Clough Manhood Series Lesson 42

Wealth-Part IV: Marriage & Family; Dowries, Capitalizing, Inheritance

We’ve seen several areas of wealth, we’ve pointed out what wealth is, that it is the main expression of your values, nowhere does the Bible deprecate wealth, you don’t have to be embarrassed about wanting wealth in a godly way as a sign of your production. That is a false thing and a technical belief of anti-wealth pro-poverty is called by a theological name, and its name is pietism. And the pietism has come into the church in many areas, so people rejoice… of course it was expressed most fully in the Middle Ages with the monks taking their oath of poverty. And this has come down into our own times, particularly wealthy people are made to feel guilty by all sorts of innuendos and so on. Now wealth is also useful for a Christian as an area of ministry. Many Biblical examples could be given of wealthy believers using their monies in a wise way to further the gospel. One thinks of only of John Mark’s mother who owned considerable property and in whose house many New Testament apostolic meetings were held. In the Old Testament one thinks of some of the wealthy people there. One thinks of Joseph, for example, and the great operation he had to save his people with his wealth.

Remember too, some of you who have come out of wealthy churches, that the wealth behind many churches in our country is wealth that was given to them a generation ago by fundamental Christians. The church has since went liberal and after they went liberal guess who continued to own the property? You guessed it, the liberals. And so therefore the fundamentalists basically are in a poor condition in this country because they’ve had their wealth stolen from them. The churches of New England, for example, under the Unitarians, basically stole every first church in every New England city and village away from the conservatives by a series of court actions in the state of Massachusetts. So we have had organized theft going on for some time. In the Presbyterian and Methodist circles this battle was fought in the 20s and 30s between the fundamentalists and the modernists. And once again, because the conservatives were outvoted and outmaneuvered they lost, and when they lost they lost the schools, they lost the property and they lost the endowments. And so this is why in our own generation the conservatives are basically coming out of a poverty situation, but it should not be; it’s just that the liberals have ripped us off.

The second thing that we have studied under wealth is the use of money in worship, and we’ve said that this is one of the most practical places in one’s life where you affirm that the Creator is ultimately the owner. And this is through the use of time, through the immaterial things that you own, skills as well as material wealth. But this is a very, very practical use of money to show where your values are. My boys have gotten themselves a little paper route and we just had a little conversation about well, what are you going to do with your profit. I want you to write out each month your profits and I want you account for every dime that you spend, and I’m not going to tell you how much to give to the things of the Lord but I want you to make it out and I want you to make it consistent. And you give to some of the support ministries this church is interested in, and I said now you choose, or choose some of your own. But it’s nice now that you’re earning money, now you learn how to express your faith with your money because if you don’t now you won’t later.

And we covered in that connection many New Testament principles of giving… many New Testament principles of giving. And you have to watch it. As Christians you will get all sorts of kook mail; you will get mail from Christian organizations month after month after month that dun you for money. You watch out for organizations that are always dunning you for money; there’s something wrong with them. No Christian organization that is being blessed of God ought to be sending emergency letters every four or five weeks saying we’ve got to have this much money, we’ve got to have that much money and so on. And where ever organizations get into this, somewhere something has happened. Special offerings once in a while okay, but this constant month in month out, year in year out, operation. Many well known Christian organizations are like this. There’s one and I saved all this stuff from them and I’m going to wait until it gets about this high and then I’m going to send it back to them and I’m going to say you know, you could have saved a fortune in stamps just on this literature alone so I would suggest that you scan your giver’s list more carefully because obviously I haven’t given you anything in three years yet you continue to waste your money in this printed material and the postage is worth more than the printed material, not that postage rates have gone up. So update your giver’s list and it might impress me that you’re stewards of the Lord’s money, but until you do I’m never going to give to you because I think you’re fools.

Now the third area of wealth is the area of taxation and we said here that though we may chaff at it, the Bible tells us we must pay our taxes. What Christ does say is that we are to pay them as unto God, not as unto Caesar. We pay the government back for services rendered, or more recently service premised to be rendered. And then we avoid giving tax as a worship of Caesar; that is, that Caesar is our provider of every blessing; Caesar from whom all blessings flow, that kind of mentality. That’s not the mentality that ought to accompany payment of tax. Payment of tax is a strict business deal, it is a payment for services rendered. We said it is unfortunate but there’s only been two or three major ways that high taxation in an ever increasing government has ever been solved historically; one is the collapse of government in the paroxysm of economic disaster; another is that the government becomes militarily conquered and subdued, or people just simply migrate, you get out of it. But it’s not a very optimistic prognosis, once the government gets big. There’s really not any historical precedent for it getting smaller once it’s gotten big. The only precedence we can cite is where we’ve had a powerful Christian influence such as in the origin of our country, but even then, people had to leave, physically leave the system and then even fight a war to stay separate from it.

Tonight we deal with the main area of wealth in the Bible and this is the area of the third divine institution. In the area of the third divine institution, the family, we have the basic holding of wealth. Now although money and labor is an outflow of the first divine institution of personal responsibility, the Scriptures seem to make much of wealth held in the family. This congregation has many young couples in it, and I think it will be very interesting to watch the role of wealth in beginning a family maintaining a family, and finally the death of the temporary leaders of that family or the issue of inheritance. So today we’re going to look at certain principles regarding wealth and the family.

Let’s begin by turning to Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments. We want to look at a particular clause in the tenth commandment. Critics have laughed at this clause, have used it to ridicule the Bible, have chuckled about it, and I suppose in this day of women’s liberation have done so more than ever before, because in verse 17 when it talks about coveting property, it says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house; you shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his slave, nor his female slave, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.” You will notice the woman is listed a little less valuable in the house; she is part of his property. Now, this, at first glance seemed to be very unflattering toward the woman, that she is considered to be a piece of property. But that’s because of the way we conceive of property. We conceive of property as material property; material property that can be disposed of, sort of in an amoral way. The Bible doesn’t do that. This is where words play tricks. The Bible says a man is responsible and he is responsible for his wife and therefore, because he is responsible for her, she is his property in that sense of the word “property.” And therefore, she is included in verse 17 along with material possessions, along with his ox and his ass. Now some men have called their wives that but this is the real thing, this is not used metaphorically; this is his stock that he owns, or his investment, or his holdings.

But to show you that the wife is protected, and that though she is considered property, she too has ownership rights. Turn to 1 Corinthians 7; the issue isn’t the property, the issue is who defines what the property is and the usage of that property. So 1 Corinthians 7:4-5 we have the command, and that’s exactly what it is, for sexual relations within marriage. The interesting thing is the role, very unromantic way, that this is described; it’s described as a legal property right. For example, verse 4, “The wife has not authority,” and the word “power” or “authority” there is the word property right, it is a legal term, she doesn’t have “the property right of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband does not have property of his own body, but the wife,” so stop stealing from one another. That’s what it means. Incontinence over a long period of time is considered in the Bible as theft, theft of property. And so therefore what we have in the Scriptures is even the sexual relationship is spoken of and cast in terms of real property. So that should show us, at least, the strong emphasis on property and 1 Corinthians 7 ought to be a reminder that the woman is not knocked down, she’s not deprecated because here she has property rights also in the relationship.

Let’s turn back into the Old Testament for there is where we have the whole theology of property, wealth and the family. And it’s important we look at this. One can sanctification well, we’re not under the Law now; yes, true we’re not under the Law now, but the principles of the Law still encompass wisdom that we can use. Since we’re in Exodus let’s look at Exodus 21:7; to show you again the outworking of property here’s a situation where a father became economically deprived and he had to generate some cash so he sold off his daughter. Now the right to sell off his daughter obviously implies that his daughter is a piece of property, and in the Mosaic Law she was. However, before all the women get ready to ambush me at the foyer, I assure you that she is very well protected by the Law, so though she is officially declared to be property, watch the boundaries and the protection that God puts around her.

Exodus 21:7, “And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.” So right away the amount of work that she does, the harshness of her environment are protected. Just because she is a woman and she has been sold she is not the complete property of this person to whom she’s sold. Now the trick in all of this is that if this represents her father and this represents her master, the father has sold his daughter to a master. But over them both is God and so therefore, since God is the ultimate owner of all, not only the girl, but both the father and her master, therefore it is God that lays down the property rights and the limitations on what she can do. So all of these are protection devices and as you look at them, understand something; you are seeing the heart of God in Old Testament legal Scriptures. So often people think the God of the Old Testament is some sort of boogey man, but just look and read the text and you’ll see that that’s not the heart of the God that I read here, verse after verse after verse in the Law. It’s a very compassionate concerned God.

So “if a man sell his daughter,” there are limitations of what that girl is expected to do. Verse 8, “If she does not please her master, who has betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed; to sell her into a strange nation he shall have no authority, seeing he has dealt deceitfully with her.” Now there is an issue, the redemption, in verse 8, appears to be the return of dowry, and that indicates that the master married her, he said that’s a sharp looking little honey we’ve got for a maid and so I think we’ll make it a little more permanent arrangement. And so he marries her, and when he marries her she is given, or her father is given a dowry, or payment, and this is how, in part, not only the service is rendered but this would be a cash flow back to daddy. Well, if he decides that he wants to divorce her, he gets tired of her, and he has a few other chicks in his operation that looks younger and cuter and so he wants to dump her, the Mosaic Law prohibited just throwing her out of the house. And so when she was given out then she had to be redeemed and that is that this man, who gave money, would have to also pay for her. So in the respect to her redemption he paid a price for it. He would kick her out but there would be certain economic repercussions. It’s a complicated question, I’m not going to go into what all the repercussions are. My only point tonight is that there were economic screws being applied to the situation to limit the amount of liberty that was going on in this situation.

In Exodus 21:9, “And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters,” she was to have full family rights. You see how she’s protected here. Verse after verse after verse is protecting her. Why is she protected? Because as a single girl in the ancient economy as well as today’s world, she could be a victim, easily become a victim of slavery. And so to prevent her from being in that situation God puts a fence around her and protects her. There is an expression of God’s concern for the woman.

Verses 10-11, “If he take him another wife, her food, her clothing, and her duty of marriage,” that means sexual relations, “shall he not diminish. [11] And if he do not these three unto her, then she shall go out free without money.” He will lose her, and there’s no redemption, there’s no cash flow and all the rest of it; it’s gone. So the point in verses 10-11 is that there are three things that are minimum provision considered in the Scriptures, and without those then God says she is being treated unfairly. That also shows you a little bit, as men, what men owe women in the relationship; the minimum.

Now let’s look, after we’ve introduced the issue of property and the wealth and the fact that property has a larger function in the Bible than just what we think of property as money, check account, stocks, bonds and so on, we think of property that way, enlarge your sights now and think of property in this much, much larger view. In the larger view let’s look at the issue of how a family was to begin. All this so far has just been preliminary excursions of some Scriptures to show you what property is. But now we want to say okay, here’s a young guy, he’s starting his family, he has to begin getting married, so the issue with the problem of a dowry. Now a lot of people laugh at these customs. And I guess in our own generation they’re just not really functioning, and so these are very, very strange to us.

But in the past, I remind you, in history dowries were used in various ways; there are many different kind of dowries. I even hesitate to use the word because the Bible uses it in two or three different ways, but in the Scriptural time there was at least one kind of dowry that was given to the bride, either by her groom or by her father. The bride was given a wedding present and it was a very expensive wedding present. Oftentimes it could be… well, I’ll show you what it’s going to be, but it consisted of a vast amount of property and you say why was this requirement, to pay the bride this vast amount of property when she married? Well, it had a very, very practical effect; nobody could get married under this system unless they first had economic preparation and so it forced the young couple, before they were married, it forced them to gather economic assets together, or they couldn’t get married because there was no dowry available. If the guy, for example, was to give the bride a certain amount of money and this amount of money in some cases may have amounted to as much as two years salary, you can obviously see that this would quickly get rid of some clown that was on a love ‘em and leave ‘em kick, because you see, he had to prove his responsibility by saving the cash. Now what would that automatically do, do you suppose, to the stability economically of that family? Right from the start it had economic stability… right from the start.

In early America, a slight modification of this custom but it was followed in many of the colonies for at least a hundred years, according to one student who said: “According to an old American custom, the father of the bride gave her a cow, which was intended to be the mother of a new herd to supply milk and meat for the new family.” Now we can laugh at it but still it was a way of giving stock that would be productive in that home in the future.

Now why is all this? Is this a stupid custom? No, today we’ve degenerated into (quote) “wedding presents,” and showers and this kind of thing, and that’s kind of nice, but that’s nothing compared to the way it was in the ancient world. There weren’t little shower $3.50 gifts at some wedding shower some place. These things consisted of thousands of dollars of land invested property, and the reason was that this was the starting capital for that family’s business and production. So since God operated and He’s got rules in the Mosaic Law for all these dowry transactions… now the Mosaic Law doesn’t go into them all, this is what makes study of them so difficult, but it goes into them enough for us to realize that God considered the economic starting point of a home very important indeed. He wants a couple to have economic security when they begin. He realizes that two people becoming one is a difficult process at best and it is far worse when you are operating under economic hardships. This is why so many student marriages go on the rocks, simply because there’s no economic stability. Both are working, both are trying to live from hand to mouth and make the bills for the next day, and this creates a pressure in the marriage that is not healthy at all, and so God is just simply trying to say look, let’s just get started on the right foot. And so the dowry rules were given.

Now we want to look at some examples of how great these dowries were to get an idea, this is not talking about a shower. Turn to Genesis 24:59. Here’s the case or Rebekah. What we talking about now in context, let’s not lose the forest for the trees, the big topic here is we’re trying to pull together in just a brief way some of the highlights of how family wealth began, and it began with a bang because nobody could get married without having quite a bit of assets available. “And they sent away Rebekah, their sister, and her nurse, and Abraham’s servant, and his men.”

Now there it just says her nurse, but if you look at verse 61, “And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebekah, and went his way.” Now I’ve seen Sunday School literature that shows little Rebekah humping it out on the top of a camel as she wonders where she’s being taken to. Well, that’s not quite the picture. Rebekah had attendants with her, she was given as part of her dowry, as part of her starting assets, a retinue of servants. Now girls, how would you like that, your own hair dresser personally accompanying you, and she’s yours for the rest of your marriage, do nothing except set your hair, every day you can have your hair a new style. Now don’t tell me that isn’t wealth, at the rate beauty parlors charge you; you sum that up over 365 days and you’ll see just what was involved in the dowry.

So again, these girls started out with quite a few assets. Now it may be unfair in this case to pick Rebekah as an all time model because she obviously came from an upper class home. And Abraham, by this time had gained wealth too and so forth. So we’ll say yes, this is an upper class situation, but the principle still holds. It’s not just being showy with the wealth; it’s a very, very practical reason for this thing.

Genesis 29:24 is another illustration. “And Laban gave unto his daughter Leah, Zilpah, his maid, for an handmaid.” Again, she has a servant girl with her. Now the only way to translate that in dollar terms is to try and compute what you would have to spend for a dishwasher, somebody hired to do your dishes, do your hair, do all the other things that women need done, sum it over one year, and figure out how much annual wage would be involved here and this gives you an idea of the wealth that was given to these girls.

Let’s look at it a different way; this girl was a little more shrewd. She was a bargainer; turn to Judges 1; there was a material economic aspect to marriage. Recently in premarriage counseling we’ve inaugurated something new, and that is we have a couple work on a marriage contract; in one part of that marriage contract is their attitude toward property. And we don’t do it on this particular contract, our contract is just kind of a warm-up exercise, but if we were in some Orthodox Jewish areas, believe me, there would be no marriage until a contract was signed in which all the property, all the clothes, automobiles, house, all of it was mentioned in the contract. Now that sounds to our western (quote) “enlightened minds” as very unromantic, but that’s the way it was. It was very businesslike. There was a lot of wealth involved in a marriage, transfer of wealth from one family to another.

And there had to be records kept and there were deals made and here, right in the middle of one of these deals in Judges 1:12, Caleb has a daughter; he offers her to anybody that knocks off this Canaanite village. “[And Caleb said, He who smites Kiriath-sepher,] and takes it, to him I will give Achsah, my daughter, to wife [in marriage]. [13] And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, took it; and he gave him Achsah, his daughter, to wife. [14] And it came to pass, when eh came to him, that she moved him to ask of her father a field: and she alighted off her ass; and Caleb said unto her, What do you want? [15] And she said unto him, Give me a blessing, [for thou hast given me the Negev; give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs].” Notice, that the payment given to the girl is called a blessing. Now we get very, very spiritual, you know, when we read the Bible, Jacob blessed his sons and so forth; we fail to realize, hey, just a minute, that’s not waving hands and putting out hot air. Blessing in the Bible meant a material gift. You know, now come on baby, I want blessing… blessing, blessing I can touch, I can use, never mind the words.

So the word “blessing” has a material content to it in the Old Testament. Therefore when you read about blessing in the New Testament that ought to tell you something. Yes, in the New Testament many of the blessings are spiritual but the primary meaning behind the word blessing comes here, in the Old Testament where it was material. So she asked her father, hey dad, give me a blessing; you have given me a south land, give me some water. In other words, this is a shrewd girl, she knew that her groom was going to be a farmer. Daddy had given her some land. But daddy had apparently had neglected the fact there was no well on the land. So she says well now we need a well for our new land, for our farm, for our family, so give me one of your wells, and he did. And so you have the situation, the upper springs and the nether springs and so on. He gave her quite a full sized operating irrigation system. Well, now those are the kind of deals that daughter worked out with daddy, and she worked it out oftentimes with her groom. It shows you, incidentally, that the women in the ancient world, though they were property, they were very astute… I don’t want to say manipulators, but they were very astute business women; they didn’t just go into marriage with their eyes closed; they were looking as to where bread was going to come from tomorrow and there was no reason why they shouldn’t. So girls, take it as a model. And you can imagine from the illustration we just saw that Achsah got quite a healthy chunk; we’re talking again, not in terms of $5.00 and $6.00 dime store wedding shower gifts; we’re talking now about massive transactions of real estate. Again why? Because a family must have a property base, an economic base.

1 Kings 9:16, another illustration of this. “For Pharaoh, king of Egypt, had gone up, and taken Gezer, and burned it with faire, and slain the Canaanites who dwelt in the city, and gave it for a present to his daughter, Solomon’s wife.” He wiped out the enemy and gave her the site with all of its wells, with all of its wealth, with all of its harvested grain and so on; gave it as a present. Can you imagine how much it would be to give a city as a present; well, that’s how much Pharaoh thought of his daughter. She was married to Solomon and after all, when you’re married to Solomon, you know, the poor girl’s got to stand out, she’s got 999 other competitors, so you’ve got to kind of run the system so that your girl gets… you know, her flag flies higher than everyone else’s. So Pharaoh decided how he’d work that deal was to just simply give Solomon a whole city, the particular city he gave Solomon, incidentally, was a very, very militarily important city. So it was worth many intangible things besides the actual material wealth in it.

So here we have cases and I hope these four illustrations have at least shown you the extent of the wealth that was paid. Now to show how this was guarded let’s turn back to Genesis 31:14-16 a moment. Suppose daughter didn’t get her gift. See, girls it wasn’t too bad living back in those days, was it. “And Rachel and Leah answered and said unto him, Is there yet any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house? [15] Are we not counted of him as strangers. For he has sold us, and has quite devoured also our money.” See, the deal was that Laban kept this money; see, old Jacob got ripped off. He ripped off everybody and so God gave him to a super-ripper, and he learned there that seven years wages that he thought at least some of those wages didn’t go the old man, some of those wages ought to have been turned around and used to start that marriage off.

Let’s just suppose Jacob made, say as a good cattleman, in those days equivalent… let’s just say he made $20,000 starting off; okay. So it’s $140,000 bucks. Now see what I mean, this is not a shallow present. That’s $140,000 and he wanted some of that back so he could start a family and a home. And Rachel and Leah are fussing about it; that’s what they’re saying, hey, daddy didn’t give him much back so we’re not getting our cut on $140,000 and we’re not getting any inheritance from the old man, so what’s the deal? We got ripped off. That’s what the deal is. So here you see the attitude of the women who don’t get their money, they’re mad, because the text indicates that this was expected. A girl had the right to expect this, under the way the system operated in the Old Testament.

Now, the problem obviously came that this meant that girls would be worth differing amounts, depending on their skills. And in that day it wasn’t just beauty that counted, it was also brains. And if a girl was some sort of a clod, well then the guy, you know, how much is she worth? And he would measure; the guy in other words would be looking on the girl, not just for her but he’d be forced to look into her character. And this had another very, I think, beneficial effect. It forced a couple to look at each other’s real worth, not necessarily the material wealth but their ability to generate wealth. Is this girl… does this girl, for example, come from a productive home, or is everybody in this home just a bum. Well, if she’s been grown up in a house of bums the chances are she’s going to be a bum. So why do you want to marry a bum for? But on the other hand, a guy would look around and say hey, this girl comes from a fantastic home, look at what her dad does, look at what her mother does. They have character; they may not be very materially wealthy, but they’ve got character. When they start a job they finish the job. I’ve noticed, for example, a guy would probably say in her home how resources are used very efficiently and so this speaks of character. So that girl would be worth a lot.

Well now the Law had protections for the woman. What about the case when the girl was raped, and this lowered her status in the world. Watch the protection, Deuteronomy 22:28; God provided for all these contingencies. “If a man find a damsel who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; [29] Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he has humbled her, he may not put her away all is days.” Now if you compare this with Exodus 22:16-17 you will see that there is also an option where if he didn’t want her he still had this vast amount of money to pay. Now fifty shekels may not be much if you count it by the rate of ounces of gold and silver today, but it was a fine and the fine was there to witness the fact that some compensation had to be given because he had lowered that girl’s value and therefore monetary… and again it sounds very cold and harsh, but it really wasn’t. It was a recognition that damage had been done and somebody had better pay for it. That’s the point.

All right, now let’s turn to Deuteronomy 20:7, this does not have to do with wealth but it has to do with the same issue of getting a family started. This is the famous chapter on the military exclusions, what young men could get excused from military service. “What man is there who has betrothed a wife, and has not taken her? Let him go and return unto his wife, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her,” and so forth and it goes on. In other words, there were some exemptions left, because God hedged about divine institution three; when that family started it had to be protected; it had to be protected from army duty unless there was an absolute emergency, so there was no service outside of the home, and there was input of cash into that home to start it off. Now you can imagine the effect this would have in our own country if this were followed. It’s not followed but it was followed in biblical times. God wanted it to be followed.

Now let’s turn to Proverbs 21:20; we want to go to the next step. After the family is begun, how does the family then increase its wealth? To show you that the Bible commends increasing one’s wealth, let’s look at some passage. Now I observe several young couples in this congregation that have known doctrine, they’ve taken in doctrine, and it’s very interesting to watch them in their marriage; they’re out of college, and the men are inevitably involved in business, trying to start their businesses and trying to get economic capital together. Now that’s thinking biblically. That’s correct, and in the years to come that couple will be productive. Now the reason why this doesn’t happen, even in Christian circles, is because somewhere along the line you get some New Testament Christian that hasn’t read these principles, oh, now that you’re married we want you to be President and Vice President of the young marrieds, and we want you to conduct some class every night of the week, and we want you to do this and we want you to do that, and we want you to hustle and we want this and that and the other thing and all the rest of it. And what happens? That couple can never get their stuff together economically and they’re living from one disaster to another for five or ten years because they were misled by Christians.

Couples, when they begin, because we don’t have the dowry capitalization feature are oftentimes forced to do this for the first few years of marriage. They have got to sacrifice in order to capitalize for the future of their home, the education of their children, and other things depend upon it. And Christian organizations ought to bug off of pressuring them into some ministry right away. For heaven’s sakes, in the book of Deuteronomy you just saw, even the army couldn’t draft the guy, and yet we have Christians in the head of organizations that consider themselves called to tell some young couple the Word of God that just came down by the hotline some place, that they are to drop everything, don’t worry about establishing your marriage but we want you to start getting in the rah-rah and all the rest of it, activity here, activity there, and so on, so every night’s shot. That’s not the way to start. The way to start is just exactly the way you see here and the way several of our young couples are starting; wisely, slowly, not getting overly involved but plodding away, building up their business, building up their productivity, saving, capitalizing.

All right, Proverbs 21:20, here’s an object of God’s attitude. “There is treasure to be desired, and oil, in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man spends it up.” That’s the King James way of translating he spends it as fast as he gets it. And verse 20 is obviously teaching savings. It’s talking about capitalizing. It’s talking about storing it, and this couple, the wise couple, there is treasure and oil, that’s just a concrete way of saying they have their assets, and they’ve saved and they’ve stored this.

Another illustration of this, Proverbs 6:6. As we have tried to make you aware in the Genesis series there are many principles, spiritual principles, in the nature around us and God, you will find, oftentimes takes us to physical features in nature and says would you look at this feature; I want to show you something. And here in Proverbs 6:6, “Go to the ant, lazy person [thou sluggard], and consider her ways, and become wise,” the idea there is that the ant, the lowly ant has been designed to teach something, and here you’ve got the authoritative Word of God, so head for the nearest anthill and learn the lesson. [7] “Which, having no guide, overseer, or ruler, [8] Provides her food in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. [8] How long will you sleep, lazy one [sluggard]?”

In other words, the issue is that God has designed systems in the animal kingdom that show the principle of economic capitalization. Think of the colony of the bees; we see in The City of the Bees, that Moody science film, what do the bees do? Basically what they’re doing is capitalizing. Isn’t it marvelous that not one of these systems in the animal kingdom, like the ant or the bee, show the principle of federalized subsidies. Not one of the systems. Nobody’s handing out subsidies to the ants because they had a bad time or the bees; the whole colony of bees and the whole colony of ants is totally dependent upon saving. Now why do you suppose God made the universe that way? To teach the lords of the nature, that’s us, the lords of nature, look at the ground under your feet and learn; that’s why it’s made that way, it’s designed with a purpose, to teach savings.

Let’s look further at the attitude of God towards those who save. Turn back to Genesis 21. What we’re fighting here is a heresy within our own circles that says that if you don’t take all that extra money, if you ever get a chance to have any, and if you don’t give it to “the Lord’s work” (quote, end quote) and always the understood thing is “our” work, if you don’t give it to the Lord’s work then you’re unspiritual. And what we’re saying is that’s not the way the Scriptures work; the Scriptures say the young couple ought to capitalized; it doesn’t say be tight as far as giving but there is an emphasis on savings.

In Genesis 21:22, notice the language. Abimelech looks at businessman Abraham, and he sees wealth. How does he interpret Abraham’s wealth? Well, it’s obvious, he says, “…God is with thee in all that you do.” Do you see again there is a material, economic sign of God’s blessing. And it was understood in the ancient world, blessing wasn’t some ethereal spiritual thing, it was a material thing that you could look at and see. Let’s go further, just so this doesn’t appear to be a quirk. Let’s take the grandson here, great-grandson in Genesis 39:3, great-grandson Joseph. We went over this thing before but nevertheless, it shows us again. Here’s Joseph, what happens? He’s acting as manager of the house of Potiphar, and in verse 3, his prosperity, notice how it’s interpreted. “And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand,” again, economic blessing is a sign of God’s blessing. The two are not separable in the ancient world.

And we could go on to Deuteronomy 28:1-8 if we had time. In the New Testament passage I read before the prayer, 3 John 2, where John says I wish that you’d prosper and be in health. [“Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be I health, even as thy soul prospers.”] What do you think prosper means there? Prosper means business wise, it’s God’s general will that we prosper. Why? Because it’s accumulation of wealth. Now there will be shortly in the Lubbock Bible Church library, one couple that’s doing this, has found an interesting book by a Christian finance man, and they donated this book to the library and this man has this interesting thing, it’s for young couples starting out with some practical advice. I’m not a financial expert, this is just his chart, but here’s just an illustration that is used and we’ll go back to this later on, of what can happen at 6%. Now obviously, inflation is at 8% so there’s a little problem but nevertheless, the point still is look, here’s a couple that puts $1,000 a year for ten years away; there’s their interest that they gain on that amount of money; there’s the total amount of money they gain after ten years. Put in $10,000, get $13,900 out. Then they withdraw it at the rate of $2,000 a year for the next nine years after this, and the total amount of interest earned on the original $10,000 is $7,286. All right, inflation is eating it up but at least something happened here; at least some cash was helped. And what did they do? The couple just simply had discipline. Financial discipline to consistently capitalize, consistently save.

This is why when we counsel, premarital counseling, one of the things we ask and you would be surprised of couples coming right down to the wedding day, they’ve got all this and all that and everything else and we say have you ever thought of making a budget? No, not really. Well, it’s about time you started, because as mundane as it seems, you do have to eat once in a while, your car does need gasoline, and your marriage won’t just operate on romantic feelings for the next 20 years. So again, it’s just simply wisdom, the power of systematic savings. That’s the biblical way of doing it. Now for how to do it in an inflating economy go see one of the financial whiz kids in our congregation and they’ll be glad to tell you various ways they’ve found and so on, but that’s not my job as pastor; all I’m pointing out is the biblical principle is to capitalize and to save.

Now, we’ve covered two things, we’ve covered how the marriage gets started with these case input in lump sums, the dowry issue. We’ve said that the biblical means for generating wealth is a systematic program of capitalizing. Now finally, the other end of the home, inheritance. Let’s look at biblical principles of inheritance. Deuteronomy 21:15, here’s the model of biblical inheritance. Oftentimes Christians have wondered why is it that the firstborn son of the family seems to receive, and he does, it’s a correct observation, seems to receive preferential treatment. By what right? You have four sons and you take your firstborn and you give him double inheritance? What’s going on with this? Isn’t this prejudice? Doesn’t this breed sibling rivalry within the home? Well, let’s see why. Usually if you look long enough and hard enough God does have reasons why he tells us things.

Deuteronomy 21:15, this is in the context of preserving marriages but nevertheless, the principle still holds here. “If a man has two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated, and if the first-born son be hers that was hated; [16] Then it shall be, when he makes his sons to inherit that which he has, that he may not make the son of the beloved first-born before the son of the hated, which is the real first-born. [17] But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the first-born, by giving him double portion of all that he has; for he is the beginning of his strength; and the right of the first-born is his.”

The firstborn son is always singled out in Scripture as the carrier of the double inheritance. Why? The answer is because the firstborn son is the appointed guardian of the estate. The firstborn son is the one on whose shoulders will come the care of his parents when they get old. On the shoulders of the firstborn will come the storms that will attack that family in years to come and the firstborn must be the boy that becomes a man and he leads. And in order to provide for that home and his responsibilities the firstborn son is given double capital. See, the double capital isn’t just a present; it’s a present but with responsibility. That firstborn son is going to have to care for the home; he’s going to have to spend out of his pocket for mamma and daddy when they get old. And so therefore he starts out with a double portion of the inheritance.

You say, well suppose the guy turns into a clown, was the firstborn son always… rigorously in the Bible was the firstborn son always appointed double portion? The answer is no, he could be disinherited. The point in this passage, in verses 15-17 is that he couldn’t be disinherited because daddy didn’t like his mother. That was insufficient reason, but to show you the Bible doesn’t say just because a guy’s physical firstborn doesn’t necessarily mean that he gets the inheritance, the next passage. Notice the context, the one we often talk about, rebellious juvenile delinquents, you see the context now, verse 18, “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, and the voice of his mother and that, when they have chastened him, [and he still] will not hearken unto them, [19] Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him,” and they will do so without apologies to some child advocate, “and bring him to the elders of the city, and unto the gate of the place. [20] And they shall say unto the elders of the city, This, our son, is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice; he’s a parasite, [glutton, and a drunkard],” that’s what glutton and drunken means, no production, all he does is sit and eat and go out with the boys and plan. [21] “And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die. So shalt thou put evil away from among you….” So needless to say, this has a little purifying effect.

And as I said earlier in the manhood series, at one time in America this was the law of the land, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. People say oh, that’s impractical, it’ll never work. It was part of the law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all during the time when that law was on the books it was never exercised, because for some strange reason the sons behaved. Marvelous how it worked. But when the law stood as a guardian to back up the authority of the parents, and the little brat couldn’t see that he could run down and get some school official on his side, or run down and get some sob sister in the welfare department on his side, when all that was cut off and he realized that boy, the old people that I got outside here, the elders of the gate, and I know what they’re going to do, so I’d just better solve my problems right here with mom and dad and not carry this thing and make a big issue out of it because if it’s going to be a big issue it’s going to be my execution. And that had a restraining effect.

So you see, verse 18-21 tells you how they got rid of the clods, so if you had this kind of a parasite for a firstborn son you could get rid of the guy so you could save your wealth; you wouldn’t have to give it to him; you could give it to somebody else more deserving. Well, who would the “somebody else more deserving” be? This is a most interesting study. We’re going to watch three biblical examples of this.

Turn to Genesis 15, if there is no firstborn, or if the firstborn was a clown, who got the double portion? Remember, whoever gets the double portion becomes executor of the family estate. We’re not just talking about transfer of wealth; we’re talking about transfer of responsibilities. Who is going to take care of mom and dad when they’re old? The firstborn son.

In Genesis 15:1-5, “After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceedingly great reward. [2] And Abram said, Lord God, what would You give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?” In other words, he is going to transfer, at this point, his inheritance to a slave. And in the Old Testament a beloved slave in the home that had served the home so well over the years, a trusted agent, could become the executor of that family life in the future; he knew all the people in the home, he had proved his character as a servant over many years, and he would be given the authority, over, even children in the home.

All right, suppose there’s not a slave and there’s not a firstborn. Suppose there are just girls. Numbers 27:1, we went through this passage a while ago but we’ll show it again. If there are no sons and only girls in the family, then obviously the girls got it. “Then came the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh…,” it begins a complete genealogy of this family because again, law is involved. [2] “And they stood before Moses, and before Eleazar, the priest, and before the princes and all the congregation, by the door of the tabernacle, of the congregation,” and they say, verse 3, “Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not in the company of them that gathered together,” in other words, he wasn’t a rebel, “he died in his own sin, but he had no sons. [4] Why should the name of our father,” and that means wealth, not just the name it means family holdings, “Why should the name of our father be done away from among his family, because he has no son? Give unto us a possession among the brethren of our father.” This would be the inheritance designated to the family by God, the land. So [5] “Moses brought their cause before the LORD.” Well, the fact that Moses brought their cause before the Lord shows you there wasn’t any precedent established at that time. [6] “And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying, [7] The daughters of Zelophehad speak right: thou shalt surely give them a possession of an inheritance among their father’s brethren, and you will cause the inheritance of their father to pass to them.” So that’s the answer, obviously there’s no firstborn son, the girls get it.

But this isn’t all. Let’s turn to a most famous illustration of inheritance passed to a total stranger outside of the home, the Lord Jesus Christ in John 19. Here Christ Himself dies on the cross. Before he dies he disposes of the wealth; apparently… well, obviously Joseph had died and Jesus Christ was firstborn son. Well, if Jesus Christ is going to die on the cross, amidst all the pain and all the sorrow and all the preoccupation of dying for your sins and mine, Jesus Christ remembered His mother. Jesus Christ remembered that He was the firstborn son and the executor of that home. Yes, he had brothers, you know two of them because two of them wrote portions of the New Testament: James and Jude. But even though James and Jude and sisters lived in that home, apparently at this point none of them were believers, and so Jesus Christ had to face this decision. His mother was a believer; his father who had died was a believer, but nobody else in the home was a believer. Only him, none of His half-sisters nor his half-brothers. By the way, you remember this next somebody makes a crack at you, well if you lived the life everybody would be a Christian in your home; Jesus Christ must not have lived the life.

So Jesus Christ had no one in His home that was spiritually qualified to whom He would turn His mother over, because she was a believer and they were unbelievers. Later on at least two brothers became Christians. But at this point they’re not. So in John 19:26, “When Jesus, therefore, saw His mother, and the disciple standing by, whom He loved, He said unto His mother, Woman, behold your son! [27] And he said to the disciple, Behold your mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” And therefore the disposition of Mary is grounded under the command of the apostle John. Why? Because he was the only person spiritually qualified.

You young couples, when you make your will, and you ought to make your will, the government won’t let you, by the way, take much of your inheritance anyway and it sure won’t if you don’t have a will. And if you don’t have a will you are foolish, I don’t care how young you are, you ought to, right after you get married, have a will made. When you have children have that amended, and be sure you have designated in your will who is going to become guardians of your children if you die. And you make sure that you pick some spiritual responsible person in your home. And if you can’t find a spiritually responsible person among your kinfolk, and among your immediate family, you do what Christ did, you pick out a Christian outside the home and designate them in your will as the guardians of your children and your wealth. And it’s going to ruffle feathers in your home, it’s going to cause all sorts of problems, but you’ve got an obligation to see that, at least within your controls, you have disposed of your property in the most godly way you can.

All right, of all these people that are recipients of wealth, guess which element, so popular today, is missing? Turn back to our last passage tonight in the Old Testament, the book of Ezekiel 46:18. This is just to show you how backwards we are. This is a prediction of the millennium so don’t get your hopes up. “Moreover, the prince shall not take of the people’s inheritance by oppression, to thrust tem out of their possession, but he shall gives his sons inheritance out of his own possession, that my people be not scattered every man from his [family] possession.” Do you know what that’s saying? The government, in the millennium, will have no inheritance taxes. It is ungodly, it is unscriptural, it is anti-Scripture to the core—all inheritance taxes!

We had a group of clowns that ruled this country back in the late 30s and they thought oh, we’re going to get all the wealthy families and so we’ll just fake them out with inheritance taxes. Yeah, look who’s getting faked out? Wealthy families aren’t, I assure you, they have enough lawyers to have all the non-profit foundations in the world. So who got faked out with that smart piece of legislation? The middle class. When we were having lunch with General Keegan during the last defense seminary he related this tragic story of Sir Thompson; General Thompson was the British expert on guerilla warfare, who led to victory the British in Malaysia, and Thompson had a philosophy of fighting guerilla war that we did not follow in Vietnam and we, of course lost because we didn’t. But Thompson was one of the few men in history who had the military moxie to meet guerillas on their own ground and win. He had a very simple trick, he just had a few men, didn’t use heavy artillery, didn’t use aerial bombardment, he just said these guerillas are successful because they live here, so what I’m going to do, I’m going to fight them with people who live here. And he did, and he won.

Well, Sir Thompson, you would think, knighted, General, recognized military authority, sought by leaders all over the world, went back to England to retire and to his estate, family estate, and when he inherited the estate from his father they had to sell most of it off, so that he and his wife live on this small tract of land. Sir Thompson has two sons, and he says when I die the government will take it all; inheritance taxes in England are so steep there is no way I can give my sons my own property. So he says, my wife and I figured out one very simple thing; we’re going to enjoy this property fully, there’s a golf course on it, a pool, because he says in the history of our home, down for five generations this property was kept in our name, and I and my wife are the last ones that ever will be able to enjoy it again, because the governments have become so confiscatory in their wealth, they have destroyed the family. The government is waging war on the home at every point. It want to take the kids out of the home early so the parents can’t teach them values. It wants to interfere in the home by violating the authority of the parents over the child in school, so if the little kiddy has a problem he can come and he can squeal on his parents and the parents will never be told. He can be shown films in the public school and his parents will never know unless they are sharp. And then we have, obviously, the last and vicious blow that go makes against the family is to destroy the wealth that the father has for his own son; he is not even free to do that any longer, because of these clowns, these socialists, that ruled in the 30s and 40s that so viciously destroyed this country by robbing it of biblical principles under the guise of redistributing the wealth. You know who redistributes the wealth? It’s the old thing, Robin Hood robs the rich to pay the poor and then finally Robin Hood robs both rich and poor to pay Robin Hood. And that’s exactly where it is.

So here you see the biblical ways of doing it; what we can do as Christians today, maybe we can appeal and get repeal of the inheritance laws, the inheritance taxes, basically if you look at the books of government, the inheritance taxes bring in about that much, very small amount. The justification behind inheritance tax is not economic; it’s family busting, that’s the justification, and it’s one that Christians who are enlightened voters, who are members of political parties, who are in a position of doing something about it, and somebody says in an election year, what issues are you interested in, tell them: get the government off my back. And if he’s a Christian running for office, tell him what Ezekiel 46 says about inheritance. There’s the biblical norm; there’s God’s mind about it. Tell him, if he’s asking you, tell him.

Well, that solves the last part or resolves the last part of the family wealth, we said how the family starts, how it capitalizes and how it passes on. Today it doesn’t require much imagination to see that we are thwarted at every point. A young couple has to postpone marriage, so phenomenally long to build up capital it’s ridiculous, and they don’t, they get married early. The reason for this is your educational system is inefficient, think of the years you waste in grammar school. And so therefore, when a couple comes and they’re 20, 22, 23 years old, they don’t have any marketable skills with which they can capitalize in their life, and so either they have to face the postponing of a marriage or they enter into a marriage and then they just get by for five or six hard years. And then they can’t capitalize because inflation rips you off as fast as you save. And then you can’t even die in peace because Uncle’s waiting there to take his sweet little portion.

So you see, why is it that family life is so weak in the United States? It’s very simple, isn’t it. When you have to fight at every single point in your whole history, you have to oppose the government here, here, and here, just to pull a home together. And this is one of the great disasters in our day, and as Christian men it’s our are to subdue, so rule it well, gentlemen!