God's View of Debt: I Owe, I Owe, So Off to Work I Go

Now, we have been talking last week. I think it was last week. Yeah. We've been talking last week about this, this balancing the income and the outgo. And we kind of did a, you know, SR 71 sweep of budgeting. And again, the point being budgeting is not, you know, the law and a club, but it is a tool that fits certain situations. In case you want it, I think we have on the corner of the table on the left-hand side more budget sheets if that's helpful to you. And one of the things that comes to be a part of that, and we'll address it today, is this subject of debt and borrowing and lending and that whole issue. Now, the starting point here is just kind of getting a feel for things. You remember the second week we talked about kind of what's the world perspective on things.

The world has all these myths that they're selling people. Spending billions of dollars selling these myths. If I just had more money, that would be enough. If I buy stuff, that'll make me happy. Although the myths that get shoved down our throat every day, the world's got those. And the latest answer to complying with those myths. Because people just feel terribly dissatisfied in the world if they're not fulfilling those myths they've been taught, right? So the latest answer is, let's build up the debt.

People have been saying, you know, to be happy I've got to have money or I've got to have things. And so since I don't make a lot of money, or at least I don't have it right now, I'll borrow whatever I have to have because I have to have the stuff. And if we talk about the Visa ad, it tells you this cost this much, this much, but this is priceless. In other words, the point is, spend whatever you have to to get this. Whatever they say is priceless, you spend yourself into oblivion if you have to, but you've got to have the thing that's priceless, right? So anyway, with that leftist, as we mentioned a few weeks back, It's left the United States currently at a $30 trillion total between private, corporate, and government debt. $30 trillion.

Grown about 50% in the last five years. I mean the numbers are just massive, just huge. One of the things that we're noticing is even now with the stock market having for almost three years now been taking a hit, the credit card bills and the mortgages are still climbing, still going up. Still increasing.

As a matter of fact, depending on what survey you look at, people are borrowing more when they refinance. They're borrowing more and getting money out. 5 to 15% above what they had originally owed on their mortgage when they refinance. 5 to 15% out to get more cash out, so that people are getting deeper in debt. And why? Because the interest rates are lower, they can afford to get deeper in hock. So that's the tendency.

Now, here's something else that along with that, we've just posted some record foreclosure rates. And the rate of foreclosures in the United States is going up hugely. The other thing is bankruptcies. That's a chart that you see in the middle of the page there. Bankruptcies tend to go through waves, but the bottom line is this chart's going up. And this chart, by the way, is a year old, so it's already more than what you see there. And I noticed just this last week that the House passed a new bankruptcy bill which will tighten up bankruptcies. And so what happens is everybody files ahead of that being effective, right? So it will even increase more their bankruptcy rate in the near term. Now, here's one of the things that's happening.

How many of you have heard of the bubble economy? Have you heard that phrase? The stock market bubble or the real estate bubble? Really what's behind it all? The debt bubble. That's what we've got is this blowing, you know, ballooning debt that we've got in our society. Now, that's the big picture here. What we want to do is to look at, you know, what does scripture say about all this? I mean, after 30 trillion dollars, you would start to say, gee, I wonder if, you know? And so, that's what we want to look at here. Let's just ask a question, just before we turn to that, let's ask the question this.

How much would houses cost if nobody could borrow the money to buy them? How much would they be? They would be a lot less. So here's the strange thing. We have to borrow more for the house because we can borrow for the house. Isn't that weird? We have to borrow more because we can borrow more. That's the strange cycle that we're in. How about cars? Suppose you could not finance a car. If that were not possible, what would cars cost? A lot less. The very fact that we can borrow increases the price of something, and then at the same time, the fact that the price has increased means we need to borrow more. Let's take a look here.

I'm going to step through what scripture says. For a starting point, I'm going to look at what God did with the Jews, not because that's some sort of automatic thing for us. We're not under law. But I think it's helpful to kind of get a perspective. And in truth, the Lord had a purpose in what he did with the Jews that even though we say we're not under law, we should not ignore.

The principle here is all scripture is written for us. Not all scripture is written to us and we need to discern the difference between the two. So it applies here. The first bullet there on page 30. The Jews were told that they were to lend freely to other Jews and they were not allowed to charge interest. I think she's missing some pages. Give me a second here.

But then, the Jews were permitted to lend to non-Jews, but were allowed to charge interest in that case. They could charge interest to non-Jews, but they could not charge interest to the other Jews. Then, here's the other thing, and it's part of the bigger picture of their year of jubilees.

Every 7th year, all debts were to be cancelled. Right? Every 7th year all debts were to be cancelled. What was the impact of cancelling debts every 7 years? Short debts. Short debts, yes. Debts were short. Good point. Short time period, the bottom line is no debt was longer than a 6 year period of time. That's one point. What's another thing that happens if all debts are cut off every 7 years? Nobody will know. Well, okay, we'll talk about that in a minute. We'll talk about that in a minute. Tom? Greatly reduces the possibility of bankruptcy.

Yeah, in other words, what happens is you keep piling debt upon debt upon debt as our culture has tended to do. You can't just keep more debt, more debt, more debt like we have. So good point. So you've got those kind of factors that say you're not going to pile up debt, your debts aren't going to be long term. 30 year mortgage, that would have gotten chopped up several times over, right? It just didn't get there. Jews were to forgive all debts between Jews in every seventh year and not to diminish their lending in anticipation of it.

How about that? Phil was saying that people would curtail. That would be the natural tendency, wouldn't it? You would say, well, we're getting close to that. I'm not going to loan you. Next year, this whole thing is going to go kaflui. This whole note that you just signed here is just going to go up in smoke.

Well, guess what? They were told you're not allowed to diminish your lending. How about that? You have to lend as if you were going to be paid the whole thing back, but in reality it's going to get truncated, cut off. Isn't that something? Can't diminish it. How about that? Interesting, huh?

But then there was one other aspect of it, and this relates to, remember this morning in the main service we were talking about the land covenant? The one thing that was conditional about dwelling in the land, if they obeyed, they were to experience one thing. If they disobeyed, they were to experience another. And this applies here.

The Jews were to be lenders if they obeyed, and borrowers if they didn't. Interesting, huh? So the Lord put that perspective. Lenders, you'll be lending to other countries, to other people, if you obey me, the Lord says. But if you disobey me, you'll be borrowing. That's the perspective here. Now, that's the law. We're not under law. I know Roger is shaking his head. He's glad he's not under law. He doesn't want to be a Jew. That's fine. You don't have to be.

Now, what's interesting, we proceed into Proverbs and there are some things there you look at and you say, well, that's definitely tied to the law. But there's some other things there you look at and you say, you know, that's a little bit different. This isn't quite just reiteration of the law. And so there's some pieces of wisdom that come forward there. Proverbs 3, there are 27 and 28.

Do not hold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it. Do not say to your neighbor, go and come back and tomorrow I will give it when you have it with you. Now that has lots of application, and it may in fact be something like your neighbor has a need, and so you're going to help them in need, so it may include that. This has also been applied to just simply paying back things that you owe, when it's time.

Proverbs 22.7, and it's interesting, this doesn't tell you what to do, but it offers a perspective, and notice what it says in 22.7. The rich rules over the poor and the borrower becomes the lender's slave. Now how is that true? What does that mean? The borrower becomes the lender's slave. What does that mean?

You're in hawk. This is the I owe, I owe, so I have to work, I go syndrome. Essentially what happens is the person is going to work no longer for daily provision but they essentially are in a position of servitude to the person that they owe the money to, even if they don't work for them directly. They're still in a position, okay, I worked all day, I got the money, here's the lender's part. So there's a position of servitude.

And notice this doesn't tell you don't do it. You notice that this is in Proverbs, which was written By Jews, it's still under the law, but all it's offering is there's a perspective here. And the perspective is true. It doesn't place you under a law. It doesn't tell you, don't do it.

This is in the same book where they were told to lend. But it gives us a perspective in this position of borrowing and lending. This is an important insight to have. A lot of the marketing that goes on these days talks like, here's some free money. Tom, Might be. Might be. I'm not aware of that. Could well be a sense of, hey, I've done you something. Could you do something for me?

Now, we come to the New Testament, and we've come to the New Testament, but something to keep in mind. The Gospels, someone has put it this way, the Gospels are the last Old Testament books. Okay? And what's meant by that is that when you're looking at the Gospels, a great portion of it is really presenting things that are in a Jewish perspective. Still looking, you know, Jesus, you know, spoke quite often. He still talked about the Sabbath. He still talked about things relating to the Temple. I mean, everything was still very much in a Jewish context.

So in terms of does it apply, we have to be careful that we don't jump to conclusions and say, oh, that fits me. Again, what if we said everything in scripture is written for us, but not everything is written to us? The example that I've given before is Judas went out and hung himself. Go thou and do likewise. We have to be careful about grabbing a scripture just because it's in the Bible and saying it applies. And this is an instance. Matthew 5 42 then is here's Jesus says give to him who asked you and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

That's exactly what the Jews were told, right? Okay and Similar message in Luke 6 and and well, this is this is in a Jewish context Consistent with the Jewish law, right? So we need to be careful about jumping to that. Some of the financial advice that I see distributed among Christians still includes a lack of perspective on, is this Jewish law you're spreading or is this for the Christian?

Now, here's what's real interesting. When we get beyond the Gospels into the New Testament epistles and have a look at that and say, okay, this isn't written just for you, this is written to you, right? When we look up the subject of debt, borrowing and lending, we find just about nothing in the whole New Testament. Isn't that interesting? Once we get past the Gospels, the whole issue of borrowing and lending and all that just about disappears. There is one minor exception to that that I've got in a footnote here at the bottom of page 31. And this is in Romans 13.

And some of the translations will say something like, oh, a debt to no one or something of that sort. But if you look at it in context and examine it that way, what it's clear about, it's not a prohibition against borrowing. But it is instead saying, stay current with your obligations. That's certainly what the situation was with the taxes that the prior verses were talking about. And then the subsequent verses talk about love. And so the situation there is not a total prohibition on borrowing. but simply a statement of stay current, you know, so that your payment of obligations doesn't somehow become to be an issue that stands out in front of your obligations and relationship as a Christian.

Okay, now, here's what does come out real clearly in the New Testament epistles. And we've got that quoted in the middle of page 31 there. What do you see here? This elder, this overseer must be free from what? Love of money. And then we get into 1 Timothy 6, and here's the one that gets frequently misquoted.

Love of money is the root of all evil. And all evil is the way it frequently gets told, right? But it's love of money is the root all sorts of evil. The key there is people's loving money is the root of basically a whole spectrum, a whole variety of different kinds of evil.

Here's another warning in Hebrews 13.5. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have.

And then in Philippians 4.11-13, again reference to contentment. So let's look at this, it's interesting, we don't have some prohibition, never borrow. We don't have some prohibition, never lend, in the New Testament. What we do have is instead of making rules about what you do on the outside of your body, what do we have? Instead it's a, let's talk about what do you love.

And interesting, this love of money, This actually, especially in this 1st Timothy 3 passage, and the others use a similar word, is an affectionate relationship with silver. That's what the word means. An affectionate relationship with silver. Now what's that talking about?

Why would there be this frequent... Don't get into an affectionate relationship with this stuff. What's the problem? It's vulnerable, isn't it? That's one thing. Money is vulnerable stuff. Yes, that's a big issue. Not only is money just not reliable, it takes your eyes off the Lord and that's the big thing. That's why the constant return to the issue for Christians.

And so fascinating, not a matter of giving you a bunch of rules on debt, but going to the heart of the matter. Where's your love? And that's really at the core of it. If I were to come up to you and just say, okay, do this and this and this with your debts and here's the rules and stuff like that, you could follow all those, couldn't you? Would that deal with the heart issues?

No. It's funny, as we look at this issue, the Lord is far more concerned about your relationship with Him than He is about all the ins and outs of the issue. And that's why I'm convinced as you look through the New Testament, it's not that this doesn't matter, but they're focusing on what really counts, and that's the relationship with the Lord. Tom? Yes, essentially that's one way of looking at it. It's an idol. An idol could be anything that calls the shots in my life above the Lord. Good point, Tom. Yeah, exactly that. How about this issue of contentment? Because notice that comes up a couple of times. What does contentedness mean? What's behind contentedness?

Trust and faith. Okay. Alright. Resting. Okay. Resting in the Lord. What's that? Satisfaction. Okay. Tom? Contempt for those things that are going to perish. Okay. You're not going to hold them up in high esteem. Okay. Yeah. Essentially, contentment starts from a perspective, doesn't it? It starts from a viewpoint that says this stuff here is not what ultimately is going to matter. It's not what ultimately is going to matter.

And you know, if you look at those kinds of issues, where is my affection? With what am I contented? With what am I satisfied? Because frankly the world doesn't want you to be. As I mentioned weeks before, all of advertising is designed to make you dissatisfied. Essentially what he's saying is, be satisfied. Be satisfied. That the gaining of stuff or the gaining of money is not going to answer the needs that we have. Aside and in spite of the myth that this world tries to shove down our throat.

Now, one of the things to look at here is, we kind of turn to the next page, page 32. I'm going to provide some guidelines here on borrowing and lending on the basis of counsel. Some of it is based specifically on scripture, some of it is based on what appears to be wise from a biblical perspective. Unless it's explicitly based on scripture, it is that and not law. So understand the difference. So anyway, let's go ahead and take a look at that.

Number one, never even consider borrowing if that borrowing appears to be motivated from the sinful nature. Or from the world's myths about money. What happens is you have a temporary spiritual dependence upon the flesh that sets you up for a long-term financial dependence. Because remember, that lending mode puts you in a servant's position. Okay? Lending puts you in a servant's position.

So, the distinction here, you can even look at it the flip side, is if you're going to make an obligation to make money, do it from the frame of beholding the Lord. If we're not careful, what will happen is the world will force us in to make a long-term financial commitment. And if it's done at a time when we're not trusting and depending upon the Lord, we get ourselves locked into something where later on we say, oh man, I wish I hadn't done that. And the bottom line is the world and the flesh and the devil will draw us into making those kinds of things that will entrap us and ensnare us. If you're looking at borrowing, first thing to do is look to the Lord. That's the message of this thing. Number two is basically the flip side of the same message.

Borrow only for valid needs or for sound business investment, but not for whim, fantasy, dreams, vanity, impressing people, and the fulfillment of worldly myths. It's just a matter of thinking, why am I borrowing this? Why am I borrowing this? Number three, there's borrow for what is substantial and of value, not for things that are either not sufficient collateral for the loan or for a rapidly depleting or depreciating asset.

What's behind that? If I borrow money, I am presuming upon a future income stream, right? Do I know for a fact that that income stream is there? No. What happens and where people frequently get themselves into trouble, it's not the only place but it's where they can get into trouble, is people borrow for things that have no essential value in themselves. And so what will take place is that something happens to the income stream and they've got nothing to back it up in terms of what's borrowed. You borrow for a vacation or you borrow for something that's just gone, now you've got the obligation but no asset to back it up. So this says to borrow based on an asset, if you must borrow, borrow with something substantial and collateral behind it.

The other thing to think about is the possibility of and the manner in which the value of that collateral could decline. There are lots of people who have gone out and borrowed and then had the value that they borrowed against just fall out from underneath them.

Being upside down in cars these days is real common. Upside down meaning you owe more than the car is worth. And if you get a no down loan and drive it off the lot, you just got yourself upside down. Because as soon as you drive the car off the lot, the value has gone down. You instantly, as soon as you drive it off the lot, owe more than the car is worth. You're upside down. That's kind of going against this general principle.

Do not allow borrowing to be a replacement for good planning or having the perspective that God is sovereign and all money is really His. You see that? What can happen is Scripture does talk about planning. That is the example here of 2 Corinthians 12, 14, James 4, 13-16. There is a sense of planning, planning with recognition that God is sovereign, but what can happen If we're not careful, in not planning, we find ourselves forced to borrow because we didn't plan. Planning is biblical. But if we set aside the planning, then we'll find ourselves in a situation where debt seems the only option.

And if you think about it, there's lots of things that are things to be saved up for, whether it's short term. An example we gave last week is you know your tires are going to wear out. You can have a few thousand miles either way as to how long those things are going to last, but you know they're going to wear out, so you need to be setting aside for that. That's the value of a budget. You have other things that are longer term. If you're going to save for the kids' college or something, that may take years. Or maybe you say, I'm saving for the time I'm no longer able to work, and so that's maybe decades out.

But the point being, if we don't plan, if we don't anticipate for things that we reasonably could have seen were going to come upon us, then we will be forced to borrow. This says, plan. Don't find yourself in a position where, well, I guess I gotta borrow. So, don't get there. Have a preference for keeping the loan short and the interest rate as low as possible, since borrowing is a presumption upon future income.

That is why the above counsel is given why unnecessarily long and or expensive loans aren't desirable. If you go out really far, what are some of the negative consequences of having a really long loan? The interest rate is higher. If you go out for a mortgage and one is 15 years and the other is 30, almost without exception, you're going to find a 30 year loan higher interest.

Okay, good. And what else? We've been through a period of time where real estate values, for example, have tended to go up, but they're not guaranteed to go up, and there have been times where they've gone down. The longer a period of time you're talking about, the greater a risk that it could take a dip, and you could end up being upside down on it. It's a presumption upon a future income stream and the longer period of time you're talking about, the greater risk that there's going to be an interruption in your ability to keep that income stream going, right? Okay, what else? There's another reason. Phil. Yes, excellent point.

This is rough rule of thumb kind of numbers. Calculate out, you might find slightly different. Rough rule of thumb, 30-year loan for every thousand dollars you borrow, $2,000 in interest, okay? So you're going to pay three times the amount you borrow in interest in principle in order to get it all paid off. Fifteen-year loan on the same amount, it's only 60%. Instead of twice what you borrowed, it's only 60% of what you borrowed as paid in interest. See the difference? You're looking at three times plus the interest by doubling the loan.

The banker loves it. Okay? Alright. So short ones are preferable from that standpoint. Interest rate as low as possible is fairly obvious and it goes back to the point that Margaret made. The longer you go out, the more likely the interest rate is to be higher. Okay.

Six, be careful about loans that have tricky conditions, complicated factors of unusual circumstances in their origination, repayment conditions, unscrupulous lenders, etc. Why is that? Loans have elements of risk already. We just talked about some of them. You don't know, am I going to have that income stream? What's the value of the asset?

If you're not sure what you're signing, be careful. Some of these risks have been curtailed by regulations, but I wouldn't count on it as an absolute guarantee. I've seen people get themselves snarled up in all kinds of messes. Be careful about what you're signing up for. A lot of them now, like they used to have ones where there's a pre-payment penalty. You try to pay it off early and you can't. People get into situations. One that can be difficult is, for example, co-signing. That can get pretty snarled up. So that's one, you need to be careful about getting into something that gets, the what-ifs need to be thought out. If you don't know what you're signing, don't sign it.

Okay? Because you need to know that. Okay. And then the last one. Don't take on a loan that you don't intend to repay or that you can reasonably foresee might be unable to pay. Remembering all the above caveats and cautions have come about because loans have been shown to have a number of risks. Get help in understanding anything you don't understand. Okay? Get help in it. Okay. Now, one of the reasons why I preface this with, you know, some of these things have direct scriptural backing and some of them are more in the area of common sense or advice.

But in giving these, I want to be cautioning against falling into a what would Jesus do mentality. We're not in a position of laying out here, okay, if I do this stuff, this is the Christian way to do my finances and I'll just go on with life and God will be happy. Remember, the very thing we started off with is that in our financial life, the Lord desires that that spring from His life in us and nothing less. And so if we drop into a what would Jesus do mentality, it can end up being just the flesh trying to make God happy and that isn't going to happen.

So big distinction here. Nancy and I, as I shared before, have for about the past 13 years done financial counseling. And we did that even in the context of our own digging ourselves out from a debt situation. Our mortgage was a high percentage of the value of the house where we had about $20,000 in consumer credit. And over a period of about 18 months, the consumer credit all paid off and then made rapid progress on the mortgage.

The next steps are suggestions for getting out from underneath a situation. Now, either one, you could be in a spot where digging out from underneath some debts is what you see yourself needing to do. You may be encountering Christians either in the near future or farther down the road that are in need of some advice on how do I do this? How do I get out of this thing?

And one thing I'll tell them is the sooner you start the better. Nancy and I have been in situations where we are there counseling while the creditors are calling. And that's real tough. Real tough. So the sooner you begin to deal with things the better. If you're in that spot or if you're in a position of counseling somebody who's in that spot, here's the sequence that we recommend.

First balance the income and the outgo. If that isn't settled, you have an ongoing problem because if your outgo is bigger than your income, you're going to just keep building the problem. So that's point number one. Nancy and I in the past have counseled people using a budget. Again, not because the budget is somehow law, but it's a useful tool. An important distinction there. Now, it does matter if a person is even a dollar a day out of whack on that. And that may seem like a kid in me. But here's why I come upon that example.

If you just pay a credit card minimum, you see that little number, minimum payment, some little tiny percentage of the total amount owed. Let's say you had a thousand dollars. If you pay the credit card minimum for the typical credit card company, it's going to take you eight years to pay off the balance. In the process of doing so, you're going to, in eight years, pay off twice that amount that you borrowed in interest.

So it can be a substantial difference. I also brought up the point in the budgeting situation that if you're a dollar a day in debt, and just put the dollar on a credit card, that after 30 years you'll be several hundred thousand dollars in debt. Because of the build-up of interest. So being a little out of balance matters a lot.

The next thing, list all the debts with the name of the creditor, the amount, monthly minimum, and the interest rate. Put a priority number by each debt. First listing those that are small. The idea is that you want to be able to get rid of those. And I just pick this as a rule of thumb kind of thing. Say $500. And then rank everything else by the highest interest rate to the lowest. With any income available to pay debts over the minimums, pay off the debts by priority number. First wanting to get rid of the little stuff. Just get it out of your hair.

Because you'll be able to get that amount turned up soon to the ones that are highest interest. Just getting things simplified is better, especially if a person finds themselves real buried with debt. By the way, I should note, if you've got creditors calling, you may need to yank your priorities around a little bit. Because obviously, whoever's screaming, there's a payment now.

The next one, only consider a consolidation loan if you have done 1 through 3 first. Otherwise, what's going to happen? Yeah, you're going to keep going. It happens time and time again. A person gets a consolidation loan. Now their credit cards are empty. I don't want empty credit cards. I want full credit cards. That's just trouble waiting to happen. Make sure you've done the first things first.

Only then does a consolidation loan make any sense. Only then does it make any sense. Then, you only want to take a consolidation loan if it offers lower interest. If you've got some other smaller loans and they have an even lower rate of interest, then why go for a higher rate of interest?

Then, if creditors are calling, by all means respond. We've gotten in a position where we're talking to a lot of people, Nancy and I have, and it's where the creditor calls and you don't respond. He sends letters and you don't respond. That's where people get into deep trouble. If they're calling, talk to them. Sit them to bed. Tell them what you're doing. Never run or hide. Always keep them current. Here's what I'm doing. Here's what I'm doing next. Keep them posted on what's going on.

The other thing is, you've seen the ads on the TV, you've seen pop-up ads if you have a computer. Consolidation loans, there's different kinds of debt outfits. Some of them will say we're non-profit, which doesn't mean a thing anyway. The thing to think about is most of those, other than the consolidation loan, most of those outfits are doing something that you could probably do yourself, but they want a fee for it. That's the bottom line.

Most of that stuff, especially if you're not in a situation where you're in an emergency state, most of that stuff you could do yourself anyway. And by taking advantage of their services, what happens is you've got all the obligations that you already had plus them. So better off to ignore those guys, click on their little pop-up and get rid of it. and deal with it yourself.

You can call up these creditors and say, hey, I'm in the spot now and I need to pay you off, but I need to have some consideration on the interest rate. And many of them will cooperate with that. You tell them what your spot is, or I'm going to transfer it somewhere else. Will they give me a lower interest rate? So if you don't, then I'll go elsewhere. and a lot of them will cooperate with you on that. They would far rather see you stay with them, they would far rather see you continue on than to be in, like a lot of people, get in a position of bankruptcy or a consolidation loan that pulls it away from them. Now, one of the key things, and you see at the end of verse 6, a real important principle in this whole matter of dealing with our debts, Paul mentions several places, and this is only some of them. I've only listed a few.

There are numerous places in the New Testament epistles where there is concern expressed over what will the unbelievers think of the believers. And these passages show that up. And as you're dealing with these debt issues, that's something to keep in mind. Sometimes Christians, you know, they're kind of in a panic mode and really they just all of a sudden they start getting, you know, real abrasive or, you know, unreasonable. And I think that's something to keep in our whole perspective here in terms of how we deal with people because a great many of the people that we may owe money to may be unbelievers.

And the consideration is, what is what I am doing telling them about the life of Jesus Christ? Again, this isn't a what would Jesus do kind of thing, but it comes back to do they see the life of Christ in me as I'm resolving my debts, or do they see the flesh? That's the question that Paul's asking. He says, we want to live as believers by the life of Christ, not the flesh's best efforts, but we want to live as believers such that the world will have nothing evil to say against us.

And even as we deal with our debts, that should be kept in mind too. As we look at this here, everything I've said above, none of it is designed to replace or displace one's personal relationship with the Lord. There is no sidestepping that as a critical key issue. And that's one reason I'm convinced the New Testament doesn't just have all sorts of rules and things like that about how you deal with debt and borrowing and lending and all those issues. I've spelled out a lot of stuff, asked you a few questions. Have you got any questions? Yeah? You're talking about giving?

Okay, we addressed that a couple of weeks ago, and so I'd suggest you get a hold of the material, but let me reiterate what I said, and that is that the 10% number was given to the Jews Under the law, as a matter of fact, one of the passages in Deuteronomy where it talks about giving 10%, the previous passage says don't eat pork and shellfish and crab meat and things like that.

So people tend to pick one part of the law and leave another. So you'll have somebody and it's great you gave 10%, let's go out for some pork. People are not consistent in what they're doing. Scripture does not give a righteous percentage in terms of what a person should give. Giving needs to come out of one's personal relationship with the Lord. That's the bottom line. And as you look at, like, 2 Corinthians 9, 7 would be a very good example. A person might give 10% judging. It's not biblical.

You can look in the appendix that you've got there. Yes, the appendix that you've got there. Good point. The appendix that I hand out deals with the biblical giving issue. Thanks. I appreciate the reminder. It's on page 2. Okay. They're all page 2. I was wondering if you did that. That's for easy reference. You can always find page 2. Tim, I'm glad you asked that question because one thing that does happen is we have people that show up here or miss a week or something, and it's just a real critical point.

And notice here this morning, I tried to steer away from basing things on the Old Testament law given explicitly to the Jews. They had 613 rules. 365 of them were things they were not supposed to do. And giving 10% is a part of just the 613 laws. And we're not under the law. The New Testament makes that clear. Other questions? I can't believe it's been that thorough. When you talked about the Jews loaning to one another, They didn't do it very well. As a matter of fact, this is something that frequently gets passed on.

If you look at the time that they were sent in exile, they were sent in exile for every time that they missed the year of Jubilees and you add them all up. That's the number of years that they spent in exile. They had missed a number of years. The quick answer is they didn't do very well. In fact, they did so poorly that God said, well, you're getting shipped off. When you say they missed it, do you mean they didn't allow people to be relieved of their debt? They did not observe it.

And that means beyond just the debts. There were other things having to do with, for example, at the end of 1949, They had the year of jubilees and it dealt one thing with debts. It also had to do with leaving the land fallow. They had to just not do anything with the land. They had to save things up and they had to go ahead and work at the seventh year. So there was that. At the end of 49 years, if you do a limitation basically on a lease where it went to the original owner, there's a lot of things to set stability in their economy. And they just sat there and lied.

And the Lord said, well, okay, for every year you've not done that, you're going to go back to Babylon. And so that's where that came from. They did not do well, in answer to Nancy's question. They did not do well, and scripture records they didn't do well, and they paid for it. That's Judaism, though. It's important for us to make the distinction. We're not called to do that explicitly other than to learn from it, look carefully, and determine what's going on there.

Does that have any bearing, which it seems like it does, on the fact that we've always been told to keep your financial records for seven years. That's what I've always been told, keep records for seven years and then after that you can incorporate records and all that. Yeah, there's different rules of thumb for different documents and a lot of that, you know, it focuses not just on a seven year principle, but you know, for example, you got three years before statute of limitations runs out with a personal filing with the IRS, you know, that kind of thing. So you got different numbers. But seven years is one of the rules we'll talk about in the corporate realm.

It may be. It may be. Yeah, it could be. real interesting. One thing that is fascinating is our word bankrupt comes from a broken bench. What the Romans would do is they would go in and take somebody who couldn't keep current on their debts, they'd take everything and sell it off and take whatever they had and distribute it among the creditors and they'd go into their work benches and smash the work benches as a kind of a statement and a warning to these people and that's where we get our word bankrupt. It means broken bench.

Any other questions? Oh, by the way, I'm only asking a question in a public forum. I, you know, if you want to ask personally, I'd welcome the question. So anything else? Yeah. Dave, what Nancy was talking about, it sounds like the Jewish thing. They're sort of socialistic. Well, it's real interesting. It just says lend freely. It is very open-handed.

We talked a little while ago about the temple tax that they were to pay, which was basically two days wages. All Jews were in it, but it was entirely voluntary. But there wasn't any obligation, there was an exemption for those who either lived off of contributions or lived off of alms, you know, like the people you see described in scriptures, you know, begging, you know, like the beggar that was lame near the temple. And one of the reasons for begging near the temple was these are serious Jews and therefore they'll take the law seriously, which tells them to give to the poor.

But, yeah, it wasn't socialistic in the sense of enforcement. Because there wasn't some, you know, you didn't give to the poor and therefore we're going to stone you. But over time the Lord said, hey, you're not taking things seriously. And so he actually did, you know, bring the punishment that was based on their not keeping the year of Jubilees.

So, yeah. Okay, let's pray. Lord, as we look to this matter of debts, I'm sure each of us has different histories in this matter, different issues that we're facing right now. And we come to you, Lord, with this, even after looking at different principles, there are certain things that are just very clear. that is to be based on your life and not simply on external rules. And so we just pray that as we deal with these issues in our lives, whether it's an existing debt or considering one that is to come, we would just ask that our hearts would be drawn to look to you in these things and to consider your wisdom. We just pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.