Dennis Tuuri

# Proverbs 29:7 – Doing Justice Through Giving Alms

Proverbs 29:7. We’ll be talking today about social justice and the rights of the poor and specifically emphasizing the privilege and duty of the giving of alms for the people of God. So this is—we’ll start with Proverbs 29:7. We’ll look at chapters 28 and 29 and look at some other verses about the rights of the poor. And then we’ll look a little bit at some case law in Exodus 22 about the poor and then we’ll conclude by focusing on alms and the significance of it in our walk with Jesus.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Proverbs 29:7. “A righteous man knows the rights of the poor. A wicked man does not understand such knowledge.” Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for that word that created all things and we thank you for the word of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is recreating all things. We thank you for that word coming to us now. And we pray that the word might bring forth a fruitfulness as we, your new creation, butt out, as it were, and give fruit into the world.

We pray that you would bless us, Father, with an image of who we are in Jesus in the new creation and the great privilege and joy we have of assisting others. Help us to know the rights of the poor so that we might do justice and bring it to victory through our Savior. In his name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

So this is continuing in our series on doing justice. In a couple of weeks, we’ll finish that up and we’ll move into a series on marriage beginning toward the end of July, the last Sunday of July. And we’ll be in marriage for a couple of months. For single people—there are some very relevant things there. The marriage series will not just be for married folks. We’ll see the great significance of marriage. And actually, this text before us today is kind of related to one of the most specific blessings of marriage.

This text asks us to be righteous and have knowledge of the poor in distinction from ourselves. The poor in this text are people in a different state, a humbled state, usually thought of economically, but a humbled state. And we’re not. And so they’re other than us. Marriage is all about embracing the other. A man, a woman, a woman, a man. And as we get into the specific case laws, we’ll see categories of others. And we’ve actually already sung about it, right? Widows, fatherless, strangers—the ultimate other. Okay?

And in the old creation, in sinful Adam, we don’t embrace the other. We keep an isolation from it. We usually don’t like it. We may even hate it. And that’s what happens. And so this text today says that we’re supposed to see ourselves with the relationship to the poor. Jesus came—as we recited in our song of response today—to bring the world together again, a world that had been brought apart through sin. And so ultimately, when we talk about the giving of alms, having a heart for the poor, doing justice through knowing the rights of the poor, what we’re talking about is the essence of the gospel that Jesus brings justice to victory by bringing people who would normally be at odds together.

This country has moved away from Jesus and because of that, it’s moving away from social integration. I’ll put up a link this week to a talk by Charles Murray on his new book called *Coming Apart*. And the coming apart in American culture is happening. The classes are more and more separated. Distinct things are happening in each and there’s no longer an integration going on. Why was it happening before? Because we were a Christian nation and in the church rich people would sit next to poor people. Okay? And that is increasingly not the case.

So that’s the topic for today. Ultimately, it’s in this context of embracing people that are different than you economically, racially or socially—the stranger, widow, the fatherless, etc. And as I said, what we’ll do is we’ll look at the Psalms first. This translation might offend you—that the righteous man knows the rights of the poor. King James and New King James, I think, says “the cause of the poor.” This is ESV translation. I read the New American Standard and NIV all say “rights.” The word is actually a synonym for judgments. So you could say “the judgments due to the poor.” But it’s not a bad translation to say “rights” except that it’s such an emotion-filled word today to talk about people’s rights, and we know how rights have been perverted into something that they’re not.

So our job is to understand—if we’re going to be wise ruling people, this is found in Proverbs 29. This is in the section of Proverbs chapters 25 through 29 that deal explicitly with kings. If we’re going to be a dominion people, we have to understand. If we’re going to be righteous, dominion people, understand what the rights of the poor are. And so that’s our job today.

Now, this text is, as I said, found in chapters 29 and this is in the context of a section dealing with kings. And so I want to bring up a couple of other verses from the proverbs. First of all, in Proverbs 29 specifically verse 14 says, “If a king faithfully judges the poor his throne will be established forever.” So in Proverbs 29—and we’ll see in a minute chapter 28—there’s a relationship between civil magistrates, kings, people who are going to rule for Jesus and their relationship to the poor. So these two texts in 29 talk about this. Okay?

Chapters 25 to 29 are about rulers, kings. It’s a section, it’s a discrete section of the proverbs that deal with how kings are to govern. And these last two chapters, 28 and 29, are loaded with references to the right relationship to the poor and the judgments that should be given to the poor. Let me read a few more texts. These will be found in chapter 28. Listen to verse three of chapter 28:

“A poor man who oppresses the poor is a beating rain that leaves no food. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked. But those who keep the law strive against them.”

Now notice here that again a king has to understand how poor people are likely to oppress other poor people and how horrific that is. But then immediately it’s said in the context of God’s law. Remember that this entire series, “doing justice,” the basic premise is that justice is a word that has to be defined by God’s word and God’s word defines justice as the statutes.

And in Proverbs 28 the poor and the cause of the poor is put in relationship to the law. Again in verse six:

“Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways. The one who keeps the law is a son with understanding, but a companion of gluttons shames his father.”

So the one who walks in his integrity, the poor man is one who keeps the law. So again, the poor man and the law of God are put right next to each other in context.

The same thing happens in verse 8:

“Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor. If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.”

So here generosity to the poor is part of the law of God. And we’re warned that a failure to be generous toward the poor—there’s an eschatology to that. We don’t end up, you know, inheriting the earth. The earth rather is given over to those who are generous to the poor. And if you’re not generous to the poor the way the Bible defines it here in the law, then even your prayers are an abomination. Does that get your attention? Does that get your attention?

There’s a relationship between your prayers being heard and your attitude toward the other. In this case, the poor. Peter says the same thing—or rather, Peter says the same thing—that our prayers are hindered when we don’t live in a compassionate, considerate way toward the other, that is our wife. And by implication, the other, our husband.

So the poor—lots of instructions about it in Proverbs 28 and 29. Again in chapter 28, verse 19:

“Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits will have plenty of poverty.”

So now the king is told that there’s a distinction among the poor. Some people are poor through no direct fault of their own—are just poor—and other people are poor because they don’t work their land. And a godly person, a righteous person who are going to know the rights of the poor has to understand the judgments of God about the poor. Is this a poor person that won’t work his land? That’s a curse from God. The last thing justice would do would be to encourage him in his sloth.

So the king has to know these things about the poor. It goes on to say:

“A faithful man will abound with blessings. Whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. To show partiality is not good, but for a piece of bread a man will do wrong. A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him.”

Another cause of poverty—people hastening after wealth. Okay? And so these chapters 28 and 29 have a great deal of instruction about the poor. And in the context of that instruction, it says there are distinctions between people that are poor. You could be hasty after wealth and you become poor. You could be a sluggard and you become poor. Or you could be the poor who have rights established for them in God’s law. And in any event, what we’re supposed to have is compassion toward people, toward people we would normally disdain.

And significantly in that last set of texts, it says that to show partiality is a really bad thing. So the Bible is not encouraging an overall partiality to the poor. In fact, we’re warned against that in several different case laws. So we’re not to show partiality to the poor or the rich in a particular case. So that’s not what’s going on. That’s not the right of the poor to be looked at more favorably in a court case than the rich. That’s not the right of the poor.

What is the right of the poor? There’s something. There are some judgments specifically given in terms of the poor because otherwise, what do the texts mean? It could just mean this failure of partiality, but it seems like it’s more than that. There are these particular judgments, causes of the poor that the king is to understand and do what he can to encourage in the context of his land.

And one last verse from Proverbs 28:

“Whoever gives to the poor will not want, but he who hides his eye will get many a curse.”

Again, so do you see what I’m trying to do here? This isn’t just some little place text about the rights of the poor. It is central to an understanding of how to relate to the poor, to godly dominion and to godly kingship, and what a good land will be like. And so it’s very important for us. We live in a context of a world that still has the Christian understanding of rights to the poor, but it has abstracted those rights away from what the biblical basis is, what the Bible says about the poor.

And as a result there’s just a general idea now that we’re supposed to help the poor. And that general idea creates a situation where more and more people, as it turns out, become poor. That’s the result. The result of rejection of God’s law. Even if you’re trying to do the same thing, help poor people, the best of your labors prove insufficient. And not just insufficient, actually damaging.

The Great Society brought about by President Johnson created a situation—attempting to help poor people created a situation that completely broke apart the family structure of minority communities in major cities and as a result opened the floodgates to drugs, gang violence, etc. Now, there are other factors going on, but one of the most significant factors in the decline of safety of the poor and a remaining entrenchment of the poor because of no family structure to produce wealth was an attempt to help the poor that wasn’t informed by biblical justice. It was trying to affirm the rights of the poor. Good goal. But what are the rights? It’s critical.

More recently, a major factor in the economic downturn of the last four years was an attempt to help the poor. “Well, if people just have their own homes, they’ll become more responsible. And yeah, they can’t really afford the homes. So we’ll pass legislation and we’ll encourage banks and pressure them.” And the banks want to make a lot of money off these things too. So everybody kind of conspired to give poor people homes. But what was the result? Was it empowerment? No. The statistics show us that poor people’s total net worth has declined radically as a result of this while the net worth of the upper class has increased radically as a result of these things.

Now, nobody—I don’t think that was a conspiracy. I think it was an attempt to help the poor without looking at what the Bible says about how we’re supposed to help the poor. And the government took on the project, which means you can’t have discrimination between the person who’s poor because he’s trying to get rich quick or the person who’s poor because he’s lazy and the poor who simply find themselves caught in a web, a trap of intergenerational poverty. It doesn’t make distinctions like that. And so when the government tries to fix it, what happens? Poor people suffer. Their neighborhoods fall apart. Their income-producing capability of solid families falls apart and then their net worth is pumped into these house loans which then they can’t pay and as a result it goes away. Their net worth crashes. Nobody’s helped.

And now we’re in the third strike of this modern way of trying to help the poor apart from a Christian perspective. And what’s happening now? We have social democracy, welfare programs. The end result of that is increasing economic distress because we simply can’t pay for all the things that we now see as the rights of the poor. And what’s happening? Nobody can get a job or they can’t improve their wages. And in Europe, it’s—we can look 20 years downstream for America and see what’s going on today in Europe is where we’ll be if we continue down this road. And the end result is not helping the poor. The end result is hurting the poor.

So, you know, alms—the giving of alms to bring forward money gifts and other gifts to the poor—is an essential part of biblical dominion. And on the flip side, we see that doing things in a way that the scriptures don’t commend to us and in fact warn us against has tremendous downsides for the poor. It doesn’t actually help them. Okay.

So what do we do? What are the rights of the poor? And I want to look specifically at a case law. And again, remember, chapter 28, I think at least four times, puts a discussion of poverty in the immediate context of the law of God, and then chapter 29 kind of brings the capper and says a king will affect the rights of the poor. Obviously the chapters 28 and 29 are about the poor, but they’re mostly about justice. They’re about doing justice and doing justice includes the rights of the poor, but doing justice is defined over and over and over again by the law of God.

So let’s turn to those laws given at a particular time and place and try to discern from them what we can say about helping the poor. So outline point number two now is how to help the poor. And I’m simply going to read the case law and go very quickly through what follows because I almost thought it’d be kind of fun to tell you that the middle part of your outline, where it talks about what commitment to aid the poor, to side with the poor, and to make the poor glad—don’t try this at home. It’s complicated stuff. It really is. And we’ll talk more about that in a couple of minutes, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that. But I do want to point out to you what I think are some obvious ways that we’re to enforce the rights of the poor, as it were, or have proper judgments toward them.

Okay. Exodus 22. And I’m going to begin with verse 20:

“Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord alone shall be devoted to destruction.”

Okay. The context for the laws of God about the others, economically distressed others, here is put—the verse just preceding it talks about serving other gods. And then it says this:

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry. My wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall become widows, and your children fatherless. If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a money lender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. If ever you take your neighbor’s cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering. And it is his cloak for his body, in what else shall he sleep? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. Next verse: You shall not revile God, nor curse a ruler of your people.”

See, the bookends talk about our relationship to God and what happens if we’re, you know, worshiping other gods or if we’re reviling our God. And the middle section between those bookends is stuff about strangers, widows and fatherless put together as a group and then the poor. And the conclusion of that section, God says, “I am compassionate. I am compassionate. If you’re not compassionate, you’re reviling me. If you’re not compassionate, somehow the God that you’re serving isn’t me. It’s a foreign God.”

Okay? So God says, “I’m compassionate.” And because I’m compassionate I brought you into relationship with me by my grace. And because you’re in relationship to me by my grace and been the recipients of my compassion, be compassionate people. That’s the message. Be compassionate.

Again though, what does it mean? Well, he gives us some specifics here. And the specifics he gives us are first of all, one based on the past. He says, “Don’t oppress a stranger. Give the rights to the stranger. Don’t oppress. Why? Because you were a stranger in the land of Egypt.” He points to the past.

And then he says, “Don’t, you know, mess with the fatherless and widows because when they cry to me, I will—in the future, if you’re not doing right to them and they cry to me in the future, I’m going to bring judgment on your head. I’m going to kill your husband so you’ll be a widow, or I’ll leave your wife as a widow, rather, and your kids will be orphans if you don’t help the widows and the orphans.”

If you’re not compassionate toward the stranger, you haven’t learned the lesson of the past. If you’re not compassionate toward widows and fatherless, you’re not thinking about the future because the future for you lies in judgment, death, and destruction.

Okay? So the things talk about the past and make the case that God has been compassionate to us, the future. If he’s been compassionate to us in the past, we should be compassionate to others so that our future will remain with God, the God of compassion. And then he says something to do in the present. And that focuses rather on the present. And that is when you lend money to the poor, no interest. You have to give money at no interest. That’s a judgment. That’s a cause. That’s a right of the poor. The poor had a right in the theocracy of Israel to no-interest loans that were—and we could look at other case laws—but you know, this probably—that were relieved, that were remitted at the end of seven years.

And so it was a law that was a right of the poor. It wasn’t a right of everybody. There was a class distinction that God made. In fact, all these cases are about class distinctions, right? What he’s doing is he’s warning us—when you look at the other, the stranger, the Mexican, the black person in Oregon City as it turns out, you know, somebody of a different race. You know, there isn’t really racism. I’ve talked about, you know, racism exists everywhere, right? Blacks toward whites, whites toward blacks, whatever it is. But you know, it ultimately isn’t racism. I don’t think it’s ultimately an expression of fear and hatred of the other, somebody that’s different than you. I think that’s the root of it. And one example, or one way that manifests itself, tends to be in skin color.

But if it’s not that, it’s going to be something else. And what God says is, “Look, I am going to bring about a new world where all groups are brought together in the church of Jesus Christ. The new creation is going to get rid of all the divisions that sin brought. I’m going to bring you together. And the way that’s going to happen is through compassion, my very character of who I am.” He says, “I am compassionate. I am love. I am patience and kindness. And because of that, I want you to think of people other than you. And here are some specific people: the strangers, the fatherless, the widows, and the poor. And I want you to know that I want you to be particularly compassionate toward those people.”

Now, Proverbs gave us instruction: “Well, if the guy’s a sluggard, that’s different, right? It’s a different kind of compassion. It’s a different kind of fix.” But God wants us to be compassionate to other people. And today, what I want you to think of as we go through these texts is to, you know, ask yourself, maybe I’m not compassionate toward others enough. Maybe I need to practice compassion. And very specifically, what I want to suggest that you do is commit yourself afresh to the giving of alms in the context of RCC or just individual alms to other people as a way, a ritual in which you honor, glorify and give weight to others and specifically those who are in worse economic situation than you.

So the text tells us that there are ways to help people that God set up at a particular point in time that included class legislation. So the problem isn’t whether you’re going to have class legislation or not. The problem is what that looks like and how it’s administered. And so, the—you know, the—I could conceive. Now, it’s interesting because when you get to the New Testament, you don’t really read much about poor loans or gleaning, right? You don’t get that much. You don’t really even get how you’re supposed to use a part of your tithe as the Bible says to help the poor.

What you do get in the New Testament though is this alms giving. It’s considered to be something that you’re supposed to be doing. So by the time of the New Testament, some of those specific ways of applying yourself to show compassion seem to have kind of funneled down into this alms thing. And let me suggest that one reason for that is that the case laws are given in the context of an agrarian economy, a tribal form of government, and by the time we get to Jesus coming in the New Testament we’re now not living really so much agrarian. We’re talking about a big city—we’re talking more along the lines of Jerusalem, at least of what we would be like today. And so when we look at the application of this, we don’t see people gleaning anymore. We see people giving alms to other people. And that’s the application for us to be compassionate toward people of lower economic straits or who are humbled in some way.

What I’m encouraging you to do is to think about how much you spend for X, whatever it is—video games, movies, adult beverages, non-adult beverage, whatever it is—and ask yourself, could I use some of that money to do what the compassionate God expects me to do in terms of reaching out to people who are other than I and helping them. Okay? And so what I want to encourage you to do is here in the context of a series on doing justice is to say that one of the ways that God is bringing justice to victory, one of the ways God wants me to do justice, is to come up here sometimes on my way up to communion to stop off at that box right there or that box over there and put in some money that are alms gifts to people that are poor that the church can administer for you in helping people. That’s what I want you to do.

Now, let’s look briefly at this “how to help the poor” thing. And this is—I’ve done a couple of different sermons where I’ve used this acronym, but I think it’s pretty useful for me. You want to first of all, you want to commit yourself to aid the poor. You want to side with the poor, right? Compassion. And then you want to cause the poor to be glad. So you aid the poor by siding with the poor and making them glad. And these are acronyms for what you have to do.

And so to aid the poor: A, you have to acquire the means to help the poor. Here’s another result of social welfare in the way it’s being administered in our country and in Europe. Increasingly, you’ve got some people at the top who are getting quite wealthy, but most of the middle class has stagnated for the last 40 years in terms of income. And in fact, they’ve gone—if you’re like us, single-income homes, you’ve lost income value. And it’s just the way it is.

And so if you’re going to help someone who doesn’t have money that you have and you want to help them with it, you got to have money to help him with. It’s that simple. And yet this is left out of all the equations. You got to acquire the means to side with the poor and make them happy. You got to have some money to begin with. And anytime the culture works retrograde motion to the establishment of private wealth, it’s taking away the very engine that the Bible focuses on, which is personal help of the poor.

I mean, the king wasn’t told—even in agrarian times—the judge wasn’t told to collect to make sure everybody reaps the corners of all their field. You bring everything to the state and we’ll tax part of it and then we’ll give it to the poor. That’s not what it said. That’s not what it said. When it becomes centralized in Jerusalem, what it says is people are individually letting others glean their fields. Now, the law required it. It was a law. It was a right of the poor. I don’t know what would happen if they went to court, but the point is it was a law. You were supposed to do it. But you were supposed to do it right—direct. Direct.

And so if you’re going to do it direct, as opposed to sending money to Washington DC and then have it funneled back to the state and go through some administrative bureaucracy and you never know who gets what and what sort of distinctions are being made, etc.—if you’re going to do it direct, you have to have the means to do it direct. And so you have to, you know, develop that in the context of the culture. Acquiring the means is a part of what will allow you to fulfill the rights of the poor. Those are not in distinction from each other. The first is absolutely required for the second. Okay.

So to acquire the means is very significant. To identify recipients, to make distinctions of recipients, is also very important. We have a whole mechanism set up amongst the churches in Oregon City called Love Inc. to help us identify worthy recipients of aid because we get scammed otherwise, right? It’s not easy. Don’t try this at home. You know, somebody goes knocking on your door. More often than not, believe me, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re not going to be able to figure out who the right recipient is. But that’s what you have to do.

If you’re going to have personal wealth that you then personally assist people with, then you have to do it through some kind of mechanism that helps you, with biblical grounds, to identify recipients and then you got to do the work. So you got to do stuff. What do you got to do?

Well, in terms of siding with the poor, the poor need various things. And so what you have to do is evaluate their situation. And the way of evaluation—and this is what your deacons do. This is what the deacons here do. This is what the elders do. This middle part, this “side” thing—in order to side with the poor, we’re making evaluations and assessments of people.

What is their spiritual state? And their spiritual state is sort of summed up in their intellectual, dominical, and economic states. We’re prophet, priest, and king. And so, first of all, if a person doesn’t have intellectual capacity or training to get reasonable work to provide for himself or his family, then the church sees it as an obligation for us to help train him for work. Okay? So there’s an intellectual side to it. And if all we do is give somebody some subsistence and we don’t help equip them by setting up some kind of training for them to get better work, well then we’ve not really helped them. We’ve not really sided with the poor.

Secondly, there’s dominical stuff, kingly stuff, ruling sort of stuff. And as that proverb we just read said, if a man won’t exercise dominion in the context of his field, he’s going to end up poor. And so what he needs then is not a lot of food subsidies. What he needs is being told, “Look, this is how it works in the new creation. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. You’ve got to work. And we’ll help you to do that. We’ll pray for you. We love you. We’re not rejecting you. We want to help you and encourage you.” But that’s what you’ve got to learn to do—you’ve got to learn to exercise dominion as a king. You’re a king. Don’t act like a knave.

And then third is economic. What you do with your money. This is the priestly aspect of things, right? A priest consecrates things and we consecrate our money for particular purposes. So these are things that are required if you’re really going to do justice and bring justice to victory by taking a poor person and helping them to the full extent in their need.

This is the sort of stuff you got to do and this is why it’s really difficult to do at home. And this is why we have training programs. This is why we have discussions amongst the deacons and the elders fairly regularly. How do we do this stuff? This is quite important stuff to do. And if you don’t do it—you know, if all you want to do today is feel better about your conscience because the verses about, you know, compassion toward the poor seem pretty convicting to you—yeah, okay, you can just put money in the bin.

But you know, if you really are—if you really want to do what God says to do, you want to be encouraged to know that your deacons and your officers are doing this sort of thing. And if you want to get personally involved in the life of someone helping them, this is the sort of thing you got to commit to do.

Now, there are priorities as well. When God sends Jonah to Nineveh, he doesn’t send them with food stamps. Okay? He could have, but he didn’t because Nineveh’s immediate need was not food. There were no doubt poor people in Nineveh, but that wasn’t their immediate need. Their immediate need was God had decided within three days if they didn’t repent, he was killing them all. That was their immediate need. It was the priority message. On the other hand, when Jesus feeds the 5,000, the immediate need that he perceived of the 5,000 was food. That was what he saw as the best immediate need of those folks that he was going to meet and it set up teaching.

Now, when that immediate need was met by the feeding of the 5,000 and they ate and he showed them a picture of who he was and then they rebelled against that picture, he doesn’t continue feeding them. He stops feeding them. He refuses to feed them. Jesus understood the time for feeding and the time for teaching and the time for making declarations of judgment. Like Jonah, he understood those things. And so you know, when you—if you really want to side with the poor, you have to understand the problems are somewhat complex and that the problems need to be prioritized.

And God has, you know, through the alms in the church—we know that widows are set up on the roles of the church. So God seems pleased to give us particular men and women who can evaluate the needs of people and then help meet them. And sometimes, you know, it’s just a matter of giving people money, period, right off the front. Great. That’s it. Sometimes it’s working with them. Sometimes it’s helping set up a budget. Sometimes it’s, you know, providing no-interest loans. There’s lots of things that can be done.

But that’s what God seems to do—he rolls all this stuff, much of it, into these special officers of the church who are called and equipped to do that. And then the last acronym is GLAD: Economic Assistance Plus.

So what happens? Well, in the Bible, we’ve talked about this before, but gleaning, loans, alms, and dues. By “dues,” I mean an aspect of your tithe was to go to the poor. But what’s significant here, I think, is as I said earlier, that those other mechanisms seem to take a bit of a backseat as we move into the New Testament. And the New Testament, what we find over and over again, is the giving of alms.

So you know, Jesus tells people, “When you give your alms don’t do it in public do it in secret so that your father in heaven will reward you.” By the way, your father in heaven will reward you. Jesus tells us. So alms were sort of—he didn’t say, “If you decide to give alms do it this way.” He said, “When you give your alms, okay, here’s another way to do it.”

So the position held by our Savior is that his people are engaged in the giving of alms to people. Now, you know, if you’re poor, you don’t, but most people—Jesus seems to imply that’s the normal practice of a member of God’s people in their community: to do that. Even people outside of the community—in Acts 10, Cornelius is talked about and he’s this gentile god-fearer who is baptized and brought into union with Christ. And specifically, we read that Cornelius is someone—specifically in verse two—”a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people and prayed continually to God.”

Okay, so Cornelius is singled out as a person that gives alms. And not only that, but in verse 31, he says God sends the message to Cornelius. He says, “Cornelius, your prayers have been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Your alms, your gifts of money and assistance to the people, to God’s people in Jerusalem that had needs. That’s been remembered by God. And he’s going to now do a wonderful, tremendous thing with you that’ll be recorded in the scriptures forever because Cornelius prayed and gave alms.”

So the giving of alms is seemingly the normal way in the New Testament that these Old Testament expressions of the rights of the poor are given. And so the rights of the poor to understand them today seems to be funneled down primarily to the giving of alms, the giving of gifts to people. And now along with those gifts come the other things we’ve talked about, but this seems to be the big deal.

Now there’s an interesting verse. There are other verses that talk about the giving of alms, but here’s an interesting verse in Luke 11:41. Jesus says, “Give as alms those things that are within, and behold, everything then will be clean to you.” Give as alms those things that are within. You may be sitting here today thinking, “Well, I don’t really have money to give as alms.” But Jesus says that the money is an expression of your compassion and care. And there’s other ways, other kinds of alms, alms from within that you can give.

And in one of the most significant aspects of the giving of alms found in Acts chapter 3. We see this very thing happening. Acts chapter 3:

“Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the Beautiful Gate to ask alms of those entering the temple.”

So you got the temple. You got this beautiful gate where something beautiful is going to happen. And this guy is lame. And so the idea is he can’t really—I mean, symbolically at least—move into the temple. He’s on the edges of acceptance with the people of God and the presence of the temple. He’s there, but he can’t get in because he’s lame and he’s asking alms from people. This guy is lame. Okay? And so because of that, he needs help. So he asks for alms.

Peter and John. Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us. Look at me. Look at us.” They direct their gaze at him and they say, “Look at us.” And he then directs his gaze at them. Why does the Bible tell us that? It seems significant. I mean, the Bible tells us this. It’s a detail. Right? Why?

Well, because maybe—because normally if you’ve been down to, you know, a street corner in Portland where people are giving alms to people, you don’t get a lot of gazes. You don’t get a lot of individual exchange of views. You just got people giving, “Oh, there’s the blind guy” or “There’s the lame guy. We got to give him alms. Yeah.” There’s no individual. The giving of alms that typically goes on seems to be some kind of, you know, duty being performed or some kind of way to make ourselves feel good.

And I think the text is going out of our way that what alms represents and the kind of alms we all can give—even the poor—the kind of alms from within that we can give to others is individual attention and then asking for individual response. It’s a connection of people. Again, one of the problems with modern attempts at the rights of the poor is there is none of that between giver and recipient. There’s no gift being exchanged. It’s an entitlement. And because of that, God’s compassion is never allowed to be pictured. It’s not compassion. It’s just you pay your taxes and that gets funneled down there and they got things down here. But the rights of the poor as described in Old Testament case law involved individuals looking at each other, seeing each other’s eyes. Yeah, go glean the corners of my field. No, you’re not going to rip me off, right? Yeah, you need money. I’m going to loan it to you. I’m looking at you. By the way, most of those loans are secured. You can’t secure it with the only—it gives us an indication of how poor people were that got these loans. But the point is, it’s a personal loan, right? A personal contact, eye to eye, right?

And the stranger that was given a portion of your rejoicing aspect of your tithe, you gave it to him there in your city. This wasn’t distributed at Jerusalem in a big mess of people. It was distributed in your own town eye to eye. So the gaze thing here is significant. Individuals are hooking up with other individuals.

Now you know in the context of the church, that gaze is happening through the eyes of your officers or if you enter into these arrangements yourself. One of the things the church also does is hook up people with resources with people with needs—whether it’s gleaning, needs and resources, poor loan, whatever it is. We hook people up that way. We connect up people with each other and we engage in these acts of trying to help them intellectually, dominically and economically as well. And that’s personal interaction with them. Okay.

So this is what happens here. They’re giving alms of what they don’t have. They go on to say:

“I have no silver or gold, Peter says, but what I have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”

The word of God brings about new creation. But it isn’t just the word. So often in the Bible, this is what happens. And he took him by the right hand and raised him up. See, that’s very interesting. Over and over again—book of Daniel, a lot of places—when you’re helping people, when you touch them, something happens. It’s word, but it’s word ministered again personally—the gaze of the eyes, the actual assistance of the person by taking him by the arm and he helps the guy up. Okay? He’s giving alms from his heart, things within, not exterior. He says, “We don’t have money to give you alms but I got something a lot better for you that alms are a pale representation of. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” He takes him by the right hand. He raises him up. Immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up, he stood and began to walk and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.

So now we know we were right when we thought of the imagery. He’s at the door of the temple. He’s not going in because he’s lame. He’s a picture of Israel. He’s a picture of everyone not able to enter through their own inabilities or infirmities. And by the end of the story with him, he’s leaping. He doesn’t care about money anymore. He’s leaping and he’s walking into the temple now. He’s walking into the presence of God with God’s people praising God and he goes to church. He goes to church.

And so the imagery is wonderful. That’s the purpose of alms. The purpose of alms is to bring people to wholeness and to exhibit the compassion of God so that we all rejoice in the kind of God who has given freely to us so that we give freely to others. And yes, money. Yes, I want you to think of bringing up alms the next few weeks particularly as the ministry of the church, you know, needs funding so that we can—the deacons can help particular people and particular needs when they come up in the times that we’re in now. I want you to think of these two baskets, but I want you to think beyond that to your ability to give the grace of new life in Jesus Christ or just the encouragement of life in Jesus Christ, the way this story reveals it.

Alms from within. Alms from within.

What happens next? Well, causes quite a hubbub. If you go on to read the rest of chapter 3 and into chapter 4, what you find out is Peter and John end up getting arrested. But that’s only after they’ve given a sermon because of the hubbub that’s a result of their actions. And many people believe on them, on Jesus, as a result of the sermon. They take the act of compassion, individual attention, touching people’s lives and assisting them in the name of Christ, speaking the word of God that brings new creation life to more and more fruit. They use that particular interaction of the giving of alms from within to then—God multiplies that seed many-fold as they then preach about the nature of who Jesus Christ is. They call men to repentance and many believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Compassion, alms from within, sets up the proclamation of the gospel to a wider group. And so this text is a wonderful text showing us that indeed alms are absolutely significant.

Why are they so powerful? Because they’re the demonstration, as we said at the end of the case law in Exodus 22: “I, your God, am compassionate.” It’s a demonstration of who God is. It’s more than a demonstration. It is God entering into the life of people. When you and I, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God is with us, united to Christ, doing the will of the Father in heaven, act in the context of that new creation life. And we know that we’ve been gracious recipients—or recipients rather of his gracious compassion. And we want to pass that compassion and gift and grace on to others. That’s what fuels the whole thing because now God is working in the context of our immediate needs, the immediate needs of others and our own particular inabilities.

Let me close by talking about the significance of helping the poor very briefly.

Ezekiel 18 says this. He says:

“Do not oppress anyone but restore to the debtor his pledge. One who commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry, covers the naked with a garment, does not lend at interest or make any profit, withholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes, and keeps my rules by acting faithfully. He is righteous. He shall surely live, declares the Lord God.”

God says the summation of righteousness in this text from Ezekiel is keeping God’s statutes, doing justice, and specifically with a very good number of pointed references to the justice due to the rights of the poor—expressing justice in relationship to the poor. Restoring to the debtor his pledge. Don’t rob. Gives his bread to the hungry. Covers the naked with a garment. Doesn’t lend at interest or make any profit. Withholds his hand from injustice. Executes true justice between man and man. True justice is defined by Ezekiel in relationship to the other—to the one who has needs that we’re supposed to look at and be gracious and compassionate towards and not close our hand against. That is true justice.

True biblical social justice is showing compassion to the poor. It’s giving alms of exterior things but also of what is interior to us as well.

In Deuteronomy 26, you know, Deuteronomy is this great sermon on the Ten Commandments and it gets to the end and it says—well, there’s this covenant ceremony at the end of the three years because the tithe is distributed in a three-year cycle at that particular point in redemptive history. And God says at the end of that three years, what you’re supposed to do is make this affirmation to me that you did what you were supposed to do in terms of the tithe. Here’s what it says:

“When you have finished paying all the tithe of your produce in the third year, which is the year of tithing, give it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that they may eat within your towns and be filled. Then you shall say before the Lord your God, ‘I have fulfilled the covenant in my relationship to you. You have been gracious to me. You have graciously allowed me to do what I’m supposed to do.’”

And that declaration is said in the explicit connection to using a portion of one’s tithe to help the poor—to help the fatherless, the widow, the stranger—not just get by, but to be filled, to have a feast together with you. So the Bible says the essence of covenant keeping—in Ezekiel and in Deuteronomy—is to have this sense of giving alms to the poor. Alms to the poor.

Jesus said from one perspective, “That’s how it’s all sorted out at the end of the thing, right? ‘I was hungry. You gave me food or you didn’t. I was naked and you either clothed me or you didn’t.’ And that’s the determination.” What happened to justification by faith? Well, somehow that’s got to be tied together with that text. And the text says that justification by faith is an acknowledgment that we can’t save ourselves. Only Jesus paid the price for us. Only his grace and compassion has brought us to life.

And Jesus is saying, if you really believe that, then you’re going to be compassionate toward the other. You’re going to embrace the other. You’re going to want to aid the other. You’re going to want to side with the other. You’re going to want to bring the other to gladness. And you’re going to want to take people that are starving and give them food. And you’re going to want to take people that are naked and clothe them. And you’re going to do it not because in and of itself it’s a good thing, but because this is an expression of the compassion of God to people. And you’re going to expect that their response to that, and the power of the spirit, is going to be to leap with joy, come to church at some point in time and praise God’s holy name for the compassion that he demonstrates to us.

Doing justice is not on the other side of showing compassion. The Bible says showing compassion is really the right due to the poor. And that right is linked to God’s law and it is an essential aspect of doing justice.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your great love and compassion toward us. Help us, Father, to be characterized increasingly as a congregation that embraces people different than ourselves, particularly those who have particular needs. To help them, Lord God, in the name of Jesus Christ, to bring them to wholeness of life through both our finances, but also through the gift of our very lives themselves, touching people’s lives to the end that we all might be joined together in praise toward you for your compassion and love. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.