Clough Divine institutions Lesson 14

Divine Institution #4 - Resources of National Government

We are working with the functioning of a national entity from God’s standpoint. We’re coming up to election time and people are thinking more and more in terms of political issues, and therefore I think it behooves us to go, not to the dealing with political issues as such, but we are going back into the Biblical principles of God’s Word to see if there are any absolutes that control this area, so that we as Christian citizens can have an overall view of what God has to say about government.

We said last time that God’s Word gives us a very thrilling philosophy of government, a philosophy which you latch onto it, you really see what a tremendous thing it is and why all of the fussing between the collectivists and the individualists is beside the point. God’s Word says this; that society can be divided up into various spheres. These are sovereign spheres, they’re created ordinances. For example, we have the first divine institution, the second divine institution, the third divine institution, we have economics, we have natural resources, we have arts and sciences, we have the church and we have other different created ordinances, or basic parts to society. And the function of government came in after the fall; remember, government is the only divine institution that came after the fall and therefore it is not a created ordinance. Therefore the government does not have the right to determine the form of any of these areas.

We’re going to take the first four tonight; the first divine institution, the second divine institution, the third divine institution, and economics, we’re going to get on the topic of money. And we’re going to go through these four to show you the legitimate domain of government from the Word of God. Now government’s job is to regulate the relationships between these things. But government does not have the power unto God to determine the structure of these things. For example, the use of a ridiculous one but to get the point across, government does not have the power to legalize and to force and compel polygamy because the second divine institution is constructed by God for one man and one woman, right man/right woman relationship. The government, therefore, has no business coming and trying to violate that structure. That structure is God-given, not government-given, therefore the government is secondary. But, the government does have the right to regulate things like divorce and other issues because this affects the first divine institution of volition. And there you have marriage affecting this and whenever you have one affecting the other then government can regulate the interrelationship between the parts. But the government does not design the parts. The government only regulates the relationship between the parts. And if you can see this and apply it consistently you will see why today the argument over collectivism or individualism is beside the point. It’s not the question of whether government has more power or less power, the question is what is government doing to these creation ordinances, God-given from Adam on.

Let’s take the first one, the rights of the individual, the first divine institution. We are taking one of these circles of society, studying from the Word of God what is the legitimate domain of government in this sphere. First of all it is God-given that man has the responsibility before God to choose different ends and means in his life. This means that you and any other person in the society has had the God-given, not government given, God-given right to choose and to experience the effects of his choice. He has the right to choose the maximum because this is the only way in which the individual can exercise his volition and mature with God.

If you look at Deuteronomy 22:1-3 you will see an example from the Old Testament of how the Old Testament society operated, and if you look carefully at verses 1-3 you will see how the right of the individual had to be respected and was grounded on the first divine institution. In other words, individual rights come, not because of a constitutional arrangement or a social contract; individual rights come because God created us with them. So in verse 1, “Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from him; thou shalt in any case bring them again to thy brother. [2] And if thy brother be not near unto thee, or if thou know him not, then you will bring it to your own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. [3] In like manner shalt thou do with his ass; and so shalt thou do with his raiment; and with every lost thing of thy brother’s, which he has lost and thou has found, shalt you do likewise; that thou mayest not hide thyself.”

Now first of all, “hide thyself,” notice it’s used twice. “You shall not hide yourself,” verse 1 and verse 3. The word “hide yourself” means, if we would translate it in contemporary vernacular, don’t make yourself scarce; in other words, respect your brother’s right, even if the policeman isn’t there. We had to call the police a couple of moments ago because of a little disturbance; in that case we had to utilize the force of the police. However, this is not the case in our normal operating society because we recognize that individual rights are not a function if a policeman is standing there with a stick. And Moses doesn’t say in verse 1 if a policeman is standing over you with a stick and you see your brother’s ox go astray then you’d better go get it or he’s going to clobber you with the stick. See, the right doesn’t come from the police; the right doesn’t come from the government; the right is there all the time, whether the police are there to enforce it or not. That’s the issue.

Now the point here is that individual rights cannot be given or taken away by government in this sense, and the particular individual right in verses 1-3 and I deliberately picked this as an example because this is an individual right that is being neglected in our time; if there’s one thing that’s true of verses 1-3, what is the individual right? Just look at it again. What is the individual right that is under discussion in verses 1-3. It’s the individual right to own private property; the individual has the right to own private property and the Bible points this out with the commandments, “thou shalt not steal.” “Thou shalt not steal!” You cannot steal that which is yours. “Thou shalt not steal” refers and presumes private property on the part of the person from whom you steal. Charity presumes private property.

There are five basic points about property developed in God’s Word. This is crucial because today you hear a lot about the value of human life is greater than the value of property. For example, if you have 3,000 students mobbing some administration building, the National Guard shouldn’t go in and shoot because after all, their valuable little lives are more than the government building. Of course they fail to realize that the parents are the ones that had to pay for the building; the parents are the ones that have been taxed out of their homes to provide an educational system, and the parents are the one that foot the bill, the parents are the ones that pay the insurance, the parents are the ones that put food in their bellies, and so on, and then they get hacked because they can’t, like a group of two-year olds go around and throw their blocks around the room. Well, this shows you want kind of college education we have when college students fuss and act like three- year olds. Did you ever see a three-year old in a tantrum? He throws blocks all around and so on, looses control; well, that’s just like the average college student in these riots, they’re just two and three-year olds and what they should do is come in with some switches and rattles and pass out rattles to them and say if you want to act as two and three year olds, here, have a rattle, suck on it for the next three minutes, put glue on it or something and then stick it in their mouth.

So from the first three verses we have property rights. Now the first thing about property in God’s Word is that it is the means for carrying out your decisions. Property is the means that you have; if you don’t have property what kind of decision are you going to make? The property is the means by which you carry out decisions. True, Jesus said be careful how you use it, but He said use it. You develop your powers of choice in your use of property and you mature in the use of property. This is why there is nothing wrong with a Christian who has wealth. Wealth is actually looked upon in Scripture as a tremendous trial and a burden, as incidentally any wealthy person will tell you, just keeping your wealth from “Uncle” is a fulltime job, especially around April 15^th. So it is a trial. And the rich man has tremendous trials today. And the person who has wealth today and who has earned that wealth in the last ten years, believe-you-me, he has earned it. If he could earn any kind of wealth under the system we have that is destroying individual initiative, he is welcome to it, he has earned it, as long as it has been legitimate. So therefore property is a means for carrying out real decision.

The second thing, property is the basis for freedom. We have seen this in the Mosaic Law because the Mosaic Law says that even the widows and the orphans who have no property must be taken over and protected by God’s Word and through the functioning of the various priesthoods in the Old Testament. And that right there is a recognition that property is a corollary to personal and individual freedom so don’t you buy this socialist line, everybody put all your property in a common pot and so on, and it’ll be everybody’s. Yeah, it’s everybody’s; the post office is everybody’s, you go down there and try to claim your brick. See! So just because everybody owns it doesn’t mean anything in practice. It means nobody owns it except bureaucrats. So freedom for the individual.

The third thing the Bible develops about property is that it is the basis for giving, 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. Common private property is the foundation for giving. Can you give that which isn’t yours; no, it’s not an act of charity to give someone else’s goods. Say you know, dear brother so and so is starving, would you please give brother so and so a thousand dollars so I can feel good. Now what kind of logic is that? And yet we have that; we have politicians by the carload today voting your money for all sorts of causes and then claiming that they are the ones with the compassion. It’s not an act of compassion to vote somebody else’s money for someone’s problems. If you give your money to them through the United Fund or through various other charitable groups then that is an act of charity. But it’s not an act of charity for some individual to vote your money and say the police will come now and confiscate your private property to give it to brother X who is suffering. Now that is not charity; it’s something else, and in certain areas of the Bible that is legitimate. We have some minimal welfare in Scripture, and we’ll get into that later but the point is, it’s not charity.

The fourth thing the Bible develops about property is that it’s danger; the great danger of property that the possessions possess the possessor. That is always a problem with property; that you are possessed by your property instead of you possessing your property. And you might do a check on this, no matter how much you now own or don’t own; if your property is running your life so that you can’t enjoy your life and get on with the basic things of life, you either have too much property or you do not know how to run that property which you have. And I understand that this is probably why many Christians to this day do not have more wealth than they do. It’s because God is being gracious to you. He is being gracious because you probably could not control property, you would not know how to use it properly and you would be overwhelmed by it. And this may be one reason why you do not have more than you do materially.

The fifth thing about private property in Scripture, which we developed in Ecclesiastes, is that you can only enjoy property when you are in fellowship with the Lord. And you can have all the property you want to, as Solomon did in Ecclesiastes 2 and you can try everything you want to under the sun but if you’re not in a personal vital relationship with Jesus Christ you can have all property and you’re miserable…you’re miserable. I can name you three or four businessmen in this town right now that are either millionaires or very close to it; these men are some of the most miserable men I have ever seen. They are so miserable that I know certain men who work for them that are quitting; they can’t stand to be around them. They’re either dragging them out of a bar somewhere or something else, they’re doing something for them all the time, trying to take care of their wife and family while they go out and do something else, and so on. And this goes on right here in the city of Lubbock and is an example of men who have amassed fantastic wealth and in the course of amassing this wealth they have completely left the Lord. Some of these men are Christians, and they are so far out of fellowship with God that it’s highly dubious they will ever get back into fellowship again. And they are destroying their lives, they are destroying their families, they have already destroyed their children and their children’s children. And they are heading for disaster, and whenever you are around these people you are miserable with them because they haven’t got anything to do but their little god of property.

So here we have the problem that you can’t enjoy property without Jesus Christ. In fellowship with God you can enjoy property and if you are a Christian and you have wealth do not be embarrassed about it. Never be embarrassed about wealth. If you own thousand and thousands of dollars of investments that is your private property, the Lord has given that to you and you need never apologize for that and you need never give it to any preacher that comes knocking on your door or anybody else, like is going on in this city. One of these particular individuals I have in mind is a very wealthy man; this man needs to have spiritual ministry to him; this man needs the Word of God desperately; this man is on the last legs of his life and he needs someone who will come and minister and do you know what the ministers do of a certain denomination? They walk in his office and say oh brother so and so, we pray that God will burden your heart to give to this, and that, and the other thing. And so they walk in there and put on this big phony front, wanting money from this man and what he does is write out a check for two or three thousand dollars and hand it to them just to get them out of the office. It’s worth it on his nerves. Now what kind of giving is that? This man, one I’m thinking of in particular, has been deprived of the Word of God by men who have done that. And then, of course, you try and present the Word and the image is well, you’re another one of these shysters again. Now that man has been destroyed by asinine clergy who have walked in there, instead of trusting the Lord to provide for needs have come in there and literally sucked this man dry, spiritually, by all of their human viewpoint gimmicks of money-raising and so on. Money-raising is a very deadly thing; thank God that Lubbock Bible Church has it written in the constitution that the Board, the Pastor, or anyone else can never solicit funds from any person. And if you ever are solicited by anybody in this church you report that to me immediately. That’s a violation of this constitution; we are not involved in the money racket. That’s the fastest way of violating this thing.

So in Deuteronomy 22:1-3 we have one individual right and that is the right to own property; this is only one illustration of this first circle, namely that you as an individual and other people as individuals have inherent rights not given them by government.

Now if you’ll turn over to 1 Samuel 8 you will see how it is that oftentimes government will come in and destroy volition. This is when the government exceeds its legitimate domain. As we study this you’re going to find many situations that spell disaster as us as a nation. Many areas that we’re going to go through here are hard to go through because if we’re honest thinking citizens we have to say we were the ones that approved this. You can’t blame it on Washington all the time because these men are elected. Who elects them?

So in 1 Samuel 8 we have a case situation involving about 1000 BC, actually probably a little bit earlier, around 1100 BC; we have a situation develop in Israel where the king, the people cry out for a king. But God is their king. However, these people say we do not want to wait for God to raise up gifted men. You see, up until this time in the history of the nation Israel they always passively waited until God Himself would raise up a judge. A judge wasn’t the man that you think of in a black cloak; a judge would be more like Samson. He was a military leader, a policeman, and a judge all wrapped up in one, you might say. And these were men who had charisma or had a gift from God, and that was the way God’s original plan was to administer the nation Israel. The natural leaders would emerge to the surface. You would not have a human dynasty. But the people got tired, particularly because of Eli and his sons. Eli is the model for all fathers; Eli is precisely an example of what not to do and how not to raise your children. Eli let his children go as brats and never disciplined them, never applied any correction of an sort, and he developed some monsters. And finally, later on as he gets older the Bible says one point Eli did: these kids are about twenty, twenty-five and they were out carousing around and raising Cain and tearing up the society and so on, and Eli says wouldn’t you boys please stop it. And that’s all the Bible says he ever said to his sons. And when the nation saw that they said if this man is a gifted leader you can have it; we’re going to establish a dynasty and so that’s the situation now in chapter 8.

But God has warned Samuel that although it may be bad to trust in gifted men, it’s going to be worst to trust in a dynasty or centralized government, for in 1 Samuel 8 He spells out the problems they’re going to have, and beginning in 1 Samuel 8:14 and going through verse 18 we have a forecast by Samuel as to what will happen to the individual right, in this case property rights. Verse 14, “And he,” the king, “will take your fields,” your private property, He will take “your vineyards, he will take your olive yards, the best of them, and give them to his servants. [15] He will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, to give to his officers, and to his servants. [16] He will take your menservants, and your maid servants, and you goodliest young men, and you asses, and put them to his work. [17] He will take the tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants. [18] And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king whom ye shall have chosen; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.”

So there Samuel forecast the logical thrust that government must always be kept from violating the individual particularly in the area of property rights.

The second circle that we would like to study tonight is the second divine institution and that is marriage, the legitimate domain of marriage. Now obviously marriage must be protected by government; marriage is built on this simple relationship, the right man/right woman. And a happy marriage will be the result of the right man/right woman relationship, and the law, the government, is to protect this. This means, for example, it means to guard against rape and adultery, to guard against these things and that is the legitimate domain of government. But the government does not have the right to step in and construct the foundations of marriage.

As an illustration of how the government can help marriage with a simple legislation, turn to Deuteronomy 24:5, for a law that was used in that day to help strengthen marriages. In Deuteronomy 24:5 in enumerating the military policies of the nation and the draft that they had, for Israel did have a draft and it is Biblical, in verse 5, “When a man has taken a new wife,” then he shall be draft exempt, “he shall not go out to war,” or military service, “neither shall he be charged with any business, but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife whom he has taken.” And the verb here to “cheer up” is the piel stem and it means to cause to bring into the state of happiness; it’s not just be happy, but it means to make happy or to produce a happy state. And this suggests something; this suggests something that many couples contemplating marriage and some of you who have been married while you were in college might think about seriously.

In Deuteronomy 24:5 the insinuation here is this; that it takes a minimum of one year to establish a marriage; one year in which the pressure is off, one year in which the man cheers up his wife, literally this means in all areas, functioning as we outlined in the second divine institution. Remember we said that man is the initiator, the woman is the responder. This is one part of the cycle that must be begun and must be strengthened throughout this one year period. The man must win her positive volition and she must give her positive volition. The man must be a revealer of his character and the woman must be a truster in the revelation of his character. The man must have patience in this process and the woman needs growth in this process. These are just some of the characteristics of the love cycle between right man and right woman. And it evidently is the implication here that it takes a year and so therefore in the Old Testament God had hands off new marriages for one year, to let those marriages cycle and get on firm ground and then the obligations toward the government and so on came in. Now this displays a tremendous sensitivity that the got had in the ancient times of Israel toward marriage.

Now we come to the third divine institution, the divine institution of family. For this turn to Deuteronomy 21 and then we’ll go to the New Testament. Again the government cannot step in and modify the form of family living, but it can balance the family life and can control families when they begin to bother other families and when they begin to violate the first divine institution. See, you’ve got to keep all these things balanced here and that’s the role of government; not to create them but to just keep that which is already created in balance, in a working harmony.

In Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is a very interesting point about something that you very rarely would ever think that government would have, and yet it was fundamental to the role of government in the Old Testament toward the family. “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, he will not hearken unto them, [19] Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him,” you can just see them grabbing him by the ear and dragging him down “to the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place. [20] And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and drunkard.” This is simply a polite way of saying he’s a parasite, he’s a worthless thing, all he does is eat and sleep and use the house as a hotel while the parents pay the bill and he’s absolutely…doesn’t have any production whatever, he’s rebellious, he won’t submit to authority, so therefore, verse 21, “And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones that he die. So shalt you put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” Now that’s how they dealt with juvenile delinquency. You say that’s cruel; it is not cruel! It is cruel not to expect response to authority. And when you do not have response to authority your society is doomed.

America, unless something happens to the generation that is now in college on a large and significant basis, is going to be in deep water in about twenty years, when these monsters that throw their tantrums on the college campus and throw around their blocks because they can’t have their way, when that crowd gets to be the head of the government I think we all ought to take off to Switzerland some place because that’s the only place, with the Alps, you might be safe. At least you can climb up in the Alps and enjoy yourself while you die. But if this crowd gets in charge of the government, woe be to American citizens, unless they get straightened out.

Now Israel had an automatic cutoff here in verses 18 and 19; those that would not respond to authority, and there was a trial here, don’t get the impression that verses 20 and 21 they just did this quickly; there was a trial. And notice that the mother and the father were the ones that brought their own children to trial. And this is a principle of tremendous citizenship responsibility that was felt by the Old Testament people. They felt so deeply committed to their country that they would not even put their own children over the welfare of that country. They realized they had perfect freedom, they had welfare but they realized a vital principle, that by the time this person in verse 18 had reached a testing period, his parents, evidently from the way we read verse 18, it’s evident that his father and his mother had to present evidence to the court that they tried to discipline the child; their methods of discipline were probably evaluated by the court and if they were illegitimate means of discipline then or course the case was dismissed. But if the parents had a legitimate program of discipline and training, it was fair, and still the child rebelled… and by the way, this shows you, do not misinterpret Proverbs 22 about raising a child up the way he should go and so on because this does not guarantee that because you rise your children the right way they’re going to turn out right. Do not blame yourself all the time. Parents are altogether too defensive about this; they think because a kid turns out wrong that it’s automatically their fault. Oh no it isn’t, and this is evidence of it. The family, in verses 18-20 was right, they did everything they could and still the little brat rebelled, and so therefore he was clobbered and that’s how they dealt with brats. And that was the relationship of government to family, and I dare say, had this been consistently carried out in the nation Israel there would have been very little juvenile delinquency.

Turn to Ephesians 6 for the positive side. We’ve shown you how government can step into a family situation but let’s go to Ephesians 6 to find out where the government should stay out of the family situation. In Ephesians 6:1 we have an important statement: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord; for this is right. [2] Honor thy father and thy mother, (which is the first commandment with promise), [3] That it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long in the earth.”

And verse 4 we want to concentrate on, “And, ye fathers,” and the mothers are included in this, “provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” I’d like to expand a little bit on the words “nurture” and “admonition.” The word “nurture” means to feed them Bible doctrine, this means feeding; nurture means orienting, feeding, teaching. And this means the principles of Deuteronomy 6 and 7 and so on, that the parents have the obligation before God to build Biblical standards in their children. Now we said by and large the public schools take over the technical things; the public schools take over the problems of technique, like for example, mathematics, writing and all these other functions. These are techniques of living and the school system has by and large taken this over. But where the school system, acting as the agent of the state, cannot take over is in the area of the overall philosophy of life and the overall basic living requirements. That is where the state cannot intervene. That was our point in protesting in Austin a few weeks ago, was that when a text book in history or biology is written that text book must be free of philosophical points unless those philosophical presuppositions are explicitly stated in the front of the book. Any time you have a textbook that is teaching technical material within a philosophical framework the state has violated it mandate because it is interrupting and is moving and performing a function that mother and father should do for that child. It is the mother and the father that orient the kid toward life’s issues. We find that in Deuteronomy 6 and 7 and so on.

Now the word “admonition” is a word which means to correct and counsel. This means that part of a job, as you well know as parents, is to counsel children, and counseling here, the word admonition, means to sit down with established communication and counsel. What do I mean by counsel? Let’s look at the counseling process. First of all you have to have communication. This is why in a family situation when it gets so bad and the relationship between the parents and the child is to the point where there is zero communication this function of admonition; just put it in the basket because you can’t do it. You’ve got communication; the second thing you have to have is a conversation that will develop the point of rebellion or error, you’ve got to point out error, contrary to what you may have heard in child psychology courses and all the rest. When you counsel with somebody you don’t let them develop the answer to the problem. You give them the answer to the problem. And I realize fully that many of you have been taught about nondirective counseling and you’re to sit around and bring it out of the person and so on, don’t impose your standards on the individual. Of course, this is anti-Biblical; God says you impose your standards, the whole book of Proverbs is written to refute nondirective counseling. Proverbs is directive counseling, of course we mean listen to them and let them become convinced of it, but the standards you give to the counselee are God’s standards and Proverbs is your book to work with there. So Proverbs is an illustration of admonition from father and mother down to the child. This is to be done, not by the state; it is to be done by the parents.

We have illustrations of this in school, I won’t go into it but as one practical illustration, on October 30 this week the Creation Research Society is issuing their high school biology textbook which will develop the techniques of biology within a Biblical framework. And if I were a parent and I had a child in biology I would immediately buy that book and I would stick by it; of course it may have errors in it and so on but the point is in reading the book you will teach the child there are two ways of looking at biology; one way from the anti-Christian point of view and the other way from the creationist point of view, one or the other, there are two ways of doing it. So that’s one illustration. But when the school system, acting as the arm of the state, moves in and tries to dictate a humanism and evolutionism or something like this it is violating this area. So again keep these sovereign spheres in mind. These are the spheres that must be kept in balance.

Now we come to the last phrase tonight and that is the area of economics. In the area of economics we have to deal with certain Biblical passages so turn to Deuteronomy 25. The laws of economics are given at the point of creation, along with private property. The government cannot change the laws of economics; the government can only regulate them. But the Bible has a lot to say in the area of economics and I am very sad to report to you that fundamental Christians in the United States have been amiss for at least 100 years. Fundamental Christians back in the time of the Constitution saw very clearly what the Bible was teaching about money. Those of you who are interested I recommend John Witherspoon’s book, Essay on Money. John Witherspoon was a fantastic Bible-believing Christian, one of the signers of the United States Constitution, a man who if you do not know John Witherspoon’s life you are missing something in American history. John Witherspoon was a fantastic Christian in his day; he was the President of Princeton University and out of his classes this man had the following students: he had one President, he had one Vice President, among his students were ten cabinet officers in the early continental government; he had twelve Governors who had studied under him; twenty-one Senators and thirty-nine Congressmen.

So needless to say John Witherspoon was a very influential man. He was an influential man for many reasons. Not only was he a deep student of the Word of God but he was able to correlate the Word of God to the issues of his time and one of those issues was the issue of money: shall the United States develop a biblical economics or shall it go into an apostate economics, and John Witherspoon’s Essay on Money is a spelling out on what the Biblical doctrine of economics is.

First of all, the principle of all economics is given in Deuteronomy 25:13 and following. “Thou shalt not have in thy bag various weights, a great and a small. [14] Thou shalt not have in thine house various measures, a great and a small. [15] But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight; a perfect and just measure shalt thou have, that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee.” Note the last phrase, “that thy days may be lengthened in the land.” Do you know what this means? This means that this point is so crucial that when the laws of economics are violated God’s discipline begins to be thrown into action.

Now what has economics got to do with these various weights in verses 13-15? Here’s the principle: in the ancient world money was in the form of various gold pieces and so on, a shekel and silver pieces, gold and silver. The gold and silver was transacted on the basis of weight, not on the basis of the face value of the coin; it was transacted on the weight of the gold and silver in the coin. Therefore, a just weight meant that you had to have integrity to the currency. The currency had to have true value and it had to be accepted by all parties as equal.

Now turn to Isaiah 1:22; here is when God lowered the boom on the nation. Isaiah wrote in the latter part of the monarchy and by this time the nation had begun to go down the drain; Isaiah had warned the nation that they were about to encounter the fifth cycle of discipline of Leviticus 26. Isaiah said in his day that this nation is sentenced to doom because of certain evils. He spelled out these evils and one of the chief evils Isaiah spelled out was Isaiah 1:22 and he made this indictment on the economic structure of the nation. “Thy silver has become dross; thy wine mixed with water.” The first part of that is an indictment and please notice in the context, this is labeled as a sin against God’s law. This is, to put it in modern parlance, the devaluation of the currency. What has happened here is that you have taken a silver coin, a coin that is supposed to have value on the basis of weight, and to that silver coin you have removed part of the silver and you replaced it with a non-silver metal, with the result that that coin now has weight but it is a non-integral currency; it is a currency that does not have value as to its face or as to its weight and it is therefore a devaluated and apostate currency. And Isaiah condemns this as a sin against God; “your silver had become dross.” And it is included, and we haven’t go time to develop this from Isaiah but it is included in the section under the Ten Commandments, “thou shalt not steal.” And whenever the currency is devalued and manipulated by the government it means that the government is stealing from its citizens. And so the Bible is very sensitive here on the point of economics; the government must leave the currency at face value and not regulate it.

Let’s go into this a little bit very briefly before we conclude so you can apply this principle clearly. First of all, remember from Isaiah 1 and other passages, that money is not a medium of exchange. You’ve been taught to believe that in all your school, that money is a medium of exchange. Money is more than a medium of exchange; money has inherent value and always has up until the United States government started making paper money legal tender. Until that point money had inherent value. This meant that there was always gold and silver back of it or there was some property. So let’s put this word, “value,” and let’s put equal to “V.” So now we have a certain coin; that coin is equal to V in value; it is equal to V because the gold and the silver that is in that coin has inherent value, nobody adjusts this, it’s the free market condition that establishes the value.

However, we have a problem; oftentimes it becomes ridiculous to carry around gold coins. If you have a million dollars you don’t want it in gold coins. You may say well I’d like it in gold coins, I’d like it any way, but you don’t want to go down the street with a wheelbarrow full of a million dollars worth of gold coins. Around Lubbock you’d get about one block before you got hit over the head or something. So you have the problem of carrying; so men have devised paper, nothing wrong with paper. They have devised paper to do two things; to facilitate commerce because it’s easier to carry than coins full of the inherent value. And also paper is a way of extending credit, it’s a way of saying you borrow money, I give you a promissory note, and you take this note and you say I have a thousand dollars worth of credit. So paper has a function.

What happens is this, that governments always have the tendency to inflate, so what happens is this. Suppose the government, through its banks, has gold, and so the gold is now on deposit, but the government begins first to issue money of equal value to the gold or at least a part of the gold. Say this is worth 25% of the gold. Over here we have some more people and they well, we ought to issue some more money and so we’ll issue 75% and so now all the paper that is out is backed one to one. So you have a dollar bill in your pocket this means that that dollar bill is backed by gold, it is good as gold. However what happens is that the government says well, we want to stimulate the economy after all, we want to have full employment, we want to have a lot of other things so to stimulate the economy we will shoot dollars into it, and so then the government begins to say let’s give us 25% and we’ll shoot 25% more. Now what’s happened to the gold backing? Now you’ve issued more paper dollars than you have gold to back it. Therefore in this illustration I have given you, you now have dollar bills in currency that have no backing. This is technically called a very simple way, fractional reserves. Fractional reserves are a violation of Biblical Christianity. Fractional reserves are an abomination to God because you are making paper worthless and you are pawning it off when it does not have inherent value.

Now please make a careful distinction here; there’s a difference between paper as a promise and paper as legal tender. Those of you who have some money tonight, take out a dollar bill; don’t worry, we’re not going to have a collection, just take it out. I want you to look at something on that dollar bill, and this is what transforms your dollar bill from an actual promissory note into something that violates Scripture. You take out a dollar bill, if you have a silver certificate lucky you, but if it’s a Federal Reserve note, sorry. If you have a Federal Reserve note and you look at a dollar bill on the left side, you will see a little phrase under “The United States of America” that says “this note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.” This means that by law the government has said that if, for example, somebody owes you $1,000, suppose you’ve loaned money out, and you’ve got $1,000 due; I can come up to you with paper and you have to accept the paper, you cannot say I will not accept this, I will accept gold only in payment. But you have to accept the paper, it has become legal tender. And when the government has done this and made paper, which has not value in itself, and is not backed by whole reserves, it has violated the law of God because it is now dictation and interfering into the free laws of economics and is allowing people to have price controls and so on. This is an overstepping of the United States government or all other governments; whenever a government moves in and dictates the price that you will accept for goods, for that is what has happened.

You say we don’t have price control? Well all right, but when you accept money and it says this is legal tender, your price is controlled because you are forced to sell your goods, if you are a store owner or if you’re buying something or if you’re earning a salary somewhere, you are forced to sell your labor and your goods for worthless payment. And sometime this country is going to go down and it’s going to have a depression and it’s going to have a catastrophe financially because people have manipulated the currency and it’s like Confucius says, “He who rides a tiger dare not get off,” and neither the Democrats or the Republicans have the guts to get in there and do what has to be done; it would be political suicide because what has to be done is that the currency…we have to pull the dollars back and get backing and no politician wants to do this because that means unemployment, and it means for a lot there’d be an economic chaos in this country. So therefore the Democrats get in power and they put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off; Republicans get in power and they put it off, put it off, put it off, and everybody is putting it off and putting it off and putting it off and putting it off but I’ll tell you something, on the basis of the laws of economics you can put this thing off only so far and we are heading for disaster.

John Witherspoon, in his Essay spelled this out and he said it very clearly when he said this: “When you make a law,” and he was talking about the legal tender laws, “When you make a law that I shall be obliged to sell my grain, my cattle, or any of my commodities at a certain price, you not only do what is unjust and impolitic, but you speak nonsense, for I do not sell them at all, you take them from me. You are both buyer and seller and I am the sufferer only.” And John Witherspoon spelled it out very clearly because he was an acute student of the Word of God and yet today in this day we have had preachers who have failed to point this out. We have had Christian politicians who have failed to apply the principle, because we know that it would spell a temporary disaster and yet what is there going to be, a temporary disaster or is it going to be fantastic; are we going to have inflation in this country like Germany had when people had to be paid two and three times a day by wheelbarrow because the money wasn’t worth anything and you have to fill a wheelbarrow with money to get enough money to buy bread.

Now that’s what’s going to happen because paper is worthless and somebody sooner or later is going to catch onto it. We have lost our gold, we have fiddled around and fiddled around until we have no gold left in Fort Knox and so our financial system is on very rocky and unstable ground, and it means suffering for all of us. It means suffering for the elderly particularly in inflationary times; you are stealing from people who saved their money years ago when they put aside, and we have penalized the people who saved and we’ve rewarded the people who borrow. That’s the way inflation always works. When you save your money you are penalized; you take a person who’s worked 20 or 30 years of his life, he’s been honest, he’s put his money away hoping that he can have something when he reaches old age, and what has happened? The government has stolen from him. When he was working, from say 1920 to 1940 he put his money away faithfully, every payday, he put his money away saving so he would not have to become a victim of the state, so he would not have to put himself over on his children, so that his children could live their life and not have to worry about the problem of the parents and so on. And so they saved and they saved and they saved and they saved, and they may have saved up $10,000. So when they come to spend it, when they reach retirement, it’s worth about $2,000. Now who has stolen? The United States government has stolen $8,000 of value from that individual by inflating the currency.

Now that’s what’s going on and this is one of the greatest sins that is in America today and yet how often do you hear a Bible teacher even mention it. This is one of the most catastrophic sins our nation faces and God says… and every nation that has ever tampered with its money has always reaped the results; sooner or later there’s a collapse and it means that the only defense you have as a citizen against this thing is to sum up everything you own, all your assets, and ask yourself tonight, of my assets, how much of my assets are in paper money. That means how much you have in your checking account, how much you have in your savings. And that amount of your assets is in the form in which the government can take it away from you tomorrow. You can wake up tomorrow morning and there may be a nationwide announcement that they have devaluated the dollar and you’ve lost. And they can steal it from you overnight.

What is the conclusion to this matter? Turn in conclusion to Matthew 6:19. What does the Christian response? Some say well, it isn’t important. Money is important; we are commanded in Scripture to provide for our families. God’s Word says the man that that does not provide for his family is worse than an infidel. And by the way, that goes for you men who have may have been approached by some religious organization making you feel guilty because you didn’t give your tithe or something else to their outfit and they made you feel guilty and so you had to give your money to some outfit and so on. Listen, you have an obligation in the Word of God to provide for your family first and if you can’t provide the basic necessities for your family you have no business giving your money to any organization, Christian, non-Christian, or anything else. None, because 1 Timothy tells you you are worse than an infidel if you deprive your family of the necessities of life to give your money to the church. That is not honoring to the Lord, it’s an abomination to the Lord. So this is one thing you have to get straight.

However, there is a point to application here tonight and I’d like to conclude with this. Matthew 6:19, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. I hope I’ve shown you today that those of you who have your confidence in money don’t think it’s going to be there tomorrow; your money may not be there tomorrow. But Jesus says, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust or inflation doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.” That is a legitimate application of the text. [20] “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not beak through nor steal; [21] For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

And I can’t think of a more fitting way to conclude tonight than think of the sheer stupidity of worrying about currency. Now you’ve got to do something to provide for your families and you may, some of you have investments in certain areas and so on, you try to as unto the Lord pick out the most secure form of investment so that you won’t have this problem if they do fiddle around with currency and so on; you can minimize it, all right, fine, but in the end, after all is said and done your mental attitude, if you’re going to perpetually worry from day to night about your money, about your assets, you’re going to wind up on the funny farm. Now that’s just one of the side benefits of applying Scripture, and what Jesus says is that where “your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” and if you’re resting and you have your confidence in the idol of private property, whether it’s in the form of cash, whether it’s in the form of investments or something else, you’ve got your heart in the wrong place. And you’re going to be miserable; tomorrow if some other situation comes up you’re going be absolutely miserable. So in verse 21 advises: is your heart on Him, or is it on money and property.

Remember, the Lord Jesus Christ, I would say, led a quite successful life; how much money do you think He had. As far as we know from Scripture Jesus Christ owned one thing and that was his own clothing, made apparently by his mother, and that’s all that man owned. He evidently, from the way we can gather from Scripture is Jesus Christ stayed at home to provide for his family until his father died or Joseph just disappeared from the Gospel narrative, Jesus stayed in the carpenter shop and worked to provide Mary and the children with financial need until the other children got to the point where they could take over, then Jesus began His ministry. And when He went forth He had nothing but the clothes on His back and I would say He led a quite successful life.

With out heads bowed….