Deuteronomy 15:2-6 Bible Study | Episode 899

March 20, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Deuteronomy 15:2-6  Bible Study | Episode #899

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name. Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church's morning Bible Study. We're back in Deuteronomy 15 and we're just dealing with a whole lot of financial stuff, a lot of financial issues, really. The law of God about debt. And I don't wanna miss any of the, any of the nuggets, the good nuggets that are in here, both the direct law that God gives, the commandments that God gives here, the precepts that God has given us. But you also learn from things that are tangential to it. As you're read, you realize, oh, this is true and this is true and this is true also. And that's how you kind of dig deep into God's Word. When we dig into God's Word and marry it up with the rest of Scripture. And that's very, very important, marrying it up with rest of scripture because oftentimes people want to take one passage and use it as. As if it is some way trumps another passage and that they're in conflict. Well, the truth is, none of scripture is in conflict. It' uh, it all works together. And by working together, by working together, you can, you can begin to search for the truth and realize that maybe some way you see scripture is wrong. Because if it, if it, if it conflicts directly, if your understanding of a passage directly conflicts with another passage, then it's not the passages that are in conflict, it's your understanding that's in conflict. And that's a good principle to understand as you're reading, studying, thinking about the word of God. And so yesterday we only got through one verse. It says, at the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release of debt. And this is the form of release. This is verse two. This is the form of release. Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it. He shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother, but because it is called the Lord's release. Now that is really, really interesting in that God says that you could not have a loan, an outstanding loan that was for a period of time, more than seven years. He, he forbid it in the law here. He forbids there being any personal loan, any loan out there that was over seven years. Now you go, well, well, what are personal loans today? Well, there are a lot of people give, give people loans. That happens all the time. All the time. There are people who lend somebody a few hundred bucks, you know, a thousand bucks for this, even more than that on a personal level. And that happens a lot. But the primary driver of personal loans in the world today is credit cards. Credit cards are the mechanism by which most personal loans take place. And let me say this, the average amount of personal loans that are on credit cards goes up over and over and over again. Interestingly, as we read this, if you study credit cards and study the financial background of credit cards, the, the company has set up the interest rate such that the minute that you begin to show signs of not being able to pay your credit card, you may start out at a pretty low interest rate. And when I say pretty low, I'm talking about pretty low for credit cards. Most credit cards, interest rates are at least in the double digits and oftentimes are 20 and 30%. But if you carry your balance over to the next month, then you're going to pay an interest charge. Those interest charges are staggered such that the minute you start showing signs that you're not going to be able to pay off that credit card anytime soon, the interest rates go up to a level such that the credit card company is going to begin to make money, meaning they're going to make back their balance and they're going to get a good interest rate for them, which is for a bank is 8 or 9%. They're going to get 8, 9, 10, 11% interest back on that credit card. Even if you default on it, even if you quit paying the bill. They're going to, they're going to make sure that the amount that you've paid and you go, well, I don't understand that. What are you saying? Well, it's real easy if, if, if I owe you $1,000 and each month that's, that's averaged out over five years. So they're not wanting me to pay you that thousand dollars back this year. They want you me to pay you the $200 back this year, 200 this year, 200 next year. And then they're going to want some interest, some, some more than $200 back from you over the next five years. So if, if I am paying my balance off and I'm a normal credit person, I'm a person that's getting regular credit and I'm getting 20% interest on that credit card if I carry that balance. Meaning, meaning I don't pay off the bill, I carry the balance. And by the way, that's what they want you to do. They want you to carry the balance of, of $1,000. If I carry that balance of $1,000 for a year and they charge me 20%, well, I've already paid off the principal in interest that year for the year that they wanted me to. So I've paid $200 in credit. I've paid $200 for the principal in the interest. Now the minute that I'm not paying the balance off, that interest rate's gonna go up to 30, 35%, which means they're gonna get what I owe them for that year, the $200, and they're going to get another 150. They're going to get another 10 to 15% of that interest back. So if I carry that balance for five years, I paid the whole thing off and I give them 10 to 15%. And I still owe the $1,000. I still owe the thousand dollars. So if it's set up such that they can carry it for five years, they've made over that five years their money back plus 10 to 15% interest. Now if you do it for longer periods of time and your credit gets less and less, then they're going to bump it up into the 30s. And as they bump it up into the high 30s, you are paying them way more than what you owe them. And what would be a great interest rate to get back? And they're making a lot of money. And so if you do that for, and you struggle for six or seven years and you get to the end of that time period and you just quit paying your credit card, they've made their money back. They've made a great interest rate back and they're going to sue you for that credit card debt because you owe it to them. That's why God said here not to lend to your neighbor for a time period greater than seven years. And by the way, credit card companies drop dead date on making the most amount of money they feel like they can make off someone with a credit card is seven years. Seven years is the time frame that they want to make sure that they get you on the hook and get you paying them a monthly amount for that time period because they're going to maximize the amount of money that they make. Interestingly enough, the time period for if you go into bankruptcy, and we're going to deal with bankruptcy law, interestingly, the time period that you go to go into bankruptcy for your credit to be cleared and for you to have a clean slate as far as your credit history is seven years. Both of those are tied to this law. And God told him, listen, don't. Don't make a loan, a personal loan with your neighbor that you can't release in seven years. And notice he says it here. Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it. That's a legal term. Shall you see there? He shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother. But it's called the Lord's release. Now, interestingly, verse three says of a foreigner, you may require it, but you shall give up your claim to what you owed by your brother. Notice God is in this passage. In this passage, he is beginning to make the separation between those people who are lost in the law. Love your brother, love your neighbor, love those around you. The New Testament law is beginning to form even in this. The understandings of it are beginning to form even in this passage. Love God, love your brother, love each other, the church, the body of Christ. Here it would be, love other Jewish people, other people, part of Israel. And then love your neighbor. Meaning, Meaning those around you, those you have personal relationships around you as yourself, those that you don't know, you can require them to keep paying after seven years. But everybody else, you've got to release them after seven years. Then he says this, except when there may be poor among you. And this is verse four, which I think is fascinating. It's a little phrase that's just left in here. It is a legal out. It is one of those defenses to, to somebody's claim against you. He says, if there's a time period in human history where there are no poor among you, then you can not release a debt because everybody can pay. And you go, well, did God think there was going to be a time that there would be no poor among you? No. Jesus says in the New Testament he is speaking really literally to this passage. He says, the poor you will have with you always. So what God's saying is there's no outs here. He gives them an out that seems like an out. He gives them out that seems like it's one of those things that we, oh, oh, here's the exception to the rule. And then when you really think about the rule, you go, that's not really an exception. That is, that is a re. Emphasis on this rule. Meaning God says, you got to release people from debt after seven years. Period, end of story. Got to release them from the debt after seven years. All Jewish people who give loans to each other must release it after seven years. I'll give you an out. The out is when there's no poor people among you, then you can not release it. Well, that's never going to happen. And so there's never going to be the release that happens here. Now, some could say that this, the whole purpose of this is that's talking about people who have money who are loaning money to other people who have money. And that could be. And there's an element of our law that allows that there's things that their safeguards in the law. But those who are sophisticated in finance can write contracts that get around those things. And the reason they can is because you know, you know what you're doing. And when you've done. When you've made a. Made a contract that goes beyond the law, you understand that you have removed the safeguards from our financial and legal system and you're at fault then. Now that's pretty deep in the weeds. And I don't want to get too deep in the weeds, but I think it's neat that here it says, accept that they're poor among you. And then Jesus tells them, the poor you'll have with you always. For the Lord you. You will greatly bless, for the Lord will greatly bless you in the land which the Lord got your God has given you to possess as an inheritance. Meaning this is one of those. This is one of those understandings that God has given them, one of those precepts that God is giving them for God's best to take place. And we talked about my personal views on giving loans out to your friends and family. I strongly discourage it. Why? Because it's hard to live blessed in the land when you're worried about your friends and family owing you money. He says, only if you carefully obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe with care all these commandments which I command you today. For the Lord your God will bless you just as he promised you. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you. Now that is a fabulous passage for our modern times, for the day we live in today. And we see that. We see that the greatness of our country is diminished because our country owes so much in debt. And that becomes a problem. It becomes a problem for the world, and it becomes a problem for our nation. And it becomes a problem personally for us when we see the nations of the world suffering and our own society suffering because we carry such great debt. The debt today is somewhere in the 35 to 37 trillion dollars range. It's going up so fast, it's a trillion dollars every hundred days. Hopefully we will be turning the tide of that over the next year or two. But the truth is, is that this passage that we read here, this verse in verse 6 of chapter 15 of Deuteronomy is true today. For the Lord your God will bless you just as he promised you. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you. Meaning the borrower is slave to the lender, the borrower is slave to the lender. And so understanding that principle, both personally, corporately, as a church, and then ultimately as a nation, is important. It's important to put us in a position that we understand how well the laws of the universe work. Because by the way, this is a picture of the laws of the universe. God's laws, financial laws are true. And they're true on the micro economic scale, meaning the personal level. And they're true on the macroeconomic scale, meaning the national level, the world level, the world economy level. And we can learn a lot from it. There's a lot more to learn in this chapter and we're going to spend a good bit of time on it. I hope you'll join us as we talk through these financial issues that God has put in place, these financial truths that God has given us, that we might live abundantly and fully and that we might walk in harmony with each other. As you go today, I pray that.

The Lord will bless you and keep.

You, that he'll make his face to.

Shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.