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Amos 1:1-2: The Roar of God

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Introduction:
As God gives us the grace, we will now begin to work our way through the prophecy of Amos. Apart from what is revealed in his writing here, we know nothing about the man. Among the minor prophets, he occupies the vanguard in this period of Israel’s history, even though he is placed third in the canonical order.

The Text:
“The words of Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither” (Amos 1:1-2).

Overview:
Tekoa was about ten miles south of Jerusalem, and this small town in Judah is where Amos was from (v. 1). But Amos was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, and so it was that he conducted that ministry as a satiric outsider. He prophesied two years before the earthquake, a notable event remembered in Zechariah 14:5. The most likely date for his ministry is between 760 and 755 B.C., right near the end of Jeroboam II’s reign. The earthquake serves as a great metaphor for Amos’ message of impending judgment. As mentioned at the first, Amos was a shepherd, and if there is anything that a shepherd dreads, it is the sound of a lion’s roar (v. 2). The Lord, who was Israel’s shepherd, had become Israel’s predator. In the prophecy of Amos, the Lord was roaring. Moreover, He was doing this from Zion, and His voice was from Jerusalem. That was where God had established His name, and yet the northern kingdom had established false worship at Dan and Bethel. As a result of God’s predation, the pastureland of Carmel was going to wither, and the habitations of the shepherds would wither.

A Host of Sevens:
Amos is from an obscure place because God loves to rebuke the sleek and fat of this world with those who are little in the eyes of the world (1 Cor. 4: 9). But Amos is far from being some kind of hick or cornpone. This is a book of magnificent poetic force, and the literary abilities exhibited by the prophet are considerable. He is no court flatterer, but his abilities are not at all beneath the task of rebuking a corrupt aristocracy. One of his favorite literary and structuring devices is that of the organizing power of seven. There are at least twenty-three places where Amos relies on the number seven to organize his material, which we will note as we go through the book. He asks seven rhetorical questions (3:3-6), there are seven empty rituals that Israel performs (5:21-23), there are seven plagues (4:6-11), seven verbs of exhortation (5:14-15), and so on. Moreover, the entire book is structured in a seven-fold chiasm.

a Judgment coming toward Israel and her neighboring countries (1:1-2:16)

b Destruction of Israel and Bethel’s cultic worship (3:1-15)

c Condemnation of fat cat women (4:1-13)

d Call to repentance (5:1-17)

c’ Condemnation of fat cat men (5:18-6:14)

b’ Destruction of Bethel’s cultic worship (7:1-8:3)

a’ Judgment coming toward Israel and promised deliverance (8:4-9:15)

The Great Themes:
The book of Amos is a book of rebuke and denunciation. According to Amos, the two great sins committed by Israel were, first, compromised and corrupt worship, and second, a resultant abuse of power. The same thing comes up in the book of James, a New Testament book with a strong similarity to the book of Amos.

What is pure and undefiled religion? The answer to that question is two-fold, not solitary. The famous part of the answer is to visit widows and orphans in their affliction (1:27). But James also says that pure and undefiled religion keeps itself “unspotted from the world”(v. 27).

It is not the case that good deeds stand alone. Good deeds cannot justify a sinner, as we all know (Eph. 2:8-9). But good deeds cannot even justify themselves. All true living flows from true worship. Any one who worships at Dan and Bethel will inevitably grind the poor. And any one who tries to implement a syncretistic alliance between Zion and Bethel will do the same. Wisdom says that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36).

This is why the great order of the day today is reformation of the Church, and restoration of true worship. This is not because we want to bottle true worship up to hide it from the world, but rather because we want to unspotted religion to be what visits the widow and the orphan. To skip over the question of right worship, discarding the question of immoralities and heresies, for the sake of the poor and oppressed, is extremely short-sighted. To say, as one evangelical leader (Jim Wallis) has done, that we should not be that concerned about sodomy in the church because we mustn’t get distracted by secondary issues when the question of global poverty is so pressing, is to fly in the face of the message of Amos. To argue this way is to assume that Amos would agree that so long as we quit grinding the poor, worship at Dan and Bethel are fine with God. It is to assume that it would be fine with James to be corrupted by the world so long as we visited widows and orphans. But not only is it not fine, we need to flip this around. So long as you worship at Dan and Bethel, no matter what you say, or how eloquently you say it, the poor are going to catch it. False worshippers always stand up for the poor the way that Judas did.

The Engine and Drive Train:
To say that worship is the center of everything, is not to say that worship is everything. In our worship of God, we have our names and identities established. Once we are named by God, we are then commissioned to go out into the world, and to represent Him there. One of the central tasks that God has assigned to the Church in this regard is the task of mercy ministry. But this is just like everything else we do. We worship God on the Lord’s Day. Everything else that we do—art, literature, education, business, politics, economics, and mercy ministry—must be connected to this worship. The drive train has to be connected to the engine, which is true and faithful worship.

Promise Fulfilled:
Amos is a fierce and biting book, and we need to be prepared for its message. We need to be ready to be convicted, prodded, encouraged, and rebuked. But the book drives inexorably toward a glorious conclusion, one where the promised salvation of God does come into the world. As we allow the unbending righteousness of God to speak to us, we must constantly fix our eyes on the promise fulfilled in Christ.

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Heavier Than Wet Sand

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Introduction:
In this series, we are considering the temptations presented to us by desire, envy, competition, and ambition. Last week we looked at desire—the quarry from which many sins are hewn—and is a word which, thankfully for the writers of rock ballads, rhymes with fire. We now turn to the thing that our spirits’ desires naturally run to, which is envy (Jas. 4:1-3, 5-6).

The Text:
“A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but the fool’s wrath is heavier than them both. Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?” (Prov. 27:3-4).

Overview:
The writer of Proverbs begins with an illustration. A heavy stone is hard to pick up (v. 3), and the same thing is true of sand (v. 3). And when a fool gets angry, that is heavier than both or either of them. You should rather have your pick up filled with wet sand than to encounter an angry fool. Then, building on that first thought, since we are now at the next level, wrath is cruel (v. 4). The synonym anger is outrageous (v. 4), but envy carries everything before it. Envy is therefore a formidable sin.

Definitions:
Jealousy is to be possessive of what is lawfully your own. Because we are sinners, we sometimes give way to jealousy for wrong causes, or in a wrong manner, but Scripture is clear that jealousy is not inherently sinful. Our God is a jealous God; His name is Jealous (Ex. 20:5; 34:14). Simple greed or covetousness wants what it does not have, and wants to have it without reference to God’s conditions for having it. The thing that it wants may have been seen in a store, a catalog, or a neighbor’s driveway. This sin is tantamount to idolatry (Eph. 5:5), putting a created thing in place of the Creator. But envy is more than excessive jealousy, and is far more than simply a lazy or idolatrous desire. Envy is a formidable sin, as our text shows, because it combines its own desires for the object (status, money, women, whatever) with a malicious insistence that the other person lose his possession of it. In two places Paul puts malice and envy cheek by jowl (Rom. 1:28-29; Tit. 3:3), and this is no accident. In the Bible, when envy moves, violence and coercion are not far off (Acts. 7:9; 13:45; 17:5; Matt. 27:18). Envy sharpens its teeth every night. We may therefore define envy as a particular kind of willingness to use coercion to deprive someone of what is lawfully his.

The Natural Condition of Man:
We saw last week that the spirit within us “lusteth to envy” (Jas. 4:5-6). This is our natural tendency; it is a universal problem. We saw also that a recognition of complicity in the sin is the way of escape. That recognition is called repentance, and can only be found in Christ. Outside of Christ, envy is the natural condition of all mankind. Before we were converted, what were we like? “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Tit. 3:3). That is what we are like. “Being filled with all unrighteousness . . . covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder . . .” (Rom. 1:29).

When we are brought into Christ, this does not grant us automatic immunity to this sin—we must still guard ourselves. We have to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, and that includes death to this sin. For example, the godly have to be told not to envy sinners (Prov. 3:29-32; 23:17-18). And we have to guard ourselves against sanctimonious envy, the kind Judas tried to display in his false concern for the poor (Mark 14:5,10; John 12:3-6).

The Invisible Vice:
In striking contrast to many other sins, nobody readily admits to being envious. Envy is petty and malicious. Envy is unattractive to just about everybody, and in order to operate openly in the world, it has to sail under false colors. Envy is clandestine; envy is sneaky. To admit to envy is to admit self-consciously to being tiny-souled, beef jerky- hearted, petty, and mean-spirited, and to admit this is dangerously close to repentance. To be out-and-out envious is to be clearly in the wrong.

Envy often decks itself out with the feathers of admiration, and tends to praise too loudly or too much. One writer said to “watch the eyes of those who bow lowest.” The praise can come from someone who does not yet know his own heart, or it can come from someone who is trying to position himself to get within striking distance. Guard your heart; don’t become a Uriah Heep.

Envy occupies itself much with matters of justice, and becomes a collector of injustices, both real and imagined. Since envy cannot speak its own name, the closest virtue capable of camouflaging the sin is zeal for justice. And since true Christians should be very much concerned with true justice, be sure to run diagnostics on your heart as you do so.

Envy gets worse as the gifts get greater—when dealing with talent, artistic temperaments, and great intellectual achievements. We sometimes assume that we can “cultivate” our way out of the temptation, which is the reverse of the truth.

Heading It Off:
Because we are naive about this sin, in ourselves and in others, we glibly assume that if God only blesses us a little bit more, that will make it clear that we are nice people and that there is no reason to envy us. But of course, this only makes everything worse. Should the “neighbor” in the tenth commandment assume that if God only gave him a bigger house and faster car that this would somehow resolve the problems of his green-eyed neighbor next door? Is he serious? Many of you are at the beginning of your lives, your careers, your accomplishments. And you need to know that when marked success comes to some of you, the poison will start to flow. Even in the church? Yes, even here, but if we take note of our hearts now, if we internalize these truths now, we are laboring for the peace and purity of our congregation—one of the things we are covenanted to in our membership vows. When James takes aim at conflict in the church, he takes aim at envy. So remember that the love of Christ is forever, and envy is transient. Speaking of the earthbound, Solomon says, “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun” (Ecc. 9:5-6).

Gore Vidal once said, “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.” In stark contrast, the apostle Paul said, “Love does not envy” (1 Cor. 13: 4).

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Penitential Seasons

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Introduction:
We are nearing the conclusion of the historic season of Lent, the preparation season for the celebration of Easter. This is Palm Sunday, the day in which we mark and celebrate the Lord’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. As we are trying to orient ourselves by and with a Christian year, instead of the secularized civic year, we are certainly taking a step in the right direction. But this does not mean that there are no pitfalls as we move in this direction. We have to remember that the Church has been here before, and we have stumbled before.

The Text:
“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work therein: but ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD” (Leviticus 23:23-27).

Overview:
In Leviticus 23, the Lord revealed the festivals of Israel to Moses. The weekly sabbath was first (v. 3). The other feasts (Passover/Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles) were all celebratory in nature—they were feasts. And in our text, we come to the singular Day of Atonement. On this day, the Israelites were commanded to “afflict their souls.” God required this of Moses (v. 23). The day was set aside as a holy convocation, as a high sabbath, and was marked on a particular day (v. 24). Work was proscribed, as on a regular sabbath, and an offering of fire was required (v. 25). The Lord speaks again (v. 26), and He required the Israelites to afflict their souls (v. 27). There were other times of fasting, obviously, but these appear to have been occasional or individual. In the liturgical calendar of Israel, before the advent of the Messiah, one day out of 365 was set apart for the nation to afflict their souls. The rest of the commemorations were gratitude-soaked and celebratory.

A Weekly Resurrection Day:
In the early Church, celebration of the resurrection was instantaneous. From the very beginning, Christians celebrated and worshipped God on a weekly basis, and they did so moving their observance from the seventh day sabbath of the Jews to the first day of the week, the Lord’s Day. This was done because this was the day on which the Lord rose from the dead. “Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first . . .” (Mark 16:9; cf. Matt. 28:1; Luke 24:1; John 20:19). From the pages of the New Testament down to the present, Christians have been observing the first day of the week as a weekly “Easter.” “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them . . .” (Acts 20: 7). “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come” (1 Cor. 16:2). “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet” (Rev. 1:10).

There are two striking meanings of this new day, this Day that the Lord has made. The first is the obvious meaning, which is that it marks the day of the resurrection. The Lord came back from the dead on the first day of the week (Mk. 16:9), appeared to His disciples on that same day (John 20:19), and then appeared to them again on the following Sunday (John 20:26). But what is the second meaning? This meaning is that God has recreated the heavens and earth. In the old covenant, the seventh-day sabbath was anchored to the old creation in an everlasting way. That seventh-day observance was clearly going to last as long as that created order did. Nothing would suffice to change that day unless it were a change of the created order, unless it were the establishment of a new created order. And this is just what we find. “There remaineth therefore a [sabbath] rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Heb. 4:9-10).

Penitential Seasons?:
Lent began as a period of preparation for Christian baptism—many of the baptisms in the early Church were performed on Easter Day. Over time, as a system of work-righteousness began to establish a deeper hold on the minds and hearts of many professing Christians, the church calendar began to reflect a false understanding of the nature of the gospel. Now we want to return to an explicitly Christian understanding of our days and years, which they certainly had, but we want to do this without making the same mistakes they did.

Traditionally, both Lent and Advent are penitential seasons—not times of overflowing celebrations. This is not something we have sought to cultivate at all, even though we do observe a basic church calendar, made up of what the Reformers called the five evangelical feast days. Our reluctance to adopt the penitential approach to these seasons of the year is not caused by ignorance of the practice. I want to present three arguments here for a rejection of this practice.

First, if we were to adopt this practice, we would be in worse shape than our Old Covenant brethren, who had to afflict their souls only one day out of the year. Why would the time of anticipation of salvation be so liturgically celebratory, while the times of fulfilled salvation be so liturgically glum? Instead of establishing a sense of longing, it will tend to do the reverse.

Second, each penitential season keeps getting interrupted with our weekly Easters. Many who relate exciting movies they have seen to others are careful to avoid “spoilers.” Well, these feasts we have, according to God’s ordinance every seven days, spoil the penitential mood.

And last, what gospel is implicitly preached by the practice of drawing out the process of repentance and forgiveness? It is a false gospel. Now I am not saying that fellow Christians who observe their church year in this way are preaching a false gospel, but I am saying that lex orandi lex credendi—the law of prayer is the law of faith, and over time, this liturgical practice will speak very loudly to our descendants. If we have the opportunity to speak to our descendants, and we do, then I want to tell them that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Christmas and Easter:
So as we prepare our hearts and minds, along with our families, for the annual celebration of our Lord’s resurrection next Lord’s Day, one other comment should be made. The Incarnation was a glorious event, and we don’t want any diminution of that celebration. But the resurrection of the Lord was what remade the cosmos, and we should strive over time to have our celebration of Easter far surpass the glory of Christmas. We are currently more than a little lopsided—and we shouldn’t try to fix this by reducing what we do at Christmas.

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Loving Little Ones #4

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Introduction
Thus far, we have considered the context of all child-rearing, the attitude underneath all child nurture, and the mechanics of discipline. We will finish this short series on loving little ones by addressing a miscellaneous collection of remaining issues.

The Text
“Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them” (Ps. 103:13-18).

Overview
The Lord does not look down on us with contempt. Rather, He looks down on us with pity, the same way a human father pities his children (v. 13). He does this knowing our frame; He knows how we are constituted, and knows that we are but dust. He knows our frailty (v. 14). We are here for a brief time; our days are like the grass (v. 15). One brief summer, then we are done with it (v. 16). But in contrast to this feeble existence, the mercy of the Lord is not feeble (v. 17). His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting to those who fear him, and His righteousness is bestowed on grandchildren—to those who keep His covenant, to those who remember His commandments (v. 18). We see here the general outline of this series of messages: the context of all is God’s pity and compassion for us, and His realization of our frailty. For precisely this reason, His covenant (which includes means for forgiveness) and His law (which reveals His holy character) are not dispensible.

Be Encouraged
Think in terms of generations, and try to get your head and heart out of the day you are having, or the week you are having. Look past the dishes, look past the pile of laundry, look past the swats you have to give today for the same offense you gave swats for yesterday. Look past it all because child-rearing is a generational labor. God knows your work; it is not in vain.
There is such a thing as parental failure—we are not offering sentimental comfort here. But failure is not measured by discovering that today is very similar to yesterday. This is also true of all long-term successful enterprises. When you want godly feedback on how you are doing, take care to look in the right place. And if you are looking there— in Scripture—be encouraged.

Understand the Nature of the Process
Your children are being raised up to maturity, and one day they will occupy the same station in life which you currently occupy. This means that you must understand that you are dealing with a very different situation when your child is fifteen years away from leaving your home and two years away from leaving your home. Too many Christian parents get this part exactly backwards.
When children are little and sin is still (comparatively) cute, it is easy to go easy on the discipline. You relax a little bit too much and the roof doesn’t fall in completely. All the sins committed are at a toddler level. But when your child is old enough to seriously destroy his or her life, you panic and clamp down. This is backwards. Young children thrive in an environment of strict, loving, predictable, and enforced discipline. Teenagers thrive when they have been trained to be trustworthy and then are trusted. But if you are still doing “the same thing” fifteen years later, the central thing this should tell you is that the standards have not been internalized. If your sixteen-year-old still has training wheels in his bike, something is messed up. External rules are training wheels, and not a permanent part of the bike.

Education is Central
In many Christian circles, it is commonplace to speak this way: “We don’t want to emphasize academics so much—we want to focus on character issues.” The problem with this is that it presents a false dichotomy. Academics is a character issue. It is the work that children have been assigned to do—for good reason—and to set it aside for the sake of “character” is really misguided. Picture a number of men sweating away with pick-axes and shovels, digging a ditch. Off to the side we see one of them leaning on his shovel, and we look long enough to tell that this is not a well-earned break. We might go over and ask him what he is doing, and, if we did, we would probably not expect him to reply that he is “emphasizing character instead.” That is precisely the one thing he is not doing.
This said, it is cheerfully acknowledged that getting the academic work done is not the only character issue, but it is an indispensible character issue. “The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason” (Prov. 26:16). This can certainly apply to the parents or teachers as well.

Boys and Girls
Remember that we are created in the image of God, and this means we were created male and female. That is how we bear the image of God (Gen. 1:27). But you are not rearing generic human beings until adolescence, at which point differences make their first appearance. When Eve gives birth to Cain, she notices right away. “And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD” (Gen. 4:1). Bring up your children with stereotypes in mind, but carry them and apply them in all wisdom. Generalizations are true, but they are true as generalization. Use them to nurture your girls, not to insult them

Faith and Works
God has set a pattern of good works for us; He has established good works for us to walk in. Among these good works, we must certainly include the good works you are doing as parents (Eph. 2:10). But this means that all your parental efforts must be ground themselves in God’s grace, appropriated through faith. Your children will not “turn out” by works. Viewed from the side, your parental efforts will look like a lot of work to others. But viewed from within, everything proceeds from grace and to grace. This is why you can extend grace to your children—because you are a non-stop recipient of it (2:8-9).

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The Forgotten Duty

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Introduction: 
Forgiveness of sin is forgiveness of sin, not redefinition of sin (Rom. 13:8-10). “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven” contains a glorious truth. But, misapplied as it frequently is, it also represents a travesty of biblical living.

The Text:
“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, If a soul sin, and commit a trespass against the Lord, and lie unto his neighbour in that which was delivered him to keep, or in fellowship, or in a thing taken away by violence, or hath deceived his neighbour; or have found that which was lost, and lieth concerning it, and sweareth falsely; in any of all these that a man doeth, sinning therein: Then it shall be, because he hat sinned, and is guilt, that he shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten, or that which was delivered him to keep, or the lost thing which he found, or all that about which he hath sworn falsely; he shall even restore it in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering. And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest: And the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord: and it shall be forgiven him for any thing of all that he hath done in trespassing therein (Lev. 6:1-7).

Overview:
God is the only ultimate owner of anything. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof (Ps. 24:1; 1 Cor. 10:26). This is why property sins and crimes are sins against the Lord (v. 2). This is what God Himself says (v. 1). Property sins of various kinds can be perpetrated by means of deceit or by violence (v. 2). They can also occur through a windfall, with lying as a follow-up (v. 3). All the kinds of things that men do are covered here (v. 3). The thief must restore what is not his (v. 4). Whatever means he used to filch it, he must return it, along with an additional 20% (v. 5). He is to bring a trespass offering to the Lord (v. 6), and the Lord will forgive him for this kind of sin (v. 7).

Basics of Restitution:
In the Old Testament, restitution was accompanied by the guilt offering. In the New Testament, the fact that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross fulfills the guilt offering does not mean that it fulfills the restitution.

Second, when God prohibited adultery in the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20: 14), this presupposed that He had established and defined the institution of marriage. When He says not to steal, this means that He has established and defined the idea of private property (Ex. 20:15). We reject the Enlightenment idea that property rights are somehow held autonomously—whether by individuals or the state. We “own” only what God has given us stewardship over—but if God has granted that stewardship then it cannot be abrogated by man. Attempts to do so are called stealing.

Third, men are stewards not just of “stuff” but are also stewards of time, and the fruitfulness that time makes possible. There is no such thing as static wealth. So when a thief restores the property, he must also restore the time it was gone. This, presumably, is why the twenty percent is not a constant. Sometimes the thief had to pay double (Ex. 22:4,7).

Yeah, but…
We can certainly come up with all kinds of reasons why restitution is not practical for us. For example, we might say that restitution would make the future inconvenient for me. To which the answer should be so? If a thief cannot pay the amount back, the Scriptures allow for slavery (Ex. 22:3). We might say that we did not mean to harm our neighbor’s goods. But the Bible requires restitution for culpable negligence (Ex. 22:5-6), not just for deliberate theft. We have scriptural contingencies that distinguish between borrowed and rented (Ex. 22:14). We might say that we can’t make restitution because it is simply impossible to do so. If so, then the money goes to the Lord (Num. 5:5-8). We don’t get to keep it. We might say that the coming of Jesus has wiped the slate clean. And so it has, making restitution a joy (Luke 19:10).

Time does not make that twenty dollars yours. The blood of Christ does not make that twenty dollars yours. Forgetfulness does not make that twenty dollars yours. A deficient view of the Old Testament does not make that twenty dollars yours. The fact that you swiped it from your mom does not make it yours. The fact that the person you took it from never missed it does not make it yours. “Fools mock at making amends for sin, but good will is found among the upright” (Prov. 14:9, NIV).

Property Rights Are Human Rights:
When economic libertarians try to ground property rights in the autonomous individual, without any reference to Christ, they are making an idol out of property. Whatever good things they might say about economics do not keep this from being an idol, and behaving as idols always do. And one of the things that idols always do is destroy that which is idolized. Those who worship sex destroy it. Those who worship wine destroy it. Those who worship mammon destroy our ability to enjoy it as a very fine fellow creature (1 Tim. 6: 17). We refuse to worship property, and this is why stewardship-property can be secure. With autonomous property as the rope, atomistic libertarians will always lose their tug of war with the state. When we compare the secularist (economic) libertarians with the secularist statists, we are looking at the difference between a competent businessman who loves money and an incompetent businessman who loves money. We have no reason to cheer for one over the other.
Christians are to see property as an incarnational and God-given way to love other people (Rom. 13: 8). And this leads to our last point, the most important one, really.

One More Thing:
“Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Eph. 4:28). Hard-line theonomists can pound the text—“take the money back, you antinomian!”—and miss the point of the law, which is love. What is the greatest commandment? That you love God. What is the second? That you love your neighbor. When the thief repents, he is to get a job— but not so that he can become a fat cat. He is to labor with his hands . . . why? So that he might give.
Whenever anyone puts property ahead of people, he is assaulting the reason God gave property to us in the first place. But when others foolishly react to this error, putting people ahead of property, they have abandoned the only material God gave us for loving others. One of the best ways to recover this understanding is to recover wisdom about restitution.

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