Generosity and Humility

Boy, oh boy, doing the dark side. Well, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. This morning we're at Deuteronomy chapter 23, verses 15 through 25. It's a whole bunch of various different laws. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray. You don't get into God's word. Want some coffee? Nope. Okay. Unless you pour cream into it. Then it wouldn't be coffee. It'd be a dessert drink. OK, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for blessing us with your word. We pray that you would please help us as we read it, that we would understand. We pray that we would believe that your spirit would teach us in Jesus's name. Amen.
Deuteronomy chapter 23. You got that reading? 23 and we're at verses 15 and following. So we'll just kind of go paragraph by paragraph. Yeah, you're at the right page. All right. So we'll just go paragraph by paragraph and we'll just talk about them as we go. All right. So go ahead. You can go first.
You should not give back to his master the slave who escaped from his master to you. He may dwell with you in your midst in the place What you choose within one of your gates where it seems best to him. You should not push it. You should not oppress him.
Good. All right. So what's this talking about? Why is one way slave that? I'm your neighbor. That's supposed to take him. And that's supposed to oppress him. You're not supposed to talk. Well yeah, so you're not supposed to take him back, right? He may dwell with you in your midst, right?
So this is about fugitive slave laws, right? And so in America we had a federal fugitive slave law. Was that something that had kind of biblical precedence? No, no, the federal slave law was that if there was a slave, you had to return them. And there were even slave hunters. And so even some of our theological ancestors were part of the Underground Railroad. And people knew that if they made it to a Covenanter house, that we wouldn't take them back.
Alright, let's go ahead and go to verse 17 and 18. All right, so this is talking about cult in the ancient Near East there were all sorts of just really nasty sinful type of Sacrifices and sexual immorality that would happen at temples and so if you wanted to you could go to the to the Asheville and there were Temple prostitutes and you can go have sex with women for money and somehow that was pleasing to the gods And it wasn't necessarily just women. You could go and you could have sex with a man prostitute as well. You can have homosexual sex. And this is saying, no, right? No, no sacrifice of dogs. No, none of that type of pagan worship amongst God's people. All right.
You want to go to verse 19 and 20? You shall not charge interest to your brother. To your brother. To your brother. Interests on money or food or any anything that is lent out at interest. To a foreigner you may charge interest, but to your brother you shall not charge interest. The Lord your God may bless you in all to which you set your hand in the land which you enter to possess.
Okay, so what is that talking about? If a Jewish person wants to borrow some money, you should just borrow money. Not be like, I'm going to charge you. Yeah, right. So no interest bearing amongst Israelite to Israelite. But what about Israelite to non-Israelite? then they could have to bear interest. Did you know that actually it was illegal under kind of the first couple hundred years of the Roman kind of Christianized empire to charge interest? But then, this is interesting, one of the things that they found is, and it was based off this, one of the things that switched is, but if you had a Jewish neighbor, they could set up a bank and you could deposit your money with them, people could deposit their money and guess what they could do? They could charge you interest because you were not an Israelite. And so people are always good at finding loopholes around this type of stuff. But that's just some ancient history for you. Okay. Verses 21 through 25, 23.
When you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay to pay it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and it would be sin to you. But if you abstain from vowing, it shall not be sin to you. That which has gone from your lips, you shall keep and perform, for you voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth.
What do you think that's getting about? If you say, God, I'm going to be extra good this week. I'm going to pay you. When I make my sacrifices, I'm going to be two bowls instead of one. Yeah. And then you're just being wrong. Yeah. Right. So you're going to, if you're going to make a vow to the Lord, you better pay your vow to the Lord. Right. You did it voluntarily. Follow through with your word. Good. Let's go ahead and move on to the last ones. 24 and 25.
When you come into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes at your pleasure, but you shall not put any in your container when you come into your neighbor's standing grain. When you pick up, when you. Pluck. Pluck the heads with your hand, but you shall not use a sickle on your neighbor's standing grain.
Okay. So what's this talking about? If you're walking in somebody's vineyard and you see a grape you want, pop it in your mouth. Yeah, right. So if you're walking down the road, it's agricultural area, right? You're hungry. You grab a head of grain and, you know, you put it in your mouth and you keep on walking. Is that good? Have you stolen from your neighbor? The lawyer says no, right? That's a part of the generosity of it. But what are you not allowed to do? You're not allowed to be like, oh, well, God said I can be generous.
I'm going to harvest your field and take it all. Yeah, right. So you're not then able to go, oh, you know, maybe I'll take some more for the trip. And you start putting in your bag and you start. No, no, no, no, no. Right now. Now you're starting to steal. You're abusing that generosity that was there to be neighborly and kind to each other. It's also interesting that. You have these hands. Mm hmm. And then I bet you somebody figured out a loophole for this. And, you know. Yeah, I'm sure somebody's always trying to find a loophole.
So this is one of those areas where it's maybe difficult to underline one best verse because there's a whole bunch of kind of thundery laws, different type of laws for Israel. My question is, seek calling. What are we called to do from these types of things? Even though you're not an Israelite, these things aren't binding in the same way today. So what's the general equity or the principle behind it?
I think it's So give me some of them maybe that you would see and pick out. And maybe even show me where it ties to Christ. Well, that's fine. Just kind of pick out the ones that come to your mind first. Generosity. Generosity. Good. Promise keeping. Good. Honor. I think those were the main. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So I might throw in there like purity of worship. Right. With the whole idea of these temple prostitutes and stuff like that. None of that type of junk going on. Respecting your neighbors. Don't charge them interest. Right.
It's the difference between a nation or an economy that's built on people just trying to get as much as they can and hold on to everything for themselves. Or just people who are recognizing that everything they have is from God. They want to be generous with their neighbors. They want to honor God in the way they live. So I think there's ways for us to think about how do we live in our culture, in our society today? Are we stingy and greedy, just trying to get as much as we possibly can? Or are we generous? And are we trying to live upright before the Lord?
Now, like you said, people are always trying to find loopholes. My question is, can any man in this life perfectly keep the law of God? even these specific instances, people are going to, if you fail in any part of the law, you become a law breaker. So what's the point in studying all this? You don't wait. So you can say, well, okay. Right. So yeah, we're without it. We're without excuse. Okay. That's true. So what hope do we have if we're without excuse? Um, nice. Yeah, I guess who never charged interest? Guess who never kept a runaway slave or didn't ever return a runaway slave? I guess who never was stingy with what he had. We can go through every one of these laws and we can go, look, Jesus was right there. Jesus did this. Jesus fulfilled all of these laws perfectly. And so Jesus is a fulfillment of these things.
They still think it's a steward, right? It leads us to Christ. It shows us what does God desire of us? But to walk justly, to love mercy, walk humbly before our God. And so I think these are ways that the Lord is teaching us to do that as well. Not out of legalism, not out of pride, but of a place of weakness and asking the Lord to help us.
Good. You want to pray or you want me to pray? Okay, let's pray. Father, we pray that you would please help us to be generous. Help us to live lives where we know who you are and the many good gifts that you've given us, especially in Jesus Christ. Lord, we pray that we would walk before you now in humility. That we would love justice and mercy. Lord, we pray that you would please teach us.
Love others well. And I love you. In Jesus's name, we pray. Amen. May the Lord who has been gracious with you. Who has not even spared his own son, but with him will also freely give you all things. May he guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. And we'll see you next time. Bye bye.