Clough Manhood Series Lesson 43
Wealth-Part V: Debt
Tonight we are
going to have the last in the section on money. Next Sunday and the Sunday
after that will be a two-section part on male leadership in the local
church. And then after that we hope to
get into Song of Songs. Song of Songs is
an extremely difficult book. Hopefully
we an get to it within three weeks. We’ve
been discussing wealth. This is why, by
the way, we summarized this section on the doctrine of the Christian man; after
all, if there’s no two other topics, sex and love, that are on most men’s
minds, I don’t know what they are. So
this is why we’re ending the series on this note.
Wealth, we said,
was an expression of your value system.
Wealth in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament is considered
extremely important because it is the means that a person has for projecting
their value system into the world. And
it’s about the only thing that gives power.
This is taught in the book of Proverbs and while it’s true Christians
can operate at the poverty level, it’s also true that in the overall theology
of the Bible the man’s job is to produce, not sit on his butt. And this is the thing that God told Adam and
this is the thing that we are required to do.
So Proverbs particularly is where you pick that theology up for yourself
on the role of wealth. And wealth has
many aspects, not just money, but if you can think in terms of highly developed
skills, then that is wealth.
The other night I
happened to watch a program with the New York Philharmonic and it was
discussing with the leading pianist soloist after the program and the conductor
of that particular program was discussing the role of the artists, and it seems
like no matter what field it is, whether it’s music, whether it’s are, whether
it’s business, whether it’s some other field that a man’s involved in, it takes
time, years, to develop skills. And this
man, who is considered to be one of the world’s top pianists and happened to be
on the program was telling about how he practices five years ahead; he starts
researching pieces of music now to practice so that in five years he feels
ready to go on the concert circuit and play them. Now if it takes five years for a man like
that to get what he considers perfection in his technique and so forth,
obviously it’s a highly disciplined skill.
And that goes for art and it goes for anything.
So wealth is not
just the amount of assets that you can convert into dollars right away; it’s
also your skills, skills that you develop over a long time period. Some of us went over to the Reformation
convocation at Tech today; hopefully most of you who are interested in what
we’re trying to do here at Lubbock Bible Church, of breaking out of the usual
fundamentalist mode as far as music is concerned, could have gone there and
heard the Reformation music. This was
put on by the Lutheran churches in town and what struck me, as it struck so
many of us, I guess, as we sat there and listened to it, was that here we have
some of the greatest music ever written in the Reformation, lyrics written by
J. S. Bach, a born again musician, and we have it being sung by people who have
no idea on earth what they’re singing about.
And the tragedy is that that musical heritage is ours; it belongs to the
body of Christ, people who have trusted in Christ. They are the ones who down through the
centuries generated this art form and now it’s being used into the service of
liberal theology and it’s just tragic to watch that. If Bach, for example, could have been raised
from the dead prematurely to observe this kind of a thing I’m sure he would
have vomited, if that would be possible in the resurrection body.
One good thing that
happened in the course of this was an interesting quote that was read
describing the music of the Reformation.
And for those of you who think that the music program is just a product
of a few people sitting in the back and the choir and it’s sort of my little
pet thing I’m doing now, and so forth, listen to the words of Martin
Luther. “With all my heart I would extol
the precious gift of God in the noble art of music. Music is to be praised as second only to the
Word of God, because by her all the emotions are swayed. Nothing on earth is more mighty to make the
sad joyful and the joyful sad; to hearten the downcast, to mellow the over reaming,
to temper the exuberant or mollify the vengeful. This precious gift has been bestowed on
people to remind them that they are created to praise and magnify the
Lord. But when natural music is
sharpened and polished by art, then one begins to see with amazement the great
and perfect wisdom of God in His wonderful work of music, where one voice takes
a simple part and around sings three, four, or five other voices, leaping,
spinning round about…” and as I complete this sentence you must understand
Luther has a peculiar way of speaking and writing, and this is very Lutherian as you listen to it. “…five voices leaping, spinning round about,
marvelously gracing the simple part like a square dance in heaven, with
friendly bows, embracings and hearty swinging of the
partners. He who does not find this an
expressible miracle of the Lord is truly a clod and
is not worthy to be called a human being.”
So hopefully now we
won’t think that this is some eccentric product of a few nuts at Lubbock Bible
Church. It’s just that some people in
our fundamentalist circles have this attitude because they were raised in
cultural poverty and nothing immoral or unspiritual about this, it’s just that
we have to remember, many of us who have been raised in (quote) “Christian
conservative” circles, that we have to remember that in 1920 and 1930, within
those ten years we lost everything. The
fundamentalists were thrown out of every major denomination. That is why we are not Baptist, Methodist,
Presbyterian or anything else, because the founders of fundamentalism said we
will not be put in a position ever again of having to give money to apostate
organizations. When you go to the
mainline denominations they are all supporting the National Council of
Churches, who in turn ship funds to the guerillas in Rhodesia to kill white
missionaries. And this sort of thing has
gone on and on and on. And these people
that want to sit in the next liberal church some place, and always because Aunt
So and So gave the first stone in the wall, do not understand that this is
treason to give your money to people who are killing missionaries. And yet you can’t get the big denomination
boards to give you the time of day when you raise this. And so the fundamentalists got out.
But by 1930 when
the fundamentalists had gotten out, they lost all their seminaries; we lost all
our schools and finally, by 1940 most of the great men who started the movement
died. It was a tragic era in church history
and we are just now coming out of it. So
don’t ever take the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s as a normative picture of what
fundamentalism ought to be like. It
isn’t normative. It is coming up out of
a situation that was rendered prostrate by various powers to be in the
church. So understand that as by way of
background.
Now a particular
prayer request. The hymn book committee
has been on and off for many, many years in Lubbock Bible Church, many people
down through the years have devoted
hours and hours and hours of time to try to select hymns. Those of musically sensitive can see what’s
happening because in the morning series you’ve noticed we have how Great is my
Father’s world, and How Great Thou Art and apart from that, that’s about
the only hymns we can find in our luxurious hymn book that speak anything about
creation. Now isn’t that marvelous; we
have 400-500 hymns in that thing and you try to find one that talks about
creation; a rather elementary act of God one would say, but nevertheless, find
a hymn that speaks of the issue. You
can’t because these goofballs that wrote the thing apparently don’t have a
balanced theology. So down over the
years there have been people who have devoted many hours to this and finally a
long culmination of their efforts. The
first part of this hymn book is now existing; this part of the hymn book deals
with the character and essence of God, with all of His attributes. It has various hymns, almost a hundred of
them, just on the doctrine of God alone which should argue to someone that the
hymns can be found. Now, of course, some
of these hymns come out of hymnals dating back to 1670 or 1680, a little
historical search had to be done, but to those who persevere the rewards are
great. Hymns 3-13 deal with God’s
creative acts; hymns 14-83 deal with each of God’s attributes; hymns 84-93
deals with God’s triune nature. And this
is just the beginning of a hymn book projected to have some 700 hymns, covering
every part of the divine viewpoint framework and every basic doctrine of the
Scripture, arranged in proper order. So
before the service I don’t have to sit down with the song leader and do a spin
to find out where the hymns are that we need this morning; they’ll be properly
indexed.
Well, only one
problem with this, as you can imagine; we have a problem with copyrights. Now some of these copyrights obviously have
run out, Luther’s for example, but then there are some modern hymns that we
have to get permission to use. Only one
problem, the people who put copyrights on their materials neglect to put their
address on the material so you can find out who owns the copyright. And the other problem is that the copyrights
are on the hymn books from which these hymns are taken and we don’t know what
that copyright means. For example, if
you turn in your hymn book you’ll see some hymns are “used by permission of,”
well, those are copyrighted individual hymns.
We have to get permission to use those.
There are four or five modern hymns in here, and those have to be
checked out. But then there’s the great
majority, of course, that have come from copyrighted hymn books and these have
to be researched very carefully. And
then the other problem is that some of our people here in the congregation have
done a lot of work rewriting the lyrics to the good music. There are some hymns with good music and the
lyrics to that will be totally rewritten.
And this requires creative work and an individual copyright.
So our prayer
petition is this: Please pray as we
write the Library of Congress, copyright division, that we can get this thing
expedited through all the massive bureaucracy.
You can well imagine, knowing government like most of you do, how long
this process can take. It can take as
long as a year or two, just writing a letter, oh sorry, they don’t live here
any longer, they’ve been transferred.
This kind of thing, chasing down hymn after hymn after hymn; it’s a
massive process and that process, we’re turning out, is just as much of a work
job as creating the hymnal. So some
people have been very creative, have given dozens and dozens and hundreds of
hours of their time to get this out; now all thwarted by the all the
bureaucracy that we have to go through.
But we must do it, it’s the law of the land. So therefore pray for expeditious working of
the bureaucracy so we know where to write, and we don’t have to round Robin
Hood’s barn to get there. All right,
from Robin Hood’s barn we’ll get back to money and the other points that we
have discussed.
We have studied how
money is used in worship. We have said
that worship, the use of money is given in the Bible, is a clear expression of
where we have put our values. Again,
it’s putting our money where our mouth is.
We’ve studied taxes and we’ve said that Caesar loves a cheerful giver
and this becomes in competition to our God, as Caesar wishes to take over more
and more areas of God’s domain. And then
finally the area of the family. Last
time we studied this we dealt with family wealth. One of the most frustrating things that any
Christian man has is first of all in starting his family properly. Most young men marry and start with nothing,
and so their wives have to work. And are
all sorts of problems are introduced into the marriage situation. In the Bible, in that ideal situation the man
would have had two to three years salary saved up
before he got married, and those of you who are newly married know exactly how
that would have eased the problem for your first and second year of marriage,
had this been done. But our society puts
pressure on the man in this situation so it’s very hard for the average guy to
do this. The second thing about the
family we studied was the battle to save while you’re in an inflating economy;
a tremendous battle, but all men in their families and their homes face that
problem. Where do we put our assets to
protect our wives and out children? This
is a big problem. The other problem we
dealt with in the family and money is trying to get your money put into the
next generation; your firstborn son, your other children. These are the children that are going to go
on living in your name, and you’ve got to somehow do battle to transfer your
wealth to those people. And the problem
is not easy at all when the government insists upon taxing inheritance. It’s an ungodly tax, inheritance tax is. It is not given for the purpose of revenue;
it’s infinitesimal what the government gets off of inheritance
tax…infinitesimal! The tax is never
designed for revenue generation; the tax on inheritance is designed to crush
the family; in particular crush wealthy families. But just because a family is wealthy doesn’t
mean it’s evil, but that’s the socialist mentality. So we have these areas of battle that the
Christian man is called upon.
And tonight we are
finishing the last area of that, it’s the battle over indebtedness. Let’s turn to Exodus 12:35, the problem of
indebtedness. This is not a minor
problem. In the Bible the economic term
for indebtedness and pay off of debt, called redemption, are used and thought
so much of by the Holy Spirit that He describes the plan of salvation in
monetary terms. This little word: redemption. do you know what it means? Getting out from debt, that’s what it
means. And those of you who have been in
debt and have had to work your way out the hard way know exactly the sensation
of relief when that last payment is made.
And you vow to yourself at least not to go in debt for a few hours
more.
This act of
redemption, this feeling of redemption, is what the Bible describes as
typifying and describing the state of salvation. And in Exodus 13:35, after the Jewish people
received their political freedom you’ll notice what happened. “And the children of Israel did according to
the word of Moses; and they borrowed [asked] of the Egyptians,” they didn’t
borrow, this is they ripped them off, “jewels of silver, and jewels of gold,
and raiment. [36] And the LORD gave the
people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent [gave] to them
such things as they required. And they
spoiled” or ripped off “the Egyptians.”
Now why is this
true, what justification do we have for this.
It’s simple; for 400 years or depending on the chronology, 200 years,
these people had given of their labor, largely in slavery. They were paid zero wages. The Egyptians owed them back wages. Who built the pyramids, the particular
pyramids? General Graham had an interesting
comment on pyramids I guess I mentioned;
they were just the Egyptians attempt to build cubes, showing his evaluation of
their technical skills. The Egyptians
used free Jewish labor to build these projects and God is not going to have
people constantly ripped off before the wheels of historic justice play
out. And so therefore on the night of
the Passover they walk off with the silver and the gold of Egypt. That is their back salary. See, there is a certain restoration of the
scales of justice in history.
Now this is
important because it’s picked up in the New Testament, this idea of redemption,
getting out of debt, getting saved. Turn
to 1 Peter 1:18, a very famous passage but it doesn’t mean too much if we don’t
first see its simple, the simple level of truth. In 1 Peter 1:18 out salvation is described in
terms of getting out of debt. “Forasmuch
as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and
gold, from your vain conversation [manner of life] by tradition from your fathers,
[19] But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot.” Notice, you were
redeemed. This time you got out of debt
not because you paid cash; because Christ paid blood and that gave us out and
we memorialize it forever in our service of communion, the Lord’s supper.
So therefore the
biblical picture is always linking salvation to getting out of debt. We were in
the slave market of sin; we owed money.
In the slave market in the ancient world was populated, not so much by
military conquest; it was populated by people who couldn’t pay their debt, and
so the concept of the slave market of sin from which we were redeemed is the
picture of people who were in bondage economically and therefore someone
liberated them by paying off the debt.
This picture of indebtedness
and getting out of debt and salvation is carried forward in several places in
the Mosaic Law. The culture of Israel,
you know, was to be a divine viewpoint witness; that is, God established the
nation Israel to communicate to the world what society would look like if God
were King. For that reason the Mosaic
Law is important; it gives wisdom. And
in that law, and we’ve mentioned this several times in the manhood series,
every six years all debts would go to zero.
Every forth-nine years all buyed land titles
would revert to the original owner. Now
why were these provisions built into the system? They were built into the system so that the
individual person, and the nation as a whole, would not get multiply indebted,
would not get hopelessly indebted and continuously indebted, because
indebtedness, economic borrowing, is a picture of slavery and the nation was
not to have that social characteristic and so God had these provisions in the
Law to break it. Every six years on the
seventh year boom, all notes cancelled.
If you haven’t paid yours back God is going to have to provide the
creditor because you don’t have to pay him back any more. On the 50th year, the year of
jubilee, the land reverted back, even if you had to trade off some of your real
estate holdings to pay off debts, it would come back to you; title would remain
in the family. Now those provisions are
there to break and crack the habit of borrowing.
Let’s look at how
the provisions of the Mosaic Law were later amplified in the Old
Testament. Turn to Psalm 37 for this
particular psalms is a psalm that’s called a wisdom psalm. It’s a psalm that teaches principles. In Psalm 37:21 we have a slogan: “The wicked
borrows and pays not again; but the righteous shows mercy, and gives.” That was their moralism,
you might say, about this business of borrowing money. It was considered extremely wicked to borrow
and to (quote) “declare bankruptcy” and so forth. That sort of thing was in violation of the
Law because it was a form of theft. “The
wicked one borrows, and doesn’t pay again.”
Now the opposite of borrowing is given.
Notice, the righteous doesn’t just not borrow, but he is productive enough
so that he can then give. There’s a
spirit, not of consumption, but a spirit of production; consumption versus
production.
Let’s look at
Proverbs 3:27, same kind of thing, and notice in these as we look at these
crystal sentences to succinct statements of wisdom that they epitomize a mental
attitude. Verse 27-28, the spirit of
Proverbs 3, the spirit of mental attitude of generosity. “Withhold not good from them to whom it is
due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do
it.” That would apply, by the way, to
many things, not just money; a good little proverb to remember. If you have the power to do something,
sometimes you don’t, God doesn’t hold us responsible when we can’t, but he does
hold you responsible when you could have done something and you didn’t. [28] “Say not to thy neighbor, Go, and come
again, and tomorrow I will give you, when you have it right with you.” So again it’s a certain mental attitude that
concerns our holding of wealth.
Turn to Proverbs
22:7, here more than any other we have the central idea of indebtedness. “The rich rules over the poor, and the
borrower is servant to the lender.” It
will always work; young people get married, one of the standard questions I now
ask in premarital counseling and they don’t have to answer it, I mean I’m not
trying to be the interrogator, but I’m just asking it so that they can consider
it: are you gong to be self-existing on your own,
with your own budget as a couple, or has mamma and daddy pitched into the till
for you? Now that’s not always bad
because sometimes in-laws like to help.
But if you get in a position where mamma and daddy have given you
something, there’s always the temptation later on, when all isn’t going just
exactly the way mamma and daddy want, unless you have some very mature in-laws,
that they’ll say now who gave you that?
The borrower is servant to the lender, and you can make your whole home,
and you start your whole marriage off in servitude when you don’t have to. Maybe you do have to eat beans for a couple
of months but so what. The point still
remains that you are not going to be the servant to the lender.
Now this doesn’t
have to be applied in every case, but it depends and I always ask the young
couple, watch out, know what is going to be, are they going to lord it over
you? Are you going to accept it as a
gift? Gift it, fine, but be careful of
indebting yourself to hold a cloud over your marriage over your family. This goes for other things; for your
home. You’re a slave, we all are, to the
bank who holds the mortgage. Whether you
like it or not, whether I like it or not, we have to have certain insurance
policies on the home, the bank requires it.
The bank makes us pay for it; the money doesn’t go to the bank, it goes
to the insurance company. Why? Because the bank is going to protect its part
of our home. If you have a car you pay
collision on it because the bank is interested in protecting the bank’s
investment. You are a servant to the
lender. And this gets carried on
throughout life. And before you sign too
quickly on the dotted line for some installment plan at 18% interest, just
think, as a borrower you are servants to the lender. If you have problems with this area, as I’ll
say later on this evening, and just seem to get in debt all the time, take
Proverbs 22:7; [can’t understand words] shall put a caricature out for you of
Proverbs 22:7, have her put it up there in big two inch letters over your door,
over your kitchen table or something.
But do something to remind you of the principle.
All right, we could
go on, there are many, many other passages, of course, in the Bible but I think
these show the general spirit of the text.
Now, one caution, for no sooner do we teach this business about don’t
get indebted then we have some person, some man who’s starting his business; he
says yes, but does this principle apply to my business and commercial loans,
because you’ve said that all the se principles in the
Bible apply to personal loans. Well,
it’s true, commercial loans were permitted and encouraged to get businesses
started. Proof text: Matthew 25:27.
In Matthew 25:27
the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching a certain well known principle. Tonight we are not going to look at the
spiritual side because we want to look at the physical principle. Jesus is talking to a young man who had money
and he said what’d you do with it. And
he says in verse 27, “You ought, to have put My money to the banker, and, at My
coming, I would have received My own with interest.” So He encourages the man here to use his
money in investments. So no, these
prohibitions against usury and indebtedness do not apply to commercial
loans. The only caution is that
obviously indebtedness is dangerous and it’s foolish beyond certain limits, and
as part of your business, you have to do that or talk to some men, maybe
Christian men that you know, that are skilled in the area of investments and
money. Don’t lay that one on me, I have
nothing to say in that area, so that’ll be all 1500 counseling appointments I
don’t have to do because I don’t know anything about it. So you talk to some of the other men here
that are experts in that area.
Now the cost of
debt. There’s a tremendous cost to
indebtedness, and of course all people trained in finance know this but for
some of you who may not have realized just how much cost in indebtedness,
here’s a little chart somebody worked out where you borrow $1,000 each year at
10%, for ten years. Well, after ten
years you’ve borrowed $10,000, which you owe, your debt. Your interest, suppose it’s 10%, your
interest you’ve paid already is $5,500, and then if you take ten years to pay
that back after it all is said and done, at 10% you’ve paid $5,500 more in
interest, for a total of $11,000 in interest on an amount of $10,000. Now that isn’t too shrewd. That really isn’t swift, to do things that
way, unless you expect an imminent inflation rate of 50% or some sort. So notice the high cost of being in
debt. Now it’s true, you have a hard
time, as young couples, oftentimes you have very hard times, old couples too,
saving anything in an inflating economy.
But the problem is that it’s still better to save it and put it some
place; if nothing else the mental attitude of discipline over your affairs. Learn to live, in other words, with some sort
of control here.
Let me show you
another text with a graphic picture of this.
Deuteronomy 28:44; it pictures the lifestyle of people who just can’t
avoid getting this massive indebtedness.
Notice the expression used here, a very graphic expression. In the context it’s talking about the cursing
on the nation Israel; it’s talking about the fact that the nation is going to
be in debt, balance of payments all screwed up and everything. And the Gentile “will lend to you,” Israel,
“and you will not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you’re going to be the
tail.” And that’s the way it is, and
that’s always the way it is whenever you are in debt. So take heart from these pictures, the
picture you saw in Proverbs 22:7, the borrower is servant to the lender, and
Deuteronomy 28:44 which shows you, are you the head or are you the tail, come
wagging along like a squirrel after every nut in the place. And that’s exactly the way it feels when
you’re multiply indebted; bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, from one bill
payment to the next. The tail of the
squirrel is a very good picture of this kind of a situation.
Does the Bible give
us some advice on how to get out of debt?
Yes it does. Here is some advice,
some of the advice that the Scriptures do give.
The first problem is that indebtedness, unless of course obviously you
had a situation of massive sickness and a catastrophe, that kind of thing, but
we’re talking about what affects most couples and most people, just getting in
debt for the sake of getting in debt.
And the first piece of advice the Scriptures give, I’ll give you some
verses on it but let me just tell you the principle, is you’ve got to admit
that it’s your –R ungodly learned behavior pattern that got you there. It’s not the people that sold you the goods;
it’s the fact that you bit on the advertising when you didn’t need it, and you
didn’t exercise judgment, and if a person is in debt habitually they habitually
don’t exercise judgment. And so
therefore you’ve got to come… before you deal with this bill or that particular
bill, the bills aren’t the issue; it is the mental attitude that’s the
issue.
Now the mental
attitude is dealt with in several passages in the New Testament. I’ve shown you some other passages, but let’s
look at these. Luke 3, this is directed
at army officers; it could apply to anyone but in that day it applied to army
officers. It’s a very famous passage,
incidentally, in case you ever get in a discussion with somebody that says ah,
the New Testament doesn’t hold to capital punishment. I submit that this particular passage in Luke
3:14 teaches it by implication. Soldiers
were there to kill. When these soldiers
came to John the Baptist, he didn’t say quit; in other words, you are trained
killers, do a good job, that “do violence to no man,” is talking about
illegitimate killing, not killing in order of army. “…neither accuse any falsely, and be content
with your wages.” And that’s not a
sentence to total passivity, that’s not saying that if there’s another unit
with better wages you can’t bargain a little bit, but what it is saying is that
there ought to be a mental attitude that says all right, Lord, right now You
haven’t given me any higher wages, and I’m going to have to say okay, for now
this is my ceiling and I’m going to have to be therewith content. And that’s it; too bad but that’s it. We will try to do better in the future, but
right now we are going to live within our limits; be content with your
wages.
Another parallel
reference to this is Philippians 4:11-12.
That’s a good reference too.
[“Not that I speak in respect of want; for I have learned in whatever
state I am, to be content. [12] I know
both how to be abased, and I now how to abound;
everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry,
both to abound and to suffer need.”] “I
have learned in whatsoever state therewith to be content. Covetousness, the lust for good, is a
violation of the tenth commandment.
All right, that’s
where it all starts. If a person can’t
make a change in his mental attitude, any little counsel that can be given
about hey, here’s a plan to get out of this debt, it’s thwarted; believe me,
I’ve seen it happen. You get a plan,
here’s somebody just under the pile, you get a whole plan to get them out of
the pile, they get out of the pile and boom, they celebrate and go right back
in. Well, now what happens here? It’s because the basic mental attitude was
never changed. You’ve got to change the
basic mental attitude and that is a spiritual battle. It has nothing to do with the dollar bill; it
has to do with this problem, right here; it’s a spiritual battle. We all are affected in degree to this.
All right, second
thing, we have got to get in view a certain Christian lifestyle of
productivity. You think again of the
puritans, coming over to this country, carving out a higher civilization out of
the rocky soil of New England. If you’ve
never been to New England, let me tell you something about the soil. It’s not like the soil around here; you see
those pictures of stone fences along the farms in New England, do you know
where the stones came from? Every spring
the frost heaves them up and before you can plow the ground you’ve got to lift
the stones off and for centuries those farmers have been lifting stones out of
the field, out of the soil, because the frost heaves it up and you can’t get a
plow without breaking it. That’s the kind of farmland that the Puritans had to
farm. And so they were a productive
people. You think of the Mennonites
moving down here in Seminole, if the department of immigration will let
them. Think of the Mennonites moving in,
the productivity of these people; fantastic productivity. Why?
Because they’re using biblical principles; they have a productive
lifestyle.
Now what has
happened in our country is we have eliminated cause/effect. So let’s say we have different lifestyles and
we’ll indicate lifestyle one, lifestyle two, lifestyle three, lifestyle four. And there are various groups and so forth
identifiable in our country with different lifestyles with regard to this
business of production. It has nothing
to do with race though it may at times be identified with certain races. It doesn’t have to d with race! I say it has to do with their spiritual
background and perception of what it means to be a human being made in God’s
image. And because of this, when we have
a free enterprise system, suppose lifestyle one was a lifestyle of
productivity; these people were future oriented, that means that the young men
would go out and they’d say okay, I’m making this amount of money, I’m going to
save 10% of my salary, and yes, it means that I can’t get into a house, or I
can’t buy this and I can’t buy that that I want right now but I am going to
save this and I am going to build into my future, and I’m going to capitalize…
I’m going to capitalize my wealth, I’m looking to the future. So what’s going to happen after a while is
that lifestyle one is going to guarantee to be successful, whether it’s an
industry, farming or whatever, that’s immaterial, the lifestyle is what is
going to generate the wealth.
And then we have a
second lifestyle over here and this lifestyle says mañana,
you know, put everything off till tomorrow and we’ll sleep today. Now that’s fine; if you want to enjoy the
present that’s a good way to live. But
it’s not going to produce much wealth, which is all right too; maybe a person
living lifestyle two doesn’t want to have wealth; that’s all right. But then here’s what happens under
socialism. Then the people in lifestyle
two are bettered by politicians, oh, look at those wealthy people over there,
they rip you off. We want to
redistribute the wealth. And so what
happens? The government intervenes and
penalizes lifestyle one by ripping off their wealth and giving it to lifestyle
two, when lifestyle two was a volitional choice. Those people didn’t have to live that way,
they chose to live that way. And this
goes on again and again and again. And
you see, this is why, any form of socialism and welfarism
is detrimental to this sort of thing because it penalizes your most productive
people. They are the ones that get
ripped off, not the clowns and the clods.
And this goes on and it goes on and it goes on, and American industry is
full of this kind of thing and we’re about to see it all play out. So, if you are a young Christian man going
into some area, go into some area of basic production that will be needed in
the future, and get your skills in that area, and produce in that area. And find some place where you can work where
there’s a minimum of this kind of interference.
It is the only way you’re going to survive and build for tomorrow.
All right, so we’ve
made a decision then, we said, we’ve recognized our problem, our indebtedness
is a spiritual problem. We’re going to
pray about it; we’re going to read the Scriptures until the Word of God just
heals this lusting we have for things. I
don’t know of any other medicine than a healthy prescription of daily dose of the
Word to do this but just reading it, reading it, reading it, reading it, over
and over and over and over. Then you
recognize the problem of lifestyle that you will choose. No one else is going to choose it for you;
you have the right to be a bum the rest of your life. Or, you can be a productive individual the
rest of your life. But don’t blame it on
something else; within boundaries we are our own responsible agent.
Now let’s turn to
Proverbs 21 for another little item about how to get out of debt. After we’ve
made this basic choice of what kind of a person we’re going to be, in Proverbs
21:20, we ought to make it a principle that wherever we are on the scale of the
economics, whatever we’re earning, we will not be spending exactly equal to
what we’re taking in. We will learn to
live with a healthy margin. And that’s
what’s taught here; let me explain.
“There is treasure to be desired, and oil, in the dwelling of the wise
man, but a foolish man spends it up.”
And the principle there is that both start out with the oil, and that
was his desire. The only difference is
the idiot spends it all and the wise man saves it, he conserves it. Not that he’s a penny pincher, but he always
saves a percent. He lives with his
spending level below his income; an elementary thing but boy, a revolutionary
truth to some people. Believe me because
I don’t say this sarcastically because I’ve been in counseling problems, people
have been Christians all their life, boy, that’s a profound truth. It involves third grade arithmetic. When you subtract a larger number from
another one you come out with bad answers.
All right, now
there’s a way, a fourth principle in this process, 2 Corinthians 8:12. And oftentimes a young man is very plagued
with this. This is the problem of
giving. I will have to say this about
some of my colleagues, ministers have a tendency to be rip off artists. Some of the greatest con artists in the world
are ministers. And they would love to
have you give to their every little goofy project that they have, and they
conceived this autonomously and so on, never checked with anybody, never
examined the thing, but they go (quote) “out on faith” which means going out on
a limb and hoping the Christians will bail me out. And then they’ll kind of get the guilt thing,
oh gosh, what’s going to happen, this work’s going to cave in if you don’t give
for it. Well, let it cave in; maybe it ought to. You see, the free market operates in
Christian work if we just let it operate.
I think, for
example, a very practical illustration, {?} pointed this out and maybe some of
you aren’t aware of the details of it; one of the newest supportees
of Lubbock Bible Church, {?} and they represent to me one of the finest,
well-trained, prepared, couples I have ever seen go toward the mission
field. They both have spent years on the
mission field before they went out; they are fully aware of the living
conditions on the scene; and they are very shrewd in their strategies. They have it thought out what the role of the
missionary is supposed to do; it’s not just give shots to the Hottentots; it is
to go ahead and give education to them, as well as the gospel, so they can take
the gospel into every area, and then we won’t have a repeat of the debacle that
we are watching in Africa now, with the black evangelicals just wiped out
because they were taught month after month and year after year by the American
missionary, oh, don’t get involved in politics, it’s evil. Fine, and so the
nation gets its freedom, the evangelicals stay out of politics, and Edi Amin takes over. Brilliant
accomplishment. And where are the
Christians? Well right now they’re
either dead or they’re in prison, that’s where the Christians are, all because
they were taught that it’s evil for a Christian to get involved in
politics.
The Muslims don’t
teach their people that way; there’s a school that is training Muslims to take
over Africa in Alexandria, Egypt, right tonight. And any person who graduates from this school
in Alexandria must have memorized the Koran in Arabic from cover to cover or
they can’t graduate. Now that’s what the
Islamic people demand of their missionaries.
Who says we can’t have a training program that tough. Well, we had, and {?} are well equipped. It’s interesting, I’ve been watching as
they’ve put out the feelers for their support.
They’ve already got it. Now why
is that? I submit to you it’s because
the Christians as a body sense that this couple knows what they’re doing and
therefore they give to them. There’s a
confidence that they have, and so therefore they don’t have to go around beg,
beg, beg, beg, beg, beg, beg, that kind of thing.
But now oftentimes
it’ll be, particularly when you’re starting your married life, you’re starting
out in the world on your job as a single person, that you may want to give some
time and you can’t; maybe you don’t have the right talent; maybe you don’t have
the cash, and you’ll be in that kind of a bind sometimes. Well, lest you feel guilty about it look at 2
Corinthians 8:12, “For if there first be a willing mind, it is accepted
according to that which a man has, not according to that which he has
not.” In other words, what Paul says,
it’s the mental attitude. Do you want
to? If you have the means, fine. If you don’t have the means, fine. It’s going back to whether you want to, your
own mental attitude in the area of giving.
But we suggest if you are in problems of indebtedness, it may sound
foolish from the pragmatic, utilitarian point of view, I agree, it may sound
foolish to say that one ought to be in this area of giving, yes, even while
you’re in debt. The reason is because of
a mental attitude. As long as you can
give two cents you are in a position where you’re using your wealth the way
you’re supposed to and that’s a positive reinforcement of a principle that
ought to operate.
All right, another
thing that may have to be done to get out of indebtedness. 1 Kings 15, it’s not very pleasant but
sometimes this has to be done. Two
things we’ll conclude with in this program.
In 1 Kings 15:16 the King of Judah was entrapped. Basically he was in bondage. It’s a form of political blackmail analogous
to being in debt. In verse 18 what does this
king do to get out of debt? He “took all
the silver and the gold that were left in the treasuries of the house of the
LORD, and the treasures of the king’s house, and delivered them into the hand
of his servants. And King Asa sent them to Ben-hadad,” now
look what he’s doing? He’s shipping the
gold and the silver out of the house of God, as well as his own palace, to
obtain redemption. Now nobody likes to
do this but it may come down to it, where a couple or an individual is so
heavily in debt that you have to sell off some of your possessions, possessions
that you really like, that are cherished possessions. But you really don’t need them on a day by
day basis; you really don’t need them.
Maybe it’s the car that you’re making too big payments on it and you’ll
have to put up with an old thing for a while longer, but whatever it is you may
have to go and sell off, sell off, sell off, sell off, sell off, and generate
cash to get out of the debt.
Believe me, the
physical deprivation of getting rid of those cherished goods is nowhere to be
compared to the emotional relief of getting out of debt. That is far more valuable for your soul than
the little physical thing here and there.
The other thing
that was done and this was done in the family, and I think this is implications
about women working. Every once in a
while a young man will say well, I’m not going to let my wife work. Boom, absolute value. That’s ideal. Correct. But let’s look at Exodus 21:1. This is talking about slavery and bondage,
indebtedness. No man likes to see his
wife work, obviously. We’re not talking about
some [can’t understand word] bum, he doesn’t like to see his wife work, unless
the wife is involved in something that she likes to do and can do it on the
side or something, that’s different. But
no man likes to say well Hon, you’ve got to go out and work, that’s the only
way we can make it. It’s not a pleasant
thing. But to show you that it is not
totally excluded either, by the Word of God, let’s examine this passage.
Exodus 21:2, “If
you buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh he
shall go out free for nothing. [3] If he
came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he was married, then his
wife shall go out with him. [4] If his
master have given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters,” and so
on, it discusses this Hebrew servant.
Now where did the Hebrew servant come from? The Hebrew servant sold himself into bondage
because he was in debt. You say fine,
that’s the man, not the woman. Keep
reading. Verse 7, “And if a man sell his
daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. [8] If she please not her master,” and so on,
there’s the case where the daughter is sold.
Now offhand I was
unable to find one, where the wife is put out to work like this, though
Proverbs 30 does show the wife involved in a business. Here you’ve got the children being put into
work where the work money comes back to the father and the mother of the
home. So we do have precedence,
sometimes, in breaking out of massive indebtedness, where the entire family has
to chip in. Now you say, well that’s
awful. Being in debt is awful. And sometimes getting out of debt requires
radical moves. And oftentimes if these
radical moves are taken, it will leave such a bad taste in your mouth it will
cure you of ever having to do that again.
So that has a long-term redemptive quality in your soul. You’ll remember that, you’ll say next time
the glittering appeal comes, next time the sweet deal is put to you, where you
could stand to lose and get massively in debt, and you say no thanks; thanks
but no thanks, I’ve been through that before; I can remember when my wife had
to work, when my children had to work, and I’m never going to do that again, I
learned my lesson there. But it’s part
of learning. And the Scriptures realize
that this is a fallen world and caution us in this area of the use of
money.
This concludes the
series on money; some of you have handed in feedbacks and again this evening I
walked off without the feedback cards.
But we’ll get to them someday and we’ll try to answer those things.