Read Deuteronomy 24:10-15. What important principles are being expressed here regarding how we are to treat those who are under our control?

Again, we see the Lord’s concern for basic human dignity. Yes, someone owes you something, and it’s time to collect — but show the person a bit of respect, a bit of dignity, will you? Don’t go barging into his place and demand it. Instead, wait outside and let him come and give it to you.  Deuteronomy 24.12-13 seem to say that if some poor soul gave you his garment as “collateral,” you need at least to let him sleep in it overnight. The other verses deal with how one treats the poor who work for him or her, who can be so easily oppressed.

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Don’t oppress them, because in the eyes of God it is a sin, and surely a grievous one too. Again, if Israel were to be a witness, a holy people walking in truth amid a world steeped in error, idolatry, evil, and sin, surely they would have to be kind to the weakest and most marginalized among them. Otherwise, their witness would be nothing.

Read James 1:27-2:11. What is James saying here that reflects what the Lord was telling His people in Deuteronomy? What significance is there in the fact that in these verses James links mistreatment of the poor with the Ten Commandments?

Though nothing in the Ten Commandments themselves directly relates to showing partiality to the rich over the poor, sternly adhering to the letter of the law while at the same time mistreating the poor or needy makes a mockery of one’s profession of faith and any claim to keep the commandments. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the highest expression of God’s law — and this is present truth now as much as it was in the time of James, and as it was when Moses spoke to Israel on the borders of the Holy Land.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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You can view an in-depth discussion of The Stranger in Your Gates in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris. Click on the image to view:

With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.

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This video is produced by the South Pacific Division Discipleship team.

Week 5 _The Stranger in Your Gates_ study this lesson for Oct 30 from SPD Discipleship on Vimeo.

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As believers, we have been called to reflect the character of God. Paul wrote, “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). After all, we had originally been made “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27), an image later defaced by sin. And as we saw, when Moses talked about the power and majesty of God, he also said that God didn’t take a bribe and that He cared about the weak and the outcast. God does this; therefore, we need to do the same, as well.

Read the following texts in Deuteronomy. What is the common theme among them all?

Deuteronomy 1:16

Deuteronomy 16:19

Deuteronomy 24:17

Deuteronomy 27:19

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It’s all but proverbial how the weak, the poor, the outcasts don’t get the same kind of “justice” in most human courts as do those with money, power, and connections. It doesn’t matter the country, the era, the culture, nor how lofty the principles of justice and equity that are enshrined in constitutions or laws or whatever; the reality remains the same: the poor, the weak, and the outcasts almost never get the justice that others do.

That’s what is so remarkable about what the Lord Himself was saying here. This unfairness, which is everywhere else, should not be done in Israel, among God’s people, the ones who are to represent Him to the world. In a sense, to use a term from the modern era, the Lord wanted there to be “equal justice under the law” in ancient Israel.

But this goes even deeper than mere jurisprudence. “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). Yes, they knew who the true God was, and they had the correct forms of worship, and they brought the right kinds of offerings. That’s all fine. But in the end, what good was all that if they were mistreating the weak and poor among them? Over and over, in the prophets, the Lord rails against the oppressors of the poor and the needy in Israel. How can you be “holy” and mistreat others at the same time? You can’t, regardless of how strictly you adhere to proper religious rituals.

<–Tuesday Thursday–>

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“Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). What is the message to ancient Israel here? What should the message from this verse be for us, as well?

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Centuries earlier the Lord told Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years” (Genesis 15:13; see also Genesis 17:8, Acts 13:17). This is, of course, what happened, and in the early chapters of Exodus the dramatic story of their redemption (Exodus 15:13) and salvation (Exodus 14:13) from Egypt has been recorded for posterity, a symbol, a type, of the redemption and salvation that we have been given in Christ Jesus. In this verse, the Lord wants them to remember where they had been and what they had been — and that was, strangers in another land.

In other words, remember when you were on the margins of society, outcasts, even slaves, and thus at the mercy of those who were stronger than you and who could abuse you and, indeed, often did. And though Israel was a chosen nation, called of God, a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6), and though there were some differences between them and the strangers among them — especially in regard to religious services — when it came to “human rights,” the stranger, the widow, the orphan needed to be treated with the same fairness and justice as the Israelites expected for themselves.

Read Matthew 7:12. How does the verse encapsulate what the Lord was telling ancient Israel about how they were to treat the weak among them?

This admonition to Israel about how they were to treat outcasts was not, by any means, the norm in the ancient world, where outcasts could be treated in some cases no better than animals, if even that well.

In contrast, Israel was to be different, a light unto the nations. And yes, that difference would be found in the God whom they worshiped, how they worshiped Him, and the whole religious system of truth that God had given them. Yet, their kind treatment of the marginalized could have been a powerful witness to the world of the superiority of their God and of their faith, which in one sense was the whole point of their existence, anyway, to be a witness to the world of their God.

<–Monday Wednesday–>

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