GOD’S ECONOMIC
PLAN FOR HIS PEOPLE
Tomorrow, we vote. The longest campaign in recent
Canadian history will finally be over when we go to the polls. We have had
enough of the mud-slinging and political rhetoric. Let’s end this and see what
comes.
One of
the big issues of this campaign has been the economy. Canada has slipped into a
recession this year and so the big questions revolve around reviving the
economy, creating jobs, managing resources, and taxing the right people.
Whatever government is formed tomorrow, blue, red, or orange, their agenda will
determine what values Canada will lean toward. Their plan will shape our
future, what our society will look like for the next few years. Your vote
impacts that outcome in a relatively significant way.
While
the word “economy” makes us think of the effective management of a community or
system, it also has a theological meaning. In theology, “economy” is a method
of divine government of the world. No matter which party rules Canada after
tomorrow, God rules overall. He is sovereign and His economy for His people is
the only economy that is the most effective and takes into account the
wellbeing of every person.
What we
know as the Ten Commandments, what the Bible rightly calls “the Ten Words” or
Decalogue, are the fundamentals of God’s economy. You may wonder at that. How
does “You shall not murder” apply to you who has not murdered? Few Christians
realize that the Ten Words clearly address some of the most pressing problems
of our generation: inequality of wealth, growing refugee issues, consumerism
and more. They are a platform for justice, yet society considers the Ten Words
as irrelevant.
In their
original context, God’s economic plan for His people, the Ten Words, are a
pattern for life in which every person can experience the fullness of life. To
show you how this is so, I would like to unpack Deut. 5:6 for you.
1. Acknowledge the LORD who is God
Moses calls the people together to remind them of the
laws of God in Deut. 5. Even though the mass of people standing before Moses
were not alive when God gave the Ten Words, Moses insists in v.3 that God made
this covenant “not with our fathers…but with us.” He emphasizes the ongoing
nature of this covenant which God made with Israel.
With
this in mind, Moses recites the Ten Words beginning with this introduction: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out
of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (6).
The
first phrase is an introduction. Israel did not know the Lord God as intimately
as they could have. So it truly is an introduction. A person might say, “Let me
introduce myself, I am ….” God does the same. This was the custom of the person
offering the covenant. These covenants were common at that time in the world
and were never given by those of equal status. It was always the greater
offering the covenant to the lesser, usually the one who lost the battle.
Here,
God introduces Himself as Yahweh (LORD). It was Yahweh who met Moses on Mt.
Horeb in the burning bush. It was Yahweh who said to Moses when asked his name,
“I am who I am,” that most holy name (Ex. 3:14). It is this Yahweh who says to
Moses that He has seen the misery of His people and heard their cries and will
rescue them (Ex. 3:7). So even though Israel was not intimately acquainted with
Yahweh, He knew them and cared for them.
Back in
Egypt, Israel had slaved for a Pharaoh who claimed to be a god. Not only did he
claim to be a god, Pharaoh refused to recognize Yahweh as God (Ex. 5:2). So the
bulk of the first chapters in Exodus features a contest between Pharaoh and the
true God, Yahweh. Not only does Pharaoh submit to God, all Egypt and Israel see
that Yahweh is God of the whole earth.
The
first three commandments, or Words, underline what Yahweh has proven without a
shadow of a doubt. “You shall have no
other gods before me” (7). Israel came out of a land of many gods; they
were about to enter a land with many gods; but their God has shown His
superiority over all so-called gods. Why would they want other gods? “You shall not make for yourself an image in
the form of anything…” (8). Egypt was known to create images of their gods,
so the second “commandment was to prevent such foolishness. To make an image of
Yahweh was to rob God of His glorious person. How can you capture the majesty
of God in a statue? And “You shall not
misuse the name of the LORD your God…” (11). The Exodus story provided a
fresh revelation of divine name and demonstrated its power. No one was
permitted to use the power of that name without God’s permission.[i]
Yahweh is
God. To begin to build a community on any other foundation ignores the Creator
of life and community. To be a people where fairness and equality and harmony
reign begins with acknowledging that the LORD is God.
2. Why we obey God’s Law
When we acknowledge that the LORD is God, we consequently
confess that His ways are right and that by living according to His Word we do
exceedingly well.
Yahweh
has introduced Himself; now we will
look at the context for obeying His
laws. We find this in the second phrase of v. 6 “…who brought you out of Egypt…”
Yahweh
delivered Israel out of Egypt. He went down and got His people out of there.
“Deliverance” is the motivating theme for the response of obedience.
How many
of us don’t look at the OT as a covenant of legalism? Don’t we sometimes think
that the only way to be saved in the OT was to obey laws? We thank Jesus for
coming in the NT and saving us from the law, giving us salvation by grace
through faith. But that is too simplistic actually.
Consider
again v. 6, “I am the LORD your God, who
brought you out of Egypt…” The commandments were given to Israel, not so
they could perhaps gain salvation by keeping them, but because God had already
redeemed them. These laws were given to live in the light of that deliverance.
If you
read Exodus with this mind, the majority of the narrative displays the saving
acts of God despite the obedience or disobedience of the people. The God of
grace is very much evident in the story of Israel, saving them from trial after
trial, and then asking them to live a life of gratitude by obeying His laws.
And His laws were ultimately and realistically for their own benefit. First God
saves; then He gives the Law. Grace is the foundation for obedience, as opposed
to obeying the law to be saved.
Like the
Israelites who became slaves of the Egyptians, we became slaves to sin. Jesus
said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to
sin” (Jn. 8:34). Jesus saves us by His grace and then calls us to
discipleship immediately. That means obeying His words. Jesus told the Jews, “If you hold to my teaching you are really
my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”
(Jn. 8:31b-32). In this same conversation with the Jews, Jesus reveals the most
awesome truth, that He is the Son of God. They say “no way;” Jesus replies
“Yahweh” (Jn. 8:58).
Grace
without obedience is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” getting by
on being saved but not living as one who has been saved.
Why do
we obey God’s laws, including these Ten Words? Because Yahweh has delivered us
out of Egypt. Egypt represents the land of sin in the Bible, and we are headed
for the Promised Land. To live in that Land, God has given us laws so that we
can represent Him and be a light to the nations.
3. Laws that create a counter-culture
Israel had been delivered out of Egypt, “out of the land of slavery.” And for
Israel, when they came to Mt. Horeb to receive these Ten Words, they had only
been out of Egypt for three months. They still felt the scars and wounds on
their backs from the whips and rods of their oppressors. The Egyptians had been
trying to systematically annihilate the Israelites through forced labor. At one
point Pharaoh took away the straw with which to make bricks but ordered the
people to make more bricks. He was trying to work them to death. And you know
he tried to kill all the male Hebrew babies, which led to Moses’ river journey.
This was the context that they knew for so long.
Now they
were free. And how were they to live in community? How do free people live? By
doing their own thing? Is freedom a “live and let live” experience? No, God
gives them a kind of “Bill of Rights” for free people to live by.
Consider
the context and contrast of Egypt now when you read these “commandments.”
“Observe
the Sabbath day by keeping it holy…” The fourth commandment to rest on the
seventh day, as God did when creating the world, stands in stark contrast to
life in Egypt when Israelites never rested. Now God institutes a weekly day of
rest for a nation of slaves. What a relief! As part of God’s plan in the Garden
of Eden, there was to be a rhythm of work-rest-work-rest. Two reasons are
given: 1) To rest everyone including livestock; 2) to worship (see v.15).
We have
slipped out of this holy and healthy rhythm these days. Our worldview values
productivity over the need for rest and reflection. Working a 60 hour week
hails you as a hero in our culture. Work hard or your fired. Sunday shopping is
convenient for some but not if you are the one working.
With the
fifth and seventh commandments, a free society was to be structured around the
family household. These laws protected the authority of family (honor father
and mother) and sexual integrity.
The
sixth commandment “You shall not murder,”
though taken individualistically, are spoken to restrain the excesses of
powerful people, like Pharaoh. Remember how easy it was for an Egyptian task
master to kill a slave whenever he felt like it. The same was true in the South
before (and even after) the U.S. Civil War. A slave’s life meant nothing. Now,
Yahweh institutes a law that values human life. Where in Egypt, economic
productivity was valued higher than human life, God flips the scale.
The
eighth commandment “You shall not steal,”
might make us think of the poor man who is tempted to steal a loaf of bread to
feed his family, or perhaps the criminal who steals rather than work. But in
actuality the command was given to restrain the rich. In Egypt, Israelites were
robbed of the benefit of owning land; now, every Israelite was promised a piece
of land to produce wealth. Under Jubilee law it could not be permanently taken
away (Lev 25:23). Ultimately God owns the land and He gave everyone a piece of
it. So the command “you shall not steal” was meant to keep the rich from
exploiting the poor, as they had been in Egypt.
One more
example: the tenth commandment “You shall not covet,” shows us that the OT was
not about rules, but about the heart. To covet is to want something, even if it
disadvantages the other person. In practical terms it looked like this: say my
neighbor has fallen into hard times and say he wants to sell me his ox, his
only ox, so that he can buy some grain. The point of the 10th commandment
is this: I don’t suck him for all he’s worth. I don’t covet his ox or his
money, rather I trade in a way that is helpful to him and generous. If he
doesn’t have an ox to sell, maybe I give him grain anyways. The attitude we
strive for is mutual care.[ii]
What the
Ten Words point to is God’s priorities for human moral attention: God, society,
family, life, sex, and property. Dare we point to our modern society and see
that modern culture has almost precisely turned this order upside-down? Our
culture has built up its industries and worldview for the sole purpose of
breaking the tenth commandment, “You shall not covet.” Every commercial we see
on TV or on the web begs us to trade our perfectly good cars to buy better ones
so that we can drive to various restaurants at midnight to eat very fatty
burgers, wake up early to workout, or barring that, to try the next fat-burning
method because we lust after bodies that we cannot and should not have. Is it
any wonder that when we call on people to worship no other god, most would
claim to really have no God to worship at all?
As I said earlier, the Ten Words function as an Israelite
bill of rights. However, unlike modern bills of rights, the document does not
protect one’s own rights but the rights of the next person. Each of the terms
may be recast as a statement of another person’s rights. We first guard the
rights of our covenant Lord, and secondly each other’s rights.[iii]
What
does this sound like? Jesus replied to the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ question
about the greatest commandment. Jesus said, “Love
the Lord your God…and love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the
Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Mt. 22:37-40).
So love
God and love your neighbor. Don’t worry about the rest, we say. But hold on a
minute, how do we love God and love our neighbor? That’s where we return to the
Ten Words of Deut. 5 and we understand that God has a carefully thought out
program for a new society. Jesus does not negate this program but supports it,
because he cannot contradict Himself. Jesus says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so
you must love one another. All men will know that you are my disciples if you
love one another” (Jn 13:34-35). The command to love was not new; what was
new was loving sacrificially as demonstrated by Jesus on the cross.
We have
been called out of Egypt (slavery to sin) to be a new society (the church)
where each person can be built up and loved and encouraged and protected so
that we can thrive. To be a missional church in this fashion, we become a light
to the world displaying the glory of God’s economic plan.
AMEN
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