“When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make a loan shall bring the pledge out to you. And if he is a poor man, you shall not sleep in his pledge. You shall restore to him the pledge as the sun sets that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you. And it shall be righteousness for you before the Lord, your God.”
– Deuteronomy 24:10–13
I love this simple picture amidst these miscellaneous laws from God to his people in Deuteronomy. And specifically here, what I want you to notice and what I want to lead us to pray according to is the relationship between righteousness before God, and simple compassionate care for other people. That last phrase of Deuteronomy 24:10–13: “It shall be a righteousness for you before the Lord, your God.” What will be righteousness for you before God?
We pray to grow in righteousness today by growing in simple love and care for other people.
God Helps Us Grow In Righteousness
Isn’t that something we all want today? Every follower of Jesus, every child of God wants righteousness before him. So, what will be righteousness for us before God? To simply care for the people around us. To give back to them what we owe them. Or if we have something that would help someone who is poor or in need, let’s look for opportunities to give to them that they might be provided for, and that they might bless us and glorify God. What a picture.
God, help us. We pray to grow in righteousness today by growing in simple love and care for other people. God, I pray for this in my life. I pray for this in every single person who’s listening right now. God, we pray you help us today to be sensitive to ways that we can love and care for people around us. Particularly people who are in need, or maybe it’s just people we honor, oh God, by giving them what we owe them on time. And God, even as I pray that, I think about people around us in need of the gospel. God, we pray that you help us to give it to them. Help us to see ourselves in a Romans 1 kind of way as obligated … as in debt to others, that we might share the good news of your grace with them.
Deuteronomy 24:10–13 Prays For The Kaitag People
In debt to people around us. In debt to people far from us. God, when we think about people in need, the Kaitag people, another one of these small people groups in the dog’s region of Russia. Nobody has gone to share the good news of your love for them, and it’s so hard to get to some of these small people groups in these caucus regions of Russia. God, we pray. We plead for the spread of the gospel to them. God, we pray for those who are working. I think of friends I know who are working to get the gospel to these people groups. God, please bless them. Bless their efforts to glorify your name.
Deuteronomy 24:10–13 Blesses Our Lives
May it be righteousness for them before you that there might be people who go to sleep tomorrow night, or this time next month, or this time next year knowing the gospel and believing the gospel because of the way they’ve given their lives. God, bless them. We pray. Bless our lives toward that end. May it be righteousness for us before you in the way we love and care for people right around us and people far from us in our lives. God, help us to live in righteousness like this. Help us to grow in righteousness today by growing in love for others. We pray in Jesus’ name based on Deuteronomy 24:10–13.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
