God's Great Reversal: The Usurer's Folly Text: Proverbs 28:8
Introduction: The World's Economics and God's Economy
We live in an age that is utterly confused about money. On the one hand, our culture worships at the altar of mammon, pursuing wealth with a frantic, idolatrous energy. On the other hand, it is riddled with a sour, envious spirit that despises the wealthy and seeks to tear them down through punitive taxation and godless socialistic schemes. Both of these impulses, the grasping greed and the green-eyed envy, are sins. Both are rebellions against the economic order that God Himself has established in the world.
The Bible is a profoundly economic book. It is not, as the Marxists would have it, a revolutionary handbook for class warfare. Nor is it, as the prosperity preachers would have it, a get-rich-quick scheme for the pious. The Bible lays down the fundamental grammar for all sane economic activity because it reveals the character of the God who created all things and who owns all things. He establishes the laws of the harvest, the principles of stewardship, and the ethics of the marketplace.
One of the areas where modern Christians have become particularly muddled is on the subject of interest and usury. We have either forgotten the biblical prohibitions entirely, participating in a system that often preys on the vulnerable, or we have adopted a simplistic view that condemns all interest as sinful, which is not what the Scriptures teach. The Bible makes a crucial distinction. There is a place for legitimate interest in productive, commercial loans, where risk is shared and wealth is generated. But there is another kind of lending that God despises, and that is the practice of extracting oppressive interest from the poor and the desperate. This is what the Bible calls usury, and it is a damnable sin. It is an attempt to profit from a brother's calamity. It is a cold, calculating enterprise that seeks to build a fortune on the backs of the lowly. But as our text this morning makes clear, it is also an exercise in supreme folly. God has hardwired the universe in such a way that this kind of greedy enterprise is doomed to fail in the most ironic way imaginable.
Proverbs 28:8 is a marvel of divine irony. It shows us that God's providence is always at work, even in the grubby transactions of sinful men. He is the great chess master, and He is always ten moves ahead. The man who thinks he is cleverly building his own financial empire by squeezing the poor is, in fact, nothing more than an unwitting collection agent for the godly. He is diligently gathering up wealth that God has already ticketed for another destination.
The Text
He who increases his wealth by interest and usury
Gathers it for him who is gracious to the lowly.
(Proverbs 28:8 LSB)
The Sinful Enterprise (v. 8a)
The first clause of our text describes the man and his method:
"He who increases his wealth by interest and usury..." (Proverbs 28:8a)
The words here for "interest" and "usury" point to the practice of charging excessive, biting interest on loans. The Mosaic law was very clear on this point. "If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him" (Exodus 22:25). And again, "You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest" (Deuteronomy 23:19). This was a covenantal prohibition. It was about how you treat your brother, your fellow member of the covenant community, when he falls on hard times.
The law distinguished between a charitable loan to a brother in need and a commercial loan for a productive enterprise. Lending to a foreigner for a business venture was permitted to carry interest. But lending to a poor Israelite was to be an act of mercy, not an opportunity for profit. The goal was to help him get back on his feet, not to push him further into the mire. Usury, in this context, is predatory lending. It is taking advantage of a man's desperation. It is seeing his poverty not as a call for compassion, but as a business opportunity.
This man is actively working to increase his wealth. There is nothing wrong with increasing wealth through diligent, honest labor. Proverbs is full of commendations for the diligent man who works with his hands and builds up his estate. But this man's method is corrupt. He is not creating new wealth; he is siphoning it from the pockets of those who have the least. He is a parasite on the body politic. His balance sheet may be growing, but it is a cancerous growth, fed by injustice.
We must see that this is a direct assault on the character of God. God is the defender of the poor, the father to the fatherless, and the protector of the widow. To oppress the poor is to mock their Maker (Proverbs 14:31). This man is setting himself up in opposition to God. He is betting that he can get away with it. He is betting that the laws of God's universe can be safely ignored for personal profit. He is, in short, a fool.
The Divine Reversal (v. 8b)
The second clause of the verse reveals the stunning, ironic outcome of the usurer's hard work.
"Gathers it for him who is gracious to the lowly." (Proverbs 28:8b)
Here we see the absolute sovereignty of God in the realm of economics. The usurer thinks he is gathering for himself. He checks his accounts, he counts his money, he admires his growing pile of assets. He sees it all as a monument to his own cleverness. But God, who sees the end from the beginning, has a completely different accounting sheet. On God's ledger, the usurer is not the beneficiary; he is merely the temporary steward, the delivery boy.
Notice the language. He "gathers it." He is doing all the work. He is the one staying up late, calculating his percentages, and chasing down his debtors. He is laboring under the delusion that he is the master of his own financial destiny. But in reality, he is working for a different master, and for a different purpose entirely. God in His providence is using this man's sinful greed to accomplish His own righteous ends. This is a consistent theme in Scripture. God uses the wicked actions of Joseph's brothers to save a nation. He uses the pride of Pharaoh to display His power. He uses the treachery of Judas and the injustice of Pilate to accomplish the salvation of the world.
And for whom is this wealth being gathered? "For him who is gracious to the lowly." The ultimate recipient of this ill-gotten gain is the very opposite of the man who gathered it. The usurer is hard, grasping, and merciless toward the lowly. The final owner is gracious, open-handed, and compassionate toward the lowly. God ensures that the money will eventually find its way into the hands of someone who understands its true purpose: to be a tool for mercy and a means of honoring God by caring for those He cares for.
How does this happen? God has a thousand ways to make it so. The usurer's son might be a spendthrift who squanders the inheritance, which is then bought up for a pittance by a righteous man. The government might collapse, and his paper wealth might become worthless. He might make a foolish investment and lose it all. Or he might simply die, and his estate passes to a godly heir he never knew. The mechanisms are endless because God is sovereign over every molecule and every transaction. The point is not for us to trace the precise path, but to trust the certain outcome. The universe is rigged, but it is rigged in favor of God's justice.
Application for the Church Today
This proverb is not just a quaint piece of ancient wisdom; it is a sharp-edged tool for the church today. It cuts several ways.
First, it is a stark warning to any who would be tempted to build their wealth through exploitative means. This applies not only to literal money-lending but to any business practice that preys on the vulnerable. It could be a landlord who charges exorbitant rent for substandard housing. It could be a business that pays its workers unjustly. It could be a marketing scheme that targets the financially naive. If your business model depends on the desperation or ignorance of your customers, you are on the wrong side of this proverb. You may think you are getting ahead, but you are merely a cosmic bagman, collecting funds for the kingdom of God against your will.
Second, this is a profound encouragement for the righteous. It teaches us not to fret when we see the wicked prosper. It can be galling to see ungodly men accumulate vast fortunes while the faithful struggle. But we must take the long view. God is on His throne. Their prosperity is temporary, and their wealth is transient. It is a vapor. God has already signed the transfer order. This frees us from envy and empowers us to pursue wealth through honest, productive, godly means, trusting that God's blessing is what makes truly rich, with no sorrow added to it (Proverbs 10:22).
Third, it instructs us on the true nature of Christian charity. The ultimate destination for this wealth is "him who is gracious to the lowly." This is the calling of the church. We are to be the people who are gracious to the lowly. But biblical charity is not the same as the state-sponsored, bureaucratic welfare of our secular age. Biblical charity is personal, relational, and wise. It is the deacon visiting a widow in her home. It is the church providing for a family that has lost its breadwinner. It is modeled on the Old Testament laws of gleaning, where the poor were given an opportunity to work for their provision, preserving their dignity. The state's method is to create dependency and institutionalize poverty. God's method is to restore and empower.
The Ultimate Reversal
The principle of Proverbs 28:8 finds its ultimate fulfillment in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The greatest and most wicked transaction in all of history was the cross. There, sinful men, driven by greed, envy, and the love of power, took the Son of God and murdered Him. They thought they were increasing their own power, securing their own position, and ridding themselves of a rival.
But in that very act, they were gathering the greatest treasure imaginable for others. Through His death, Jesus Christ purchased a people for Himself. He gathered up all the riches of salvation, forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal life. And to whom does He give this treasure? To us. We who were the lowly, the spiritually bankrupt, the poor in spirit. We were the ones with nothing to offer, crushed by the debt of our sin.
Christ is the ultimate one who is "gracious to the lowly." He did not exploit our poverty; He paid our debt. He did not charge us interest; He lavished us with the riches of His grace. The cross is God's great reversal, where the wicked machinations of men were turned into the means of salvation for the world. And now, as recipients of this grace, we are called to live it out. We are to be a people who are gracious to the lowly, using the resources God has given us not to exploit, but to bless, knowing that whatever we have, we hold as stewards for the King. And we do this with great joy and confidence, knowing that the final accounting has already been settled in our favor, through the blood of Jesus Christ.