After Pentecost Devotional - Day 11
“If
any of your people become poor and unable to support themselves, you
must help them, just as you are supposed to help foreigners who live
among you. Don’t take advantage of them by charging any kind of
interest or selling them food for profit. Instead, honor me by
letting them stay where they now live.” Leviticus 25:35-37
We
have seen that Leviticus points to economic justice for all parties
in Israel from the priests and Levites to widows and orphans. What we
may not have caught is that the laws in Leviticus were to apply
equally to economic justice for foreigners as for the people of
Israel. In fact, the verse above assumes that foreigners were to be
dealt with in equity and addresses an expectation that the people
would more likely mistreat the poor than the foreigners in the land.
Though
we may commonly quote 2nd
Thessalonians 3:10, that those who do not work should not eat. That
concept is completely foreign to this text in Leviticus. While Paul
was speaking of people who were wanting to live on the charity of
others in expectation of the imminent return of Jesus, the point here
is that those who are without resources depend upon the generosity of
those who control the economic resources of a nation.
Leviticus
specifically forbids taking advantage of the plight of the poor as
leverage to increase one's wealth. Rather than making use of the
leveraging of one's resources for personal gain, Leviticus instructs
us to make meeting the needs of the underserved a greater priority
than increasing personal wealth.
The
principles here undercut so many of the economic strategies of our
society that it makes it really difficult to figure out how to apply
these principles to life in the larger marketplace. Our whole
economic system is engineered to leverage our assets for personal
advantage over those whose perceived needs grant us leeway to profit
from them. We prioritize the leveraging of capital above the needs of
people, while Leviticus would stand that on its head.
Instead
of allowing people to be evicted from a house due to financial
constraints, Leviticus instructs us to be generous with the poor so
as to keep them in their houses. If they are not able to support
themselves, it becomes our responsibility to do so. We are to deal
with them according to the manner in which Yahweh dealt with the
nation by rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. Allowing a subsection
of the nation to become destitute was the equivalent of reversing
Yahweh's redemption of the people, something Israel was not to allow
for by any means.
This
generosity was to be inclusive. It was to apply to the Israelites,
but also the to foreigners living among them, the immigrants in their
midst. As far as Yahweh was concerned, there was no issue of us
versus them. There was no reason to worry about there being enough to
go around. The land belonged to Yahweh, and Yahweh was willing to see
that is produced abundantly for all. The question was whether the
people were willing to serve as stewards of God's abundant provision
for all people.
Determine
how God would want to shift your economic priorities and attitudes.
"Lord,
mold me into the steward you created me to become, willing to provide
from your bounty without discrimination."
—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/
My latest books can be found here on amazon
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