... a biblical perspective on money and possessions in light of eternity
Showing posts with label person. Show all posts
Showing posts with label person. Show all posts

Thursday, 1 February 2018

How should we view our money and property?


The command "not to steal" proves that property can belong to one person and not to another.
Do not want anything that belongs to someone else. Don’t want anyone’s house, wife or husband, slaves, oxen, donkeys or anything else. - Exodus 20:17
The Law lays out strict rules for the protection of private property, requiring restitution for property violations.

Yet God wanted some input on our property.
No land may be permanently bought or sold. It all belongs to me—it isn’t your land, and you only live there for a little while. - Leviticus 25:23
In fact, a farmer's field had to be left unplowed and unused every seventh year. Although land could be bought from others, when Jubilee came every fiftieth year, parcels of land were restored to the families from which they came. When land was sold, the transaction price was determined by how many years remained until Jubilee. 
If it is a long time before the next Year of Celebration, the price will be higher, because what is really being sold are the crops that the land can produce.- Leviticus 25:16
Every seventh year was the year of release when all debts were cancelled.  This practise prevented permanent indebtedness and servitude. 
Be careful! Don’t say to yourself, “Soon it will be the seventh year, and then I won’t be able to get my money back.” It would be horrible for you to think that way and to be so selfish that you refuse to help the poor. They are your relatives, and if you don’t help them, they may ask the Lord to decide whether you have done wrong. And he will say that you are guilty.  You should be happy to give the poor what they need, because then the Lord will make you successful in everything you do. There will always be some Israelites who are poor and needy. That’s why I am commanding you to be generous with them. - Deuteronomy 15:9-11


Friday, 1 July 2016

We'll be in heaven and that's all that matters


Paul spoke of a loss of a reward as a great and terrible loss.  The fact that we're still saved is a clarification, not a consolation --
But if any person’s work is burned up [by the test], he will suffer the loss [of his reward]; yet he himself will be saved, but only as [one who has barely escaped] through fire. - 1 Corinthians 3:15
Receiving reward from Christ is unspeakable gain with eternal implications.
In 1888, Alfred's brother Ludvig died while in France. A French newspaper erroneously published Alfred's obituary instead of Ludvig's, and condemned Alfred for his invention of dynamite. Provoked by the event and disappointed with how he felt he might be remembered, Nobel set aside a bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes to honor men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, and for working toward peace. Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1968 in honor of Alfred Nobel.




Believer's Judgment of Works