Dennis Tuuri

Continuing in our series going through the ten commandments. Today we have our fourth sermon on the fourth commandment, the fourth word. And for our text we will be reading from Deuteronomy 15 beginning at verse one, reading through verse 23. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Deuteronomy 15. And this is the first half of Moses’ portion of Deuteronomy, his sermon on the fourth word, Deuteronomy 15.

These first few verses we’ve already preached on, but they are in the context. Verse 1: “At the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release of debts. And this is the form of the release. Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it. He shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother because it’s called the Lord’s release.

“Of a foreigner, you may require it, but you shall give up your claim to what is owed by your brother. Except when there may be no poor among you. For the Lord will greatly bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance. Only if you carefully obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe with care all these commandments which I command you today.

“For the Lord your God will bless you just as he promised you. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you.

“If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor shut your hand from your poor brother. But you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs.

“Beware, lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is at hand,’ and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing and he cry out to the Lord against you and it becomes sin among you. You shall surely give to him and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand.

“For the poor will never cease from the land. Therefore I command you saying you shall open your hand wide to your brother to your poor and your needy in your land.

“If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you send him away free from you, you shall not let him go away empty-handed. You shall supply him liberally from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your wine press.

“From what the Lord has blessed you with, you shall give to him. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore, I command you this thing today.

“And if it happens that he says to you, ‘I will not go away from you because he loves you and your house since he prospers with you,’ then you shall take an awl and thrust it through his ear to the door, and he shall be your servant forever. Also to your female servant, you shall do likewise.

“It shall not seem hard to you when you send him away free from you, for he has been worth a double-hired servant in serving you six years. Then the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do.

“All the firstborn males that come from your herd and your flock, you shall sanctify to the Lord your God. You shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock. You and your household shall eat it before the Lord your God year by year in the place which the Lord chooses.

“But if there is a defect in it, if it is lame or blind or has any serious defect, you shall not sacrifice it to the Lord your God. You may eat it within your gates. The unclean and the clean person alike may eat it, as it were a gazelle or a deer. Only you shall not eat the blood. You shall pour it on the ground like water.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Help us, Lord God, to be attentive to it now. Help us to explain the many complicated details of the text in an easy way. Give me grace, Lord God, that my tongue would communicate truth and that your Holy Spirit would use our gathering today to transform us. Help us, Father, to understand deeper as a result of this text what our commitment to the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath entails.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

I have my U2 tie on today. I told somebody earlier they had a song called “Beautiful Day.” And one of the lyrics is “after the flood all the colors come out.” Reference to the flood. I mentioned U2 here before recently, particularly the guitarist, who Bono refers to as the lead guitarist—long obedience in the same direction in terms of working with third world nations and trying to relieve hunger and poverty in the world.

I bring it up because that’s what our text really will help us to understand why a Christian would be so committed in the long term to the sort of work that this guitarist for U2 is committed to. You know, as I did this morning, I tend to refer to them as kind of Christians but left-leaning. Well, today’s text will lead us to discuss left and right. And we’ve said this before, but the left and the right wings politically—one stresses compassion and helping people. The other stresses justice. And both political parties aren’t humble before God. And so they don’t go about it in the right way.

So we may or may not agree with all the ways that U2 works in this area. But I think if we understand today’s text and what Moses has to say about the fourth word, we have to resonate with the desire.

Two years ago I preached during the Easter season from N.T. Wright’s book “Surprised by Hope.” Wonderful book simply restating the orthodox Christian position which came across as a surprise. The resurrection of the body. The fact that Jesus comes back here, heaven, if we think of it as something away from earth, is not our long-term dwelling place. Jesus returns and heaven and earth are merged in heaven. This is where we eternally exist in a renewed earth. And so this world has significance.

Tremendous book obvious sort of truths, but things that catch us by surprise because of the weird way the church has gone for the last couple hundred years.

I mentioned too my reaction to his application. Then his point is that what we do here is significant and I was amazed to read that he thought the most important thing we had to do was release third world debt and I thought in light of the abortion situation that was pretty goofy. But if we pay attention to today’s text we’ll understand why that significance again is a profound understanding of what the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day is all about.

So it’ll help us to understand—we may differ on the mechanism as we probably would. But the desire that N.T. Wright and U2 describe is something that must fill our hearts to be truly sabbatarian, whatever that word might mean.

As we see in Deuteronomy 5 in the recasting of the 10 words, a more modern application to what they’re going to do—the focal point while they’re in Exodus 20, the focal point in Deuteronomy 5, the center as I’ve laid it out in your handout today—is that thing about giving others rest. Sabbatarianism has stressed the need to take rest but not so much giving rest and not so much the idea of what we do in terms of debt bondage oppression and all that stuff. And that’s what this text is all about. And this is the first half of the sermon by Moses on the fourth word, so it’s very important to us.

It’s the only sermon we could say on the fourth commandment that we have. We have other places in scripture that kind of mix up the laws and do them in different ways, but this is an actual commentary on the fourth word. It’s quite important to us. And so this emphasis that we see here is quite important as well.

This text will also help us to see that there are vestiges of God’s law still in our legal system. We have, for instance, the provision for bankruptcy in our legal system, but Chapter 7 bankruptcy can only be filed every seven years. So it ties to this sabbatical release from debt—the bankruptcy system—and you know, that’s based on these texts. And this will help us to understand the significance of that as well when we may not originally.

One other thing I want to point out here, and I meant to bring this up at our congregational meeting in two weeks—we report back from Schemata. We’re considering changing our vision statement which drives our strategy map.

Currently it is: loving the triune God, transforming the fallen world.

And what we have tentatively approved is inserting “and our neighbor” after the triune God. Loving the triune God and our neighbor and transforming the fallen world. It isn’t quite as balanced. But the reason for that is that this text—and as I said, if we’re fourth commandment people in the midst of a culture that wants to dump it—then we have to be people who understand that at the heart of the fourth commandment as Moses talks about it here is compassion and helping others.

Now loving God includes the idea of loving our neighbor but it’s important that if we’re going to make sure we don’t become kind of lovers of God apart from neighbor, that we self-consciously message the idea of compassion and loving our neighbor in the vision statement for what we want our church to be like. And so this text today is sort of connected to that as well.

What I want to do then is I’ve got several structures and this can get—you know, I hope this doesn’t confuse you. But the purpose of looking at the structure of a text is to kind of help us give a little bit of focus to how God has structured things so we can understand it a little bit better. So it should aid our knowledge of the text to kind of meditate on it to look at it from several facets—this diamond of God’s word.

You know, it’s interesting if I was to take any little piece of something, anything in the world, and to take a scanning electron microscope to it, it looks beautiful and there’s interesting structures. And in a way it doesn’t make any difference where you cut the thing up—there’s these wonderful structures. And in God’s word, you have these incredible structures, macro structures, micro structures as well that are just plain beautiful because they reflect the character of God who is beauty and order and symmetry and focus and all that sort of stuff.

It’s a beautiful world and the Bible is a beautiful book. And when we look at these texts, it’s like looking at a jewel. There’s multiple perspectives. And what I’m giving you today in the handout or in the outline—most of it isn’t from me. I’ve done some modifications to the outlines suggested, but most of them are from other Bible commentaries. And this is now very standard operating procedure, looking at the chiastic structures or linear structures of a text, because people know that if you’re going to understand what it says, part of it is you got to kind of understand how God structured it and the matches that he puts in the context of the text.

So we’re going to do a little bit of that. If you look at the first sheet on page two of your handout, what I’ve got here is a structure involving the first half of this sermon. So now I don’t put in 21B about boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. That’s an introductory symbol to help you meditate on what follows. And then there’s two parts of this sermon.

And this first part is a unit. The second part, which we’ll talk about next week, deals with specific feasts—by the feast of Passover, feast of booths, triennial feasts. And so that’s a different deal going on. So it’s quite clear to most people that study the Bible and study this part of Deuteronomy that there’s two halves. And this is the first half of the sermon. And there is a beautiful structure to it.

As I read through the text, you probably noticed that you’ve got this sabbatical release from debts. And then you had the sabbatical release, the seven-year release of bond servants. Those kind of match up. And if we look over the overall structure of the text, we began by discussing tithes. And this first half of the sermon concludes by talking about offerings. Tithes and offerings. And these tithes and offerings are tied to the worship structure, right? Formal worship deals are going on before and after of the Lord’s day. And of course, that doesn’t surprise us. The Sabbath is a day of holy convocation.

And so it involves tithes and offerings. It involves structuring our worship the way those things tell us to structure it. But coming in from that formal structure of worship we see the kind of attitude, the sort of things that are supposed to flow out of proper worship. And what we have is a sabbatical release of debt. So in the seventh year, poor loans—not all loans, not business loans and that sort of stuff—but people who are disadvantaged and have had to borrow money, their debts are released.

You let go of it, you let them go free. And matching that, if the guy serves for you six years, in the sabbatical year he gets to go free. And in fact you have to liberally provide him with goods as he leaves. So these things are related.

Now when we look at that structure, then it takes us then to the center—God’s focus of this first half of the sermon, Moses’s focus, what is the purpose of the formal worship structure? It’s the beating heart of the first half of the sermon. And that’s about compassion to the poor. That’s the center.

Now, it’s kind of in the context of releasing loans, but it’s really a separate section there. It’s not, you know, so what we have at the beating heart of this first half of Moses sermon on the fourth word is that if we’re really sabbatarians, it will drive us to compassionate action toward others. And at the middle of that, that beating heart, then the middle of that is this discussion about not having a bad attitude and not developing an evil eye toward the poor.

It talks about the heart attitude that we have and it talks about what our hands are supposed to do in relationship to that heart attitude. So that structure you see helps us to take a long complicated text—as I read it you probably lost your place and what’s he saying? And oh, it’s long and complicated and what’s the focus? How can we keep it simple?

And one way you keep long pieces of text simple is to look at the way they’re laid out. God writes a song and he’s got a first verse and he’s got a matching last verse. And then he’s got a couple of inner verses. And the middle verse is sort of the heart of the thing that drives everything else and what’s supposed to happen as a result of the first and last verse.

And so when we look at it that way, it helps us to understand the text. And I believe that the beating heart of the center of this text is the idea of compassion.

So on that sheet I’m talking now about C on that outline: generosity to the poor. So now there’s qualifications. These are poor who are among you, right? “If there’s among you a poor man of your brethren.” So this isn’t, you know, this is a very specific. This isn’t really got to do with poverty in general. It’s people among you and who are of your brethren within your gates even. So this center section begins by really focusing on the fact that charity begins at home, so to speak.

It begins in the context of where you are. Now when we apply that in terms of a global village today, well we have to think about that a little bit. But the point is there’s very clearly designated a particular kind of poor person.

And notice by the way that this is talking about poor people. So when we talked about tithes, there were these specific name groups that were the emphasis, right? The stranger, he’s a foreigner coming into your land to be with you. Your widows and your fatherless. Those are the specific designations. Now, the emphasis is not those three groups. Now, as the text moves on, it’s talking about the poor generally.

Now, this word poor—you know, what does it mean? Well, it meant somebody that was really poor. It meant somebody that was day-to-day subsistence level poverty, having a hard time providing just for his basic needs. And we could, you know, we could talk for a long time about who are the poor today and who are the struggling.

So in our country, because our governmental systems have taken this compassion and applied legal structures to fulfill it, we have really not the sort of poverty that is being described here very much, if at all. Because everybody can get food stamps and they can get enough food. And all children are eligible to get health care and you know, section 8 housing and other vehicles providing for people.

You know, homelessness is a problem but not much of a one. And typically these are not poor who are acting in a godly fashion. Frequently there’s sloth involved. And we have to balance this compassion for the poor against what the scriptures clearly tell us in Proverbs that the slothful man is supposed to be hungry. Don’t feed him. And in 1 Timothy, you know, if a guy won’t work, he shouldn’t eat either.

So we’re not talking about people that don’t have enough food if they’re not willing to work. So there’s a qualification here that’s important for us. But we want to be very careful. If the heart of this is having this compassionate view toward the poor, we don’t want to so structure the definition of the poor so that we don’t have to be compassionate toward anybody, right?

So you know, and we have to say that really has it been compassionate to provide the sort of systems for taking care of the poor that the liberals have provided? Just like the conservatives provide a justice system that isn’t based on restitution or the death penalty, but rather prisons and as a result creates more problems. So the liberals, not being humble before God either, have applied compassion, but they’ve done it with governmental systems that haven’t produced the kind of freedom that’s described in the text in front of us.

So we have to be careful, but we don’t want to miss the big picture. And the big picture, what does it say? “You shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother.” There it is in a nutshell. Have an open heart. Have an open hand. If you can help people, you should have a desire to do it.

So there’s an attitude that’s described here at the center of this sermon on the fourth word. And there’s an attitude that results in a specific action. So once again, you know, we have commandments. And yet we have, you know, an attitude involved in the keeping of them that’s just as important as the keeping of the commandment itself.

So no hard hearts, no shutting your hand. And I’ll talk about this a little bit more later, but you know, this is Egypt stuff. Who hardened his heart against oppressed people? Pharaoh, right? So don’t be like Pharaoh. Don’t be like Egypt. And of course, that’s what happens to Israel later on. They’re like Egypt and Jesus has to flee from the promised land to go to Egypt as an oppressed person, right?

So you know, the warning here is pretty big and significant in terms of the big issues that are going on with the Ten Commandments. They’ve been delivered out of Egypt. And so that’s really kind of behind the whole thing—the story of the Exodus and the arrival in the land. And they’re supposed to reflect that. So and then it says “open your hand wide to him.” So don’t just open it wide and willingly lend him. You got to lend him money. But you’re supposed to do it willingly.

Now, notice here that it’s not about giving money away. Now, you can do that. Alms are fine to give to people. But what this is talking about are loans. And so, you know, we want to see that if the beating heart of the fourth word, the first section of the sermon, the first half is compassion, it’s compassion that directs people to loan poor people money, not to give them money.

It’s not a violation of compassion to loan people money. Okay? It’s okay to give money, but it’s not as if giving money is, you know, more compassionate than loaning money. What God says is you have a requirement. If you have the ability, if you’ve got money in your hand to loan, which more and more people won’t in this culture, but if you have money in your hand to loan, then you’re to loan it out to them.

Loaning produces a relationship that helps mature people. We’ve actually done this at our church. We had years ago, we had a guy, for instance, who was hard up. He was poor, couldn’t support his family. And so there was a poor loan arranged to him. And there were a couple of us—the church didn’t do it. We thought that this is personal. So we had a couple of men in our church who put together a sum of money and loaned it to this fellow.

And you know, he hated it. He didn’t like it. Because it came with an obvious implication that he should repay it back. And if you’ve loaned people money, you don’t want them to be slothful. And I’m not saying the guy was, but there was a pressure, right, to try to work—for him to get work. How are you doing on getting work? Are you looking for work full-time? There’s a deal that goes on, and that deal is part of this loan relationship. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

You see, in a culture where people are used to being perpetual servants coming out of Egypt, it’s very difficult for them to live like free men. And you can’t just do it by giving them money and freedom. They’re still going to act like slaves. So simple point: the compassion that’s driven here has to do with loans. And that’s what loans that are willingly led into.

And at the center of this text as well is this warning, this “beware” stuff. Don’t have a wicked thought in your heart. Don’t have an evil eye. But rather, you know, help.

Now, what does it say? If you have an evil eye toward your brother and you have a hard heart like Pharaoh, what is he going to do? He’s going to be like the Israelites in Egypt. He’s going to cry out to the Lord. And you know what happens after that in Egypt? They cry out to the Lord and God then brings all the judgments upon Egypt. Okay?

So God is giving a huge warning here. He’s giving—at the center of this text, he’s giving us a positive command to have compassion, to have wide open hearts, wide open hands. And he’s telling us at the same time, now look, be very careful that you do this because you don’t want to be like Egypt. You don’t want to be destroyed.

And as we’ll see in a few minutes, that’s just what happened to the Jews as they came out of Egypt. Eventually, they go into exile because of these verses. Because of these verses. That’s what Jeremiah says. So very important.

And then, additionally, it says that God will bless you in all your works. So God is kind of a carrot and stick sort of guy. When we look at God’s motivation, it’s carrot and stick, right? So he says, “Be real careful because I’m going to bring severe judgments if you harden your heart against people that need compassion.” And secondarily, he says, “Now, if you do open your heart and help them out, I’m going to bless you a ton.”

So it’s carrot and stick, stick and carrot, I guess. So that’s that’s sort of the heart of the text. And so an overall looking at kind of how the thing flows—whether it’s bringing people out of, you know, indentured servitude, that’s the sort of slavery that’s described here (it’s not chattel slavery)—he’s got money to pay off. He enters into a contractual period of service to you and your house. So it’s that kind of servitude.

On the one hand, you want to release him from that. Either, you know, he comes out free with money or he stays. But now he’s not an indentured servant really. He’s kind of a guy that loves to do what he’s doing. He’s doing his calling. So whether it’s that or whether it’s the loans, either way, the idea is that there’s a release from the loans you give people compassionately that ends in some kind of release and establishment of them. So you’re trying to establish them in their place.

And that’s that’s really the kind of heart of the message of Moses emphasis in the fourth word. And that’s why so now we see guys like N.T. Wright saying release of third world debts is important. Well, yeah, it is. Release of debts, biblically qualified, done in the right way, is absolutely critical. And God promises tremendous judgments against people that won’t do it. And he pronounces tremendous blessings.

So you know, we’ve said that keeping the Lord’s day is real high in the list of priorities. That’s right. But with that, based on this text, connected to cessation from work today and going to worship is developing an attitude that produces compassion toward the poor and makes use of specific vehicles and releases etc to help them mature, help them become independent.

So you know, it’s you know, if we see the great importance of the fourth word—and I do—and how its departure has led to many problems in our culture, here’s another one. You know, what we need to do is see the connection between, you know, a church like ours that emphasizes the day of the Lord, the Lord’s day. It must yield a compassionate heart and compassionate actions toward people that are poor.

One other thing about the poor thing: poor doesn’t just—now, here obviously the implication is economically poor. They can’t feed themselves or their families. But I would say that again this is a bit of a part for the whole. There are people that are oppressed in lots of ways, that are downtrodden in lots of ways, right?

So it’s just as much a proper application of this as we’ve talked about before to focus on babies that are going to be killed in the womb of their mom. It’s important to do that. It’s important to notice, for instance, the growing apparently sex slavery that goes on right here in Oregon, by girls sold into bondage. They’re being oppressed and they need to be released. And so, you know, while we’re talking about money primarily today, this word “poor” and “needy” is used in a broad sense in the Old Testament and can refer to other forms of difficulties or want that people have.

And we could apply it in all kinds of directions within our own community. We may not have people that are financially poor, but probably most, you know, many people in our congregation are oppressed or needy in some particular way. And having compassion toward each other, loving God and our neighbor, right, is what our vision should be. It’s what we should be seen to be to the outside world. And it’s something that should—that messaging should carry through in everything we talk about and evaluate here.

So it’s very far-reaching.

All right, let’s look at the next page of the outline. And here’s a little structure that commentators have noticed in the first three verses. Okay. So we’ve looked at the big jewel, the diamond in the whole, and kind of a big perspective on it. Now, we can look at a few smaller structures as well.

Now, this translation is Young’s Literal Translation because in most translations, the Hebrew word order is reversed at the end, and you can’t see the structure. But if you’re working in the Hebrew, the structure is rather obvious. And so I’ve given you Young’s Literal Translation. So it begins by talking about a release. It talks about the owner of a loan. And then it talks about not exacting it. And then it says “This is a release to Yahweh.” And then it says “Of a stranger you may exact.” And “that which is thine with thy brother thy hand release.”

So it begins and ends with “release”—the structure. And it talks about the owner of a loan and that which is yours. So the thing you’ve got to give to other people moving toward the center. And then we have this obvious device at the middle. And that’s a lot of times the way these structures are obvious to us is we got this word “exact.” And “exact” is at the beginning and after the center. So why does God say you don’t have to exact have a foreigner?

Well, part of it is because that’s what he wants us to know in terms of who he’s talking about. But he uses a particular word structure here that does this matching thing. Okay? And what does that do? It brings us into a focal point of the first three verses. In this particular facet of the diamond, this particular, you know, perspective on this text shows us that the first three verses, God builds in a focal point of what?

It’s a proclamation of Yahweh’s release. That’s at the center.

So what we’re talking about here, the Lord’s day, is a proclamation of Yahweh’s release. It’s a proclamation to us that we’ve been redeemed and released from sin and suffering is that proclamation, but it’s also a proclamation that rolls out into compassionate attitudes and actions toward those who are needy. Okay. So the center of the first three verses is the emphasis on the release of Yahweh. The release of Yahweh. Very important. And we’re going to look at a different release of Yahweh in a couple of minutes, but that’s important here.

The focal point really is: this is Yahweh’s release. This is the Lord’s day. This is the Sabbath. This is the time when God comes and proclaims release. And as a result, these things that you’re supposed to do are things you’re supposed to do.

Now, another emphasis here is this idea of the things that you own, right? So you—throughout this text, there’s references to the hand. And the hand, you know, you’ve got something in your hand. You give. You have a debt in your hand that he owes you. You release it. So you don’t hang on to this in the sabbatical year. And at the other hand, your hand is wide open to others. The hand is what’s big deal. So at the end of the service, you know, the benediction will be pronounced.

And those of you that have been here very long know that when you talk about the hand, it’s a big deal. And that’s what he does here over and over again. The hand, the hand, the hand, the hand, the hand. Why? Because what’s going on is God’s hand is a hand of power, might, authority and a hand of blessing in terms of benediction, right? And it can be a hand of judgment as well. We lay hands on people giving God’s power and authority to exercise the office of elder or deacon.

It’s the transference of power and authority. So the idea here is that again, this is a little broader than just “we’ve got money, great.” This is people, I think that you know—so we’ve tried to help identify the poor a little bit. Who’s the people that are required to give to the poor, to lend to them? It’s people who have a strong hand, a full hand. Probably it’s not most of us, okay?

I mean, it’s people that have the ability through power and influence, whether it’s monetary or not, to shape a culture. Hands shape things, right? And so the hand has to be full before you can open it wide to somebody else. We’ve talked about this before, but at the center of the Proverbs, there’s three sets of ten. The first set of ten words of the wise are about work. And at the center of the words of the wise in terms of work is being able to give to other people.

We should all aspire to be people with hands that are full enough that we can shape society through compassionate actions toward others. We should aspire to that. But it ain’t going to happen for all of us. And in America, it’s going to happen less and less. It’s the way it is. Our lifestyles will probably decline.

I was at a concert with Billy Joel and Elton John this last week with my daughters—I with Charity and Joanna. Lana couldn’t go because she was sick. And it was a good time with them. And Billy Joel sang “Allentown” and it’s a very sad song. And it was, you know, thirty years ago when he wrote it, you know, there was a decline in the manufacturing in America and this stuff. And we recovered. But now we have Allentown in spades, Allentown cubed.

I believe that we’re at a stage of economic reality with globalism, wage competition, and now the mistakes being made with governmental debt, etc. that I think it’s probably likely that Allentown will be our basic state for decades. So there’s a sorrowful line in it, you know. “It’s hard to keep a good man down, but I won’t be getting up today.” The singer of the song, who’s got no work, and you know that’s true of about twenty percent of our population right now that are trying to get work and can’t find it. And I think that’s going to be the way it’s going to be.

And I think what we’re going to have to see is a long slow degradation of cost of living or rather living standard. I could be wrong. But you know, you should desire to have a full hand. But realistically, most of you won’t have that. This is talking about people primarily who have the means to shape others with power, whether it’s accumulated wealth or political power, whatever it is.

Now the general principle is true, right? I mean, you’re supposed to have compassion on the poor too. And there’s a sense in which if we compare ourselves to, you know, third world countries, a lot of good Christians are using very small amounts of their capital through microlending projects to bring about the sort of thing—to have the compassionate loaning activities that are going on that this text talks about. And that’s very successful. And we should be doing it here at RCC.

We should be plugged into programs from other churches that are doing that. But the idea here of hand is powerful shapers of culture. And that’s an emphasis here as well. Your hand, the thing that you have which is yours. In other words, you don’t borrow money to lend it to a poor person. You know, it’s your—it’s your—it’s your. You have that power or ability. So the center is the release of Yahweh. And that’s what we can sort of see at the center of that one.

Now the next structure is verses 7 to 10 on that second, third page of the handout. And now here, Hebrew commentators have noticed that there is an emphasis here on the word “if” and “because.” You see, okay? We’re looking at 7-10. And you see at the last part of it “because, keel, for this thing the Lord your God will bless you.” I’m probably not saying that word. That’s a Hebrew word, and it’s the same Hebrew word that’s translated “if” at the beginning of the text. Okay? And it’s an unusual construction.

So God puts these little markers in there, these two Hebrew words used in unusual ways—the same Hebrew word rather—to mark off a unit here. And he kind of wants us to sort of again see this little facet of the diamond. And when we do that, it brings us to a particular center on this one, right? It brings us to the center of warning. “Beware.”

So here we saw warning was contained in the middle section of the whole—compassion to the poor, the overall structure. But here in this particular set of verses, there are these matching ups, these bookends that drive us to the center. And God wants us very much to realize that what we’re talking about here is the release of Yahweh. And because of that, you should be very careful. You should beware lest you have problems with this.

And notice the progression. “Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is at hand,’ and your eye be evil against your poor brother.” That’s real interesting to me. There’s a psychological development, I think, being talked about here. You know, you don’t want to loan money to the guy because it’s going to be released in the next year if he doesn’t pay it back. So you got kind of a—you don’t want to give him the money. And but to justify that, I think you end up thinking poorly of him. I mean, you don’t just want to say, “Well, I don’t want to obey God’s law and I don’t want to have compassion on the poor.” You start to look at him evil, with an evil eye.

That’s what we do, right? We don’t want to obey God’s word, and then we make up reasons why we don’t have to obey God’s word. And the reason here becomes one that’s completely destructive of culture. The very person you’re supposed to be compassionate and open to, you actually now have an evil eye against that person because your heart wasn’t opened. Your eye then became evil and wicked toward your neighbor.

So beware lest these bad things happen to you.

Now I mentioned the warnings here. And the warnings here are warnings that remind us of the hardening of Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s heart was hard, right? Let’s see. In Exodus 13:15, listen. “It came to pass when Pharaoh was stubborn about letting us go that the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of beasts.”

Now, see, it’s interesting because we’re not going to really talk about the last section of this whole thing, but the last section is about the consecration of firstborn animals. Well, here we’ve got a little couple of verses. Pharaoh hardened his heart, wouldn’t let—wouldn’t have compassion on people to let them go even though they’d served him long and hard. And as a result, God kills him and kills all the firstborn. Okay?

And so related to the sabbatical release is these laws on the firstborn that are given to us. But the point here is that, you know, there’s a really important truth here that we had better make darn sure that we don’t miss. This isn’t some sort of interesting little aspect of the Sabbath. It’s key to it. That’s what Deuteronomy 5 says. That’s what this section of Moses sermon says. It’s absolutely central if we’re going to be properly sabbatarian. Not in a blue law sense, but it’s sabbatarian and applying the law of God and keeping the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day.

This is central to it. And if we don’t do it—and remember this is the release of Yahweh—he will bring horrible judgments because then we’ll be Egyptians and not God’s people anymore. And that’s just what happens to them, right? In Jeremiah 34, here’s what God says.

And the deal is that, you know, before judgment’s coming—they’ve been in the land for a long time. They’ve sinned against Yahweh, and he’s going to send them into exile, right? And Jeremiah is one of the prophets that described this. And what they’re doing wrong according to Jeremiah is they’re not releasing their servants. Or they released them from their indentured servants and took them right back. So it’s not obeying Deuteronomy 15. That is the specific reason that Jeremiah gives for the exile. Okay.

Now, there are other texts that say it’s because they wouldn’t give the land rest. So the Sabbath is the reason for God’s horrific judgments, and their failure to release people sabbatically in terms of debt and servitude is also the reason.

Now listen to this. This is real interesting. Jeremiah 34—that’s the context. Jeremiah says, “Therefore, thus says the Lord, ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty.” That’s on the liberty bell, right? “Proclaim” from Leviticus. But this is the idea. The release of Yahweh is proclaimed. To not enter into this compassionate attitude and actions toward the poor is to deny our liberty bell. Okay?

Well, he says, “Because you didn’t do this in proclaiming liberty, everyone to his brother and every man to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim a liberty, a release.” Remember I said, “Remember, this is Yahweh’s release. I proclaim a release for you, sayeth the Lord. A release to the sword, to the pestilence, to the famine. And I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

“And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the words of the covenant which they had made before me when they came out, I’ll give them this judgment.”

Now, that’s really interesting. It’s the same sort of thing expanded and magnified and multiplied that describes what happened to Pharaoh. And now we can be just like Pharaoh. And that’s what happened to the Jews when you don’t proclaim the release of Yahweh and follow it up with actions. He makes a release. He releases you to damnation, to destruction, to the sword, to pestilence, to going into exile, to debt to China, whatever it might be, right?

That’s what he does. And notice that he says that the reason for this is “they’ve transgressed my covenant.” Remember, we said that the Bible says the Sabbath is the covenant. That’s what it says. You don’t have covenant if you don’t have the Lord’s day. And here it says the covenant is the proclamation of release. It’s compassionate actions toward the truly needy and oppressed. You see the connection?

Well, maybe you saw it as two different issues before today, but what you should see today is these are absolute—it’s the same thing because the Sabbath, the interpretation of it by Moses, involves the sabbatical release, compassionate attitudes and actions toward people. Do you see?

So I hope you’re fearful of violating the Lord’s day. And I hope you’re also fearful of not having a properly compassionate heart, which leads to—if you have the power in your hand—compassionate actions toward others. And remember, it can be expressed in different ways.

I was thinking about this, that you know, really this sort of was for ourselves but also for others when we did the homeschool law. People were powerless. Homeschoolers were powerless before an oppressive legal system that wanted to take their kids. And God raised us up, people that believed in the Sabbath. And we weren’t thinking of it this way, but to bring release to a group that had no representation, who were oppressed. That’s what happened. So it goes a lot of different ways. But it begins here in terms of these economic realities.

So the center of this next little facet, then, is this idea of warning. They’re going to cry out to God, and when they cry out to God, bad things happen. That’s just what the Jews, the Israelites, did in Egypt. They cried out to God, and God then brought all the judgments upon Egypt. Okay.

Next one. Deuteronomy 15:1-11. This is another structure. And here there are really two structures going on. And the first center is verse 4: “except when there may be no poor among you.” So here he wants us to focus on the fact that what you do isn’t just some sort of rolling the stone up the hill and coming back down. There is a movement toward the elimination of poverty that can be accomplished through the sort of things, the sort of social justice legislation that God puts in place for us as individuals.

So it is effectual. There’s this connection between the elimination of the poor in a particular place where God’s laws are enforced that can actually come to pass. And not only is that true, but if you look at the outer edges of this little structure, at the bottom of this structure, it says that there’s a relationship to the nations. “You shall lend to many nations. You shall not borrow. You shall rather reign over many nations. They shall not reign over you.”

So dominion over the nations, which is something we talk about a lot, is tied to eliminating the kind of poverty that’s being described here in our towns, in our village, in our country. You see, those things go together. And so, again, the Sabbath is the proclamation of release. It’s the proclamation of the gospel of Christ. The world will be converted. But that conversion happens, at least in terms of this particular structure, in relationship to our compassion and our actions toward the release of the poor.

And then the next half of this 7-11, again here, is the warning text which we’ve talked about already. So from a couple of different perspectives—three perspectives now. The overall structure, the other little verses, and now the main section of this thing. Three different perspectives on this diamond. This “beware” jumps off the page at us. So tremendous warnings contrasted with tremendous blessings, right? Dominion over the nations and the removal of poverty.

All right. Then finally, the last section: the release of the indentured servant at the seventh year. And notice verse 12. So we’re looking now at Deuteronomy 15:12 to 18. That structure in your handout: “If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman.”

Now they weren’t called Hebrews anymore. Okay? They were now Israelites because they were, you know, Jacob had his name changed to Israel. These are the twelve tribes. They’re Israelites. Why does he say Hebrew? Because it’s an Egypt deal. In Egypt, you know, they weren’t Israelites yet. They were primarily looked at and described in the scriptures of that part of the Bible as Hebrews.

What does the word mean? We don’t know. It seems like it’s probably related to Abraham was called a Hebrew, and he was the descendant of Hebrew. So maybe there’s a connection there. But you know, there are these three names used for God’s people in the Old Testament: Hebrews, and then Israelites, and then Jews—shortened form of Judah—which becomes, you know, the summation as we move through the history of the Old Testament.

Three different names, three different emphases. And here God goes out of his way to use a different word than Israelite. He uses the word Hebrew because he wants us to think in terms again of Egypt.

And what happens here? Well, you’re supposed to supply them liberally. What didn’t you know what happened in the wilderness, or as God’s people rather moved away from Egypt—before they left? What did they do? They asked for gifts, and the Egyptians gifted them. And so there’s a relationship here between the Hebrews and Egypt. Who, when they come out, are properly paid, just like the indentured servant is given capitalized funds as he leaves indentured servitude. God’s people were capitalized through the gifts that the Egyptians gave to them as they came out of captivity.

And those gifts, by the way, became used in large part to fund worship. Right? So but clearly the analogy here is to Egypt and God’s people coming out of Egypt, and we have an obligation—not just to let people go, but to capitalize them. Indentured servants, when they’re done, you capitalize them. You don’t want them to go into debt again. You don’t want them to have subsistence living. You’re supposed to provide for them liberally, right? That’s what the text says.

And then the very heart of this is the next section, beginning at verse 15. “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore, I command you this thing today.”

Today. So the center is again: we’re imaging God. He did this for us. He blessed you by giving you this land. He’ll bless the work of your hands so that your hands can be full to bless others. We’re image bearers, and compassionate actions toward the disadvantaged is part of the image-bearing capacity that we have on the Lord’s day.

God comes close to us. His characteristics get fused into ours—his communicable attributes, we can say. And that means his heart and compassion for us is experienced in a deeper way every Lord’s day. And that should have the effect, if we really understand the grace that’s been given to us, to be gracious and compassionate to others. That’s at the center of this provision for the release of the servant.

And then finally, we have the discussion of the man who becomes a listener, a good listener. At the end, we have the wonderful image that I think people have primarily misunderstood. And what it says is that if the guy loves you and wants to continue to serve in your home, now you put a hole through his ear. You put an awl, and you put it through his ear to the door of the house, and he’s attached then to the house. Right?

Well, God’s people Israel come out of Pharaoh’s house and they become attached to God’s house as his servants. There’s nothing on here about wearing an earring, folks, or being feminine or a slave in a bad sense. Nothing at all. It’s just the reverse. The picture here, the imagery, is somebody who loves to serve the master of the house.

Every Lord’s day, we come to God’s house, and we should have our ears open to hear. You know, the Egyptian word for slave was “listener”—literally someone who could listen to the command of the master. So God’s brought us to his house and he’s washed us. He’s having a discussion with us now, and he’s going to have a meal with us here and send us on our way. And what he wants us to hear today in his house is that as his loving servants, we’re supposed to be like him. We’re to extend compassionate actions to others.

We’re supposed to be gracious toward them as he’s been gracious to us. We’re now the servants in God’s house. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a great thing. Where else would we be? We just read it earlier in the Psalm. I’d rather be close to God in the house of God than any other place. It’s a great place to be. And that’s the image here at the end of this text.

What we’re bringing people into as we are at compassionate actions to the poor is ultimately loving service in the house of God that isn’t a result of necessity anymore, but is voluntarily and freely entered into. That’s the description of who we are. We bear the image of the master. We’re those who listen to his word. And yeah, that word says place the Sabbath very high on your list of priorities. But that word tells us today that to really do that, you have to place high on your list of priorities compassionate actions toward others.

Praise God. We love him. And we know that the end result of loving the triune God is the transformation of culture. But we must continually remind ourselves that the love for God must flow into the necessary second commandment—the love of our neighbor—and particularly our neighbors who are needy in some particular fashion or way.

God brings us to his house. May the Lord God grant us to be gracious image-bearers of his in really grabbing ahold of what the Lord’s day is all about.

Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you so much for giving us salvation, for making us Lord God’s servants in your house, for opening our ear to hear your word. We thank you for the imagery of the Passover and the blood on the door. We thank you for the work of the firstborn, the Lord Jesus Christ, your only begotten son, without defect or blemish. Lord God, accept—