Clough Proverbs Lesson 60

DI #1: Laws of Property II

One question is, this is not directly relevant to the Proverbs teaching but borders on it. When are our spiritual gifts revealed to us? And the answer to that is would be all your Christian life. God may have gifts that He has given you which He has not yet shown you. Your job is to find them out and if you need help in this line I’d highly recommend a pamphlet you’ll find in the tract rack by George Meisinger on the doctrine of spiritual gifts.

Another question: I’m writing to ask about Bible study groups. I have just started attending LBC this summer and have not really become involved yet; I’m interested in the beginning basics Bible class if one is beginning in the fall. There will be some for the girls and also the family training framework literature is a basic type of course also.

You mentioned that salvation does not require one to make Christ Lord of one’s life; it seems to me that this is not consistent with what Jesus told the rich young man who asked Jesus how he may attain to eternal life. What is your response? The story of the rich young ruler, you will recall, is one where Jesus asked a man to sell all his possessions and he couldn’t and therefore he walked away, and therefore doesn’t this teach that Jesus Christ’s claim is that He must be Lord at the point of the gospel. My point last week was that when you receive Christ as Savior at the point of evangelism lordship is not an issue. The answer to this is that in the parable of the rich young ruler the issue is not salvation. It is pre-evangelism. Jesus asked the rich young ruler to sell what he had, not in order to be saved. He asked him because the rich young ruler was stupid enough to say that he had kept all of the commandments, that he had not sinned. And so therefore Jesus was simply asking him to do this to prove to him that he could not keep all the commandments or their intent. So the rich young ruler parable really has nothing to do with the gospel. In fact, it’s most interesting because that there is a time not to present the gospel and Jesus Christ refused to present the gospel to the rich young ruler at that point because the rich young ruler had not yet become ready for it.

You have intimated that welfare is sometimes okay. How much and what is the method of distribution? I would suggest that you refer to my Deuteronomy series, or there is a new book out that I’d refer you to by Rousas John Rushdoony entitled Institutes of Biblical Law, and this book deals with the Old Testament political and social implications from the fundamentalist point of view.

Are the imprecatory prayers against people valid during the age of grace? We covered this in the Psalm series and the angelic conflict series; they are valid against the principalities and powers that may influence people in the church age.

Since people have to water and so on, what is the gift of evangelism? Is it speaking to non-Christian or is it having people accept Christ? The gift of evangelism is the capacity to clearly present the gospel to the non-Christian. And obviously a person who has the gift of evangelism will be fairly successful in its use. I refer you to Frances Schaeffer’s book, The God who is There for a more detailed discussion of that question.

You call upon women in some of your classes. Please explain what Paul meant, then, when he said for women to keep silent and to learn from their husbands. If it means something different than the English Bible says then how can we trust the Bible? Your problem is a problem of context. In there Paul is talking about women during a worship service, not during a class type situation. And furthermore, the problem there involved a historical thing that can be understood if you know the culture of the time that the women were separated from the men in the early worship services. They were congregating around the back and the men were in the center. If you’ve gone to some Jewish services in some synagogue you’ll see this whole thing in some conservative synagogues carried out to this day, it’s very easy to understand. And the women were talking while the men were receiving instruction in the Word of God. And so Paul just told them to shut up. And the men were being instructed and the women were supposed to learn from their husbands. Obviously such a situation as single women would not apply in this case.

Let’s turn to Proverbs by way of Deuteronomy; in fact before we get to Deuteronomy let’s review something. I notice another question was asked and we’d better clean up this one first. We are on the laws of property, labor and money. This is a set of principles taught in the book of Proverbs. Right now we are on the law of property which we began last week. The law of property itself is a complex involving certain principles and we’ll summarize the two principles taught last week and we’ll teach some more principles all under this single law of property. Now they are all interwoven and it’s hard to separate these principles but the law of property itself states that property makes responsibility possible in history, that without property, material property, volition is not too significant. It’s true that one can receive Christ in utter and total and complete poverty. It is true the Lord Jesus Christ did not own much in the way of material possessions, but yet had tremendous responsibility and volition. Nevertheless, as a generalized principle of human existence, property makes responsibility possible in history.

And we also added that the law of property includes the fact that God gives or removes property under the laws of responsible action that we studied earlier. So the law of property, or the principle in God’s word that deals with property, has tied with the first divine institution your choice. If you do not have property then you do not have the range of choice that you would have had you owned considerable belongings.

The first principle that we studied last week where we showed how divine viewpoint and human viewpoint clashed is in the matter of absolute versus relative ownership. The absolute ownership versus relative ownership and we showed how apostate man is always interested in ordering the divine institution underneath one of the others. For example, he’ll take the first divine institution, volition; second divine institution, marriage; third divine institution, family; fifth divine institution, tribal diversity in the world, and instead of putting them under God they take the fourth divine institution and it becomes the one that orders all the rest of the institutions. This is the mentality that pervades 99% of Americans today, statism, that the fourth divine institution, the institution, the institution of the state, defines, grants property rights and other things, which is not true. The fourth divine institution does have a legitimate sphere of operations but the fourth divine institution… for example, take marriage. People are under the impression that the state establishes marriage and by the decree of divorce the state breaks marriages. That is not true. If you will study the traditional Christian wedding the couple makes a vow first and then the minister says, “by the laws of the state” and so on and so on, “we hereby recognize the existence of this marriage.”

The state does not make or break marriages; the state only acts as a recorder of the facts. The individuals, the couple, makes or breaks the marriage. That’s what is in reality the real life situation. The state can only say we grant you a license to do what has been done, or we grant a permit to do but the state does not make or break marriages. It has nothing to do with marriage; it can’t prevent marriage nor can it break marriage, even with its laws. The laws do not break or establish marriages. Marriages are made or broken by the couple before God and the state has nothing to do with it except it’s a regulatory agency. So therefore the state is completely knocked out of the second divine institution. If you’re going to allow the fact that the state makes marriages or doesn’t make marriages, the next logical thing to do is the state’s going to regulate what happens in the marriage. That’s ridiculous. And we have the state infiltrating in other situations.

So we went over the fact, summarizing the fact that one of the areas today is the concept of eminent domain, that the state, by virtue of its sovereignty grants property rights and can remove those rights and this is antithetical to the Naboth vineyard incident of 1 Kings 21 where we studied last week that that passage proved that the state does not have power of eminent domain because in that situation, Naboth refused to sell his vineyard to the state, even with just compensation, and the state took his vineyard, and Elijah pronounced damnation upon the state for violating the individual’s property rights. So eminent domain, while interesting, is not a prerogative of the state; it’s a prerogative of God as proved by Psalm 50:10-12; 1 Samuel 8:11-17 and Ezekiel 46:18. The state does have a right to some property in its own domain but it does not have right over anybody and everybody’s property.

So the first principle under the law of property is that all creatures own relatively to their institution. We have five divine institutions; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and God is above all. God is the One who defines the limits and domain of these institutions. This is what Abraham Kuyper called the doctrine of sphere sovereignty, and you cannot allow one of these institutions to prevail over the other or it destroys the other; it eats the other ones up. This always happens; the anarchist wants to take the first divine institution and make it dictate to all the rest of them. The result: he destroys the rest of them. The American statists wants to take government and make it prevail over the rest of the divine institutions. The result: it destroys them. God alone has the capability and the authority to set up these institutions.

The second principle that we studied last week is the principle of ownership. We dealt with relative or absolute ownership; the second principle that we studied last week is what does ownership involve and we found from Matthew 20:15 that ownership means sovereignty in the sphere over which the ownership occurs. For example, under the first divine institution you own property; by virtue of Matthew 20:15 it means you have the right to misuse the property as well as use it. Ownership means freedom to use or misuse. Why? Because ownership, as we’re going to see in the third principle studied today involves judgment. You can’t be judged for that where there is no possibility of misuse. Ownership as in Matthew 20:15 says it means that you have the right to use or misuse what you own. If you do not have the right to misuse then you do not have ownership; somebody else has the ownership but you don’t. If you have the right to misuse something or use it correctly that’s ownership. If you don’t have that right, you don’t own it; it’s that simple by scriptural principles.

Now the third principle under the law of property which we’ll study now is the principle of stewardship, that property, while we have the right to use or misuse, we do not have the right to avoid judgment for its use or misuse. We have the freedom to use or abuse, but we do not have the freedom to avoid the results of the use or abuse. Carefully distinguish between those two points. You have the freedom to use or abuse but you do not have the freedom to avoid the results of your use or abuse, a very important principle. And in Deuteronomy 18:11 we see one of the areas of this principle. We are going to examine this principle in connection with another one which we do not have time to deal with but it’s affiliated and that is the cycle of wealth. In Deuteronomy 8:11-18 you have the biblical doctrine of wealth, which is affiliated with our principle that we’re studying now. The cycle of wealth has five steps and the Bible indicates that the cycle of wealth is repeated by man century after century, age after age, era after era, always and forever.

The cycle of wealth, in Deuteronomy 8:11, “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping His commandments, and His judgments, and His statutes, which I command thee this day, [12] Lest when thou hast eaten and art full and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; [13] And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold are multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; [14] Then thine heart be lifted up,” now it starts out with the first step in the cycle of wealth is that you have believers involved in godly labor. The Israelites, as they were to go into the land, remember Deuteronomy is Moses’ own funeral sermon, it was one of the longest sermons in the Bible, the entire book was one sermon. And in it he recapitulated the Law of Israel to make sure that the average citizen of the nation understood the terms of God’s constitution to that nation. And in the cycle of wealth Moses touches on what is going to happen. This will always happen and the only way to break out of this cycle is through the filling of the Holy Spirit as a person believes in Jesus Christ.

First it starts out with godly labor. And this is the source of the blessing that Moses is talking about. After the godly labor you have the actual blessing and blessing here means material blessing. Spiritual blessings are mentioned but remember the concrete way the Hebrew had in the Old Testament of looking at life, and he’s not talking about something you can’t see, something that’s off in heaven, he’s talking about material prosperity. And so we have the blessing. The blessing in Scripture is looked upon as the test of prosperity. God will test believers by prospering them to see if they are skilled at using the things He puts into their hands. So when God tests us this way we call it the test of prosperity, the blessing test. It’s not as easy as some of you think.

Then the third point in the cycle of wealth of here, it begins verse 14, beware, “Then thine heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD thy God,” and here we have a sinful preoccupation with material things. And that oftentimes is the end result of the test of prosperity. “…and you forget the LORD thy God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, [15] Who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents,” and so on and so on, verse 16, “Who fed you in the wilderness,” and in verse 17 “you say in thine heart, My power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth,” and so in the sinful preoccupation we find the person going into the next phase which is basically a human viewpoint autonomy, a human viewpoint disobedience to God’s grace. At this point the person deludes themselves into thinking that it has been through their work that they have earned (?), not by God’s blessing.

Now remember last week we dealt with the difference here, just for a moment, between God and His ownership and man and his. Both have volition; God’s volition we call sovereignty, man’s volition we call volition. God’s sovereignty ex nihilo creates, creates out of nothings. And so God generates wealth by works. God always generates wealth by works and by no other means. It is always God working. But when man has wealth he can do some of it by work, he does others by grace, it is given to him, and he gains wealth by inheritance, that is before the federal government started penalizing people for passing on inheritance to their children. But in the days when laws were more biblical then we had three methods of gaining wealth: by inheritance, by gift and by work. Now the creature gains all significant wealth by the last two methods, not by the first. This principle applies to salvation; no person gains salvation by works. People gain salvation the same way we gain the universe, it was given to us. Adam did not gain the Garden of Eden by his own works. Did Adam provide fertilizer for the plants in the Garden of Eden, or did God already provide Him with fertilizer? It’s obvious; God gave Adam capital investment by grace. God gives us by grace and by inheritance, since we become members of the family of God, we inherit the wealth of Jesus Christ. This is like a capital investment. The Bible is pro capitalist, anti socialist. And so here you have grace and inheritance given for investment. Now, Adam, at the point of his test was given land; it was a capital investment and Adam was required to invest this wisely or foolishly, to use property that had been a result of grace.

Now in the Christian life it’s the same principle. Jesus Christ invests in your life and it begins at the time that you receive Christ as your Savior. At that point God makes you a spiritual capitalist, with all due apologies to the ultra left. God, at the point of salvation, makes every person a spiritual capitalist and you are going to be judged, I am going to be judged on how well we have invested the spiritual capital given to us at the point of salvation. Ownership says what? Ownership says we are free to use or abuse, and when God gives us by grace the spiritual blessings in Christ we are free to abuse them; we are free to misuse them, but we are not free to avoid the results of their misuse. Now that’s where this principle applies spiritually.

But going back to this point in Deuteronomy 8, the principle is that in verse 17, in this point in the cycle of wealth the person who may be a carnal Christian, or he may be an unbeliever who has been blessed materially, he thinks that it is all by works, as a creature he has gained his wealth by his works and he is ignorant of the fact that God at many points has graced him. He may have inherited some of it but God has worked out circumstances beyond his control that gave him much of his wealth and this is what is denied in verse 17, “My power, and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.” And here you have someone entering the fourth step of the cycle of wealth and they flunk the this test, so they go into what is the test of adversity, verse 18, “But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God; for it is He who gives thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore unto thy fathers, as it is this day,” and it goes on to warn them that they would go into the fifth step which would be poverty. [19, “And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. [20] As the nations which the LORD destroys before your face, so shall ye perish, because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.”]

So the five steps in the cycle of wealth that you can trace this in history, nation after nation, you probably if you’re careful can trace it in your own family, if you can go back four or five generations in your family you’ll probably see the same cycle. It repeats over and over and over and over. Why? We’re built this way; this is a description of human nature. And this is how history operates. Let’s illustrate it from American history; you start out with the era of the Puritans; the Puritans come to this country, the Puritans were one of the greatest people who have ever lived, contrary to the propaganda you often get in classrooms about burning witches and so on, ridiculous. The Puritans were people who carved out a fantastic civilization, tremendous civilization, with the highest standards of any civilization in the West. There has never been a civilization with the highest standards of the Puritans. The Puritans were tough people; I don’t mean tough in the bully sense of the word, I mean tough in the sense of their mental attitude. The Puritans came and they established the nation with godly labor. They labored because they wished to do it for God’s purposes; it was God’s will that they be free to apply the Word to all areas of society, they couldn’t in England at the time, therefore they went to a place where they could.

The second point is that the Puritans were mightily blessed; economically the Puritans became some of the wealthiest people America has ever seen in a short time. Fantastically wealthy. Why? Because of their godly labor. Now what happens? The second generation and third generation Puritan became convinced that what had gained them wealth was not the godly labor, but just labor. And so you have the good old American work ethic develop, which is still with us, hard work, etc. given wealth. And it’s apostate; it’s nothing more than Deuteronomy 8:17 and this is part of the American culture that is actually a rebellion against the Lord Jesus Christ’s grace. It is this part of the American soul and the American character that makes Americans almost impermeable to the concept of grace. The Puritans would have understood it but by 50 or 75 years in this new world failure to teach their children concepts of grace and so on led to a development in the character of America that is still with us, the idea that it is just sheer work that gains wealth. The concept is not true. It is not wealth, it is grace and inheritance along with labor that gives you wealth and the American at this point, we have to confess as American believers that where we share our American character we are wrong and this is unbiblical.

All right, that’s the cycle of wealth. Now we’re going to go to various verses in the book of Proverbs to watch how God judges people on the basis of how they use their wealth. You say how does God judge? How can God judge a man? What are the mechanisms that God uses for judge me? Here I have so much wealth and I’m going to use it or I’m going to abuse it, how can I anticipate God will judge? God can judge two ways: God can judge in time, God can judge in eternity. The Proverbs emphasizes God’s judgment in time, that God will judge you in time or your family or your nation, in time. The next time we meet we’re going to deal with four violations that men have made under the principle of property to avoid God’s judgment. God will judge in time.

Let’s look at some of these Proverbs that we’ve looked first at the cycle of wealth, we’ve understood that God does hold us responsible for the use of property, that’s the overall concept, now let’s look at some of these Proverbs. The first one is Proverbs 10:22; we read here of God blessing materially. “The blessing of the LORD, it makes rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” Now this is going to be a principle that occurs over and over in the book of Proverbs. It’s hard to line these verses up at any clear form; I despaired of every trying so you’re going to have to bear with us as we go from verse to verse. It’s going to seem helter-skelter but that’s the way it’s written. One of the principles in this verse where it says, “and He ads no sorrow,” it means that when blessing comes from God it will be blessing that you can enjoy. When the blessing is from God the blessing can be enjoyed in time.

You can be “blessed,” (quote, end quote), with wealth and never enjoy it because all of a sudden descending on you are the problems of its management; you are ill equipped to handle this kind of a management situation; you have no training and the first thing you know you either gum it up, lose it or get in a serious jam. Time and time again American celebrities on the scene have been blessed with fantastic wealth; certain athletes in various sports have been blessed overnight with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of wealth. The blessing obviously was not from God because they could not enjoy it. We’ll show you how God prepares people for blessing. But God usually does not bless overnight; it’s not a sign of divine blessing overnight. The reason is that the person is not trained to use it and therefore if you are not trained to use wealth you can’t enjoy it; it becomes a burden because you’re constantly having to go around to protect your investment and so on, and it becomes something unbearable. So the characteristic of blessing from God according to Scripture is that He will work out the circumstances so you can manage it and enjoy it.

Now this doesn’t mean you’re going to have no trouble. In a fallen world you will always have trouble. But material blessing, generally speaking, from God, will be minimized as far as the trouble; trouble will be minimized in connection with this kind of blessing. To show you the opposite, that this isn’t necessarily so, that all blessing is not necessarily from God, turn to Proverbs 13:22. We’re going to examine three or four more verses in affiliation with Proverbs 10:22 to show you that when God materially blesses He blesses in a way in which the wealth is adequately managed. That makes sense, it shouldn’t come as a shock, after all if God is omniscient, God is wise, He wants us to be wise, wouldn’t you think that His way of blessing materially is to school us so we wisely use what he has given us. There’s going to be a very interesting spiritual application of this in a few minutes so just go through some of these verses and we’ll look first at just the material side; then we’ll skip over and go to the New Testament to the spiritual side.

In Proverbs 13:22, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children; and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” Now this verse, we’ll amplify it later on in connection with the third divine institution, talks about the effect of wealth; that wealth, when it is involved in God’s chain of command, when God is doing the doing, when God is directly blessing, it will be such that the family unit will be stabilized, another characteristic of divine blessing in the material sphere. Wealth that comes into a family that tears that family apart has not been given by God. When God gives the wealth the wealth will have the effect of solidifying the family unit. Again, we’re not saying there won’t be spats and disagreements and inside the family; in a fallen world that’s necessary but generally speaking the wealth will have an edifying influence on the family unit. But, it says, “the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” In other words, he is going to lose his wealth and the wealth will be transferred to some other person; that’s the concept. The wealth that is from God will last to the second and third generation. The children’s children, his grandchildren will be blessed by the wealth and that’s one of the signs that God is involved in the process of giving this kind of wealth, this kind of blessing.

Now before Texas and the U.S. government and so on penalized people for this concept, this would have been valid. Today the government, both at state and federal levels are interested in violating this principle of law in Scripture. God’s law permits free inheritance. It is wrong for the government to come in and tax families because the father was wealth and therefore is passing this wealth on to his son. That is the father’s right given to him far before government ever came into existence. Government didn’t come till after the fall; Adam had the right to generate wealth and give it to Cain and Abel without the government butting in. The government has no prerogative from God whatever to dictate how much wealth you men can give to your sons. That is not a right of government and that is where both federal and state governments are out of line today.

It’s a violation of a biblical principle, and I know the argument, no sooner will I say this but somebody will say but, the government has to do that because otherwise certain families would become extremely wealthy. What you’re saying, then, is that it is wrong to be wealthy; that’s the force of your argument, there is something morally wrong to be wealthy. Where is that in Scripture? Show me! Nowhere does the Scripture ever say it is morally wrong to be wealthy. The Scripture says it is morally wrong to misuse wealth, but never to be wealthy. See, here’s where your thinking is wrong if you think this way. You see the wealth and you say that is wrong when the Bible says it’s the use of the wealth that is wrong. So instead of penalizing people for their misuse of wealth, if a family is wealthy and misusing it then that’s a matter for criminal law to handle, but what you’re doing is you’re judging them before they even have the chance to use their wealth. You’re saying that this family is going to misuse it, therefore we won’t even allow them the privilege of misusing it, we’ll take it away before they have the chance to use it for good or evil. We’ll insure this. Now that is the real force of inheritance laws. Inheritance laws are not geared to finance the government. Inheritance laws are designed to break the family down. Inheritance laws contribute infinitesimally small revenues proportional to both federal and state governments. So they never were designed in the first place to bring in revenue to the government. Inheritance laws and taxes on inheritance and estates were designed from the very beginning to break down the third divine institution. That’s what they’re for, and let’s be clear; you may or not be for it but if you’re for them you are for the breakdown of the third divine institution. It’s just one further attack by our present secular culture to destroy an institution of God.

So in this section the Bible clearly says that it is right to inherit wealth and to pass this on down to the second and third generation. This is how the great immigrants, how the minorities that have come to America in the early days were able to make it. How were some of the minorities able to make it? Simple; practically every group in America came to this country at one time as a persecuted minority. At one time the Indians were a minority to other Indians; they were persecuted. The Puritans were persecuted by the Indians and vice versa. And so you have had minority after minority come to this country. How have they made it? Because the father would work and pass his wealth to his son. His wealth would build on his father’s wealth and so on, and that’s how many families in America made it, because they used principles that are wise by Scripture. And then we have the rise of the socialists and they are trying to screw it up so everybody will be poor.

Now we come to another principle in this concept, Proverbs 24:19. In Proverbs 24:19, it’s a warning about mental attitude toward wealth that is given to the evil person. Here is where you have a situation of wealth, and we’ll call it blessing, material blessing, that is not from God. God sovereignly allows it but it is not the direct kind of blessing. Here God has permitted wealth to accumulate under the ownership of people who the Bible calls wicked. “Fret not thyself because of evil men, neither be thou envious at the wicked ones,” that is the biblical answer if you see people amassing wealth and the answer is not to take it away by inheritance laws. You leave it alone; the Lord has His own ways of handling the problem. But our attitude in that situation is don’t sweat it, “Fret not because of evil men, and don’t you be jealous” about their wealth, you stay out of it. You let the Lord tend to it.

Another strange set of verses come up in Scripture associated with this in the very next chapter. Proverbs 25:21, you have seen these verses before undoubtedly; you’ve read them because Paul quotes them in Romans, but I wonder how many of you have ever read these verses thinking of material blessing? Because of our limited time we don’t have time to go into parallel verses with Proverbs 25:21-22, but there’s a whole slew of verses in Scripture that indicate that God, through the area of the cycle of wealth, remember the cycle of wealth, you have godly labor first, then you have blessing, then you have preoccupation, then you have apostasy, and then you have poverty. God will artificially speed up the cycle of wealth to judge an evil person. And peculiarly at times since this law of wealth works God simply takes a law that He has created, a law of the universe, and He just speeds it up by blessing a person who is going to misuse his wealth. He will deliberately go ahead and bless him.

The principle is used in Proverbs 25:21-22, “If your enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink; [22] For you shall heap coals of fire upon his head, and the LORD shall reward you.” Now that’s a long way away from the way some have used that verse. This verse teaches the fact that oftentimes on an individual basis, or God Himself… in fact I could show you prayers in Psalms where David prays God, bless my enemies, just pour out material blessings all over them so they will have materialism lust and will fall. That is a legitimate prayer that David prayed many, many times. And it is here in the Proverbs series, where the person who is on negative volition, may be a believer in compound carnality, he has rejected God’s authority, rejected God’s authority, rejected God’s authority, and after a while what happens? God says all right, you reject My authority, fine, you have the freedom to use or abuse but you don’t have the freedom to avoid the results of the use or abuse. So I’m going to give you all the blessing you want, here it is. And we’ll just pile it on and we’ll see how you get preoccupied with it and misuse it and it results in destruction and cursing.

So the cycle of wealth is used to curse and this is the way the Bible handles the wealth of the evil one. It is a wealth that is always looked upon in Scripture, the biblical mentality is so what, let them sink in their own wealth; wealth always will corrupt an evil person. Here’s why; go back to the soul; the soul has a mind, the soul has a conscience; the mind has to get its standards from the conscience. When the mind is preoccupied on negative volition it’s fighting a war and revolting away from the conscience. The mind fights the conscience; therefore the mind lacks true standards, and the mind, then, becomes unstable. And finally the unstable mentality will dissipate the wealth, will get in trouble with it and misuse it. So it’s a very sound way of dealing with these situations. Much more sound than some artificial legislation that’s hanging in thin air. This is the kind of tactic to be used that fit with the way men are made. You can actually see wealth that will be put into the hands of one who misuses it and that very wealth will be the method God has of damning them. And this is the way Scripture operates; this is the mentality of God’s Word.

Another Proverbs, this is all in connection with Proverbs 10:22, let’s go back to 10:22 where we started that chain. Notice what we said: “The blessing of the Lord, it makes rich,” but it doesn’t add sorrow with it. See, that’s the good kind of blessing. You may have a person, in other words, on positive volition, who has $10,000 in property that he has been given that has come to him in a godly way. That particular person, if it comes from God’s way on God’s time schedule, will be able to enjoy that, not totally because in a fallen world you can’t totally enjoy anything. But… [Tape turns]

…can relax and enjoy it, this is not all to do with giving. Proverbs 11:25, “The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that waters shall be watered also himself. [26] He that withholds grain, the people shall curse him but the blessing upon the head of him that sells it,” so obviously it’s not (?) involved in verse 26. What is involved? This is the use of capital. Now this is most interesting; the use of capital. God says that He wants us to use our funds. The person pictured here as in verse 24, he’s withholding, the person in verse 26 is he that withholds, is he that hordes his capital and doesn’t use it by way of investment. It is true that this involves some giving because the Bible looks upon this as an investment, an investment in the Lord. But it also involves simple everyday business ventures. And it’s talking about the man who hordes his capital and never uses it, the person owns land and never uses the land to produce.

You may say well, that’s my right. That’s correct, you own the land; that is your right, not to produce or to produce but as far as what God wants in verse 26, “He that sells it shall be blessed,” in other words, as a member of the human race God has given you capital and He expects you to produce, and by common grace…this applies to Christian and non-Christian alike; the non-Christian who does not produce, as we’re going to see next time, is cursed. There is a pressure, even on the non-Christian, completely oblivious to the Word of God, I’ll show you how he bows his knee to this law at point after point in his life, where he has to find, he has to take his capital, he has to invest it, and he has to produce. God has set up the business world to operate this way. And a person who is not going to use his capital for production, for investment, is going to be the loser. And the man who is going to invest is going to gain.

Now Jesus Christ Himself affirms this principle in Matthew 25:14; turn there and we’ll see where Jesus Christ takes a truth from the business world, and while this does apply to salvation, yes, I know I’m approaching it this morning in its original context which had nothing to do with salvation, it had to do with business. See, many of the parables in the New Testament are pro capitalist and this is why many, many people who say they love Jesus do not really love Jesus because first of all they don’t even know what Jesus said and the reason they don’t know what Jesus said is because they never understand the Old Testament or study it, and they never understand that most of Jesus’ parables in the latter days of His ministry that have to do with the so-called Christian life are all parables based on business laws. A person, therefore, who is uninformed in the area of business, economics, money, labor and property, can simply not understand the force of the parables.

See, this is a most interesting dilemma, is that as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ God expects us to have some common sense in the area of business before we can understand the Christian life. Now how’s that for priority, but that’s the way these parables are designed. If you don’t understand the business principles involved you just can’t understand the Christian life. Now let’s look at this parable.

Matthew 25:14, “The kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.” There is the capital. There is the initial investment. So we’ve got the capital. The capital is in verse 14, “delivered unto them his goods. [15] And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, to every man according to his ability; and straightway took his journey.” Please notice here, in verse 15, this is not the state giving each man according to his ability. This is not socialism; this is simply a smart businessman who doesn’t want to waste his capital on some clod. This man has the right, he owns the talent. What does ownership mean? He has the right to do with it as he pleases. And so what does the owner do? He gives it to the most promising thing; it’d be like you buy so much stock and you buy so much stock in one company that you think is going to go and you hedge on another company that you don’t think shows so much promise, so much gain potential and so forth. That’s what’s happening here in verse 15. It’s not socialism. I’ve heard liberal preachers use verse 15 to justify socialism; it has nothing to do with it. It has to do with simply smart business investments.

Verse 16, “Then he that had received the five talents when and traded with the same, and made another five talents. [17] And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other. [18] But he that had received one went and dug in the earth, and hid his lord’s money,” the ultra conservative. [19] And after a long time the lord of those servants comes, and reckons with them. [20] So he that had received five talents came” and so on, and you know the story, and then verse 23, “His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things. Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” Now the point is that the man who gave the capital comes back and he judges; the investment leaves you with freedom, freedom to do with it as you will, but it doesn’t leave you with freedom to escape the judgment of using what has been given to you well or poorly. See the point? These men had freedom, the lord wasn’t there to direct them, hey look, you take your five talents and what you do, you put it over here; and you, you’ve got those two talents, you put them over here. There is no direction; the Lord gave them utter freedom in their business investment but the Lord expected production. And these people who received capital by grace, please notice, they received their capital by grace and they were going to be held accountable for how they used it.

And then, Jesus makes the connection in Matthew 25:23, “He lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.” Here is the spiritual analogy that Jesus Christ draws from the business world. Our future spiritual promotion depends on how we manage resources at our disposal today, just like in any good company. If you were working with some mutual fund or you were working with some investment company, your promotion would be based on your success, your ability to manage resources under your control. Now what Jesus is saying, do you understand that, He says, do you understand this in the business world? And what is the force of the passage? Therefore, He said, don’t think the Christian life is any different from the business world, it’s the same way, it’s exactly the same principle Christ says. He says you know this from your everyday business. He was talking mostly to men when He made this parable, they were all his disciples.

They were His disciples and they were mostly men. And these men were selling and buying on the market, and He said look, you men, you all know this because this is how you feed yourself. You know these principles of business, you use them every day. Now why is it that you suddenly think that the Christian life is somehow radically different from that. It’s not at all. He says I have given you capital assets, I have given you capital assets at the point of salvation and I give you complete freedom to use or misuse my salvation in time. As I accept you, Jesus says, at this point, when you become a Christian and I invest in your life many, many wonderful things, then I expect you to use them in history for me. You are free, absolutely free, I don’t coerce you, I don’t keep after you, I don’t twist your arm to do certain things, but I hold you accountable down here for what you’ve produced as believers. This does not mean we lose our salvation but it does mean that believers are called upon to justify Jesus’ investment in their life. What has reproduced is the question.

And then He says in verse 24, “Then he that had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee, that thou art an hard man, reaping where you had not sown,” notice, “and gathering where you have not spread.” What does that principle mean in the Christian life? It means that Jesus Christ expects His Church to do things that He Himself never did. Illustration? Jesus never preached the gospel in Africa but He expects believers to. Jesus never preached the gospel in America in spite of the book of Mormon, and He expects the Church to do that. Jesus Christ preached the gospel in many, many places in Palestine but not outside of Palestine. And yet He expects believers to; He expects us to reap where He has not sown.

In verse 25 the answer. “But I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth, and lo, thou hast that which is thine.” The man was afraid to involve in an active business transaction. [26] “And his lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful,” or “lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not spread? [27] You ought, therefore, to have put my money to the exchangers, and then, at my coming I would have received my own with interest.” The idea is you should have loaned the money out if you couldn’t do anything you could have loaned it to somebody and let them use it, if you’re chicken to do it yourself. Give it to somebody that is using money properly and skillfully, at least you would have gotten the interest back but you didn’t even do that.

Again, the same concept applies to the Christian life. At the point of salvation Jesus Christ invests in us many, many things; He invests righteousness, His righteousness is credited to our account. Do you know what credit means? Credited, that’s imputation; Jesus Christ credits His absolute righteousness to our account. This means that when we face guilt and so on, in many situations in life, are we using that investment, are we calling on the capital that He has invested in our life or are we just hiding it in the ground, afraid to use it, so we don’t produce anything, there’s no fruits of the Holy Spirit operating. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is always produced when we operate on the assets Christ has given. All right, Jesus then was a capitalist. The Christian life is run on capitalist (?) and it goes along with the same business principles.

Let’s turn back to Proverbs for just a few more verses. Proverbs 19:17, the parable, incidentally, that you just saw, particularly the man with the one talent who was afraid to invest, is a picture that you often see in the business world, you see it in government circles, you see it in Christians, and that is I want to enjoy ownership but I don’t want to be held accountable for how I use it. In other words, I like the joy that comes from owning wealth but I don’t want to be held accountable for how I use the wealth. In other words, I want to forsake my responsibility, and one of the things that men always try to do and you can explain many, many things you see on the contemporary scene this way, they take ownership and they take stewardship which hang together, you can’t divide them, but men always try to divide them; they try to draw a line between the two, and you can explain a lot of government programs this way. It’s simply sinful man trying to split stewardship away from ownership. And I’ll point out to you next time how every time this has been tried in the last 50 years in America, you take stewardship away and you always lose the ownership. People can’t understand why; it’s because God designed the world this way, that’s why, it’s one of God’s laws, you don’t break God laws. If a man does not want to enjoy the cost of ownership he just doesn’t enjoy ownership period.

All right, Proverbs 19:17, “He that has pity upon the poor lends unto the LORD, and that which he has given will he pay him again.” That concept is the area of giving socially, giving socially. This is the area of giving welfare, now the concept in verse 17 is the individual citizen of the nation Israel. Let’s forget modern society, go back to Israel. “He that continually has pity on the poor lends unto the LORD,” the word isn’t “give,” notice, it is “lend” and the word “lend” implies a return. It implies interest will be received because of the investment. “He that has pity lends to the LORD, and that which he has given will he pay,” that is the Lord; the Lord will pay him back with interest. That was the promise not, as it is often used in Christian circles, church giving today. Verse 17 has nothing to do with giving to the church. Verse 17 has to do with giving to social needs in the nation Israel. Now men always want ownership without stewardship and so one of the modern things has, as men have forsaken the use of charities to solve the social problems, the government has simply expanded into these spheres. It hasn’t been the government moved first and destroyed the social welfare; the social welfare and charitable bases were destroyed first, then the government moved in. It is finely balanced and we’ll see how this all works together as we go through Proverbs further.

Another proverb, Proverbs 22:16, this is a person who is utterly misusing wealth, “He that oppresses the poor to increase his riches,” this was done by various farming cartels in the nation Israel, “and he that gives to the rich, shall surely come to want.” Same principle, that God will use the cycle of wealth to discipline and to destroy.

All right, such is the law of property in the third principle that we are held accountable. Let’s turn in conclusion to the final application to us as Christians, 2 Corinthians 5:10. The last couple of times people have asked me at the door about the so-called bema seat judgment for believers. Where is that found? Here it is. If you understand economics a little bit and business principles a little bit, as we’ve worked with them today you can understand the bema seat judgment now. It’s very simple; it fits together, no strange principles. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” “we” refers to believers, “the judgment seat of Christ” is the bema seat, that’s what we mean when we say “the bema seat judgment.” That is the bema seat, that is to be distinguished from the great white throne judgment in Revelation 20, 21 and 22. That is for unbelievers; verse 10 refers to believers, Christians. Christians “must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one,” every believer, “may receive the things done in his body,” or literally the things produced, “in his body, according to that which he has produced, whether it is good or bad.”

And that’s why Paul said, verse 11, “Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men;” now so you see what Paul said. This is why Paul wrote all the epistles in the New Testament. He said look, I know God operates the kingdom in a businesslike way. I know that He is, in a way, the hardest businessman that you’ll ever face. God operates His kingdom according to the laws of business that every one of us know by personal experience in the business world. That’s the way the whole thing operates. Now Paul says I know that’s what goes on, therefore, I teach believers and plead with them to apply the Word in every area of life.

The answer, then, today is are we or are we not producing. The fruit of the Holy Spirit by the filling of the Spirit, by submitting to the promises that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose,” all these areas, all these promises, 7,000 promises some once counted, how many have you used this week.