context is home ownership is what he’s saying here. “Our state must do more to assist them, especially during these challenging economic times. I’m supporting legislation to create a dedicated and dependable funding stream for affordable housing in Oregon, which will be funded by a modest document recording fee. Currently, the state imposes an $11 fee whenever official documents are filed with the county. This bill would increase that fee by $15, so from 11 to 26 bucks, generating approximately $19.6 million to help Oregonians afford housing in our state. I am committed to moving this proposal quickly through the House of Representatives.”

Well, I wrote Representative Hunt an email back and one of the first things I said in my return email is, “I hope this doesn’t get me taken off your list when I’m going to write to you here.” I said, “Thanks for the email. I appreciate getting these. Hopefully, this email response will not result in my being taken off your list. You asked for response and suggestions, so please read this in that context.”

So, in his email, he said, “Please give us feedback.” So, let me get this straight. In a time of deep recession, you’re trying to increase county recording fees—taxes—by 136%. And this is not to reflect the actual costs of these fees, but rather as a revenue measure, a tax mechanism. And this new tax is intended as a welfare measure.

Please let me know if somehow I have misinterpreted your email. My research has led me to the conclusion that one of the chief reasons we are in the current economic disaster is the misuse of civil government to affect social policies, specifically the desire for people to have affordable owned housing. Your response seems to show that little if anything has been learned by the lessons that are currently being taught to us.

And I went on. So this is the response. Remember that much of what we’re—the difficulties we have financially—are due to subprime loans. And yes, the banking system had its own greed. Nefarious intent there. Yes, they did things that maybe should have been regulated better. But don’t forget that the reason all this happened was social policy. The recent PBS special on the Ascent of Money points this out: that since the Roosevelt administration, the civil government has said, “Well, it’s good if people own their own homes.” And it is. Home ownership is a good thing.

But then what happened, beginning with the Roosevelt administration and then in Carter, Clinton, and Bush, it accelerated dramatically. Home ownership was made more and more supposedly affordable to people that really couldn’t afford it. And as a result, the quasi-governmental agencies that provide these mortgages sort of guaranteed the banks that these loans would be okay. And then there were insurance companies involved. So everybody really had an incentive to doubt that everything would be okay, giving these NINJA loans, you know, No Income, No Job, no Assets—NINJA loans. And so we had a tremendous amount of debt which became leverage through the system, which is a whole other issue.

And then the end result was: when people couldn’t make those home payments, the whole thing collapsed.

So we got here because the government was trying to enforce what we think is probably a good thing—home ownership. But is it the right tool? I would say no—to try to affect that change. That’s how we got here. And Representative Hunt and the leadership in the Oregon House, their way out of this mess is to increase taxes so that they can fund more low-income housing to keep people who have supposedly owned their own homes in those homes and increase home ownership some more by using tax dollars.

So, you see, it’s a continuation of the problem we’re in. This is what’s going on. We’re not two weeks into the Obama administration and we have more radical polarization and politicization and partisanship than we had prior to it. It’s astonishing. That’s because real issues are at play in this crisis.

You know, Rahm Emanuel said this crisis is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to affect particular agendas, and the agendas that are being affected on the part of the federal stimulus plan and the state stimulus plan that I just read you part of—these things are, I think, gonna exacerbate the problem, increase indebtedness, both national and individual, and we’re going to have really some very difficult times in all likelihood in the next few years. Even if the thing works itself out this year, you can expect this massive infusion of dollars to create some real inflationary pressures a year or two out.

And then what’s going to happen? We don’t know. So the point is: we got very difficult times, and in difficult times what we should always do is not close our eyes, but open them up, find out, do some research, figure out what’s going on, and then apply biblical solutions.

And the whole point, I think, of a biblical solution would be first of all to identify whose job it is to do particular things. We live in a time increasingly where more and more and more of what used to be done by the private sector or by voluntary associations or churches is being grabbed by the federal government. And the end result of that is that all these activities become political.

You know, two weeks ago I talked about Herod, and Jesus declares war against Herod through the proclamation of his worshippers and the crown rights of Christ Jesus and his kingdom being established in the earth—which is what’s going on right now. This is troubling to people that don’t want to rule in submission to King Jesus. And so, you know, the message is troubling to them, but to us it’s the basis for hope and assurance because we want to know what to do based upon the wisdom of the scriptures.

But here’s how it becomes political. For instance, one of the things the Obama administration is planning to try to pass is something called FOCA—Freedom of Choice Act—and plus the Healthcare Initiatives. Either one of these will have as its likely political effect the providing the requirement for doctors who are supported by the state system and for the Freedom of Choice Act, the requirement to give abortion counts in any hospital.

The Roman Catholic Church, as I understand it, has already put the Obama administration on notice: If you do that, we’re closing the hospitals. We would rather shut them down than have you force us through whatever mechanism to provide abortions that we think is murder. Now, that’s the kind of line in the sand that the church needs to take. And that’s the kind of clarity—bringing clarity to the situation—that we have the responsibility to do in the churches of Jesus Christ in this state.

And I want to talk today then, on the basis of all this stuff, about how can we help the poor. Look, the instincts are right and proper from Representative Hunt. Right? Christian man wants to help poor people. That’s a great thing. I hope that all of us have that same desire as we go into a discussion about this.

You know, in Galatians 2:10, Paul’s talking about his being received by the elders in Jerusalem and he says they desired only that we should remember the poor—the very thing which I also was eager to do. Christians should be eager to remember the poor.

So, Representative Hunt’s instinct is proper and right in terms of wanting to help people. Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. She and her daughter had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

Now, you know, we’re a church that’s known as the Brokers—became members, you got to pledge that you’re in opposition to the disgraceful and abhorrent sins of adultery, abortion, and homosexuality. That’s what’s required here. So, we certainly know that part of what was going on in Sodom was something that is reviling to us and an improper use of sexuality. And so, but here in Ezekiel, we find out that another great sin of Sodom was in not being anxious or eager to help the poor.

So the idea is that, you know, if you’re not anxious and eager to help the poor, God says you’re a Sodomite. See, that’s by way of analogy here. That’s what’s going on. It’s so important to us.

Luke 14:13 says, “But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind.” We’re supposed to be looking for ways to help people. Representative Hunt’s instinct is absolutely correct to try to help people. The question is: is it helping people?

You know, the Proverbs says the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. I’m not calling Representative Hunt wicked, but I’m just saying that when we try to do things out of our own ideas as opposed to what the scriptures guide us in, and end up doing things in opposition to the scriptures, we’re not helping anybody. We’re hurting people.

Didn’t help those poor people with the subprime loans—got kicked out of houses. It disrupted their life massively. You know, a little kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing feeds the goldfish, feeds them, feeds them, feeds them until they explode and die. You know, that’s what’s going on. So, we have to be wise in the way we help the poor. If we’re going to not do harm, we have to understand what we’re doing. And so instincts are good, but how do we go about doing it?

Another scripture says that he who despises his neighbor sins, but he who has mercy on the poor, happy is he. Isaiah 58—a great passage of the Lord’s day, Sabbath, and dominion and all that stuff—has at its core the need to share your bread with the hungry, that you would bring to your house the poor who are cast out, and so forth.

So, the scriptures are filled with references that say to us: when we hear there’s going to be a sermon on how to help the poor, we’re all ears. We want to be all ears. We’re with that. We’re down on that thing. That’s what we want to do. But we want to do it right in ways that actually do help the poor.

Well, the first thing we need for this job is to figure out who’s the right man for the job. If I bring in an electrician to fix my sink, it ain’t going to work too good.

Who’s the right man for this job? Now, it’s interesting. Years ago, you probably don’t know about this book. Few of your old-timers do. This is a wonderful book. It’s called Clark’s Biblical Law, published in Portland, Oregon by Benford and Moore. Clark was a state legislator. He had a lawyer, did all kinds of interesting things, and he produced this book. And all he did was he took all the biblical laws about anything that seemed to have some kind of civil implication and put them into a law book the same way you’d have a law book found in Salem or any other municipality or state government.

So, it’s just, you know, laid out like a law book with law citations. He gives comments. He talks about what the scriptures say, and then he gives legal citations at the bottom from other states or countries or whatever other law codes around. It’s a wonderful research tool rather in doing this. His research involved going through the scriptures three times slowly, line by line, making sure that—well, what he already did before that, of course, was to know the Bible well. He’s a Christian man, but to know that he for sure went through every text three times as part of the preparation as well as all other kinds of research.

And Clark in his Biblical Law says, you know, the poor—they’re supposed to be helped, but they’re supposed to be helped first by the family and then they’re supposed to be helped by individuals or the church. But it’s not the civil government’s job to engage in all these acts of benevolence.

Now, if nobody does their work, then he leaves some little leeway for the civil government being involved. Now, that’s the biblical position. The civil government is for the punishment of the evildoers and the praise of the righteous. Over and over and over again, there’s all kinds of verses in the Bible about helping the poor. But like the one we just read in Leviticus, it’s directed to individuals. You got a field, let people glean in the field. You got a vineyard, let them glean the vineyard. That’s how you’re supposed to help people over and over again.

We do find some institutional work of the church with specific groups—widows specifically in the New Testament. So there we have the church, not just the family, not just the individual, not just voluntary associations, not just businessmen. Now, the church is supposed to have a role in some benevolences, specifically in terms of godly older Christian widows that don’t have family support. Very limited stuff. But nowhere in the scriptures is the indication that the civil government was to actively take upon itself the work of being a benevolent agency to the poor, getting people into homes, feeding them with food stamps, whatever it might be.

Why? Because governments become political, and as a result of what the situation we’re in, if somebody doesn’t work, it doesn’t make any difference. The country now has said it’s a right to eat. The Bible says no—hunger is a good thing. It’s supposed to drive you to work. Now, if you can’t find work, we’re going to help you out as individuals. But when the state things develop into rights, so you’ve heard this before. But the first point here is a simple one: you got to have the right man to do the job. And the civil government, as has been demonstrated in spades, this is, you know, this is like big letters in the sky. Dorothy, go home. What we’re living through right now is: civil government doesn’t work when it tries to help the poor. And when it does, it messes up everybody’s life. That’s what’s going on right now with this subprime thing.

You know, huge letters in the sky written by God saying, “No, no, there are dragons that way.” When you start having the wrong guy—the civil state—do the job of families, individuals, churches, and voluntary associations, you get these kinds of results. So, you got to have the right guy. It’s not enough to have the right guy, though. Then you need the right tools for the job, right?

I may go to fix the sink, but if I don’t have the wrenches and stuff, I might look at it and try to do something, but I’m not going to be able to do much. If I don’t know how to do plumbing, I’m probably not the right guy, and I sure don’t have the right tools.

What are the right tools? It’s amazing to me how frequently we fall into pretty much the same status mindset on this stuff. The tools—as I’ve got in your outline here—there’s some acronyms I’ve developed years ago. Kind of helps me. It doesn’t help you, forget it. But GLAD: How do you make the poor glad?

Well, you got gleaning, loans at no interest, alms (which is like gifts), and dues—a portion of your tithe—for specific elements of the poor as well.

Now, of all those four methods, the one that is apparently used most often—it’s the normal method for taking care of poor people. Now, I’ll get to it in a little bit. Well, I’ll get to it, right? Now, there’s a portion of the tithe according to Deuteronomy 14 that is a grace aspect of the tithe. The tithe predates Moses, right? But then a portion of the Mosaic tithe is to be given as a grace thing, specifically to widows, the fatherless, and the stranger.

So that means that a portion of your tithe—some small portion (the bulk of it is used to support ministers of the word)—but some small portion is supposed to support, when needed, widows. So we have the list of the church list in the New Testament: fatherless orphans or the strangers—people that are new to the land and could be taken advantage of.

Now, what that tells me is we’re never told to use tithe money to help male adult members of the church. That’s not the idea. That doesn’t mean we’re heartless toward guys that are having trouble providing for their family, but it just says that portion of the tithe—that particular tool—it’s used for specific people. We in this culture tend to want to just throw money at stuff, and that’s not God’s way typically. It’s okay. Alms is a part of what we do—giving to people. You know, Paul encouraged the giving of alms to the church in Jerusalem, adult males included, who are starving.

Yeah, certain emergency situations when alms can be given—money to help people. Other situations where you’re supposed to loan at no interest to the poor, you can loan at interest to others, but not to the poor. Those are certain specifics. But the normal way in the Bible to help the poor guy with his family is to provide gleaning resources.

You got it—and it’s set in an agricultural context, but you can think of it in lots of other ways. We got a bunch of people going out of work in this church. What do we do? Well, the biggest thing we want to do—there’s several things we want to do. One is to let you know who they are. Another is to line them up with people with gleanable resources.

Now, none of us are farmers. But gleanable resources are stuff that you could do at the edges of your employment or at the edges of running your home, but God says leave it and pay somebody else to do it.

So, you know, we’re putting out emails now: Well, so-and-so is unemployed. They need work. Now, that’s gleaning resources. We’re asking from the church. And this is the normal way to help the poor—to glean, to let people glean in your field. And what it means is to give them a wage.

Now, you know, they weren’t given what they would normally make in their vocation. Gleaning was hard work. It was a lot tougher to go around to all the corners of the field or way up high on the grapevine and pick stuff—much easier to go right through the middle and harvest. So, you’re getting paid relatively fewer wages because the idea is not to stay in a gleaning sort of job. You don’t want to encourage people to do that kind of irregular work. You want to encourage them to have their own fields, have their own vocation, get paid a good wage.

So, to do that, you pay them a lower wage when you give them gleanable resources. So, you know, it’s benevolent because you could do it yourself and keep all the money, but it’s helping somebody that doesn’t have money by giving them that kind of thing to do. That’s what we all ought to be doing.

The deacons, as officers of the church, should provide an information conduit between people with needs and people at the church who have gleanable resources. And the RCC email list, all that stuff—we’re supposed to be aware of these things and communicate in the context of the body. If we got guys going down in terms of employment, then we’re supposed to try to set up gleanable resources. That’s the normal way.

Now, certain other things apply, as I said: loan with no interest, alms, direct giving of money. That’s okay. And the grace aspect of the tithe—not to normal householders, but to widows, strangers, and the fatherless.

But the normal method is that picture on the front of your order of worship today: somebody out there gleaning in the field. And of course, the great picture there is probably of Ruth, reminding us of the wonderful things that happen when God’s laws are followed. She becomes part of the genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ. So wonderful things happen when we apply God’s method.

And the Leviticus text—early on in this listing of the commandments, right? Seventy commandments expounding the Ten Words. Early on, after the big two—about, you know, honoring God’s worship, time, the Sabbath, and then honoring God’s authorities in terms of your parents and reverencing them—that’s followed up by a couple of laws about food. The peace offering, where God lets you eat some of his food. He brings us today to his house. He gives us a meal. He gives us a peace offering. And so it says some things during that time how that was regulated.

And then it goes on immediately to talk about gleaning. What’s the idea? Well, the idea is that from the beginning to the end, God is the Lord of the harvest. Peace offering. A lot of that stuff would come from the first offerings. And so from beginning to end, God’s the God of the harvest. But what it shows you is God gives grace to us. The peace offering is the grace of God affected by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ that we’ll celebrate here in a few minutes.

God graciously feeds us with manna from on high. And we’re supposed to be gracious dispensers then of gleanable resources to other people. That’s kind of how it flows.

So right away, right off the get-go in Leviticus, we got eating stuff going on, and it’s eating stuff reminding us that we’ve been blessed by God with food and we should be a blessing to other people relative to food as well.

So the proper tool and the tools are these four: GLAD. And the biggest tool—the one we normally use—you know, when you’re a plumber, I think there’s probably one or two tools it’s the normal thing you use, and probably a pipe wrench or something. I don’t know—one of those faucet wrenches that has that weird thing that goes up in there. There are tools used most of the time. And you know, mechanics—I don’t know, 9/16 wrench used to be. I don’t know what it is anymore—some kind of metric thing, no doubt. But the idea is there’s a tool that’s used most of the time. And most of the time, the way to help the poor is gleaning. And we’ll talk more about that in weeks to come.

Now in B, so you got the right man for the job, you got the right tool for the job, hopefully, and in addition to that, weaving quickly through my handouts. Oh, I wanted to read this one. No, I didn’t. Sorry.

Then we have the right preparation for the job. So, we got the right tool: not the state, but individuals, voluntary associations, churches. The right tool—the normal tool—is gleaning. The other tools are poor loans, direct gifts, alms, and a mercy aspect of the tithe for particular groups.

Now, hopefully I’ve already challenged you a little bit in terms of how you think about how to help people in this congregation that have fallen on hard times economically. I mean, I think that most people, without getting instruction from the scriptures, the normal way we take care of things is money—but I mean direct money. But that’s not how God works. And we got to trust him, right? He knows what he’s doing.

Then we have the right preparation for the job. And here I have another acronym: Acquire the means, identify the recipients, and then do the work. So, as I said, the church is essential in terms of the identification of recipients. This is a big part of what the deacons are supposed to do. They go out and talk to people, or they talk to people here. They figure out who’s unemployed, who’s not unemployed, what can we do to help them? And they kind of, you know, identify the needs.

And hopefully then we’ve done our part in preparing individually and also as a church by acquiring the means to help these people.

Now, there’s, you know, in terms of identifying the recipients, there’s some other stuff that goes on. See, you got to identify what’s going on in the case, right? What’s wrong with the sink? You know, if it’s sloth, then probably you’re not going to do a whole lot for him except urge him to get a job, right? If it’s health problems, then it does no good to suggest he go glean because he can’t do it—he’s unhealthy. He has to have other kinds of resources.

So you have to evaluate the people and to evaluate the needs. The acronym I use here is SIE: There are spiritual realities, intellectual aspects (you know, does he know enough to get further work? Does he need training?), and then economic. The deacon in Calvin’s Geneva trained people. They taught them languages. They taught them English. They taught them trades—intellectual, economical.

Do they need to be encouraged not to be slothful and to take, you know, to take advantage, to be a dominion man in terms of work? And then economic. So there are these various aspects of developing how we see these people in the context of who we are.

But now I want to bring a fine focus to the first of those means of preparation for the job. We know who the right person is. We know the tools. But now we need to be able to acquire the means.

And I want to focus on this a little bit. Acquiring the means—again, as we do this, don’t close your eyes to your reality. If you’re having hard economic times, don’t pretend you don’t. Don’t just think it’ll all work out. It’s not going to work out, probably. God made you a Christian man. Christian men have hope for the future. They don’t see a bunch of problems and wimp out on the thing and close your eyes and not take care of what’s happening.

Now, part of taking care of it is accepting help from other people. That’s being a Christian man, okay? So we have hope for the future. We know what baby Jesus come means—he rules now. We know what the future means. His kingdom is being established. We don’t worry about that. There’s no reason to close our eyes.

Don’t close your eyes to your own economic situation or the economic situation of others as well. We’re Christian men. And in terms of how we then—what are we supposed to do? How do we acquire the means? Do you have gleanable resources?

I had a man this week talk to me—good guy, godly guy. And he said, you know, I just feel bad that I haven’t done a little better at my business so I could hire some of these guys that are going unemployed—at least for a period of time. Man, that was, you know, that was just the balm of Gilead to my soul. That was good news to hear congregants here thinking that way.

Yeah, wish we could help people a little better. Wish we would have done a little better job, been a bit more diligent, bit more prepared, whatever it was. I don’t know what he was thinking about his own job, but that’s what he wants to do. That’s what all of us should want to do. We should want to be able to acquire the means of taking care of other people and having gleanable resources.

Because you may say, I don’t have money to glean. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. I can’t help anybody else. Well, that’s right. You can’t. You need help, though. Don’t close your eyes to that. Open them up. Talk to a deacon. Talk to me. Talk to your friend. Get some structures in place. Evaluate where you’re at and then try to move past it.

You know, Dave Ramsey has these nice little seven steps or whatever it is in terms of your own difficulties. How do you get out of the problem you’re in? Number one, he says, put a thousand bucks emergency cash someplace. That’s a good idea—before you get on to paying off debt, get a little emergency cash. I think he’s right.

I would add something to that. I would say that in light of what we’re going through now with the kind of incredible manipulation of the currency, the injection of trillions of dollars into the system, I don’t see how we avoid hyperinflation a couple of years, or maybe even shorter, into that. Now, that means your dollars aren’t going to be worth a whole lot if you just hang on to them.

Now, they will this year. We’re in deflation. But next year probably, and on, those dollars are going to shrink, shrink, shrink. So yeah, have a thousand bucks of cash to get you by. Have a thousand bucks of small silver coins, gold coins. We do not know what’s going to happen to the currency, but we do know that it’s not pegged to anything more than the confidence of the people. And the confidence of the people, if this thing that’s gone on for the last week and a half continues to play itself out, confidence is going away.

So, you know, I thought I hit alarmist here. I’m just saying it would be a wise thing to add to Dave Ramsey’s first suggestion: Have a thousand bucks in cash. That’s what people are going to take. Have a thousand bucks in some sort of metal—something that’s easily tradable. Not a big Krugerrand. You got to shave off parts of it for a loaf of bread maybe then. No, don’t do that. Have stuff that’s small denominations, easy to trade in case you get into difficulty.

You know, Pastor Phelps up there in Alaska—I don’t know if he still does or not. I probably shouldn’t tell you this. He might get rolled. But he used to fly down to the States, he’d carry a gold grant in his wallet just in case. You don’t know. But just in case something bad happens, he could buy himself transportation back home.

So, I would say that’s a good first step for you. Number one, get that. Well, actually, it’s not number one. I’ll talk about that in a minute. But number one in Ramsey’s steps, number two, pay off your debt. You know, really, preparation for what we’re going into is just economics 101. You know, spend less than you earn.

And if you haven’t done that, spend less than you earn and then try to lower your debt. Now, Ramsey recommends paying off your smallest debts first and regardless of interest rates. I’m not sure I agree with that, but here’s the rationale: Debt is depressing. Debt makes you give up hope. Debt depresses you.

You know, the Babylonians—that’s what they would do. They’d go and debt nations before they conquered them because they knew that they wouldn’t fight very good. They’re all in debt. So, debt tends to do that to us—we lose hope. Well, as Christians, if there’s one thing we should have, it’s hope for the future. We believe in the God of resurrection. We believe in the branch of Jesse coming back up out of that dead stump, right? We believe the sun’s coming back up. So, we’re men of hope.

And the reason he says pay off small debts first is it gives you hope. You get one debt totally paid off—one credit card—you got hope now. Oh, I can do that. And then you move on to the other one. So, that’s good. Maybe it’s the right thing for you to do. Interest rates, I think, do figure into it, but you know, it’s a good idea he gives us there.

Is: first, get some emergency cash. Two, begin to pay off your debts. And then three, start to save. These are all good things. This is what we all should be doing right now. Don’t run around, you know, chicken little, head cut off, things are going to fall. We have to totally revamp our lifestyle? Not really. Make the small changes to your life: spending less than you make, having a little emergency cash set aside, begin paying down those debts, baby steps, you know, and pretty soon you’ll start to straighten up and fly right economically.

And all this will equip you to eventually have resources so you can help other people because that’s what we want to do. It’s the very thing we’re eager to do is to help poor people. Can’t do it if you’re a debtor. Can’t do it if you haven’t saved up money. Can’t do it if you haven’t learned the physical, the fiscal discipline of spending less than you make. Can’t do it.

So, we should want to do that. Representative Hunt’s instincts are correct, and that should be our instincts. And our instincts should drive us then to financial well-being in our own homes using these simple steps. We want to acquire the means.

But the place where Ramsey messes up big time, in my view—and I haven’t read all his materials, so maybe he does this—but in terms of his list of the top seven things you got to do, the thing he doesn’t start with is the most important thing from my view, and that is the tithe. The tithe predates Moses. The Mosaic tithe. We’ll talk about it at the Lord’s table.

The tithe is a perpetual obligation. When people become members of this church, that’s what they say there. They, you know, agree to give God his tithe, his tribute. And that is the beginning of everything because that establishes trust and hope and good relationship in terms of your finances with God that will help you acquire the means to help other people. The tithe is the beginning place of everything else.

If you honor God with the first of your substance, the scriptures tell us, then he’ll honor you. What does it say in Malachi 3? “Will a man rob God? And you’ve robbed me. You say, ‘Well, how have we robbed you?’ In tithes and offerings. You didn’t pay your tithes.”

Now, think about it. You’re here in the king’s hall. You’re in his home or in his living room. And he’s having a little talk with us before we go to eat with him, right? And he’s telling you, “No, you tithed, right?” Oh, you didn’t. You would come to my house and you would rob me. He says, “Don’t you know what I do to people that steal from me? I break out with holy wrath and fury against those people. I come down on them.”

Later on, he says that I send devourers to people that rob me. I send these little—you know, I was going to say tooth fairies to chew up everything. He sends these devourers out, and you—other place in the Bible it says well, you get paid, you put it in your pocket and dog gone, there was a hole in that pocket. Now you can’t find your money. That’s God’s hole. That’s his devourer. All of a sudden, the car starts breaking down, kids get sick, things go bad.

First thing you should say is: Am I paying the tithe or am I stealing from God? Will you rob God, honestly? Will you? No. I’m preaching this today in part because we just distributed financial reports. Okay. And it sounds self-aggrandizing. It’s not. But I’m not sure, based on those reports, that people are tithing here anymore. I’m not sure that a lot of people aren’t not tithing anymore.

And you know, we have a couple of Sundays where we miss because of snow. Shouldn’t affect the giving much, should it? It does. You know, I’m not trying to complain about the giving, but I’m saying these are indications to me that probably people aren’t tithing. They would have mailed their checks in, brought it in on the Sunday when we were here, right? If that’s what they were doing—just not tithing because of that. I don’t know anymore how many people here are tithing.

I know that we’ve grown a lot. We’re so crowded. We want to have two worship services or overflow or build another church, whatever it is. But I also know that the giving has been basically flat for three years, apart from a special gift here and there. Now, all those things roll up. And it makes me worried for you—not for me. God’s going to take care of me. It’s going to take care of this church, okay? But I worry for you.

You want to help the poor. You want to acquire the means. You want to get straight in this time of financial shaking. God shakes the whole world as the devourer goes out there and ate up seven trillion dollars in the fall of the market or whatever it was. God’s judgments are in the earth. Are they against you?

If you’re robbing God—and that means failing to tithe, right?—then God help you. He says, “Turn around on that.” The curse of God is against people that fail to give—those that know and understand. Not saying people that don’t understand, you know, it’s a different deal. You know, you’re supposed to tithe. You’ve made a solemn oath before God and man, if you’re a member of this church, to tithe. And if you’re not doing it, your conscience is dirty.

That makes you a lot weaker guy, too, right? And God’s mad at you. That’s just the way it is. That’s what he says in Malachi. I don’t, you know, it doesn’t make any difference how much money you make. You’re barely scraping by? Come to me. You can’t figure out how to tithe financially? Come to me. We’ll work something out. I’ll look at your budget, look at the thing, figure out a way to do it. If you need help with food or something, we’ll help you with food. But tithe. Pay God the tithe first.

So, it isn’t a matter of money for the church that I’m talking about, because we may turn right around and give you as much money as your tithing back in some kind of assistance. But pay that tithe. Don’t come before God, into his house, having robbed him of what the little measly part he demands—10%.

You make minimum wage? That ain’t much money. That’s not much money. He doesn’t ask for much. And for you to rob him and keep that middling amount back from him. I was listening to Van Morrison song the other night. They sold me out for a few shuckles. They sold me out. Money. Love of money—root of all kinds of social crap in the Bible. The word is more colorful than that. I’ll leave it at that. Love of money.

Oh, there’s a lot of speculations about Judas, right? Oh, envy, this, that, the other. Yeah, we know. But what we do know is the Bible tells us he loved money. For 30 lousy pieces of silver, he sold his soul. Went to hell for love of money. That’s what God does to people—people sold out the Savior just for a little bit of money.

Don’t rob from God. Pay him your tithe. You want to acquire the means to help people. Put yourself in a position of being blessed financially by God, not by being cursed.

You know, I love that old movie. I know John S., I think it’s his favorite movie, too. A Man for All Seasons. And Sir Thomas More is in there. And Richard Rich is this protégé of his, mentor of his. He was mentor to Richard Rich, helped him out. And eventually Richard Rich turned his back and suborned perjury, lied about Sir Thomas More in a conversation he had with him.

And after he leaves the stand, you know, More looks at him and says, “Richard, I see you have”—and he had this medallion on that was Wales. So he was now, he says, “What’d you get?” “Oh, I see you’re sheriff of Wales now or Prince of Wales, whatever it was.” Says, “The Bible says, you know, it’s not good to sell your soul, right? For all the money in the world, to sell your soul. It’s a bad exchange. But Richard, he says, for Wales. You sold your soul for Wales.”

You know, you sold your soul, Judas, for 30 pieces of silver. Now, I’m not saying you’re going to hell, but you’d rather you’d risk robbing God and coming before his face in worship. He sees everything that we are. He knows whether you’re tithing or not. I don’t. But you’d come before him for a for a little bit of money. Risk his wrath and, worse than that, take yourself out of the running to acquiring the means to help other people. The very thing we’re eager to do.

God is so gracious. Right after he tells them, “You’ve robbed me. This is bad news for you. I’m coming in judgment,” then he goes right on to say—well, he actually first he says, “You’re cursed with a curse, for you have robbed me, even the whole nation. You’re cursed with a curse.” Now, that’s double cursing. That’s bad. That’s what happens to people that aren’t tithed. But look what he goes on to say.

“Bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and try me now in this, says the Lord of Hosts. If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be—rather, there will not be room enough to receive it. I’ll rebuke the devourer for your sake. He will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field, says the Lord of Hosts. And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land.”

That’s what we want. We want to see this postmillennial optimism work itself out in history for our particular country, every country of the world. And God says the way to do it is to have his blessings on your economics, your work, your wealth. And he says that he promises that he you come before him as a thief of his house. You’ve stolen from him. And he says, “Now look, you’re cursed, okay? Bad things are happening to you, but repent. Turn around. Start tithing. And you know what I’m going to do? I don’t hold grudges. I’m going to open the storehouses of heaven and make it a lot better for you. And all that stuff, that starts—all that financial difficulties you’ve had in the long term covenantally—most people, I’m taking that away. That’s how gracious God is.”

Representative Hunt, properly motivated, wants to help the poor, using the wrong man, the wrong tool, and having the wrong effect in the context of the country. And we can say, well, we know from the scriptures he’s doing wrong. And what he ought to do is let people keep more of their money, not increase their taxes 136%. Right? For the sake of somebody else, let you keep your taxes. And he probably ought to be praying that you all tithe. And I hope he’s tithing, too. That’s the way out of the financial mess: honoring God at the first of your substance because if you do that, then the rest of your substance is being used for his kingdom work.

God says that’s the way out. That’s the way to acquire the means: first and foremost, pay your tithe.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you for your graciousness. We thank you, Father, for the clarity of your scriptures that tell us in such detail all the various ways, the tools you’ve given us to help the poor. Help us in the next few months not to just hear about this stuff and not act on it. Help the deacons and the elders to spring into work, identifying, encouraging people who may be downcast because of loss of work.

Help us to link up resources—people here that have gleanable resources with those that need the work. Help us, Father, to think through the appropriateness of alms and poor loans and the grace aspect of the tithe when widows and orphans are involved. Thank you, Father, for all these tools and for calling us, your church, both individually and our families and voluntary associations and the church itself to carry out your work of helping the poor.

Help us, Lord God, in spite of the burden being placed upon us by civil magistrates through higher taxation, do the right thing. Bless us, Father, in our substance that we can help other people. Help us to work diligently. Help us to be excellent in our work. Help us to keep the jobs that we have today and not lose them. Help us to be so valuable to our employers, Lord God, that they won’t let us go.

But if they do, may we understand that we have a community here of people who are committed to us. Help us, Lord God, to be that extended family to each other. And help us in all of these things, first and foremost, to honor you with our dollars, with our economics. Bless us in Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.