All right, if you'll open your Bibles with me to Deuteronomy chapter 23. Deuteronomy 23, starting at verse 15, which says miscellaneous laws, and I think there's a rhyme and a reason there for them. Deuteronomy chapter 23, starting at verse 15. Here's what God's word has for us tonight. It says, you shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him. None of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute. None of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow. For both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God. You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that's lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all you undertake in the land that you're entering to take possession of it. If you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it, for the Lord your God will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. But if you refrain from vowing, you'll not be guilty of sin. You shall be careful to do what is past your lips, for you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God what you have promised with your mouth. If you go into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain. This is the word of the Lord, amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're coming to your word again tonight, all of your word. We want to mine your law for wisdom. We pray, oh Lord, that you'd show us wisdom that Lord, the things that I have to say would be clear, that they'd be correct, oh Lord, but more importantly, that the power of your spirit would drive these things into our hearts, seek the hidden person of our hearts, oh Lord, and show us what we need from this passage tonight. So Lord, apply this to us, grow us thereby, and Lord, glorify yourself. May we see the beauty of your face yet again as we read your law. Even in your law, we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, tonight we're coming to the eighth commandment, which is so simple on paper. It's just, thou shalt not steal. But we'd be naive to think it's always so simple in practice, because we live in a sinful world. And in a sinful world, questions about property are always very complicated. That's why there are whole philosophies and professions that are dedicated just to property law. It's easy to imagine there are all kinds of sticky property situations. The other day I was listening to the radio, I heard a case that was asking the question, can a musician own a chord progression, a particular chord progression? Or think if lots of towns live along a river, then who gets to decide how the river is used? Or if something was stolen by, say, the Nazis decades ago, and it's passed hand several times, who does it rightfully belong to? Or for our purposes today, what do you do if a runaway slave shows up at your door, and you know that Assyria wants its property back? Or is it okay to stop and eat a couple grapes from your neighbor's vine as you travel down the road, or some of his wheat? They're complicated questions having to do with property. So tonight, let's look at five specific case laws that God gave us to help with some of this complexity. We'll take them up under two headings. First, we'll talk about two laws that talk about giving property to God. And then second, we'll talk about three laws that talk about property in regards to other people. So two sections, giving property to God and then giving property to other people. So first, let's talk about the laws that regulate giving property to God. So for our first point, what I want to do is I will look at each of these laws on their own first. And then we'll look at the big principles that they express all together. The first law we're looking at is actually the second in this passage. We see it in verse 17. We'll read it again. It says, none of the daughters of Israel shall be a cult prostitute. None of the sons of Israel shall be a cult prostitute. You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute or the wages of a dog into the house of the Lord your God in payment for any vow for both of these are an abomination to the Lord your God. So the law starts out like it's from the seventh commandment. I think sometimes these commandments sort of transition gradually and it's just prohibiting cult prostitution. Say, OK, got that. And this needed to be said back then, though, because the nations all around Israel thought that they could use cult prostitutes to boost their crops, to boost their fertility. They thought, the gods really like that, so let's do that. But then this law quickly moves to an Eighth Commandment context. As God says, he doesn't want the wages of prostitutes. He doesn't want those things brought into his tabernacle. He says, they're an abomination to him. So this teaches us a simple point, really, It's that God doesn't want dirty money. He's not interested in gifts in a vacuum. He just wants gifts. He's more interested in the heart and in the character of the giver. Because he already owns everything, he doesn't need money that comes from the destruction of his image bearers. He hates money that's generated by desecrating the institution of marriage. Our God weighs everything. He's a God of infinite complexity. He considers the source. He doesn't want dirty money. We'll say that. Second law we're looking at comes from verse 21. It's also about giving to God. It says, if you make a vow to the Lord your God, you shall not delay fulfilling it. For the Lord your God will surely require it of you and you will be guilty of sin. But if you refrain from vowing, you will not be guilty of sin. You shall be careful to do it as past your lips for you have voluntarily vowed to the Lord your God, which you have promised with your mouth. So at first glance, this seems to be just about vows in general. That makes it more ninth commandment territory, but reading it in context and taking a closer look at the language, I think you can see it's probably about people making vows to give things to God. That's why all this language about don't delay fulfilling it. Because in that day, the idea was if you're really praying for something, if you wanted to thank God for doing something really special for you, you make a vow. You'd vow to pay him something. So this law is really saying two important things. First, it's saying you don't have to make these vows. You see that in verse 22. We might be tempted. We want to make vows. We actually want to pay God for things. He really doesn't work that way. But this law is saying you can refrain from vowing. You can voluntarily vow. It's totally voluntary, it says. It reminds us of Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5. You don't have to make oaths, just let your yes be yes, let your no be no, and that's enough for the Lord. All this to say, beyond a duty to tithe, God's people are under no compulsion. They're free in their giving, totally free. And second, this law is saying that if you told God you'd give him something, you better honor that. He says, you shall not delay fulfilling it. You shall be careful to do what passed your lips. It's getting at faithfulness to our commitments to God. You make a commitment, you'd be faithful to it. Actually, if you commit something to God, he considers it his property and you have to give it. So let's apply this a little while. Let's apply this first section, this giving to God section. Now that we look at these two laws, I want you to see what they're talking about. They're all about giving to God. And if you put them together, I think what they're getting at at the heart of these laws is they're getting at the heart of the person who's giving to God. Because like any person, God only likes gifts from his beloved if they're a free expression of love. He doesn't want gifts that are gotten dishonestly. He doesn't want gifts that are given begrudgingly. It's insulting to him if you promise him a gift and then you withhold that gift. Like people say back where I'm from, they say, don't do him any favors, right? He doesn't want you to do him any favors. Or like Proverbs 15 says, the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him. That's Proverbs 15, eight. So anyway, at the end of this first point, may this just be a call for us to examine our hearts. Do I come by my money honestly? Would God approve of my profession? Or do I give to God? Do I give to his church? Do I give to his kingdom in any way? Or when I do give to God, why do I give to God? Because I have to, because it looks good, or because I'm grateful, because I want to. Where's my heart when I give to God? Is it glad? Is it grateful? Or is it just fearful? Is it grudging? That's our first point for tonight. It's all about the heart of a man who gives to God. Second, we're looking at our section about laws about property in regards to other people. So for our second part, we'll do the same thing. We'll look at each law in turn. We'll draw some principles from each law, and then we'll look at them all together and get some larger principles. So the first laws in verse 15 is the first law of our section, and it's about escaped slaves. Let's read it again. It says, you shall not give up to his master, a slave who has escaped from his master to you, to Israel. He shall dwell with you in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him. In Hebrew, it's you shall not oppress him. So we're pretty sure this law is envisioning a scenario where a slave has escaped an oppressive master from somewhere outside of Israel, and he's come to Israel for sanctuary, come to Israel as a place of refuge. So what makes this situation so complicated, though, is that in the cultures of Israel's surrounding neighbors, a runaway slave would be considered property. And so in law codes like Hammurabi's Code or other codes of that day, people are commanded, you need to return that runaway slave upon pain of death because it's someone else's property. You're stealing. But not so in Israel. Israel played by its own set of rules. God told his people in Exodus 22, he says, you must never, quote, wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you are sojourners in the land of Egypt. So instead, slaves that are fleeing abuse from Assyria or Syria or Egypt or wherever, slaves fleeing abuse could go to God's people for refuge. Isn't that beautiful? They could always start a new life amongst the people of God. So this law teaches a couple of important lessons. It teaches that People are more than property. It teaches that God's people are a sanctuary for the oppressed. It's always a good lesson for all of us. It's always a good lesson for us to hear that we need to be a sanctuary for those who are oppressed. It's a good lesson for government officials, bosses, husbands, anyone who's ever tempted to see people under authority as being their subservient peons. It's also a great passage to bring whenever people try to tell you that the Bible supports slavery. Ever heard that from our enemies? They say, well, the Bible's all about slavery. It doesn't condemn slavery. Well, that's a ridiculous claim for any number of reasons. We've preached on that before. But here you see very clearly that God's law allows people to flee to him from this oppressive institution. They could flee slavery and come be with God's people. That's the first of these three laws. For our second law in this series, you look at verse 19. It says this, it says, you shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that's lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you're entering to take possession of it. So this law is against charging God's people interest. It's actually a really important law in that day because A, people only typically borrowed money back then when they're desperate, like they don't have any food to eat, And B, in these cases, Israel's neighbors often charged excessive interest. It was common in that day. So for example, we found contracts from northern Assyria from this time period. Interest rates could get as high as 50%. You think loans are predatory today? 50% interest. So you can see how loans like these would absolutely destroy people. Not only are they behind, they can't eat, but now they've got a 50% loan, they're enslaved forever in perpetuity. That's probably why the word for charging interest in Hebrew comes from the root word to bite. You're devouring people. You're biting them. So this law is against exploiting people. It's against taking advantage of people for your own benefit. Then for our third law, we're looking at verse 24. This is our last law for tonight. It says, if you go into your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. If you go into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor's standing grain. The law is basically saying, you can eat some of your neighbor's crops if you're hungry, but you can't take it to go bag. You can't take advantage, you can't just help yourself Like that. So this is an interesting one because logic would tell you, well, isn't this stealing though? You're going into your neighbor's grain, you're going into his vineyard, you're just eating what you want. You're taking crops that don't belong to you. Isn't that against the eighth commandment? Isn't that stealing? Well, here's some reasons why God says this isn't stealing. For one, God knows that all the crops of Israel belong to him. And he says it's okay. For two, God makes it clear that he's gonna bless his people so much, they're not gonna miss a few grapes. They have no reason to be upset if their neighbors ate a couple grapes. By the way, God just gave them this land that wasn't theirs. And then third, what God's doing here is, it's beautiful what he's doing. I think I see what he's doing. He's training his people to be open-handed. He's fostering this national culture of generosity. He's introducing this thought into their daily lives. Well, what's a few grapes amongst family? So this law, again, it's against greed, it's against hoarding, a law against holding your hand back from a brother in need. And this is also probably what Jesus had in mind when he and the apostles were eating their neighbor's grain in Matthew 12. As they're going along the fields on the Sabbath and they're plucking grain and eating it, this is why you'd think, Jesus, aren't you stealing? And this is why Jesus was not stealing. He knew the law, being the one who wrote the law, he knew the law better than anyone else. So let's apply these as a batch again. Let's look at these three laws together and what do we see? Well, I think we see how God expects us to think about our belongings and how God expects us to use our belongings. But first, all these laws show God's people that God's generous. God's given his people so much. I want you to see the underlying presumption behind all these laws is God's immense blessing. These laws presume that Israel is a desirable place for a runaway slave, that they'd want to go there. These laws presume that borrowing wouldn't be needed a lot in Israel, but if it was, other people will have enough to help. These laws presume that crops would be big enough that people wouldn't miss some grapes, they wouldn't miss some wheat, they could eat from each other's fields and it'd be okay. The underlying principle beneath all these laws, the assumption beneath all these laws is God's consistent generosity. Not just generosity in the past, but also generosity in the future. Because the other principle that underlies these laws is that if God's people continue to trust him, they should expect his generosity to continue. Look at the reason given in verse 20, it's very telling. This is why you shouldn't charge interest. In verse 20 he says, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you're entering to take possession of it. He's saying, it's because first of all, I've given you this great inheritance, but also it's because he wants to bless them more. He wants them to live by his principles, be blessed more. He's got more to give them. His hand isn't just gonna give them up till here and then stop. He wants to continuously pour out everything that they need. So I want you to see that these laws, they're reflecting God's generosity. They reflect his generosity and his expectation that those who receive a lot from him should give a lot. And so these laws speak pretty strongly to us today, I think, especially to us here who have so much. If God's freed us from slavery to sin and the world, how can we not be a sanctuary to other people who are escaping sin and the world? We've got to be welcoming. We've got to be patient with them. We've got to be a help to them. That's just from the escape slave law. God has provided for us so richly. We've got such big crops in our congregation in general. This being the case, what's a few grapes for a brother in need? It's such a small thing to help out where we can such a small thing or you know how we're tempted. We're tempted. How our lack of faith is always screaming at us. Well, what if I don't have enough? What if more doesn't come? I can't afford to help. Or if I help somebody, they need to give me something really big in return. These laws say, no, no, no, you don't have to, you don't need interest. You don't need to charge anything. You can just help. Have faith, these laws say. Philippians 4, your God will supply every need of yours. According to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus, he'll meet every need. You don't need to charge. interest for your kindness. So brothers and sisters, these laws are reminding us that everything's gods, everything's to be shared. We're all just tenants. We're managing with gods and trusted to our care. He requires us to use it for other people. He requires us to be hospitable. Through these laws, God's reminding us we have an obligation to every person in our covenant community. We have an obligation to everyone here that you've made vows to. We need to put people before our property. The people of a kind God must also be kind. That's what we get from that second batch of laws. So now let's. Let's start to conclude. Now what I want to do is we kind of looked at each individually, put them together into little principles. Now let's put all the laws together. These eighth commandment laws, and let's see a bigger picture. These laws are all about property. They're about giving property to God, about sharing property with other people and take it all together. They actually come through. I like to look for where these laws punch through into the new testament where they're. I think they come through the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 9, 2 Corinthians 9, 7. So remember our first point, it's all about laws, about giving to God. We learned it's about the heart of the giver. Now look at 2 Corinthians 9, 7, it says this, it says, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. You see, same principle. Again, in verse 12, why do we give? Verse 12, for the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but it's also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. Saying God loves gifts given honestly, given freely, given faithfully. It's no different than Deuteronomy. It's the same principles. Remember our second point about laws that regulate giving to other men. They showed us God's given us so much. He'll continue to do so, so we can bless other people with it. Now look at verses eight through 12. They express the same idea in 2 Corinthians. It says, and God is able to make all grace abound to you, all these grapes, all this money, this promise, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times. you may abound in every good work. As it's written, he has distributed freely, he has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. God says, I don't want you to bite with interest. I don't want you to begrudge your brother some grains of wheat. Instead, he'd have you be a sanctuary. He'd have you share whatever he's given you as a way of life. That's what these laws are meant to demonstrate, to illustrate, to build into his people. I want you to see we may be all the way back in Deuteronomy in this season as I'm preaching, but God's people have always served the same God, who's always had the same heart. Down through the ages, he never stops being good to his people. He always calls us to be like him. And so as I close for tonight, may this sermon fix itself somewhere in the back of your heart, in the back of your mind, so that as opportunities arise, may we be grateful for what we're given May we trust that he'll always give us what we need. And then from those two foundational truths, may we feel more free to share. The people of a kind God must also be kind. And I'm sure we all need to be poked and reminded in this area all the time because it's so easy to love our money more than we love our God. And so thank God he's given us his law.