Watch Out Wealthy Oppressors

Posted: September 18, 2022 | Author: | Filed under: Commands, Debt, Jesus, Money, Neighbour, Sermons, Stealing, Theft, Wealth, Worry | Leave a comment

Does money keep you up at night? I’ll tell you what keeps me up at night, at least last night – gout! This is why I am limping. I ate two crabs with a friend on Friday and my foot reacted like it was a latex glove full of air. Hopefully gout is not keeping you up at night. For many of us North Americans, money is consistently the #1 stressor in our lives. Even in 2020 during the pandemic, money was people’s greatest worry.[1] Maybe you are worried about whether you have enough to pay the bills? Maybe you are worried about the higher interest rates? Maybe you wonder if you have enough to help your kids through school or a big enough nest egg for when you retire? Maybe others of you worry about whether our pension will stand up to the high inflation? Today and over the next few months, our leadership team is hoping you can trade worry for worship. As Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:25, 33-34, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? … But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” What a reminder of God’s care! All of us here today have been given enough food and clothing to make it to church. But God wants more! He wants you and I to be free from the love of money. You have already heard about our Freed Up Financial Discipleship series and I encourage you to sign up for the app that can be found at https://www.templebaptistchurch.ca/freedup. Here is a testimonial from Adrian Hoyte who he and his family have been using Freed Up principles for 20 years. It is important you sign-up now so you can get the workbook through the mail that takes about a week to arrive. We want everybody to do, this including our young people – you high school and college students. Many of your financial decisions that drive you for decades are being made right now. This is why I believe this will be a life-changing and a generational-transforming series if we seek God first and follow His principles. As Pastor Jason Elliotson reminded our leadership team this week, “We are aiming at being freed up from money, not having our money freed up.”[2] Being freed up from money won’t just give you and I a good night sleep. It will help us to change our society.

             You see, there is another group of people that also suffered from insomnia because of money. Let’s read about them in Micah 2:1-5. We are continuing our series in Micah. We learned in the first week in Micah 1 & 7 that we must wait for God to make things right and in the second week we focused on Micah 1:8-16 that we need to lament our losses and the lost!  After years of rejecting God, He was going to institute justice first and allow His people to be exiled. This was why Micah was lamenting. But then Micah goes all prophet-like! His weeping turns to warning. Let’s read the warning in Micah 2:1-5! Read Micah 2:1-5!

Micah’s woe is for the wealthy landowners. This is not just a common attack on the rich 

because they present a big target. I try to teach my children that the rich need to be loved just as much as the poor. I am thankful for the rich. They pay taxes at a rate of more than 50% of their income if they haven’t found a tax loophole, which means that they fund at lot of the roads, schools and hospital care in this country. Being rich comes with more responsibility! The rich have extra obstacles to get to heaven because they can so easily depend upon themselves and not God. And this is in part why God warns the rich through Micah in Micah 2:1-2, “Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them away, they oppress a man and his inheritance.” “Most thieves work at night when no one can see them (I know it was at night when our vehicles have been broken into.) The powerful thieves in Micah’s day brazenly operated in broad daylight by using legal and illegal means to take what they wanted from others.”[3] “Might, not right, was their M.O..”[4] And so God Almighty in turn, showed His might and exposed them. Now, friends before you think that God is coming after the rich and this makes you gleeful. In your heart you are cheering that they finally have their due coming. This is what God is saying, “Woe is you and me!” We are rich! We live in the top 10% of the world of all time. If you had a choice what you wear today, you are rich. I am sorely reminded of this today as I suffer from gout, which is called “the rich man’s disease” because the attack comes after eating rich foods. Certainly, our wealth at times is unstable because much of it is built on debt. Many of us borrowed to go to school, borrowed to buy a car, borrowed to buy our shelter in the form of a home. And we may borrow to eat when we use our credit card for lunch today. In a global economy, maybe our debt has been on the backs of others such as cheap labour from other countries? I confess I don’t consciously think about this enough. I just buy what is cheapest and best at the time. Maybe I need to buy from those with Fair Trade practices as long they each person along the way is grabbing beyond their fair share. Let’s remember thought that our net wealth on paper may be 5 or 6 or even 7 figures because our homes are exorbitantly high priced, but we are enslaved by debt as a nation. Canadians have the highest debt ratio in the world. In March 2022, our debt ratio is 186.2% to our disposable income.[5] Think of it like this way. I need a volunteer. For every dollar we make as Canadians, most of us have already spent it and borrowed nearly the next dollar we have made. It would be like me giving my hard earned loonie to ___________ and then tell them that I owe them a twonie next week. The problem is that I would never can catch up. No wonder Proverbs 22:7 proclaims that when we are in debt, we are enslaved: “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”  I don’t say this to make you feel guilty, but to tell you that God wants to rescue you and me from financial slavery. Our finances should mirror our spiritual reality where Jesus Christ has set us free from slavery to sin. Jesus may have given us economic lift, but the riches of this world can choke them out. As the great 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “With many a man, when wealth grows, his worldly estate is fatter, but his soul’s state is leaner.”[6]

God is against oppression. We see this clearly in Micah 2:2 where God warns against those that “seize fields and houses and oppress a man and his inheritance.” In our community, we may think that sounds unfair, but that is just part of living in a capitalistic society. However, we need to understand that Micah is writing to God’s people in a theocratic society. A theocracy (lit. God-rule) is where God and His Word is the rule of law. I realize that some think we should still be in a theocracy because our laws are mostly based on a Judeo-Christian ethic, but the Old Testament proves that God as ruler is not enough because the human heart has to be transformed first. Israel’s failure to submit to God in a theocratic government proved that Jesus needed to come and die for our sins and change our hearts. Some day, there will be a perfect theocratic government, but this is once Jesus comes back, imprisons the devil and all the demons and vanquishes evil once for all along with our sinful natures being eradicated. Jesus will physically reign on the earth and we will reign with Him (Revelation 20:17; 2 Timothy 2:12). 

To understand more about what Micah is warning against, we need to understand the law in his day. The prophets were often sent by God to remind God’s people of His commands. We find the law in the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20:17, “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house; you shall not cover your neighbour’s wife, or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbour’s.” Notice how God’s rule starts with the heart – no coveting other people’s things. But it works itself into our behaviours and specific rules like Deuteronomy 19:14, “You shall not move your neighbour’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.” Remember, the land was the means to which you raised food to feed your family. No, wonder the law repeated in Proverbs 22:28, “Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set.” In fact, to disobey this law in ancient Israel was to be cursed in Deuteronomy 27:17, “Cursed by anyone who moves his neighbour’s landmark. And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’”Therefore, “Land grabbing was a serious offense in Israel and Judah.”[7] It was so serious because as you may recall, God promised the land of Palestine to Abraham and his offspring in Genesis 15:18, “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates…” Land was considered an inheritance from the Lord to the Israelites. And even to this very moment, it explains why there is so much fighting over the land in Israel. Think about the conflict over the Palestinian settlements and how this often turns deadly. Does this now make sense why land grabbing was such a high crime in Israel? 

And though we don’t live in ancient Israel, land grabbing is wrong today here in Canada. 

One thing we are seeing is that people are buying up homes on credit and then charging high rent to make a profit. This may be what the Bible condemns as usuary. It is wrong to enslave ourselves in debt, especially when we are indebting others to pay for our debts.  Some advocate that we get out of the “rent serfdom and into homeownership.”[8] But even that is getting very difficult to do for the next generation to live in our region. We must think creatively to try to help people. God actually holds us accountable for economic systems that we may aid in exploiting people. This was the surprising warning and judgment we find in Micah 2:3, “Therefore, thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I am planning against this family a calamity from which you cannot remove your neck; and you will not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time.” “The entire community is accountable for the sins of its leaders.”[9] And this is true for us too, if we continue to hire real estate agents that buy up multiple housing units who receive real estate fees and then charge high rent or maybe extra money on both the flip and real estate fees. I first learned about this at a meeting of church leaders in our city with our local MP. I value our community leaders, government officials and agents that are serving and helping people without greed. However, a few bad apples can spoil the bunch and the wasps come as well and sting us all.  God can give us answers to this challenging situation because “His power has given us everything we need for life and godliness.” (2 Peter 1:3) I know we might punt to a capitalistic, free market and say that when things get read bad there will be creative correction like privatization such as UberÒ did with high priced taxis  or TuroÒ with rental cars that are expensive and unavailable or LIVÒ Golf with a pro golf monopoly. The problem is that well-intentioned companies trying to meet a need may create animosity with their competitors and eventually only focus on the bottom-line.  We Christians need to find a sustainable way of caring for people in non-greedy ways, otherwise I am afraid the next generation will not be able to afford to live in our region.  If you have an idea, maybe we should form a group of us to see how we can help others? Talk to me afterwards if God is tapping you on the shoulder to help. The Freed Up series will provide us with the opportunity to pray and seek the Lord as to how to store up treasure in heaven and help those on earth.

Remember, I said earlier that we should wait on God to make things right. One of ways that God makes things right is in our finances. Look at what Micah 5:4-5 declares, “On that day they will take up against you a taunt and utter a bitter lamentation and say, ‘We are completely destroyed! He exchanges the portion of my people; how He removes it from me! To the apostate He apportions our fields.’ ‘Therefore, you will have no one stretching a measuring line for you by lot in the assembly of the LORD.’” God will make things right economically. Micah prophesied that “the land robbers would be mocked,”[10] as they went into exile. And then when God miraculously brought the exiles back from Babylon after 70 years, “The land grabbers and their descendants would not participate in the future redistribution of the land.”[11] In fact, they would be shamed because the godless apostates would apportion their land – probably a reference to the Medes & Persians. This was one of the worst things that could happen to the Jew, to lose the land that God promised. The irony is that “The unscrupulous land owners would be excluded from the inheritance they denied to others.”[12] Look at Micah 2:5 and you can see this for yourselves, “Therefore, you will have no one stretching a measuring line.” God takes economic injustice seriously. Esteemed Bible Scholar Walter Kaiser summarizes, “The lesson is clear: God divides up the real estate of the earth and gives it to whomever He wishes.”[13]

What makes this even more surprising is that in Israel, debt was only ever short term. Have you ever heard of the year of Jubilee? All debt was based on how close the debt was incurred to the year of Jubilee. We read about this in Leviticus 25:8-10, 13-17, “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement, you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to this clan … in this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. And you shall not make a sale to your neighbour or buy from your neighbour, you shall not wrong another. You shall pay your neighbor according to the to the number of years for crops. If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the LORD your God.” How we treat one another economically is reflection of our relationship to God. God goes on to say in Leviticus 25:23-24, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with Me. And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.” That is a game changer for us if we start believe and act that everything we have – our spouse, our kids, our jobs, our neighbours, our homes, and all our other stuff belong to God. Now I want to reiterate that we are not Israel and we are not living in a theocracy. However, the Word of God is relevant for us and there are principles that we can apply to our lives as wait on God to make things right. Remember I said last week that “Trust = active patience.”[14] God is coming and His unstoppable justice will get rid of evil and replace it with forgiveness, but we are to join Him in making things right. This means applying God’s principles of financial interactions. We heard the warning in Micah 2 and look for application from the wisdown found in other Scripture. The first principle was repeated in Leviticus 25 and then contrasted in Micah 2 is that 1) We shall not wrong another because we belong to God (Leviticus 25:14, 17). Maybe God has convicted you of some way you are wronging another person financially? Make it right, no matter the cost! This is especially true if you take advantage of your brother and sister in Christ with whom you will spend all eternity. God says when we give, we will store up treasures in heaven. I don’t know all that it entails, but I do not God will make things right financially if not fully here on earth, but in the new heavens and new earth. 

The second principle is how we spend our nights. The land robbers spent their nights scheming iniquity – a lack of integrity. Others suffer from insomnia worrying about money. I have good news for us financially-induced insomniacs, there is another way. The second principle is contrasted with Micah 2 is actually found in Psalm 63:5-6 in describing God, “My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise You with joyful lips, when I remember You upon my bed, and meditate on You in the watches of the night.” So here is the second principle that we can apply to our lives, 2) Mediate on God and His heavenly riches at night.

One of the best ways to do this is think about Jesus. Remember, how the land robbers were mocked for stealing and losing their inheritance. Jesus was mocked for being a prophet. And yet, Jesus didn’t steal anybody’s inheritance. He gave us an eternal inheritance (Ephesians 1:11; Colossians 3:24; Hebrews 9:15). The inheritance Jesus gives us will be “treasures, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:20) You see that only way to change our economic situation in our lives, in our family, in our church and in this country is to allow Jesus to change our hearts. Often the reflection point where Jesus met people was in their financial best or worst – rich young rulers, tax collectors, and widows with only two mites. Today, I believe Jesus wants to meet each of us. Some of you are just new to our church and maybe you have never surrendered your finances, let alone your life, to God. Today can be a day of wow and instead of woe! A day when you are freed by Jesus and not just on the path of financial freedom, but you are freed spiritually forever. Surrender your life to Jesus today.CONCLUSION: My friends, at the beginning of my message I confessed to you my gout was causing by eating crab. I thought I was okay to eat crab. It was only two little crab cakes. I take anti-gout medicine every day and didn’t give what I consumed another thought. But it was a reminder that I have to be vigilant with what I consume. In our finances, we have to be vigilant with what we are consuming. Maybe you have taken preventative and protective measures with the money, God has entrusted to you? There is more God wants to do. Here is the ACTION POINT for us this week: Do not wrong another but meditate on God!

[1] Angelyn Francis, “Money is Still the Number One Thing Keeping People Up at Night. The Pandemic Only Makes Things Worse,” https://www.toronto.com/news/money-is-still-the-number-one-thing-keeping-canadians-up-at-night-the-pandemic-only/article_6cb1f522-0aa9-5759-ac25-ea5065a416d1.html?

[2] Jason Elliotson, “Pastoral Team Conversation,” Temple Baptist Church, September 14, 2022.

[3] Gary V. Smith, The NIV Application Commentary on Hosea, Amos, Micah (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 464.

[4] Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (Vol. 1, p. 689). Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[5] Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/statistics-canada-says-household-debt-to-income-ratio-hit-record-high-in-q4-1.5815332. Accessed September 14, 2022.

[6] Aucker, 1698.

[7] Walter Kaiser, Mastering the Old Testament – Micah to Malachi (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1992), 40.

[8] Jared A. Brock, “People Who Don’t Buy in the Next 5 Years Will Never Likely Own a Home,” https://www.surviving-tomorrow.com/p/people-who-dont-buy-in-the-next-five, September 5, 2022. 

[9] W. Brian Aucker, The ESV Study Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 1698.

[10] Aucker, 1698.

[11] Charles Spurgeon, Daily Treasure (Leyland, England: Evangelical Press Books, 2021), 276.

[12] Bruce Waltke, Obadiah, Jonah & Micah (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1988), 159.

[13] Kaiser, 42.

[14] Mike Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 74