The Poor You Will Always Have Among You

Scarcity is not just an economics term, it is a daily pressure that shapes housing, wages, debt, and the quiet fear of not having enough. We start with a simple story about buying a home after the 2008 collapse and watching the same neighborhood become nearly impossible for new buyers. That shift opens the door to Deuteronomy 15, where God speaks with surprising realism: “there will never cease to be poor in the land.” Poverty is not praised, but it is treated as inevitable in a fallen world, which means the real question is not how to end it forever, but how God’s people respond when a brother or sister falls behind.

We walk through three big movements: the persistence of poverty, our response to poverty, and restoring the broken. Along the way, we challenge two popular assumptions that creep into Christian talk about money: that the church is responsible to fix poverty as a global problem, and that poverty can be permanently fixed through enough funding. Scripture pulls us toward a more grounded, more local, and more actionable approach, where the church is best equipped to help the people it actually knows. The focus becomes personal, cheerful, open-handed lending, including the willingness to bear risk, and the wisdom to lend in ways that provide productive assets rather than quick band-aids.

The episode also tackles the purpose behind difficult Old Testament laws about debt servitude, showing how mercy is designed to move someone toward independence and dignity, not lifelong dependence. We connect that to modern poverty alleviation through job creation, entrepreneurship, and giving people real opportunities to gain skills and capital. We close by tying it all to the gospel: Jesus does not only relieve us for a moment, he pays the cost to restore us fully. If this encouraged or challenged you, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review. What is one practical need you see that you could help meet this week?

Transcript

Scripture Reading And Context

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This morning our reading comes from the book of Deuteronomy, chapter fifteen, verses seven through eighteen, beginning in verse seven, the Word of God reads this way If among you one of your brothers should become poor in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart, and you say, The seventh year, the year of release, is near, and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, you shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor in your land. If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your wine press. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore I command you this day. But if he says to you, I will not go out from you because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, then you shall take an awl and put it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And to your female slave you shall do the same. It shall not seem hard to you when you let him go free from you, for at half the cost of a hired worker he has served you six years. So the Lord your God will bless you in all that you do. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. May God bless this reading and preaching of his word. Julie and I bought our house in 2012. It's uh just a few blocks from here. And at that time, the economy was still, or at least the housing market was still recovering from the 2008 housing collapse. Um had just begun to attract investors. Washington Park was being uh was under construction, but it was not yet finished. That was a huge tipping point tipping point for the neighborhood. So it had begun to attract investors, but it was not yet really a desirable neighborhood. And our house is a wonderful house. I love our house. Um, but it had been sitting on the market when we bought it for about six months. The price had slowly been dropping until we scooped it up for about$120,000. That was in uh that was in 2012. It's very hard to imagine today. Today you could not get um uh a burned out shell in of a house in our neighborhood for less than a quarter of a million dollars, and it's more difficult than ever now for new home buyers to enter the market. What happened? What happened in those 15 years or so since since we bought? Well, this can be explained by the most basic economic principle there is, and it's the principle of scarcity. Back in 2012, there were many houses like ours sitting on the market. There were plenty of them. Uh they they were going for a dime a dozen, and there were relatively fewer buyers, and so the prices were low. But today, especially in our neighborhood, there's a scarcity of homes, and there's many who are looking to buy, but there are uh very few good options on the market. What is on the market is is usually like the the rotten apples that that are have been picked over. And so those few options that exist are much more expensive. What is scarcity? Well, put in terms of the housing market, scarcity is when the demand for homes is greater than the existing supply. The desire, everyone, everyone's desire put together amounts to much more than what actually exists. And when we have that, that's a situation of scarcity. There's simply not enough to go around. There are not enough homes to meet everyone's desire. Without economists have pointed this out, without the underlying reality of scarcity, there would be no economics. There would be no need for economics. Because if we lived in a world of abundance where there's more than enough for everyone and you have an infinite budget, there would be no need to budget carefully. There would be no need to make sacrifices or to be efficient with our resources. The only reason that economics exists is because of scarcity. The passage that we read from Deuteronomy today teaches us all about scarcity, and it reminds us that we do not live in a world of perpetual abundance, but we live in a fallen world of various scarcities. And because of this, we will always have to deal with poverty. Both this passage and Jesus in the Gospels teach us that the poor you will always have among you. We read that here, and Jesus uh quoted that as well, and we'll touch on that later in the sermon. But the point is that scarcity and poverty are features of a world that is tarnished by sin. They're features of the fallen world. Uh, and there's three things that we learn from our passage this morning. We learn about the persistence of poverty, we learn about our response to poverty, and then finally we learn about restoring the broken. So the persistence of poverty of poverty, our response to poverty, and restoring the broken. First, the persistence of poverty. Scarcity is a feature of the fallen world. As long as there is sin, there will be poverty. As long as there is sin, there will be poverty. So what we're looking at in Deuteronomy 15 is an example of biblical case law, which means that um it's not like the Ten Commandments, which just give us these general principles like do not murder, but it's case law, it's giving us uh information about what to do in specific cases or specific situations. Verse 7 says, if among you one of your brothers should become poor. So it's the case of a brother falling into poverty. Verse 12, if your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, so someone falling into debt slavery, another two cases. So one is a brother falls into poverty, and then the second is a brother becomes so desperate that he must sell himself as a bond servant or as a slave. So th that those are the cases. How might those things have happened in ancient Israel? Much the same way that they would happen today. A brother could fall into poverty through many, many different things, through mismanagement, uh, through laziness. We read about that in Proverbs that the sluggard he does not apply himself to work, and so he ends up in poverty through drought and famine, no fault of your own, but because of that you end up in a situation of poverty, poverty, many other ways. Um the Bible is not saying that debt slavery is good or that poverty is good. It is recognizing that debt slavery and poverty are inevitable in a fallen world. These things are going to happen, and it's showing us then how to respond to these things. Verse 11, the Lord says, For there will never cease to be poor in your land. It's a persistent reality. There will never cease to be poor in the land. And Jesus said the same thing. As he was approaching Jerusalem, he was invited to a dinner party, and there he was met by a woman who anointed him with a very expensive oil, and she broke the alabaster flask and anointed him with that. You remember that story. Some who saw this grumbled and they said, What a waste, because it was such a valuable product. What a waste. Couldn't this have been sold and the money given to the poor? And Jesus said to them in John 12, 8, he said, Leave the woman alone, for the poor you always have with you. You can do good for them whenever you want, but you will not always have me. This is the same idea that poverty will always be a reality that we deal with. Altogether, this is teaching us that poverty is a fallen world reality. And until Jesus returns, there will always be poverty. Whether it is caused by our own mismanagement or by oppression or by scarcity brought on by drought and famine or other other things outside of our control, the poor you will always have among you. This is a very, very basic principle, but it's not very widely understood, even by Christians. And let me give you an example of what I mean. Uh, churches with large budgets, so not ours, but other churches with large with large budgets are easy to criticize. We fly under the radar. Nobody expects us to do anything uh big with our money. But churches with large with large budgets are easy to criticize. And whenever a church builds a new building or makes a big capital investment or invests in a new sound system or uh anything like that, there's no shortage of people who say the same thing that Judas said in John 12. Couldn't this money have been given to the poor instead of being spent on this big building or this sound system or the smoke machines that we just installed? If every church gave X amount of their budget away, then we could end homelessness forever. And there's you know all of these lofty ideas about that. I'm sure you've heard something like this. There's two assumptions there when people are talking like that. One assumption is that it is the church's responsibility to fix poverty. That's the first assumption. And the second assumption is that poverty can be fixed. But the Bible teaches that we will always have the poor among us, which means that even if, even if tomorrow every church gave away half of its bank balance, uh even if the government taxed the top 1% and redistributed wealth, even if reparations were paid out, even if every individual received a$100,000 check from the IRS this tax season as a bonus stimulus, all of that together would do nothing to end poverty. Sure, it might provide some short-term relief for a season, but within five or ten years, scarcity will happen, mismanagement will happen, oppression will happen, eventually we will find ourselves back at square one. The poor you will always have among you, is what the scriptures say. So this passage is not about how to end poverty. The Bible recognizes that we cannot end poverty. This passage is about how to help the poor brother or the poor sister who is among you. And as a church, this is where our focus should be. As a church, how can we help those in our midst? How can we help the brothers and the sisters that we know who are part of our community, the individuals and families that we know to climb out of poverty, to become productive and prosperous, uh, to stand on their own, to become independent. That's that's the focus of this passage. The people that any any church is the most equipped to help are the poor brothers and sisters in their midst. The church in Jerusalem, examp, for example, was full of both rich and poor. But we read in Acts 4, 34, it says, there was not a needy person among them. And the reason is because they were generous with one another and they were distributing goods to one another and uh selling property and giving it to the apostles so that they might distribute to the needs that were there. Scarcity and poverty are fallen world realities that cannot be fixed. Uh, until Jesus comes back, people are going to end up in poverty because it's a reality of the fallen world. But churches are best equipped to help the poor among them, and that's where our focus needs to be. So, what can we do to help? And that's what the next two points are devoted to. So, first, that this, and this is point two, our response to poverty. We can help the poor in our midst by personal, cheerful, and open-handed lending. Um I'll go through each one of those as we explain this. So, first, personal. It's important to note that this command is not given to all nations in general. Uh, it's given to a special nation, it's given to a holy nation, the nation of Israel, the covenant people of God in the Old Testament time. So the great the greatest application of this command today, I'm not saying that it has no application to modern nations, but the first application is not to the city of Cincinnati or to the United States of America or to any modern nation state, but it is to the covenant people of God today, what today the scriptures call a holy nation, which is the church. But it's also important to note that this command is given to individuals. If a brother falls into poverty in your midst, you who are able should personally take action. That's that's what Deuteronomy is saying. We should all take personal responsibility to help people in the church who have needs. It should be something personal. And it should also be cheerful. We should take action willingly and cheerfully. Verse 10 says, You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, as the Apostle Paul also teaches that God loves a cheerful giver, one who gives not under compulsion, but out of love and cheerfully. And we must also be willing to uh to bear risk in order to help the poor in our midst. Verse 9 talks about the year of release. In God's law that we read in Deuteronomy and in other parts of the Pentateuch, every seven years all debts were to be automatically released, even if they had not been repaid. So in the seventh year, if anybody owed anyone else money in Israel, the debt was released even if it had not been paid. And this passage here warns the lender not to begrudge lending in the fifth or the sixth year, seeing that the year of release is just around the corner, we must be generous and lend even if we risk never seeing those resources again. Moneylenders uh have long charged interest on loans. And there are parts of the Bible that forbid the charging of interest to a uh to a brother or sister, but the purpose of interest is to compensate for risk. Uh when someone loans out money, there's a risk that the loan will not be repaid, and so they must charge interest in order to compensate for that risk. But the Bible forbids lending with interest to fellow brothers and sisters, and in the context of the church family, the lender must be willing to bear the risk. So whoever it is that is lending to help out, we must be willing to bear the risk. And then uh it's lending, verse 8 says, but you shall open your hands to him and lend to him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be. In an agrarian economy, this would often mean lending productive assets and not just lending money. A brother might become poor because of a poor yield of crops. So he plants, the yield is not good, and he ends up in a situation where he does not have enough to both feed his family and to plant for the coming season. So this could mean starvation. So a brother who had a good season might lend a productive asset like grain, which can be planted, or like grapes, which can be turned into wine, or like wool, which can be woven into clothing. And that kind of lending is not just pouring money at something, it's not just slapping a band-aid on a wound, but it's giving access to a productive asset that would allow the person to work and to get back on their feet. So our first response to poverty when we encounter it in our midst should be personal, cheerful, and open-handed lending. Now, what might that look like? These are, I'm just giving you sort of big picture principles, but I'll I'll give you uh an illustration that came to my mind. In a blue-collar church like ours, where we have we've got a number of tradespeople, we have a number of business owners, uh, that could look like having a uh a church tool co-op. Uh one of the biggest barriers to starting your own business is the capital required. I've probably had to nearly invest upwards of$20,000 in tools just so that I can make money and provide for my family. The principle is true that it takes money to make money, but this is precisely what a poor brother or sister does not have. But if a church had a tool co-op, which was funded by generous gifts and donations, uh then a poor brother or sister could access those tools and they could be productive and they could work until they could afford their own. They could do something with them. It's a productive asset. A church community as a whole can manage such a project in the church carries the risk, but that can also be practiced by individuals and by you and me. Um, renting an apartment at a rate that someone can afford if you own property. Loaning an extra vehicle if you have a third vehicle that you're not using, somebody needs a car, you bear the risk in loaning it to them, but that's what we're called to do, to bear the risk, to be generous, not to begrudge. Loaning money that is needed in order for a person to become productive. So loaning money so that they can get some of the things that they need in order to work and to be productive. In all of these cases, you bear the risk. Uh you make less than you otherwise might have made on that apartment. Your car gets more wear and tear, and they might they might uh you know crash it or or or scrape it. You bear that risk. You might never see that money again that you're lending out. Either way, it is to this that we have been called in order to help one another, not to shut our hearts, but to open them to the poor brother or sister in our midst. The poor will always be among you. Something might be wrong if a church is so insulated from the poor that there are no needs among them. But that's not our problem here, thankfully. In our church, we have a lot of people who are hustling and struggling, and some who are struggling a little bit better than others. And there may be years when you find yourself thriving and having an abundance, and there may be years when you need some help. And in a church full of small business owners, there's feast or famine years. Sometimes the poor will sometimes you'll be the lender, and sometimes the poor will be you. Um that's I I've seen both of those just even in our midst here today. So here's what you should do: two things. One, don't be afraid to make your needs known. As you saw from Aaron earlier this morning, we like to pray for practical needs in our church family every Sunday from the pulpit to bring these things to the Lord, but also so that everyone can be aware of the needs and of the opportunities that exist within our church. So if you have a need, you should be able to find help in the church. That's the first place that you should look if you have a need. Um, but we have to be aware of your need. We have to know one another's needs. So don't be afraid to make it known, even if it is small, so that we can pray for it, so that everyone can learn about opportunities to be helpful. And then secondly, consider needs. Uh, and this is already happening in our church, and I'm I'm grateful to see it, and I just want to see it more and more. But people have needs, whether it be a car repair or a car period, or housing, whether what they will do next for housing or employment. And other people in our church who have resources are stepping up and helping, and this is how it should be, and I just want to encourage us to continue to do that more and more. So when you hear about needs, consider them. Don't close your heart, don't be afraid. Consider what you have that might help and personally take initiative. The church doesn't even need to know anything about it. You can go to that person and personally take initiative. The poor will always be among us, and sometimes the poor will be us. That'll happen. But in the church, they can be helped if. We will personally, cheerfully, and open-handedly share what we have. And then finally, restoring the broken. All mercy toward the poor should be aimed at restoration. Verses 12 through 8 describe debt slavery, which people read passages like this and they they get very confused because it's the Bible seemingly talking about slavery and not condemning slavery, and they say, What's going on there? So 12 through 18 are describing debt slavery, which was a ubiquitous practice in the ancient world, and a very important practice because it prevented people from dying. This was a way for people not to die. So if a brother had a catastrophic harvest and did not have enough to feed his family and to plant for the next season, then what he needed was an infusion of wheat. He needed someone to lend him wheat. But if a brother became so destitute that he lost his land, then the only thing that he could sell to survive would be his labor. And so an Israelite could sell himself as a servant to a wealthy brother, to a fellow Israelite, and he would go and live on his brother's land, and he would enrich his brother by working hard for him, working his land, and in doing so, he would provide for himself and for his family in the process, and he wouldn't starve to death. This is a win-win situation. Even though it's not a good situation, because we don't want to see anybody become destitute, it's a win-win situation because the poor brother now has hope for survival, and the wealthy brother gets the benefit of cheap labor, cheap labor. Verse 18 says, for at half the cost of a hired worker, he has served you six years. So this was a merciful provision in a hard world. But this servitude is not intended to be forever. In fact, the poor brother may only serve for six years. In the seventh year, his contract is ended, and more than that, he's given a share of the prophets. Verses thirteen and fourteen says, When you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your wine press. As the Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. In other words, after serving for six years, the contract is ended, he is allowed to go free, and the poor brother must be sent off with a liberal share of the profits, so that he might start again on his own and no longer be dependent on anyone else. And it could even be that in this six-year period, the poor man gets experience working for a functioning household, and so is better trained and better prepared to make it on his own when he goes out. So the point in all of this is that the goal of mercy is not just immediate relief. It's not just to meet needs and to make sure that they have food for today and housing for today, as important as that can be. But the goal ultimately is restoration. The goal is to restore the poor brother or sister to a place of ownership and productivity and independence so that they stand on their own with the people of God. One of the things that I've learned as a small business owner is that good help is really hard to keep. So owning a business, you own the capital. In my case, it would be tools and contacts and my Japanese mini truck expertise, that kind of thing. You own the risk. At the end of the day, everything is my fault. I bear all of the risk. And then you do that because you own the profits. If the venture goes well, then I am rewarded and I don't have to share those profits with anyone except the government during tax season. But you do need help. It's great being an employee because if you're an employee, you're paid by the hour no matter what, whether the job goes well or goes poorly, you're still getting paid. Uh you don't have to provide tools or capital, you assume very little risk, and you also have many government protections. And I'm not allowed to uh take advantage of you. But also you don't make as much money. Sooner or later, the most competent employees and helpers realize that they can make more money on their own if they're willing to bear more risk. And so they work for you for as long as they need to, and then they graduate and they become your competitors. And that's how it is with all small businesses everywhere. And some business owners are really salty about this, but this is really as it should be, because giving another person an opportunity to provide for their family is one of the greatest things that we could give to someone. Giving them an opportunity to provide for their family. In modern terms, we call it job creation. But the goal of all of this is not to hold people in lifelong servitude, the goal is to give them an opportunity to gain the training and the expertise and the experience and the capital and the courage that they need ultimately to stand on their own. So to make an application here, it's not a shameful thing to play it safe and to be an employee for your entire career. There's people in this church and they they work for the man or for an institution or for someone else, and that's totally fine. There's even a provision given in this passage for if you are well off with your master and you want to stay, that's totally fine. You have every right to stay where you are, even though in our situation today it's not a it's not a bondage situation, uh, but it's an employment situation. But I want to take this opportunity to encourage you that one of the most beneficial and rewarding things that you can do with your wealth if you have been successful, is to be entrepreneurial, to start businesses, to create jobs, to give people opportunities. This is one of the very very best ways that we can help the poor. And that doesn't get a lot of airtime off. And we think about helping the poor in terms of just giving money or giving resources, which can be helpful, but one of the most important things that we can do to help be to help the poor is to create jobs and to give people opportunities. To give people opportunities to gain experience, to gain capital, and to be able to stand on their own. Many of you are small business owners and you are doing this very thing. And ladies, you can do this too, whether you own a business or even if you're just a stay-at-home mom. And I'm going to devote a whole sermon to this later in the series to the industrious woman. We'll look at Proverbs 31, so stay tuned for that. But you run a household that requires a lot of work, and you probably need some help. To be able to hire a young woman, even in that situation, uh, to help you run the household is job creation and uh can be training for running a household on their own later on in the future, even if you never issue a W-2. That's that's still giving someone an opportunity and it's still job creation. Even choosing to hire people within the church for work that you need done. And I know that some of you have done this for me and for others in the church, that's also a way of living this out is to shop locally, uh, to give people in your own church opportunities. Deuteronomy 15 teaches us that if we should fall into poverty, we should be able to find help and to find opportunities in the church. And it also teaches us that if we're wealthy, that we should focus on the needs in our local church and be willing to bear risk to meet those needs. And we bear risk through lending productive assets, we bear risk through starting businesses and creating jobs and giving people opportunities, and Lord willing, we will profit from those risks. But even if we do not, it is a blessed thing to help a struggling brother or sister. And Jesus says that whoever whoever does these things will by no means lose their reward. In all of this, when when we do these things, we are imitating our Redeemer, who has not only borne the risk for our restoration, but has borne the cross for our restoration. Because of our sin, we are poor beggars at the throne of God's grace, and we are desperate, and we have nothing that we can do to make ends meet for ourselves, but we we can only plead for the mercy of God. But Jesus laid down his life not just to temporarily relieve us or just to give us what we need for the moment, but ultimately to restore us to dignity, to ownership, and to salvation in his kingdom. Not just so that we will remain his servants, but so that we would become his friends and become co-heirs with him, sharing his reign with him. As Paul says in Romans 8, 17, he says, if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may all we may also be glorified with him. Jesus does not keep us in servitude. He suffered in order to make us a fellow heir with him and to share in his reign. That's the wonderful Savior that we have. He doesn't just save us from our trouble, but he restores us to a place of dignity and ownership, uh reigning with him, sharing in his reign. So as we continue in worship this morning, let's glory in our Savior and thank him for that and imitate him in all of our dealings as God blesses us and gives us that ability. To this end, let us pray. Our Father, we thank you for our Redeemer Jesus, who looks from heaven and sees us in a desperate situation situation that we have fallen into because of our sin, and who sells all that he has so that he can journey to a distant land, so that he can come from heaven to earth and make his dwelling with us and redeem us from our sinful condition and restore us to a place of glory and of sonship in his kingdom. We thank you for our Redeemer. We pray that you would help us to worship him and depend upon him this morning, and we pray also, Lord, that you would help us begin to imitate him, help us to see the needs that are around us, even within our own church community. Lord, give us the courage to uh and the gen the generous hearts to reach out to help with those needs, uh to lend resources and time and expertise to help people and to lift people out of difficult situations. And we pray also, Lord, that in our church that that it would be a place of restoration where very broken people are not just um not just supported and helped, but are built up and lifted up and and um enfranchised and enabled again to be productive and to participate as members of society and even themselves to uh have something to to lend and to help others in the future. So, Lord, in all of this we pray that you would help us. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Let's stand and sing together.