Dennis Tuuri

# The Eighth Word and Social Justice

for three transgressions of Israel and for four I will not turn away its punishment because they sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals. They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor and pervert the way of the humble. A man and his father go into the same girl to defile my holy name. They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge. and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we are a confused people in our country today. We have lost your word and its understanding of what social justice is, could be, or how your scriptures teach it to us. Help us, Father, today to understand the text of scripture we’re referring to. Prevent us, Lord God, from falling into deceptions or from rejecting the idea of helping the poor in the other ditch. Bless us, Lord God, at the consideration of our obligations, joyful that they may be to us.

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

I was watching one of the talking head shows this last week on the budget talks, the raising of the debt ceiling. Bob Beckel, a liberal commentator, was saying that he was deriding and humiliating the balanced budget amendment that had been voted on in the House of Representatives. He says, “It’s sort of like someone says, ‘Well, I’m going to keep stealing probably, but I want to endorse the Ten Commandments.’”

Well, that’s right. It is like that. We endorse the Ten Commandments even though we know that in our fallen natures, we will be tempted to steal at times. We’ll be tempted to violate the eighth word. And that’s why we endorse the Ten Commandments. The Congress feels itself unable to spend within limitations. And that’s why it wants to govern itself and discipline itself by insisting on a balanced budget. To throw out that kind of approach to restraining our improper tendencies would be ridiculous—to throw out all restraint and just say, “Well, I guess we can’t do anything about it.”

We turn to the eighth word. We turn to the Ten Commandments not because we’re endorsing them and think we’re never tempted in these areas for sin, but because they’re just the opposite. We need the word of God to hem us in, to instruct us, to straighten up our thinking on things, and to be a howling indictment, as Ted Gentry once said, against us when we sin and violate these ten words. So we return to the eighth word today. The eighth word is “do not steal.”

Very simple. And yet we’ve seen some implications of it that maybe haven’t quite been part of your thinking process before. We came to it and today we’ll tackle this huge subject of social justice—not exhaustively, but in a very punctual and quick, I hope meaningful fashion.

On your handouts I’ve got in the introduction section: property, tithe, multiple restitution. Those are our first three sermons essentially on the eighth word. And so we talked about the importance of property and the protection of it for dominion men and women. We like property; it’s a good thing to have. It’s a good thing to exercise stewardship in a godly way, and it’s a good thing to want to have more of it to exercise Christian stewardship over.

I hope we like it because that’s what God is doing—he’s in a process of redistributive justice. He’s taking away the goods of the wicked and he’s transferring them usually through hard work and diligence on the part of his people. He’s transferring the wealth of the world to the meek. The meek shall inherit the earth. So I hope we like it. Hope we like property because God says we’re supposed to take care of it. It’s a good thing.

Secondly, he said that we don’t want to begin our stealing. We want to be careful not to steal, first and foremost. We’re not stealing from God. And Malachi warns us that when we don’t tithe, we’re robbing from God. And then third, we said that when people do steal, the biblical solution is not—in a large overview sense—prisons. Rather, it’s systems of multiple restitution, reminding us that God isn’t about just restoring things back to the way they were.

When you steal, you have to pay, usually twofold restitution. Because God is in the process of using men’s sin sinlessly, not to take us back to the garden, but to move the world forward to the garden city, the New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. And societal progress is what the world is all about. And Jesus’s restitution on the cross affected a doubling—restitution with his perfect obedience and is paying the price for our sins and then redeeming us so that we might indeed see our responsibility to bring the earth to full fruition the way we as part of mankind had brought the earth under subjection to sinful people.

So those are the first three implications of the eighth word and today we want to move on, as I said, to this incredibly difficult and complex subject of social justice—just what it means, what it doesn’t mean. And I will just say in passing that the outline today, the coloring picture on the back, is for your discussion with your children afterwards. So the final act of this play, the final portion of this sermon in terms of application, will be for Christian parents to talk to their children about the coloring page at the back and help them understand it in a godly way.

So that’s your responsibility. I’m not going to interpret it for you, but I hope you see it needs to be interpreted. Okay.

## What Do We Mean by Social Justice?

Well, first of all, we can see that there is a biblical justice and its effects on society. So it’s social—meaning having to do with society and the community of people—and there’s justice. And of course justice and righteousness are huge themes in the scriptures, and justice takes place in the context of community. So social justice, you know, has—from one perspective—is a biblical term. We can use the term to talk about how justice works in the context of society. And we would want to probably add to that: when we hear the term “social justice,” we think about the poor and the vulnerable, and the scriptures have a lot to say about that—about what we’re supposed to do.

So there’s, first of all, a biblical sense of social justice, and that’s what I’ll be trying to talk about a little bit today.

That’s a tough one though, because studying the book of Amos, which has several references to how we treat the poor or how they failed to treat the poor correctly and resulting judgment, studying the book of Amos is the same place where God says there’s a famine of the word in the land, right? In Amos 8:11, he talks about a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.

And now it’s interesting because in the context here, God has given them this famine. He doesn’t observe it, he sends it. That’s a scary thought, because only the word of the Lord can correct us. But in terms of application to our day and age, we don’t know the word. I see this over and over and over again, even in the context of this church that has sought diligently to study the word and teach the word.

We need to be understanding what the Bible says about social justice so we won’t be tugged off into following the world or following some conservative reaction to the world. So, you know, we need this, and it’s some of the simplest things we have a hard time with. We’re so used to as a Christian culture just reading the Bible and just sort of imposing what we might think about it.

Last week we had an interesting discussion of Peter Leithart’s book *Against Christianity* and has a section against theology. And I think he went overboard. Theology is good, confessions are good, but the problem he was addressing was when we take the scriptures and instead of drawing out the meaning from those scriptures, instead take our systematic theology and just read it on top of those scriptures. When we do that, we have a famine of the word of God because we’re just in an echo chamber at that point. We’re just reinforcing what we think we already know about the Bible.

And every text we come to says the same thing, maybe with a little more, you know, piety involved or application. We have a famine of the word of God. And I’m going to do a very punctual job this morning, but I hope you see the importance in terms of how we treat the poor, what’s happening right now in the life of our nation, to try to figure out what the Bible says about this. What does the Bible say about it?

And that’s what we’re going to try to do. So that’s what our job is—to try to figure out the mind of the Lord, right?

In Proverbs 29:7, let’s see what does it say in verse 7? “A righteous man knows the rights of the poor. A wicked man does not understand such knowledge.” Do we know it? Well, “rights”—maybe not the right translation or right way to translate this particular word. But what is owed to the poor? This is the ESV translation, not a bad translation. So if we’re going to see ourselves as righteous instead of wicked, we have to understand what the right relationship is between the Christian and the poor, what biblical social justice is.

## Society’s Redefinition of Justice

Now, we are abroad in a world today that has redefined this kind of definition. Social justice can refer to society’s redefinition of justice based on humanistic assumptions. So this is increasingly what the term means. This is usually when you hear “social justice” nine times out of ten in the current conversation. That’s what they’re talking about, not the biblical understanding from the last fifty or hundred years. Just like with what do we do about criminals being redefined away from multiple restitution to systems come up by humanistic means, so it is with social justice.

So justice is not some fixed standard found in God’s word. Justice is redetermined based upon what society thinks it is. It’s society’s justice. And that’s what “social justice” today really means more often than not. The bulk of the occurrence is this is what they’re saying. And if you don’t understand that, you’re not going to understand what’s going on.

The idea is that God’s fixed laws have been junked and mankind is supposed to come up with what justice means and looks like, and the way mankind does that is through democracy. So we have this whole age in which we live where democratic movements are encouraged, and those movements then express the will of the people, and the will of the people defines what justice is, and that’s what social justice is. And then that will of the people uses the coercive mechanisms of the state to bring to pass that justice. That’s the way the word is used today more often than not.

It produces what R.J. Rushdoony refers to as an “idiot god.” Let me read his quote on this.

“Man defines the state, law, and justice. The norm becomes what man declares it to be. The result of this is the breakdown of the state because it ceases to be a ministry under God, right? And becomes instead an idiot god whose mind is variable, unstable, and constantly subject to change.”

How could it not be? It’s the mind of men that creates these shifting standards of what justice are, right? An idiot god that can’t ever be stable and fixed because it’s rejected the true wise God for the mind of men that is subject to change. Humanism leads to the malfunctioning and the breakdown of the state.

Welcome to America 2011.

And you know, don’t get me wrong—I know that conservative principles, I think, tend to be more closely aligned with what the scriptures say because they’re conservative. They’re kind of harking back to our past when we were Christian. But don’t misunderstand this: secular conservatives are just the other side of the ditch from liberal progressives. And what we have is an idiot god—the will of the people that shifts here, then shifts there, and votes this way and votes that way, redefining social justice and what it means. That’s what social justice typically means today.

Now, there’s a third perspective on this. And by the way, part of the confusion that’s brought about this confusion is the concept of natural law. And there’s all this confusion about what’s natural law, nature’s law, God’s law. When Christians confused natural law and moved away from biblical law, then they moved in terms of no fixed idea or set of justice. The will of the people defines it. It’s society’s justice, and the state will enforce what society says. That’s the world in which we live today, and that’s what this term typically means.

So there’s a third group, however. Last week you probably don’t know this—I didn’t know it till I was listening to Progressive Radio. I do opposition research and I listened to 620 this week and I found out that the man from the Sojourners, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals, all kinds of church leaders have formed a group called the Circle of Protection in terms of these budget talks. And a number of them went and met with President Obama—40 minutes. They had an audience. The head of the Sojourners has probably been the largest spiritual advisor to the president.

And what these ministers do is they use biblical terminology, right? “The least of these” from Matthew 25: “If you’ve done it to the least of these.” And so they advocate for the least of these in America. And what they try to convince the president to do is not to cut any social justice spending programs for the poor, which includes, for instance, the children’s SCHIP program for children that in some states, I think you can make $80,000 and you’re still considered poor.

But anyway, so they advocate for this, and what they’re doing, I think, is what we see on your outline. They’re using biblical emphases. They’re really concerned about the poor, as is President Obama. And they use biblical terminology, but they couple it with non-biblical statist means. So, yeah, we want to help the poor. How do we do it? Well, we’re not going to let the scriptures tell us how to help the poor. We’re going instead to impose statist means—government coercion—to help the poor. And that’s the third way this term is being used today: social justice.

## The Great Importance of Biblical Social Justice

Okay, now this idea of how we treat the poor or the vulnerable of society—if we want to call it biblical social justice—is of great importance in the scriptures. And this is why I originally was going to use Jeremiah 7, because Jeremiah 7 says it’s more important than worship. In Jeremiah 7, you know, Jeremiah’s told to stand in the gate of the temple at the doors of worship and tell them, “What are you doing here? Saying ‘the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple.’ Why do you think your worship’s going to be acceptable? Because you’re not treating the poor correctly among other sins he accuses them of.”

And he’s telling us that if we get together and have great worship, and in other places of the scriptures, if we might even have great songs and skilled instruments, he says, “But the Lord hates it if you’re not really exercising or concerned about biblical social justice.”

Now, let me say something here. I don’t want to get the wrong impression. I don’t think this church has a big problem in this area. I preached on tithing primarily two weeks ago, primarily for the people coming up into our congregation—those becoming adults. This has been a faithful church in terms of tithing. You’ve been a faithful church in helping the causes of poor or stricken people whenever the elders and deacons have brought them to you. You’re great. So this is not, you know, this is just we need to instruct, remind ourselves, we need to bring up the next generation here at RCC to recognize that the great importance we place on worship—the scripture says worship is secondary if we’re committing sins relative to our treatment of the poor.

Jesus said the essence of his ministry, right? In Luke 4, he said he’s come to preach the gospel. Do you remember who the recipients were? “I’ve come to preach the gospel to the poor.” He said, don’t blow by that verse. That’s in Luke chapter 4. That’s when he preaches in the synagogue. He reads the text from Isaiah and he says, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are being oppressed,” to bring about what I would say is a biblical social justice. He says that’s what he’s here to do. That’s why he came—was that very thing.

We sing the Magnificat and we’ve reminded ourselves he’s going to raise up the poor in some sense of the term and put down the mighty from their seats who don’t use their riches for the benefits of the kingdom. Jesus says not only is that what he comes to do, he says that’s—from one perspective—that’s the basis when you get to heaven. You know, Dan Prince always had this question for people: “You know, what are you going to do? You die. You go to heaven. Peter says, ‘Why should I let you in?’ What’s the basis for entering heaven?”

Right? And this is one method of evangelism. It’s a good one. And you talk to people about faith in Jesus. Well, Jesus from one perspective did it a little differently, right? Again, in the Gospels, he says, “Well, actually, what’s going to happen is you’re going to get to St. Peter or Paul or whoever it is at the gate, and he’s going to say, ‘Did you feed and clothe the Savior? You know, what do you mean—feed and clothe the Savior? Did you feed and clothe the poor, the hungry, the naked?’”

And if you did, great. And if you didn’t extend that kind of love and compassion to the least of these—and this is where people are using biblical terminology, using non-biblical statist means to try to effect it—this is where that phrase comes from. Jesus says this. He says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. The basis for acceptance or rejection of who we are into eternal life with Christ is said—at least in this portion of the gospels—to be our treatment of the poor.

Sort of scary, huh?

James, of course, says the same thing. We all know that James says “faith without works is dead.” But what works was he talking about? Well, in James chapter 2, he says this: “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?” And then at the end, he says, “Thus faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

What’s in the middle of that little chiasmus there? “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace. Be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body—what does it profit?” James says faith without works is dead. And he says specifically the sort of works that demonstrate true faith are the works of feeding the hungry and clothing people without clothing at all.

So it’s of great importance, social justice. Don’t you know belittle the folks—including the head of the National Association of Evangelicals—who have this group and are lobbying to try to achieve social justice. Say yes, we agree with that goal. Now, we don’t agree with how you’re defining it, who the poor are, or what you’re supposed to be doing about it. But hey, that’s our issue. We’re Bible believing Christians. We’re “Bible heads.” And the Bible says how you treat people—if we want to call it a biblical perspective of social justice—is quite important. Quite important.

James—or, rather, Jeremiah chapter 7 says: “If you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, don’t shed innocent blood, then I’ll cause you to dwell in this place. But if you do those things, then you can’t—your worship is unacceptable.” He says we’re going to return to Amos here in a little bit with a little bit more of an extensive overview, but we’re going to see that four times in Amos God chastises them, rebukes them, yells at them because of their sins against the poor.

And in Amos chapter 5, he describes his response to their worship. He says, “I despise your feast days.” Now, why? Again, it doesn’t say it in this verse, but we’ll look at the whole of the book of Amos in a couple of minutes. Really, what’s going on in the book is treatment of the poor in the culture. And so what happens when you don’t treat the poor?

Well, here’s what God thinks about worship. “I despise your feast days. I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them. Nor will I regard your fattened peace offering. Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. But let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

You could sing a four-part harmony. We can have the worship orchestra up here. We can do the peace offering thing. We can do worship according to the way God wants it done. And we can sing loud and joyfully. But God says if we find ourselves ever in a situation of being like the folks in Amos’s time, where social justice isn’t important to us—forget it. No good. He despises it. So it’s tremendously important.

## The Father’s Heart and Ours

And next on your outline, the father’s heart. Why is it important? Because it reflects the heart of the Father. He’s got a thing for the vulnerable. Now, of course, that’s what we know, right? We understand the nature of the gospel to us. We understand that we’re the poor and vulnerable. We’re the ones who had nothing to bring to the table. We’re the ones who have to buy food from God at no cost because he’s shown grace to us. And so, of course, he wants us to be gracious to people who are in need because that’s what he was to us.

“Freely you’ve received. Freely give,” he says. In Jeremiah 9:23, he says, “Don’t boast in your own glory or wisdom or your might.” He says, “Rather boast in this: that I am the Lord exercising loving kindness, helping people”—social justice, biblically defined, judgment and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight. God delights in loving kindness and justice.

In Deuteronomy 10, it says in verse 18: “He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. Therefore, you love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

God does these things. He loves to do this. This is the father’s heart toward those in these vulnerable classes of people. Psalm 68:5, “God is a father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy habitation.” We come to worship God in his holy habitation. And we worship a God who loves to extend grace and blessing to the widow, the fatherless, the stranger, and yes, the poor.

Psalm 146:9, “The Lord watches over the strangers. He relieves the fatherless and widow, but the way of the wicked, he turns upside down.” As Christians, we should be desiring to have hearts that move like the Father’s heart. The Holy Spirit comes to us and over our lives, makes us newer and newer creatures, imaging the Father in us. And if that’s really going on, it images as well what the Father’s love and extension of social justice—biblically understood—to those who have needs.

Jeremiah 22 says, “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages.” And then dropping down in the text a little bit: “Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy. Then it was well. Is not this to know me?” God says to know me is to judge properly the cause of the needy and the poor. That’s the very essence of knowing God.

Now, do you see how all these texts build up one after another to show us, man, this is big stuff. It isn’t just one little part of what we are. This is central because what it is—it’s a reflection of whether we understand that our relationship with God is one of his grace toward us. That we were the fatherless. We were the widow. And this is what he said: “You were the stranger in Egypt. We were the poor. We have nothing to commend ourselves to God. And he showed us grace. And will we do anything other than that? The way he defines it for us?”

Of course not.

## Severe Judgments for Its Absence

Severe judgment is reflected upon its absence. Now, today in the province of God, gay marriages started in New York City. I heard the account on the radio this morning. Kind of funny. Heard the first marriage. At the end of it, the guy says, “I now pronounce you married.” He couldn’t say husband and wife. “I now pronounce you married.” Well, it’s really quite a horrific day for our country, particularly if, as many people expect, it will carry the day and start moving the country more in terms of—again, you know, what’s the question? The question is equality and civil rights. And if it’s society’s justice, we end up with what we see today in New York City. But if we have a fixed system of justice, then what’s going on in New York City is a removal of social justice. It flies in the face of social justice. Okay, so it’s the same thing.

But here, listen to this. This is about the sin of Sodom. We know Sodom was destroyed by God in a horrific way, right? Why? Why? Well, some of you know this, some of you don’t. Let’s all know it. Ezekiel 16:49 and 50. “Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. I’m going to tell you the reason she got destroyed. She and her daughters had pride, fullness of food, and abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

Why destroyed? Because of this thing we’re talking about—improper adherence to, or no adherence to, biblically defined social justice. She did not stretch out her hand. She did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. “And they were haughty and committed abominations before me. Therefore, I took them away as I saw fit.”

Now, that “abominations” there may well refer—probably does—to the sexual sin involved. But what’s front-loaded in the text is her pride and arrogance and a failure to show grace to those that God says should be the recipients of our grace.

Tremendous judgments. And as I said, in Matthew 25:41-46, the Savior says he’ll also say to those on the left hand, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Why does he send us to everlasting fire?”

“For I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was a stranger and you did not take me in. Naked and you did not clothe me. Sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”

So, you know it. Now, one other thing we notice here: he doesn’t say you didn’t give me good clothes to wear for various aspects of my life. He said, “I was naked and you didn’t clothe me.” “I was really hungry and you didn’t…” In other words, these verses help us understand what it’s talking about. It’s not talking about whether somebody gets $400 or $450 with food stamps for themselves and their spouse.

What it’s talking about are people who are naked and need clothes, who are hungry, starving to death, and need food. That’s what the Bible talks about in these verses as well. And we want to notice that.

But see, the tremendous judgments that occur to a people who don’t see their responsibility in terms of biblical social justice.

## The Components of Biblical Social Justice

Well, what is it then? What are the components? Well, first of all, a humble and gracious heart.

Okay, so you know, this is what I’ve been saying. We have to have humility. The pride of Sodom is linked to her inability, or lack of desire, to help other people. So, conversely, what’s going to drive us to help other people is humility before God. And so if we’re prideful and arrogant and puffed up, those are the sort of people that don’t extend grace because they don’t recognize the grace that’s been given to them.

So the first component is an acknowledgment that we were the stranger in the land of Egypt. You know, we were the widow. The first husband of the human race—we can say Adam—replaced by the bridegroom Jesus, the first Adam abandoned his wife. Our father Adam abandoned us, and we were like God—in Ezekiel he compares Israel to a baby left out and aborted, that he comes along and cleans up and takes care of. That’s who we are. We’re those who have been abandoned by our caretakers, and the Lord God has come to our rescue.

And so the first thing we need is a humble, contrite heart, which stems from a proper understanding of what God has accomplished for us. Yes, yes, it’s important that we do things. Works are important, but at the heart of it, we’re not accepted on the basis of those works. Ultimately, we’re accepted because the Lord Jesus Christ shed and died for us. Okay? So God gives us grace and we’re to extend grace to other people. We must have humility.

That humility extends over to our solutions, by the way. Right? So I’ve got on your outline here: “Humility, Ethanol Subsidies, and Crony Capitalism.” So, you know, we’re going to fix things, and so we end up doing an ethanol program in this country for a number of years now, and we don’t think about the unintended consequences when other climactic problems will happen, other civil unrest will happen, and you throw ethanol and the use of corn for ethanol on top of it. And I think—I don’t remember what it is—40 or 60% of corn production in America goes into ethanol now. And what do you end up doing? Crushing the poor. And I’m talking about the poor who have to go buy wheat every day, not who can buy fancy bread.

The component of fancy bread that has to fluctuate based on the cost of wheat is quite small. But if you’re buying, you know, cornmeal to make something out of, and corn prices shoot up, you’re in big trouble. And that’s just what’s happened. That results from a prideful arrogance—not recognizing that these great programs we institute have far-reaching effects that we can’t figure out. Nobody intended to hurt the poor. It was an unintended consequence. But what it was is a result of pride. And the failure to fix it is a result of all kinds of other things, including crony capitalism.

Crony capitalism is free market capitalism, but it’s tied to political influence on the part of those people involved in crony capitalism. Who started the big push to get rid of incandescent light bulbs? Companies that were making the other kind. That’s who did it. This country is filled with such things. And you know, honestly, it’s really quite disgusting that businesses can so control legislation. And you know, what’s the poor guy supposed to do? If you’re struggling to feed your family and your light bulb goes from 25 cents to four bucks, that has an effect.

Do you know what’s going on in the grocery store? I’m sure you do. It astonishes me when we go to the grocery store and see how products are shrinking, prices are being raised up, and supposedly you know, it’s because we have this government now that has great concern for social justice. And those who are marginally poor in this country—that’s all we’ve got left. We don’t have any people naked and starving anymore unless there’s, you know, mental problems involved or whatever. But those who are marginally poor, who are struggling to feed their families, are getting worse off and worse off and worse off because we’ve got Washington DC that wants to control all these things without humility.

Without humility. So we begin with a gracious and humble heart.

Secondly, equal treatment in court. This is one of the things that’s repeated over and over again. It’s not the only thing, but you know the text Deuteronomy 24: “Do not pervert the justice due to the stranger or the fatherless. Take not a widow’s garment as a pledge. You shall remember that you were a slave.”

So equal opportunity in the courthouse. And we have that by and large in this country, pretty much. Not quite true, but the public defender programs are an expression of a Christian culture’s attempt to make sure that the poor are equally represented in the courtrooms and the vulnerable.

A member of our church got paid some pretty good money by your taxes to defend someone who was accused of somehow maybe inadvertently or directly helping Muslim terrorists. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it’s a good thing because at this stage, you know, people who are anywhere associated with that kind of stuff are in the position of having some vulnerability, and the court system could just roll right over them. Now, whether you know how much you want to spend on all that stuff, but the public defender program is an attempt on the part of a Christian culture to defend the rights of the vulnerable in a culture, right?

If you’re an orphan, you’ve got no dad to take care of you. If you’re a widow, you’ve got no husband to take care of you. If you’re a stranger, you don’t have established neighborhood groups and the culture to take care of you. And so, you know, this is an important aspect of social justice—is what we’re supposed to do.

Proverbs 31: “Open your mouth for the speechless and the cause of all who are appointed to die. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. Plead the cause of the poor and needy.”

That’s a corporate obligation of the church of Jesus Christ to do that. That’s one reason why so many of us are involved in the anti-abortion movement, right? That’s just exactly what we’re trying to do—is plead the cause because of the speechless who are being shoved off into a court system that lets them die.

So, courts.

Thirdly, make the poor glad. G-L-A-D. There are biblically required obligations to people in particular situations. If you’ve got a farm—if you had a farm, then you were required to let the poor glean your field, to pick around the edges and the corners. You were required, if you had the resources, to loan money to your poor brother. Now, these are all assuming that the person you’re loaning to is within the covenant community. An important distinction. I should say that right now. I probably should have said it earlier.

But when we say “poor,” it doesn’t mean everybody who is poor. God makes certain people poor as a result of judgment. He says that hunger is his judgment at times given to the slothful who won’t work. And he tells us explicitly in the New Testament that if someone won’t work, he shouldn’t eat. You don’t let him come to the food pantry if he’s simply too lazy to work. You exclude him. I don’t know a food pantry these days that does such a thing. But that’s what the Bible says. That’s biblical social justice.

Why do you want somebody who’s just lazy eating up foodstuffs that could go for really poor people? Why would we want to do that? Some kind of misguided sense. The Bible in all these situations is talking about the poor in the context of the community—the faithful poor. Widows, even widows, right? What are the instructions we’re given in the New Testament? That widows who are widows indeed. And then it gives certain criteria for the kind of widows that will be supported through benevolence programs of the church. There’s like four conditions that she has to meet, and if she doesn’t meet them, you don’t put her on the rolls of the church.

So this is not indiscriminate, right? This is not an indiscriminate helping of the poor. It’s helping of particular kinds of poor—widows, fatherless, and aliens—not indiscriminately, but with those poor, then we’re supposed to let them glean in the field. We have an obligation to help them through loans at no interest. We have an obligation to use a portion of our tithe to help these classes of people. At least they did in the Old Testament. I think there’s an application for us as well. And then alms.

So: gleaning, loans, alms, dues (or tithes)—a certain portion of your tithe. And we have some obligations. That’s not free market stuff. That’s God’s imposition upon the free market, right? But that’s what he says. You’re supposed to care for the poor. Social justice includes when you know godly people who want to glean your field, or who need a loan to get by in their particular emergency situation, or who are just living at kind of a subsistence level—could receive a portion of your tithes and help, or your alms given directly to them. You’re supposed to do those things. You’re supposed to have a heart and hands that are wide open to such people. Wide open.

Now, it’s hard to do because we live in a culture, as I said over and over again, that does just the opposite. That forces you through taxation to give money to the lazy and people that aren’t really trying to do what’s right, that forces you through taxation to come up with poverty programs that create more poverty.

You want to save 140 billion from a year from the federal government? Just two departments—Department of Education, Department of Energy. Department of Education since 1980: have test scores increased or decreased? They’ve decreased. Our standing in the nation’s educational systems has dropped repeatedly since the inception of the Department of Education. Has Department of Energy increased production in our country of energy sources overall or decreased? It’s decreased. It’s put a clamp on the whole thing. Save 140 billion and free ourselves from programs that are actually hurting the poor.

One fell swoop—easily done. So I know it’s hard, remembering this idea of having an open heart and open hand to help the poor, because in a way the politicians are manipulating the issue for their well-being, their re-election efforts. But remember that the end result is deteriorating conditions of at least a number of the poor in our country—through the kind of inflation that we’ll soon see as rampant and galloping along.

I know it’s hard protecting—including politically—private property, the free market, and the family. Well, you know, this is what again the Bible says. It says in Zechariah 7: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, execute true justice. Show mercy and compassion everyone to his brother. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.”

So the poor are supposed to be subject to our benevolence. Well, we’re not going to have benevolence if the state takes an increasing portion of the income of a people. And when the state controls the free market—and I say “free market” because obviously there’s restrictions on it—but as we move into a socialistic perspective, we don’t have the resources anymore to help those who are truly poor and needy.

And the family—when the family structure breaks down, the family is the basic place where wealth is accumulated and safeguarded. And any attacks upon these things are attacks ultimately on the conditions that prevent poverty.

## Examining Corporate Responsibility

Okay, let’s turn to Amos now. Let’s turn to Amos and look at a few things more about these requirements that God says we have toward the poor. We’ll do this quickly, but there are really four sections in Amos that look at this. And okay. And so here’s how it works. We’re going to look at chapters 2 and 8 here. But the way it works is Amos starts by saying they’ve been really uncompassionate to conquered peoples. They’ve taken kings and crushed them. After they captured them, they crushed them to the ground. And that’s matched at the end of Amos, in chapter 9, by saying God is going to crush you to the ground. Okay.

Now, coming in from that, in sections 2 and 8 that we’ll look at in a couple of minutes, are sections about social justice. And then in the more central part of it, in chapters 4 and 5, there’s some summary statements.

So turn to chapter 4, verse 1. Chapter 4, verse 1, if you have your scriptures open. Chapter 4, verse 1. “Hear this word, you fat cows of Bashan.” It’s what he says. It says “cows,” but everybody knew the cows in Bashan were big, heavy cows, well pastured. And he’s talking to the women of Samaria on the mountain of Samaria. “Hear this, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring me wine and drink.’”

Now there’s the image. You oppress the poor. What it means is you’re the poor. The word actually is “low.” And you’re actually in your position of superiority over the inferior, over them, which we all have relative to the desperately poor. You’re taking advantage of that to crush them even further into the ground. You’re not giving them grace. You’re not giving them honor as image bearers of God. And actually, as the recipients of God’s grace and particular favor—not only is your heart not open to them, your heart’s closed to them, and you don’t like them, and you’re despising them, and you’re driving them down in the dirt. And then you’re crushing the needy.

So the parallelism is: poor and needy are two different aspects of the same thing. They’re oppressing them and crushing them, which means to break them apart. You’re not letting them build up. What we’re supposed to do with the poor is help them not be poor anymore, right? That’s the idea—is to get them out of that situation. Thus gleaning, for instance. But they’re actually keeping in place people that are desperately poor. They say to your husbands, “Bring me wine and drink.” So that’s the first description we see.

Chapter 5, verse 11. Same thing. “Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins. You who afflict the righteous and take a bribe and turn aside the needy in the gate.”

Now these are parallelisms, okay? So if you look at “you who afflict the righteous” and “who take a bribe and turn aside the needy in the gate,” this parallelism is in a couple more places we’ll look at, but it’s not two different groups of people. The righteous and the needy are the same group. Remember he just talked about how you’re afflicting the poor and you’re crushing the needy. It’s parallelism. And the parallelism shows us here what sort of poor he’s talking about—the righteous poor, those who are faithful covenant members, members of the covenant community. That’s who he’s particularly emphasizing.

And they’re afflicting them, and you take a bribe and turn aside the needy in the gate. So the problem is economic affliction and the lack of justice in the gate. So there’s two concerns that Amos has brought to bear. They’re crushing the poor rather than helping the poor in two ways. One is economic oppression of them, taking advantage of them. And the second is no justice in the gate. Okay? Perverted justice through bribery.

You’re trampling on the poor. You exact taxes of grain from them. “Taxes” doesn’t mean civil taxes here. It means a due, a weight, a burden. You’re burdening him by getting that stuff from him. I don’t know if this is the case, but it would be like you’ve let the poor glean the fields. And then you tax the gleaning as the master of the field. You take a portion of what he’s gleaned. That’s the idea. Rather than using God’s grace, you’re actually using both court systems and economic systems to hurt him. Those are the two central concerns.

Now, there’s two exterior references in chapter 2 and chapter 8. Let’s look at those. Chapter 2, verse 6. “Thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishments. Now listen, this is a section. And if you read these things in parallel, you’ll get the three and four.”

And I’ll read them that way. First: “because they have sold the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. That’s it’s one transgression. It’s the same group. You’re selling the righteous and the needy for either silver—money of some sort—or property. So it’s not a difference in value being expressed here. It’s different means of commodity, whether you use coin or barter. The point is you’ve enslaved people, literally enslaved people, right? You’re selling them.

“Those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted.” Now again, that’s parallelism. That’s offense number two, that’s the second transgression. “While they’re going into judgment, and what is it? You’re trampling the head of the poor to the dust of the earth. You’re taking somebody who is abased and rather than having instinct to try to lift them up, right, you’re crushing them down further. You’re making them poorer. You’re making them more dependent. And secondly, you’re turning aside the way of the afflicted.”

This probably has reference again to court situations. These same words, “turning aside from the way,” are used in other places in the Hebrew Old Testament to refer to perverting the way of those in court. So again, it seems like there’s these economic things going on. And there’s a lack of justice in the gate.

“The next transgression is a man and his father go into the same girl so that my holy name is profaned.” Welcome to *Raiders of the Lost Ark*. I don’t remember which version. That’s the kind of perversity, sexual perversity, that goes along with the oppression of the poor, just like in Sodom.

“And the fourth transgression is they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.” So you’re actually stealing from the poor through oppression. You’ve taken the pledge of the widow. And you’re commanded to give it back at night, but you’re not giving it back at night. You’re breaking the law of God. You’ve given some kind of loan to him, probably at very high interest, and you’ve oppressed them, and you’re actually sleeping and keeping the pledge. The widow is out there shivering someplace—is what he’s saying. Okay.

One more section. Chapter 8, verse 2b. “Then the Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel. I will never again pass by them. The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,’ says the Lord God. ‘So many dead bodies they are thrown everywhere. Silence.’”

“This you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end. Saying, ‘When will the new moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances? That we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.’”

Remember the parallelism I said earlier? You said before, “righteous for silver, poor for a pair of sandals.” Here it’s the same thing. It matches that section, but now it says you’re going to buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. I think the proof is quite clear here that again God’s concern in the book of Amos is not just indiscriminately the poor, but the poor who are righteous—the poor who are faithful, and the other members of the covenant community. They’re using deceitful practices. They can’t wait for the Lord’s day to be over to go start cheating people by using a small ephah, a wrong measure of what they’re going to sell somebody—a wrong balance, inflated or not—a proper shekel. They’re using everything they can to control the processes of commercial exchange so that they can cheat the poor.

That’s what they’re doing. Economic oppression. Now, that’s what the Bible says we’re to avoid. And on the other hand, what we’re to do is have hearts and hands open to help the poor.

Now, I’m all for a circle of protection. I’m all for the church stepping up and talking about social justice. But I am not for the circle of protection failing to go to President Obama and say, “Hey, why are you wasting money on the Department of Education, teaching people things that will bring God’s judgment—that determination of good and evil can come apart from the word of God, apart from submission to God? Why are you funding an educational system that makes our people stupider and stupider, and as a result they can’t compete in the global marketplace, and you’re making them poorer?”

Why are you doing that? Where was the circle of protection when ethanol subsidies began to produce the kind of distortions in the—along with other factors, of course—that impoverished the poor? Where was the circle of protection when the government told people who are somewhat poor in our country, “You won’t be able to buy 25 cent light bulbs. They’re going to cost you four bucks, and when you break one probably give you mercury poisoning”?

Where was the circle of protection? Where is the concern of people who supposedly want to increase government influence so that we can help the poor—when all the government statist methods that the government is taking—it’s putting its hand to—do is creating more dislocations for the poor? Where’s the circle of protection from the Sojourners, the National Association of Evangelicals, all the other liberal denominations that were represented last week in Washington DC around the aborted ones—that the president’s healthcare system is now going to give free abortion pills? At least that’s where they’re headed to whoever wants them, from women, as a mandatory part of every health insurance program in this country. That’s where Kathleen Sebelius says she’s headed.

What’s going on? Who helps the poor and who’s hurting the poor?

I believe the church has an absolute obligation to speak into the political process, to call yes for a circle of protection around the poor. But to do it realistically, to do it according what the scriptures teach us—not to see government action as the primary system, but rather the benevolent actions of the people of God—and to warn the civil processes and to take political action to reduce the kind of coercion of the poor that’s going on.

Where was the circle of protection when Freddie and Fannie and government regulations either allowed or actually encouraged—and threatened to sue banking companies if they didn’t—sell poor people homes when they knew they couldn’t afford them? And those poor people bought homes of, let’s say, $200,000. They can’t afford it. And now, you know what they have to do? The home’s only worth $100,000.

Where’s the circle of protection around the poor to protect the poor from the very people in Washington DC that supposedly want to help them?

And guess what happens to those $100,000 homes? You know, people with money scarf them right up. Scarf them right up. They’re buying the poor. Really the same thing as what was going on in the days of Amos. Economic oppression funded by government action is creating situations where people that are just marginally poor are becoming poor in this country. They’ve become enslaved to an economic system because of the policies of an administration that supposedly wants to help people.

And it wasn’t just Obama. It was Bush. It was Clinton as well. Where is the circle of protection? Where’s the circle of protection around the poor when the president stirs up, through using the poor, covetousness and envy as we’ve talked about in the last few weeks?

We need circles of protection. We need to be involved politically because the political processes at work are very important. They’re part of what the scriptures command us to do for the poor.

We come today to the gracious courts of God, who by his gracious work has lifted us out of our poverty. May the Lord God grant us hearts, minds, and hands open to help people around us through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And may he give us power as well to be involved in the political processes to draw a true circle of protection around the most vulnerable in our culture.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you, Father, for your teachings throughout your scriptures in terms of social justice. Help us, Lord God, to begin to build upon this brief overview of what your scriptures tell us to do. Help us, Father, to not fall into the temptation to believe biblical terms being applied to statist methods that only end up invariably hurting the poor and not helping them.

Bless us, Lord God. May we avoid poverty as this nation continues to go through economic disruptions. And may we be blessed by your hand, Lord God, so that we can have open hands to help others.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

—

“Blessed be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above. Before our Father’s throne we pour our prayers, our fears, our hopes, our aims are one. Our comforts and our cares we share our mutual woes, our mutual burdens bear. And often for each other flows the sympathizing tear.

When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain. But we shall still be joined in heart and hope to meet again.”