After Pentecost Devotional - Day 51

“If Yahweh makes you wealthy, but you don’t joyfully worship and honor him, he will send enemies to attack you and make you their slaves. Then you will live in poverty with nothing to eat, drink, or wear, and your owners will work you to death.” Deuteronomy 28:47-48

I grew up with texts like this one sounding an awful lot like either a prosperity theology or a theology of retribution. My tradition did not know very well what to do with verses like this as the book of Job is so clear that God does not pay people to behave. The life and ministry of Jesus show us clearly that being good, moral, and ethical does not mean that one will be wealthy and comfortable. All too often the Bible displays for us examples of the faithful who were anything but comfortable.

What then, to do with passages like this one in Deuteronomy? For starters, we should recognize that what this text is teaching is something different from prosperity theology. It equates Yahweh's potential blessings as including wealth, but that is a wealth burdened by responsibility. It is a conditional wealth that recognizes that we are stewards of God's bounty. Such blessing comes with so many of the commandments we have already seen in Deuteronomy that indicate our responsibility to care for the poor, widows, orphans, Levites, priests, and foreigners.

Worshipping and honoring Yahweh included those very aspects of caring for others. It was all part and parcel of one same structure of life. To worship and honor Yahweh meant living differently from the nations round about, specifically in the way Yahweh demanded to be honored in caring for what Jesus would term “the least of these.” That message was woven into all sorts of commandments regarding caring for society's unprotected classes, as well as making sure that tithes, offerings, and sacrifices offered in the Temple were used to care for their needs.

The feast days were days set apart to refresh the teaching regarding Yahweh's provision for the needs of one and all. The poor came with empty bellies to receive, while the rich laid out a feast for the rest of the community. These were the only opportunities most of the poor had to eat meat. This provision was centered on the worship of Yahweh.

Honoring, worshipping, and respecting Yahweh could not be divorced from taking care of the poor. Should that happen, Deuteronomy stresses that Yahweh would see to it that the source of the nation's wealth would dry up. Wealth and provision were given in order to be shared. They were given under the responsibilities of responsible stewardship

The economic structures laid out for the nation departing Egyptian oppression were to make sure that no one suffered as they had experienced back in Egypt. Yahweh would bring agricultural bounty to the land. It was up to the landholders to be sure those blessings were made available to all.

This is a very different economic system than the one we know. These words call for wealth, but not an individualized wealth. They call for communal or societal wealth. They call for a distribution of God's blessings such that the needs of all are met.

How do your economic attitudes need shaping by these stewardship principles?


"Lord, clarify my responsibilities to use your blessings to care for others."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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