Deuteronomy 28:43-45 English Standard Version
43 The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. 44 He shall lend to you, and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail. 45 “All these curses shall come upon you and pursue you and overtake you till you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and his statutes that he commanded you.
Continuing with the issues of the word covet, we move on from worst case to a bad case. The cause of this bad case is simple. The Lord tells us how to live and be at peace with one another and we do not harken to His Word.
Key to this bad case scenario is the word lend. What is the most used legal recourse in this country? We might say divorce but we should be thinking bankruptcy. We live beyond or means, we do not heed the word of the Lord and we find ourselves in debt. In 2019 there were 757,634 US bankruptcies declared. That does not include the number of financial restructures and selling off of assets to cover losses. Those are pure bankruptcy statistics.
That leaves a black mark on our name, our reputation, our dependability and our credit rating. It can take years to overcome. Once corrected, if old behaviors are not corrected, it only takes a minute to fall back into trouble. The most common cause of this lifestyle is wanting what we cannot afford.
Churches today now offer seminars on how to manage our money according to God’s word and sound financial strategies. Classes are filling fast and with good reason.