poor – Daily PBJ

Read Deuteronomy 15, Jeremiah 7, 1 Corinthians 11.

This devotional is about 1 Corinthians 11.

In the early days of the church, God’s people observed the Lord’s Supper as part of a larger common meal. In their society, Sunday was a work day, so the church’s worship meeting typically happened in the evening after the work day was over. The meal and Lord’s Supper were elements of the church’s weekly gathering.

The Corinthians, however, were not thoughtful in how they observed the Lord’s Supper. For many of them, it was a party that centered on their own private feasting rather than a family activity for all the people of God. They ate when they wanted and as much as they wanted to eat without regard for anyone else. You can see this in verse 21 which refers to “your own private suppers” and tells us that “one person remains hungry and another gets drunk.”

There were members of the Corinthian church who were slaves (see 1 Cor 7:21). As slaves, they had to finish their work and prepare meals for their masters as well as clean up after those meals before they could come to the church’s meeting. When they arrived, the wealthier members of the Corinthian church had already eaten everything, so these Christian slaves not only missed dinner but they missed the church family’s observance of the Lord’s Supper. That was abusive to the poorer members of the Corinthian church as we see in verse 22b which says, “Or do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing?”

Paul’s instructions in this chapter are designed to get the Corinthians to think reverently about the Lord’s Supper and to warn them to stop abusing others through their selfish indulgence. The proper way to observe the Lord’s Supper is that “you should all eat together” (v. 33). This ordnance gives every church an opportunity to both remember Jesus and to share something in common with everyone else in a church’s family.

Although we do not observe the Lord’s Supper in the same way that the Corinthians did, we still should examine ourselves (vv. 28-29) before we come to the Lord’s table. Part of this examination should be considering how we’ve treated other people in God’s family who are part of our church’s fellowship. Have we abused or humiliated, even unintentionally, others within our local church body? Have we tried to be thoughtful in how we’ve treated each other? Is there tension or unconfessed sin between you and another brother or sister in Christ?

The Lord’s Supper gives us a regular opportunity to check our spiritual health and to address relationship problems among us. Use the Lord’s Supper, then, to address problems and straighten out your walk with God.

Read Leviticus 19 and Isaiah 15 today.

This devotional is about Leviticus 19.

Leviticus 19 contains a large number of commands on various topics. The passage begins with a call for God’s people to emulate his character: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”’” Every command in this chapter flows from the holiness of God. If you want to know God, you must also desire to become holy. This chapter gives some specific ways in which holiness works out in the life of a believer.

Being “holy” simply means “set apart.” God is set apart from humanity in two ways: First, he is Creator and we are the created. There is a distinction between the Creator and creature that we can never cross. As Creator, God has certain qualities that we can’t understand, much less emulate. These are things like knowing all things, having all power, being everywhere present in the fullness of his being, and others. These are qualities that only God can have; they are one way in which God holy.

Usually, though, when we talk about God’s holiness, we are talking about his moral perfection. God is set apart from people in the sense that he is perfect morally. He has no sinful desires or actions. God did create us to emulate this quality. Adam and Eve began with a perfect moral nature; if they had refused the temptation offered to them in the garden, humanity would have existed in moral holiness just as God did. Since we chose to sin, however, we are unholy.

In Christ believers are declared to be holy and God’s Holy Spirit is working us over morally so that we become more holy like Jesus was, but it is an ongoing process that does not reach completion until we see Christ.

When God commanded Israel to be holy (v. 2), he was commanding them to set themselves apart from the nations around them. That required faith that living according to God’s commands would be better than living according to the ways that were common and their natural moral instincts. Many of the commands here in Leviticus 19 are easily understood as categories of holiness—either moral holiness, such as “no idols” in verse 4, or cultural holiness, such as “do not mate two different kinds of animals” in verse 19.

But what do you make of the command, “do not reap to the very edges of your field… leave them for the poor and the foreigner”? In what way does this command flow from the holiness of God?

The answer is this: God affirmed the righteousness of private property rights in verse 11a where he said, “Do not steal.” That command tells us people have a right to private ownership and that it is morally wrong to take, either by force or by deception, any property that justly belongs to someone else.

Our capitalist system is built on private property rights. Not only do you have the right to own productive assets (land, flocks, woodworking tools, trucks, whatever), you have the right to use those assets in ways that are productive. You also have the right to keep the products of that production and sell those products for a profit. That’s why people are allowed to own land, farm land, harvest, and sell what they have planted.

However, God wanted his people to show generosity to the poor. Unlike other nations where the poor had to beg, borrow, or steal to live, God affirmed the right of his people to private property and to the cultivation of wealth but he also wanted them to be different from the nations around them by generously providing for the poor. Leaving food in the fields for poor people to reap on their own without fear of being killed or prosecuted for trespassing showed love and compassion for the poor. Instead of selfishly gathering every bit of profit, God commanded his people to be productive but also to provide a means for those who were poor to live.

That kind of love for one’s poor neighbor would set apart God’s people from the nations around them. It should also mark us, his people by faith, today. We should be generous to the poor—regardless of why they are poor–because we want to live a holy life that emulates God.

That doesn’t mean that we have to support every (or any) government program. Neither this passage nor any other passage in the New Testament puts the responsibility to provide for the poor on the government. But this passage does mean that we should do what we can personally to help anyone within our reach to meet their daily needs for survival. That goes against our human instincts to watch out for ourselves alone. By being counter to our instincts, caring for the poor is an expression of holiness because it sets us apart from people who despise the poor and even take advantage of them.

Have you given anything to help those in need lately? Being generous to the needy is part of the holiness of God that God wants to develop in your life.