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{Since the Heavenly Trade Is the Best Trade…
The Blameworthiness of People’s Inordinate Pursuit of Earthly Things
How May We Know When Pursuit of Earthly Things Is Inordinate?
When the Pursuit Uses Up Too Much of Our Time}
ANSWER 1: Our attention to our earthly concerns becomes inordinate when they take up too much of our time. This was Israel’s sin. They were saying, “When will the new moon be over, So that we may sell grain, And the sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, To make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, And to cheat with dishonest scales, So as to buy the helpless for money And the needy for a pair of sandals, and that we may sell the refuse [bad] of the wheat?” (Amos 8:5–6 NASB). They were not contented with their own time, but must obtrude on God’s time also. They thought that it was too long a time for them to wait until they were back to their worldly work. They also hoped to get advantage for their earthly interests from God’s institutions. They hoped that the Jubilee Sabbath, when people must cease from farming,343 would help raise the price of things to their advantage. Therefore the Lord reproves them for their undue diligence about the world. “It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2 NKJV). “Here,” says Piscator, “by this sudden change of topic [verse 2], he rebukes those covetous tradesmen and merchants, telling them, that it is vain for them to rise up so early to their work and sit up so late in their shops for such poor and contemptible gain.”344 So Rabbi Solomon renders it [contemptible gain] for craftsmen who rise early to their labors. Excessively time-consuming pursuits of the world are here reproved as vain and sinful; such deprives people of time for God and their souls.
343Leviticus 25 extensively covers sabbaths of both seven- and fifty-year intervals, the latter the Jubilee. In both cases, the land was to rest for a year from farming. Hebrew slaves were to serve only six or seven years, and in the Jubilee, there was not only an additional year of rest from farming, but all Hebrew slaves were to be manumitted and all farmland was to return to its original owners. The Lord promised to make up for the lost harvests. This law is no longer in force, being tied to the nation-church-state of Israel and to the promised land, but the interested reader should consult Leviticus 25.
344This is not an absolute; emergencies do happen, and some employees must suffer under cruel management.
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