Luxury, poverty...

Home	Children	Young Adults	Missions	New Faces	Photos/Video
About Us	Students	Teaching	Blog	PDO

Today we continue this series on luxury, poverty and the Kingdom of God by looking at the prophetic books in the OT to see what God tells his people there about caring for the poor. So far in this series, we looked at some basic things about God's heart for the poor; ten we began to hunt in the various sections of Scripture for God's will. So far, proverbs, the OT Law and now the prophets, which are the books beginning with Isaiah and going through the end of the OT.

It's scary to study the prophets, because we've been trained to expect some wild and spellbinding things from them. If you were to pick up a book at the Christian book store on prophecy, it would probably be in a section called prophecy/end times, implying that those two things always go together. If I announced a series on the prophetic books of the Bible, you would come hoping to hear whether it's Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton who is the antichrist. When I was a kid, prophecy/end times was a hot topic and we mostly saw the Soviet Union as the devil's instrument in every scenario. The USSR isn't around any more and today I wonder if we might put in their place a world-dominator like Wal-Mart or Google in their place. (Even now, Google is busy learning everything about you, which you can read more about on my blog today ;) ) One of my early, memorable Bible lessons was one I taught to the Jr. High kids at my home church. This was about 1983 when I was 18 or 19 and I led these little guys through a prophecy chart I had found in my Bible and reproduced on poster board showing how I thought the world would probably end around 1986. Scared the sauce out of one little kid! When the U. S. began the gulf war in 1991, a lot of people wanted to study prophecy again because they sensed that the Bible's prophetic books would contain dates and times and the names of rulers who would play a part in the end itself.

While those concerns aren't totally absent from the prophets, this is really NOT the major theme. In your outline is something I've heard...the OT prophets are not just foretelling but forth-telling. That is, prophecy isn't just about foretelling the future but about holding forth with God's message of truth, and very often his message of impending judgment and discipline when his people are breaking faith with him.

Because of the interest that foretelling generates, it can be quite popular to study prophetic literature (as the popularity of the Left Behind series shows). But listen: If anything, the forth-telling (even in a book like Revelation) is even more relevant than the predictions about the future because the forth-telling is often about someone living in indulgence, luxury, and self-centered immorality, trusting in self and rejecting God...and this is exactly the temptation for many of us in this country. If you sit down with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc., you're going to hear a couple of themes hammered on to the point of irritation and those themes are: Taking care of the poor, especially widows and orphans; practicing justice; refusing bribes; not taking people's land but paying them fairly for their work; not getting rich off someone else's enslavement. These prophetic themes aren't as exciting as trying to decipher the role of the European Union in end times, but they are highly relevant to how we choose to live, what we choose to indulge in, what we require of our leaders and even what careers we choose for ourselves.

The prophetic section is so large that all I can do is brush against it, and so I offer you only TWO lessons from the prophets regarding poverty, but they sum up many more themes.

(“Marginalized” - people pushed to the margins of this world because their poor or their skin color doesn't fit or because of their class or gender). There are three ways to think of justice. All of them are legitimate, but where you stand in the world helps determine which one you choose. First, there is justice in terms punishing the guilty. When politicians talk about getting tough on crime they're stressing the justice of law and order where criminals are punished and good people can live in safety. If you are in the middle class or higher and you have possessions to protect, you probably think first of justice as punishing the guilty. Or if you have been the victim of crime, or you feel your children are really in danger because of lawbreakers, you might think first of justice as punishing the guilty. This is important and even Biblical, but it isn't the primary way that the prophets speak of justice.

Second, there is justice in terms of acquitting the innocent. Now as soon as I mention that, it strikes you as obvious, the flip-side of punishing the guilty. And it should be obvious but it's often forgotten too. You'll hear a politician talk about getting tough on crime NINE times before he/she mentions ONCE getting fair with those who are easy targets of accusation and have a hard time defending themselves. Those who make the case that minorities are more readily falsely accused and convicted of crimes can appeal to the OT prophets to show God's extreme displeasure with this, because this second definition of justice, acquitting the innocent, is getting closer to the way the prophets use the term.

Third, there is justice in terms of providing a fair society for everyone, regardless of race, economic status, etc. It's the justice of a poor widow who, when a rich land baron steals her land, can take him to court and win. It's the justice police protection being provided in poor neighborhoods, not just rich ones. It's the justice where your race or gender or economic status don't keep you from getting a good education or having access to decent housing or good jobs. This is the major concern for justice that you hear expressed in the OT prophets, which makes sense for a couple of reasons: One, many of the prophetic books of the OT were written to confront the rich and powerful about their abuse of the poor and downtrodden. Some of the prophetic books came from a time when the Israelite king and his governors were so corrupt that they had to be taken down by God and his prophets; others were written after Israel had been defeated, and it was the Babylonian or Assyrian captors that were stomping on the poor. Two, God Himself has always been concerned about justice for the poor. We saw last Sunday how in His OT Law, God put in things like the year of Jubilee every fifty years where land reverted to its original owner, and debt forgiveness every 7 years, to slow the rich down and let the poor have a chance to catch up. So it's not surprising at all that providing a fair society for everyone is important to the prophets (and maybe “fair” is the wrong word, because the society God set up had some decided advantages, some points of grace, for the poor who needed a little extra help). So when the prophets say "seek justice for the marginalized", this is what they mean.

A decent summary of what the prophets have to say about social justice - Jeremiah 22:13-16 (and this is specifically about Shallum, a wicked king of Judah, but see if it doesn't have some lessons for you and me:

13 "Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,
            his upper rooms by injustice,
            making his countrymen work for nothing,
            not paying them for their labor.

14 He says, 'I will build myself a great palace
            with spacious upper rooms.'
            So he makes large windows in it,
            panels it with cedar
            and decorates it in red.

15 "Does it make you a king
            to have more and more cedar?
            Did not your father have food and drink?
            He did what was right and just,
            so all went well with him.

16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
            and so all went well.
            Is that not what it means to know me?"
            declares the LORD.

That is a word to a specific king in the OT. But when I read it, I can't help think of us. "I'll build myself a huge house with spacious upper rooms and Crab Orchard stone around the foundation. Stainless steel appliances, polished marble tile for the kitchen floor, lightly-finished hardwood throughout." Hey, everyone needs a place to live, and I can't say that there is anything wrong with a fine home. But is that as far as your imagination goes in serving God? And what place is there in your life plan, if ANY, for the justice of God that is so often spoken of in the OT prophets? What are you doing to defend the cause of the poor and needy? Young people choosing a career: What is there in your vision of yourself ten years down the road that has to do with justice for people in the margins. Working people building up your nest egg – as you spend on vacations and tools and toys and maybe even some cedar panels in your lake-front home... what is there in your budget for lifting up the poor? Older people drawing near to retirement: Is it going to be a time of empty and pointless leisure or do you have a plan to join God in his work of bringing justice to the marginalized?

What was Sodom destroyed for? Ezekiel produces a different answer than you usually hear (16:49): “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
Now that isn't to minimize the sexual sin we already know about. But when you see the kind of wanton promiscuity and deviance that Sodom was known for, what lies at the root? Rebellion. Self-centeredness. Unchecked indulgence. The heart soaked in self-gratification produces destructive and sinful behavior of every kind – including sexual immorality, including unbridled materialism. Sodom was arrogant, overfed, unconcerned. The people there didn't help the poor and needy. It sounds like the worst elements of US.

The classic prophetic text (which Jesus used to announce his own ministry in Luke 4): What it means to have the Spirit of the Lord upon you...

1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
            because the LORD has anointed me
            to preach good news to the poor.
            He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
            to proclaim freedom for the captives
            and release from darkness for the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn...

8 "For I, the LORD, love justice;
            I hate robbery and iniquity.
            In my faithfulness I will reward them
            and make an everlasting covenant with them.

On my blog I began a series that I never quite finished called The Great Evangelical Weakness, which I perceive to be: Morality, yes. Justice, no. IOW, we are willing to TALK a lot about morality, even though we may be no more moral than the world (which of course makes us hypocritical, therefore LESS moral) but it's less common to talk about social justice. Actually, I think the Great Evangelical Weakness of Morality, yes, Justice, no is because we tend to think of the spiritual life in terms of the individual but not the society, the nation. The prophets focus a lot on nations and kings and the consequences that everybody will suffer if the nations don't repent and change their ways.

I can imagine someone getting a little tired of me speaking about poverty and saying, “The church should focus MORE on spiritual matters”. What they probably mean is that we should talk about faith, prayer, and morality (honesty, purity, decency) but if we talk about standing up for the poor, the alien, the unborn, AIDS victims, or the child-laborers who keep our products cheap and enable us to live richly, someone will say we have strayed into politics.

The mistake mainline churches made in the 60s was to turn entirely to social justice (narrowly defined) and away from morality, prayer, the authority of Scripture, and in many cases away from the essential doctrines of the faith (such as Christ's divinity). Our challenge is to listen to the whole word of God and let our hearts be broken by ALL the things God says break his heart. According to the prophets, that will lead us to seek justice for the marginalized.

Why would someone boast about their riches? Around here, it might be to show off, to correct for low self-esteem, to say “Hey, I'm valuable too!” But in the OT, the prophets spoke against people and nations who said: “I have so much money that I don't need God to protect me. I've got security, armies, food even when everyone is starving.”

Increasingly this is an attitude that a lot of people seem to have. Maybe our nation as a whole has it.

23 This is what the LORD says:
            "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
            or the strong man boast of his strength
            or the rich man boast of his riches,

24 but let him who boasts boast about this:
            that he understands and knows me,
            that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
            justice and righteousness on earth,
            for in these I delight,"
            declares the LORD.

Jesus said the same thing many years later. It's God or money. Who will you serve? "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." (Luke 16:13) Money really does try to occupy territory that is rightfully God's. The only way to break the spell that money can have over you is to treat it lightly, to laugh at it by giving it away.

My 20^th anniversary is coming up in a few months. If I can find a gift for Cindy that she LIKES, that’s good. But how much better if I find something that is so close to her heart that she DELIGHTS in it. Jeremiah says that the Lord exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth because he DELIGHTS in these things. Why shouldn’t we learn to take delight in them too?

Last week: Taking care of the poor by Repentance (of love of money), redistribution (investing your time, talent and treasure in a way gives disadvantaged a chance to live well), and in some cases relocation – going somewhere else, a different neighborhood or a different country to share God's love as a neighbor and a friend.

Morrison Hill Christian Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E. Race St.
Kingston, TN 37763 (865) 376-5205