No Poor Among You

There should be no poor among you,

for in the land of the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you.

Deuteronomy 15:4

                       

Even before the Fall, Adam was commanded to work the garden and take care of God’s creation.  While undertaking this activity, the earth would yield fruits of human labor.  God the Creator intends that the creation in combination with human effort would produce the necessary sustenance for life.  The original intentions of the Creator have not changed since the Fall of Adam and Eve.

       

It is foreseeable that some families would produce more food than they themselves would need.  What than would happen to the surplus?  Does one try to stockpile it—saving it for harder, leaner times?  Or perhaps sell it or exchange it through bartering?  How does one do this keeping faithful to God’s original intentions and one’s selfish desires?  The point is that the Fall has left mankind with a deep gap between God’s intentions and mankind’s practices.

D. Hughes writes, “The central theme of biblical teaching on economic activity is that everyone should enjoy the benefits that accrue from it.  In this sphere Old Testament law, prophetic pronouncements and the teaching of Jesus and his apostles are very much biased towards the poor.”[1]

In Deuteronomy, God commands his people to be certain that there exists no poor among them.  In other words, God indicates that the heavenly blessings will exceed life’s requirements.  The surplus of God’s people must be freely distributed to the poor.  God’s desire is not that the poor should have to beg and become further indebted to the wealthy of society, but that godly people would see the need and abundantly respond.  Hughes observes that “in the community of God’s people, Israel the rich were to supply freely the means for the poor to work themselves out of poverty.”

Why has our world forsaken God’s intentions?

Are the words of God—“there should be no poor among you”—relevant to today’s world?

What are you personally doing to keep these words of God?

God presides in the great assembly;

He gives judgment among the “gods”;

“How long will you defend the unjust

and show partiality to the  wicked?”

Psalm 82:1-2

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[1] D. Hughes, God of the Poor, p. 157.