Failed Economic Policy

The number one charge leveled against the Hebrews by the Prophets of God before they were carried off into captivity was that they had practiced a failed economic policy.

We’ve been looking at the 1000 year blank most Christians draw from Solomon to Matthew. The fuzzy areas of the Bible where, by negligence or by insufficient explanation, our sense of the overall story of the scriptures is lost. We’ve discovered so far that the Bible’s hope of Messiah comes precisely from these scriptures – for when the people were carried off into exile in Babylon, God promised rescue through His “Anointed One” (Heb: Messiah) in terms like “the Forgiveness of Sins,” “the Salvation of God,” “the Resurrection of the Dead,” “the New Life of the Kingdom of God” (for those who understand: “ha’olam haba”).

When the prophets summarize the reasons for the impending exile, the number one reason they cite is that Israel has continually “defrauded laborers of their wages, oppressed the widows and the fatherless, and deprived foreigners of justice” (Malachi 3:5).

That word “oppressed” is a Hebrew word – “a shaak” and it literally means to defraud, extort, exploit, to obtain through deceitful practices. When it is used in the Bible it consistently refers to robbing people of food and money.

Again and again, the charge is leveled – you have failed to do justice, you have failed to be honorable in your business dealings, you have failed to extend grace to the oppressed.

Isaiah 1:17 Isaiah 1:21
Isaiah 5:7 Isaiah 5:23
Isaiah 10:2 Isaiah 29:21
Isaiah 59:4 Isaiah 59:8
Isaiah 59:11 Jeremiah 21:12
Lamentations 3:36 Ezekiel 22:29
Hosea 12:6 Amos 2:7
Amos 5:7 Amos 5:12
Amos 5:15 Amos 6:12
Micah 3:1 Micah 3:9
Habakkuk 1:4 Zechariah 7:9
Malachi 3:5

Do you think God finds this important?

And the people God is standing up for – the widows, the orphans, the poor, the oppressed, the foreigners – God isn’t worried only about the financial condition of His people. You don’t have to be a Jew to deserve God’s grace.

You don’t have to believe in Jesus to deserve God’s grace.

It’s not hard to find points of intersect here. The single largest accusation leveled against the Hebrew people was that they failed to promote justice and grace to all of God’s world.

I don’t care what you think about homosexuality – extend God’s grace, promote God’s justice to those who are in need. I don’t care if you think welfare is a good or bad idea – extend God’s grace to those who need it most. I don’t care if you have a mistrust of Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Atheists – God’s grace isn’t merely for you.

Rob Bell, a pastor in Grand Rapids Michigan, sharpens this point a bit.

“Do you want to understand God’s love? Do you want to understand God’s grace? Do you want to understand, truly understand, what it means for God to have enveloped you in His Grace, Peace, Forgiveness, Hope and Light? Orient yourself around the Strange, the Different, the Unintelligible, the Co-worker, the Embarrassing-Relative, the Person-Who-Absolutely-Drives-You-Crazy: circle around them and in your frustration and pain of trying to serve and love them well – you will be face to face with what it means for God to have embraced and loved you in all your strangeness, difference, and unintelligibility.”

May God find us crying out, like slaves in a foreign land, for renewal, restoration and forgiveness – may we seek the arrival of the Mad Prophet’s Hope.

~ by sholander on October 22, 2008.