Clough Proverbs Lesson 64
DI #1: Law of Money
Some questions
that are very related though when you first hear them they don’t appear to
be. Would you please explain the
illustration on the front of the church bulletin? That’s one question. The second question is what doctrinal
information will the ballet in Psalm 136 provide for the congregation? The third question: the only excuse I can
attribute to you confession to any activities as a Scriptural ballet in connection
with the teaching of Bible doctrine is the attempt to pacify those less
interested in LBC as a source in doctrine, thus keeping them in
attendance. You are allowing a vicious
cycle to begin by allowing non-doctrine teaching to replace (?) pulpit teaching. Well, my response to that is in detail in the
bulletin and I think persons who raised the questions obviously haven’t been
here on Wednesday nights taking in doctrine like they claim they’re so
interested in because if they had they would have understood the application to
the Psalms as we have so pointed out Wednesday night after Wednesday
night. Now the day that I give up this
pulpit for the ballet, that will be the day to worry, but I assure you that I
have no intention of giving up this pulpit or it’s teaching ministry for a
ballet. However, we, as I pointed out in
the insert in your bulletin and don’t read it now, take it home and you can
have me for dinner as well as roast.
In there I explain
to you our objective in applying the Word of God to every area of life, and I’m
strong, if you didn’t know, you should have observed the last three or four
years, that one reason why our fundamentalism has not made the impact in
society it has is because there is a heresy in our own camp, and the heresy
goes something like this; that the Holy Spirit is only interested in the church
age in saving the internal soul, that the Holy Spirit does not want us to apply
the Word of God in the other areas of life, therefore we should not engage in
the arts, therefore we should have as poor quality music as possible, therefore
we should not get ourselves dirty with politics, therefore we should stay away
from all the non-spiritual areas of life and sit wringing our hands in our
pious corners repeating Bible verses to one another. Now this is a heresy and I’ll be willing to
defend that in any forum anywhere at any time, before any Christians. It does not fit at all with historic
Christianity, if you’d like some sources to widen your horizon a little bit I
suggest you read a man like John Milton, who certainly is an authorized
Puritan.
And if you read
one particular work by John Milton you would find not only to your shock was he
against censorship, but he was also, in his day, pointing out that in the
second century, in the first century the great complaint the non-Christian had
against the Christians was that the Christians were out in the arts, were out
in these areas and it was precisely in those area where they were defeating and
undermining Rome. And that was the
impact, and that was how the early church turned the world upside down, not
because they kept the Word of God under a bushel. What do you think it means by taking the
bushel off and letting the Word shine?
Doesn’t it mean letting something be visible to other people and how are
other people going to see it unless the Word of God is applied to all areas of
life. That’s the story of the front page
of the bulletin and that’s the story that’s trying to be explained on the
insert in your bulletin.
Today we go to
another area in the book of Proverbs and that has to do with money. This should be of interest to most
people. We have dealt with many laws
under the first divine institution; remember again I use the term divine institution,
people Reformed circles would use the word “sphere sovereignty,” after the
Prime Minister of Holland, Abraham Kuyper.
The idea that society is divided according to creation into spheres. Each sphere has its own principles of
operation, and wisdom, or chokmah, on
your part as a citizen, that must exist in the 20th century, that
must cast your vote one way or the other, that must breathe the same air that
everyone else breathes, that chokmah
on your part depends completely on your understanding the division of these
institutions. And God’s Word is a
revelation of how God made the universe and He made it with certain laws,
certain principles, and we are the ones who suffer, He doesn’t, we suffer when
we move categories around that shouldn’t be moved around.
To refresh your
mind on the importance of these categories notice we’re still in the first
divine institution. The first divine
institution is individual responsibility.
Now these categories are not erased by grace. When God comes to save men He doesn’t cut
across His original creature structure.
When God’s grace pours out to men in the person of Christ, we still
honor the first divine institution because the gospel is an invitation not to
any other sphere of society but to the individual. That’s why the individual is addressed:
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou,” singular, an individual, “shall be
saved.” And “your house” in Acts 16
describes the effect the father has under the principle of the third divine
institution. Now the second area, the
area of marriage, the third the area of children and authority, and
education. As I pointed out fifty or
sixty times before, when we get down here you’re going to see it, that
education is not a function of the state.
It is a function given by God in the third, not the fourth divine
institution. State run education is
basically cutting across God’s created order for society. And the fourth divine institution deals with
justice, law and punishment. And then
you have the other spheres but these are spheres that God’s Word honors.
Now we are
studying the first one and today we come to the topic of money, and to the laws
of money and as such we have to ask certain questions. Today our main concentration on the law of
money has to do with the divine viewpoint view of money and next Sunday morning
we’ll be dealing with the divine viewpoint of loans. So there are two areas that we’re working
with. We are not going to deal with the
problem of loans today or credit; we’re going to deal basically with what money
is itself according to Scripture. Now
before we get to Scripture, and in order to understand these passages, let’s
define a few words. These words occur in
the Hebrew, they occur in the Greek but we want to understand what the content
of these words is.
Let’s look first
at this word: value, and let’s ask whether we have a divine viewpoint or human
viewpoint of value. This is a very
critical word, everything hinges on it so let’s start first with the word
“value.” The first thing about value
under the divine viewpoint basis is that value is not intrinsic to
creation. It is not, repeat, not
intrinsic. There is no such thing as
intrinsic value according to God’s Word.
No part of the creation by itself has value. All value that exists is given by God Himself
as the Creator. Said another way, if God
stopped existing tomorrow the pieces of the universe would revert to a
valueless state. There would be no
value. So value is not automatic or
intrinsic. Those of you who have studied
economics you will know that Karl Marx was the last person in history who ever
thought that value was intrinsic. Most
economists today recognize that Marx was wrong and the people before that, Adam
Smith and others, that there is no such thing as intrinsic value.
Now the second
thing we have to learn is value is not intrinsic to things, such as gold,
silver or anything else, does not have intrinsic value. Then where does value come from? Value is always given to things by people, so
value is imputed, a very valuable biblical word, one that we’re going to make
an application of as we come to the conclusion this morning. Value is something credited to an object, it
is imputed to an object. Somebody has to
give the value to the thing. God gives
absolutely value to His created order; we, under God, give value to things
under us.
And finally, a
third point on value and that is, is there an absolute standard of value. What about the absolute standard. Since we have to give value to things we have
to have some sort of a reference. If you
operate in human viewpoint and you reject the absolute authority of the Word of
God, or even if you try to mix the Word of God with man’s authority you’re
operating on human viewpoint. Man then
becomes the source of his own value; it is what man says that is valuable. In divine viewpoint values are given under
God’s value system.
Let me give an
example of this, then we’ll go to a portion of Scripture. Suppose you have a (quote) “valuable” idol
here, some sort of an idol. It is valued
by a certain group of men. Now you come
along in the name of Jesus Christ and witness the gospel to them; these people
accept the gospel. What happens to the
value of the idol? The value of the idol
changes radically. For a case in point, turn
to Acts 19:23, this is an aspect of the gospel, an aspect of evangelism that is
often overlooked. There is an economic
repercussion to teaching the Word of God.
Acts
Verse 24, “For a
certain man, named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines for Diana,
brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; [25] Whom he called together, with
the workmen of like occupation, and said,” this is an emergency meeting of the
businessmen, “Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. [26] Moreover, you see and hear that not
alone at
Now what caused
the riot? The riot came about because
under the preaching of the Word of God many standard of values lined up with
God’s standard of values; you had the imposition of God’s absolute standard and
it was felt by the businessmen in the free market. There was an economic repercussion as people
aligned their values. They did not buy
products at the price the products were on the market. They refused the high price because those
products had become valueless.
So in summary to
this third point of an absolute standard, we have to say that it is possible
that we under value or over value, that we are sinful rebellious creatures who
tend, always to value things falsely.
But just because we value them falsely doesn’t mean they always have to
be valued falsely. The silver in these
idols was valuable but the idol itself was not considered valuable by these
Christians. So much for value. Value, then, is something (?) in two (?)
objects, falsely or truly.
Now we come to a
second word and then we’ll be ready for these passages. What is money? Money in the divine viewpoint frame of
reference is just another good. People
don’t always have money. Do you suppose
they had dollar bills in Solomon’s time?
Now, they didn’t even have coins in Solomon’s day. Money is a comparatively recent thing. And money, therefore, we can say, first of
all from the divine viewpoint is that it is another good; it is a good and
therefore... and watch this link because the Word of God is going to come down
hard right here; money is another good that men value truly or falsely. Money itself does not have intrinsic value. It is something men value and they value it
truly or falsely according to God’s standard.
Take gold, for
example, often even conservatives say that gold has intrinsic value; that’s
nonsense, it’s an anti-biblical statement, nothing has intrinsic value. There’s no such thing as intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is only something imputed by
men; they say therefore gold is valuable and always has been, not because it’s
something in itself but because it’s useful in trade; it is a useful item that
men do value habitually. So instead of
saying, the way some conservatives say, intrinsic value, and liberals say no
value, the Bible-believing Christian says historic value; we believe that gold
has, as an illustration, historic value and therefore importance.
A second thing
about it, besides it being another good imputed with value, is that money has
to have at least four characteristics to be useful. First, it has to be durable. Obviously if you’re going to trade in butter
it wouldn’t be too durable, and it’d be too (?) to exchange around; you’ve got
to have something durable. Another
thing, you’ve got to have something divisible.
In the ancient world at one time women were traded as money, but the
problem came, how do you have half a woman.
[can’t understand phrase] And
then you have another problem of money and that is that it has to be
transportable; you’ve got to be able to carry it around (?) the medium of
exchange you’d have (?) difficulty. And
then finally a fourth thing is that whatever it is that uses money has to be
(?). At least these characteristics must
determine money.
Now let’s go to
Scripture and see what has been the traditional standard used for trade among
men. And those standards have been gold
and silver, all the way back before the fall.
Turn to Genesis 2:11, go all the way back before the fall with just Adam
and Eve. And God’s Word points out a
certain thing about gold. “The name of
the first,” it’s speaking of the antediluvian earth, “is Pishon; that is it
which compasses the whole land of Havilah,” we don’t know what these lands were
because all the surfaces were so transformed by the flood, “where there is
gold.” And notice what the Word of God
says in verse 12, this is God’s word, not man’s word, and therefore when the
Word of God says, “And the gold of that land is good,” God recognizes that the
gold is valuable and that man is corrupt in giving it in history a historic
value; man is corrupt in this. So it’s
not wrong to impute value to gold; God’s Word imputes value to gold. In fact, God’s salvation, the richest
possession that anyone in the world can have is compared not with earth, not
with man’s products, but what is the salvation in Jesus Christ often compared
to in Scripture? More valuable than gold
or silver. Well, it’s true that God is
trying to show the infinite value of His Son’s salvation, but isn’t it
interesting that the standard of comparison that God uses is gold and silver;
not tin, not iron, not some other goods but gold and silver. Those are the things that are compared with
our so great salvation.
So here before the
fall gold is pointed out as existing, and as available to man and good for
man. What does it mean when it says “the
gold of that land is good?” It means
several things; it means that number one, it was mineable, it was accessible to
the man. Number two, it required a
minimum of refining, so that it could be used readily on the open market. So the pronouncement that gold is good says
that it is not wrong for man to value gold, in spite of certain TV programs
that you might have seen recently that argue to the contrary.
Genesis 13:2,
we’re still looking at the Scripture’s evaluation of gold and silver. “And Abram was very rich in cattle, in
silver, and in gold.” Cattle were also
used as a form of money, a form of investment in the ancient world, but notice,
“in silver and in gold.” So it is a
proper form of wealth. We see this again
in Exodus 3:22, we’re going to be hopping through the Bible today so I hope
you’re warmed up. I’ve tried to arrange
all these in the order of Scripture so you won’t have any trouble.
Exodus 3:22; when
Israel was redeemed from the land of Egypt, the land of Egypt had a monopoly,
not thanks to their own dictatorship, incidentally, do you know who was
influential in Egyptian history as making Egypt so rich? It was a Hebrew by the name of Joseph. So Egypt’s riches historically go back to the
time of Joseph. It was Joseph, the Hebrew,
that gave Egypt her riches, but Egypt misused her riches in persecuting the
Jew. And so when God released Israel
from Egypt, Egypt had to pay reparation to the Jews. And so in verse 22, “Every woman shall borrow
[ask] of her neighbor, and of her who sojourns in her house, jewels of silver,
and jewels of gold, and raiment; and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon
your daughters; and you will spoil the Egyptians.” In other words, reparation payments had to be
made to Israel because of the treatment they had received by Egypt, and it was
a form of building up, as it was later used, these women would take their jewelry
and use their jewelry to give back to God, and later on we’re going to see that
in the history of Israel, if you study it carefully you will see that this gold
became the source of their money; it became a source of their wealth; it was
actually goods God gave them from Egypt.
You see, they had an economy ran by grace. Who gave the Jews the land? God did.
Where did they get their ownership?
God gave it. Where did they get
the gold and silver for their trade? God
gave it. So God established their
kingdom by giving to them wealth. You
must have capital in order to have money and therefore we find God, when He
goes to run a nation, He puts it on a gold and silver standard.
Now Exodus 25:3,
again a passage that deals with a value of gold and silver. The offering that God accepts, listed in
order of value, what is the first one listed in verse 3, “Gold, then silver,
then brass,” and then the cloths and the finely woven things. What is the most valuable gift that could
have been given to God? Gold.
Now let’s turn to
another passage, 1 Kings 10, the tremendous wealth of Solomon. Solomon was a fantastic genius. Solomon was a man who had accomplishments in
many, many different areas of life. He
was a man who had accomplishments in politics, he is a man who perceived the
arts, he didn’t keep the Word of God shut up to himself, he applied it all
areas of life. In fact Solomon is
probably responsible, more than any other man, for getting parts of the Old
Testament put together. The book of
Psalms, as I pointed out, and the book of Proverbs that we’re studying were
basically art work when they were first written.
Now in 1 Kings
10:14 this tells you Solomon’s income in gold.
“The weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore
and six talents of gold,” that’s six, six, six talents of gold, with the
sinister application developed in the book of Revelation. But six, six, six has an economic overtone to
it which we’ll see later on. But Solomon
had this. What does this (?)? If we figure one ounce of gold at $100 which
is not too far off the international value at the moment, then Solomon’s annual
income was $141,000,000 in gold. Pretty
good for a small king, isn’t it?
$141,000,000 a year in gold. No
wonder the Queen of Sheba came and said my eyes can’t believe it, I see it but
I don’t believe it. That was the first
time that was stated in history, the Queen of Sheba.
So the value of
gold persisted on down to the time of the great prosperity of the Old Testament
kingdom. In fact, at one point, and I
can’t find the reference on it but I’ve read it before, at one point one of the
prophets says that silver was so abundant in Solomon’s time that it was more
abundant than stones in the street. Now
that shows you the tremendous value of Solomon.
Do you see why he was politically powerful? He had gold in back of him; he had tremendous
wealth in back of him. This is why
Solomon could afford to do the things he did.
You say well, that’s nice, that’s all in the Old Testament, certainly
now we’re on a higher spiritual plain, certainly now we don’t deal with the
earthly things, we’ve transcended those.
Not so.
Turn to Revelation
21; certainly you’ll agree that the book of Revelation speaks of the future at
this point, the eternal state. And the
book of Revelation doesn’t stop with just the spiritual things; it deals with
the earthly things also. Heaven is a
material place and the new heavens and new earth are material heavens and a
material earth. And in Revelation 21:18 what
do you read? The new city. “And the building of the wall of it was
jasper; and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass,” in other words, the
highest grade of gold. Look at verse 21,
“And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each one of the gates was of one
pearl; and the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.” Now notice it doesn’t say the street of the
city was like gold; the comparative term “like” is given with glass, not with
gold. So it’s not that he sees a street
that looks like gold, rather he sees the street is gold and it looks like
glass. That’s the analogy. So gold occurs once again in the new
universe.
So obviously then
gold and silver are important resources in God’s creation. It’s given to us to use, or incidentally, to
misuse. So what can we conclude by
this? That man’s historic value of gold
is biblically sound. Man’s historic
value given to gold is doctrinally correct by God’s Word.
But now we come to
how God views money. We’ve dealt with
value; we’ve dealt with some things that are used for money. Now we turn back to the passage we had this
morning, Leviticus 19:35. We’re going to
take you on another chain of references in Scripture to show you that God has a
certain attitude towards money. Don’t
worry, this is not a sermon on giving so relax; this is a sermon that has to do
with the divine viewpoint of money itself, useful to you if you are interested
in exercising your prerogatives as a citizen while you still have the
prerogatives left. Here is how God
controls money. Now let me preface all
my remarks so you don’t misunderstand this.
I am not arguing that we are in the kingdom of God. I am not arguing that the United States is
Israel. All I’m saying is that if we
want wisdom in designing our social order, then we ought to look carefully at
how God designed one when He was (?).
How did God control these things that are so vexing and perplexing to
us? Can we get some hints by looking at
Scripture, that when God reigns socially and politically what did He do in
these areas?
Let’s look what He
did; Leviticus 19:35 introduces a key passage on the biblical doctrine of
money. First read verses 35-37 then
we’ll work with the individual words.
“Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard [measure of
length], in weight, or in measure [quantity].
[36] Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye
have: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. [37] Therefore shall you observe all my statutes,
and all my judgments, and do them: I am the LORD.”
Now notice the
first word in verse 35, “You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment.” Notice the word “judgment.” What did we say money was? It was a commodity, a marketable good that
men value. Value involves judgment,
doesn’t it? Now if you look in the same
context, the last place that this was discussed in the immediate context was
verse 15. And what does it say, this
same phrase, “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, thou shalt not respect
the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty, but in
righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor.”
Now that’s insisting that God’s absolute standard be used in evaluating
people, the guilty or the innocent must be evaluated not by your sentimentalism
but by God’s absolute standard. This is
something that applies in a courtroom, verse 15. It applies to a judge who’s interested in
value judgment.
Now, if we say all
right, that’s a value judgment, then certainly verse 35 is no accident that it
occurs here, “you shall do no unrighteousness in judgment,” and this has not to
do with the courtroom, verse 35 has to do with the market place, and it’s
talking about men who are manhandling the standards of value. What are the standards of value? The “meteyard,” that is a unit of length in
verse 35. So here are standard
lengths. Here were the standard lengths
to use in a free market, obviously to measure land with, to measure homes with,
and they had to have a standard measure and God says I want in this society a
standard absolute measure of lengths, and once you set the standard you cannot
deviate from it. It is wrong and we’ll
see how wrong in a moment. “…in weight,”
now what would be measured in the free market by a standard value of weight? Obviously goods, grain and so on, but for our
purposes this morning, we’re not interested in all the areas of the market
place except one, and that’s money.
Money in the ancient world came in the form of gold and silver ingots,
clumps of the metal, ingots of gold and silver, they did not have coins at this
early stage in history, it was just clumps of the metal, gold and silver that
had to be weighed. And therefore God
insisted that the scales of weight be just.
And then the last one, “in measure,” this is volume and that was used of
various grains and so on.
But I want you to
notice it was of concern to God that the free market be protected with value
standards, just balances and so on. Now
to show you just how crucial it was, what does he say in verse 36 at the end,
“I am the LORD your God, who redeemed you out of the land o Egypt.” What does that sound like? That sounds like if we’re sloppy in our
valuation of these standards we are going back to a human viewpoint way of
operation. We are rejecting the freedom
into the truth that God has given us in Christ.
Therefore, he says observe it, I am the Lord. In other words, that last statement, “I am
the LORD” means I set your standards and you will evaluate things by Me and Me
alone. Not the gods of Egypt, I’ve
redeemed you out of Egypt, no other standards except Me, I am Jehovah.
That’s the key
basic passage but now let’s go on a little tour of the Old Testament to see how
this is reflected in history. Turn to
Deuteronomy 25:13. What do you
read: “Thou shalt not have in thy bag
various [different] weights, a great and a small. [14] Thou shalt not have in thy house various
[different] measures, a great and a small.
[15] But you shall have a perfect and just weight; a perfect and just
measure shalt shall you have.” Footnote,
applies to the New Testament. There is
where you can see a concrete application of the concept of righteousness. It came out of the Old Testament financial
circles. Righteousness, one of the forms
of righteousness in the Old Testament was something that was a standard
measure, that fit a value standard.
Remember it, in the New Testament when it says we are imputed by
Christ’s righteousness, that means we are said to fit a value standard. “…that thy days,” now look at the promise in
verse 15, isn’t this unusual, he’s saying all these things that you must have
honesty in your business, honesty in your flow of money, “that thy days may be
lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God gives you.” Now there’s only one other place in the law
where that kind of a thing comes up.
Remember where it is? “Honor thy
father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land.” Now we know why that connection is made
because that’s where people learn authority, in the third divine
institution. Children that do not honor
their parents, children who are in rebellion against their father and their
mother are in rebellion against God, basically.
Now what does this
then mean? “That thy days may be
lengthened in the land?” Simply this,
that people who are in rebellion against absolute standards of value are in
rebellion against the God of value. And
it is not a small sin to have these diverse ways. Have you ever thought of a sermon on verses 13-15? Have you ever heard that in an evangelistic
context? A sermon on the improper bags
in the Old Testament? But that is a sin
that is an abomination to God because it undercuts His values.
Turn to Proverbs
11:1, the language gets stronger as we go through the Old Testament, until it
gets violent in the New Testament. Watch
how the temper of these passages heats up as we go from one to the other. Proverbs 11:1, “A false balance is an
abomination to the LORD,” the word “abomination” was used for the most vile
forms of rebellion against God’s authority in the Old Testament, it is a
special word, a special condemnation for specially gross sin, and the
manipulation of the currency is considered by God an abomination, one of the
worst sins that can ever be done; it’s an abomination, “but a just weight is
His delight.” The weights, again, were
the weights that measured the gold and silver ingots in Hebrew trade. We have to do here with the standards of
money.
Proverbs 16:11, “A
just weight and a balance,” again, weighing the gold and the silver ingots, “A
just weight and balance are the LORD’s; all the weights of the bag are His
work.” Now what does that statement
mean? The weights and the bags are
Jehovah’s work. It simply means that God
is intimately involved in the standards of value? Why?
He does not want us to be misled and make false decisions. See, all this follows out of the first divine
institution. What is the first divine
institution basically? Man’s
responsibility. All right, if it’s man’s
responsibility all these curves, like last week we dealt with the sin of theft,
why does God make a big issue out of the sin of theft? It’s simple; He wants to protect the first
divine institution. Why is He incensed
at people that distort values? Because
they warp man’s responsibility. How can
you make a responsible decision if you can’t evaluate what you’re
choosing?
Proverbs 20:10,
“Various weights and various measures, both of them are alike an abomination to
the LORD,” again, the strongest Old Testament word for condemnation. The thing that God angrier than anything else
is the manipulation of the weights.
Proverbs 20:23,
“Various weights are an abomination unto the LORD, and a false balance is not
good.”
Proverbs 25:4,
perhaps you never realized that the Word of God must be applied to the field of
economics. It was in Israel’s day. It was during the middle ages. No longer, however. “Take away the dross from the silver, and
there shall come forth a vessel for the refiner. [5] Take away the wicked from before the
king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness.” Now why are these two proverbs connected; why
are they linked? What does it mean to
take away the dross in the silver?
Here’s what was happening. Since
the measure was a weight measure you would have something here that would
resemble an ingot of metal, and people were allowing unrefined silver to be
judged as pure silver. So this silver
would have dross in it, tin and other impurities in the silver. And what would happen is that when the weight
was weighted as though it was silver, and so on, you would have parts of this
that weren’t silver that were being weighed, even though tin obviously is not
too heavy, the point still remains that you had a distortion of the
weight. That was the way they made their
money; it was a weight form, that’s what talent is, it’s a weight, we see in
the Bible so many talents, it’s not talking about dollars, it’s talking about
something that weighs something. So
weight was a form of money and that’s why it says get away the dross in the
silver, don’t, in modern terminology, debase the currency; let the thing that
you’re using for money be the value that’s you’re imputing to it.
For example, to
cite a illustration. Suppose this hunk
of silver was $75.00 and that’s what it was passing for, at $75.00, but with
the tin it, it was only worth $50.00.
People were being cheated; they were using something for their money
that was not equal in value to what they were imputed, in other words they had
falsely imputed value to this object.
Now, the connection with verse 5 is very interesting. The very next proverb says, “Take away the
wicked from before the king,” who was responsible for the coinage? The king, and therefore involvement with the
financial standard was involvement with the government standard. And Dr. Charles Weber in a discussion made
this little point and I think it’s very apropos: “This as a man can be judged
by the company he keeps we sense that a government can be judged by the
currency it issues.”
And how true it
is; the Roman Empire for three centuries after Jesus Christ had a tremendous
standard. Today you can go to a coin
store and get Roman coins and you can trade them, and they’re worth fantastic
amounts. They are bona fide currency;
they can be traded in at great cost.
They are very useful. Roman coins
today, centuries and centuries and centuries after the Caesars have died, you even
have the (?) of the Caesar right on the coin but it’s not the seal of the
Caesar that gave the coin the value; it was the gold in the coin and the man
historically imputing the value of the gold that gave it. And why is the gold coin valuable today? Is it because the Caesar is still alive to
make it valuable or because the money itself was a bona fide good? It’s because
the money itself was a bona fide
good. Now coins issued under the Romans
after 300 AD aren’t worth anything, simply because they debauched the
currency. And the fear of the Caesar
forced the people to accept the coinage after 300 AD, but the coins weren’t
worth what the (?) said they were worth, and it was just a system that went on
Caesar’s authority. Now God does not
permit this, He would not permit the Jewish kings to issue money that did not
have value, historic value different than the (?). And that’s what it means by “take away the
dross from the silver … take away the wicked before the king,” and if you will,
if you’ll preserve the currency, then “his throne shall be established in
righteousness.”
Those of you who
are thinking economically I can tell you are beginning to see this has some
very revolutionary applications. Turn to
Isaiah 1, who says that Christian is an old fuddy-dud thing. Christian makes such demanding claims in
every area of life people are chicken to apply it. The prophets began to attack the financial
system of the nation. Isaiah stuck to
the Word, he stuck to applying it in every area. Isaiah 1:22, what does he say, “Thy silver
has become dross, thy wine mixed with water.”
Now wine was also used as a form of exchange. What would wine mixed with
water be? It would be passing it as
something of more value than it was, it would be fraudulent money. What was silver mixed with dross? Do you know what was happening in Isaiah’s day? Several centuries had passed since the time
of the glorious Solomonic era and the Hebrews kings began to lack gold and
silver. Do you know why? Because the Egyptians were stealing it,
because they had expended it on stupid wars that were used to defend
unrighteousness in the economy, and they were also doing it on various slave
labor projects for the government. As a
result they didn’t have enough gold and silver, so like all governments of
history, guess what happened. They began
to issue coins of X value, and the coin only has it that much silver and the
rest of it is dross, the rest of it is just impurities, it’s low-grade silver
in the currency. And what happens is
everybody packing the coins around, by this time they have coinage, the first coins
were issued in about Isaiah’s time, so you had people giving coins…
[Tape turns] …
distort the value of currency; you have a government that distorts values on
all other areas. Value itself means
nothing. Where can you judge how much a
society takes value seriously? Look at
its coinage, look at its dollars, look at its money. There you can tell, that’s always an
infallible indicator of the use of value in any society, by God’s Word. Sociologists would argue to the contrary but
we’re not interested in their presuppositions.
Ezekiel 45:10,
just to show you that God is serious about this; He’s not talking about
something just in the Old Testament.
This is a passage in Ezekiel that deals with the millennial kingdom of
the future, when Jesus Christ comes. And
Jesus Christ imposes His rule upon men with a rod of iron, Jesus Christ will
rule in all areas of society including economic and financial policy. And in Ezekiel 45:10 there’s a prediction of
one of the policies Christ will institute in the millennium. “Ye will have just balances, and a just
ephah, and a just bath, [11] The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure,”
and verse 12 indicates the currency that will be used, it will be a shekel,
meaning it will go back, world currency will then go back to an actual by
weight system. Jesus Christ will
institute that kind of a financial system with all due apologies to (?) and
others.
Now let’s turn to
Hosea 12: 7, what is Hosea condemning?
Sins in economics, financial and economic sins. “He is a merchant, the balances of deceit are
in his hand; he loves to oppress.” And
this adds something else. Whenever any
society sins in the area of economics the result is always oppression. Oppression in God’s Word is associated with
the fatherless, that is the orphans the widows.
The poor women who are without provision, just like in our society, the
poor older people, we have some in our congregation who are on fixed
income. Who gets faked out when the
currency gets debased? The same people
that get faked out in the 20th century are the people that got faked
out in Isaiah’s day, and God doesn’t like it, God calls it a sin. And He’s calling it a sin in Hosea. The balances of distortion of the currency in
the market oppress.
Turn to Micah, we
have one in Amos, Amos 8:5 [Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may
sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may
set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying
the balances by deceit?”] But Micah is
just like it. Micah 6:10, what does
Micah attack? He attacks the standard
economic. “Are there yet treasures of
wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is
abominable?” again notice the powerful words, the strong word, it’s abominable
in God’s sight, this kind of thing. It
is a sin, particularly one that aggravates God Himself.
Now we come to the
climax of God’s hostility to this kind of economic sin. Turn to Malachi 3; lest you read this passage
with too ethereal spiritual view and forget the physical material political
implications, let’s read all three verses of Malachi 3:1-2, “Behold, I will
send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me,” you know who that
is, “and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the
messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the
LORD of hosts.” And let me compliment
you, when we sang Martin Luther’s A
Mighty Fortress is Our God, I notice more of you sang “He is the Lord
Sabbaoth,” good; not Sabbath, Sabbaoth, that’s the Hebrew word, the Lord of
armies and that’s what it means.
“Behold, he shall come saith the Lord Sabbaoth.”
Verse 2, “But who
may abide in the day of his coming? And
who shall stand when he appears? For he
is like a refiner’s fire, and like a fullers’ soap. [3] And he shall sit as a refiner and
purifier of silver; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them like
gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in
righteousness.” And you think that just
applies to the spiritual? Yes, it does
apply to the spiritual but turn to Matthew 21:12 and you’ll see the historical
fulfillment of that prophecy.
Matthew 21:12,
Jesus Christ, the messenger of the covenant, one day suddenly did walk into the
temple and boy was it sudden. “And Jesus
went into the temple of God, and cast out” what, “them that sold and bought in
the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of
them that sold doves.” Now you normally
think that’s just because they were transacting business inside the temple,
that’s only part of the story. If that’s
the reason Jesus Christ cast them out, how do you explain the next verse. “And He said unto them, It is written, My
house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of
thieves.” What theft was going on at
that point? Do you know what the theft
was? Caiaphas’ group, goons, hired by
the high priest, a Levite, remember the prophecy in Malachi, I’ll purge the
sons of Levi, Caiaphas was the high priest at the time of Christ. Caiaphas and his goons took in three or four
million dollars every feast, from money changing. They would short change and give debauched
currency to the people who came, because the Jews would come from many different
countries and they made a rule that you couldn’t buy the sacrifice… see, you
had to go through the temple and they had one table, like registration, they
had one table after another and before you could get down there into the table
where you bought your sacrifice, if you got down there they’d say sorry, we
can’t accept your money, you have to get the temple currency. So you might have all the money in the world
but then you’d have to go to another table and change your currency for the
temple currency. That’s where Caiaphas
made his money because the temple currency wasn’t worth anything. And that was where the theft was going
on.
And so at this
climactic moment in the life of Jesus Christ you find Him violently reacting
against an economic sin. It was the most
violent moment in the life of Christ’s ministry. Christ shows more violence here than at any
other point in his three year ministry.
What sin is it that aggravates Him more than any other sin? That causes the calm gentle Jesus to suddenly
become so violent? What caused that
transformation? A sin in the area of
economics and a sin which He says is a sin, not just of economics, it’s a sin
we studied last week, it’s theft is what it is.
Call it by what it is, instead of inventing all sorts of sweet economic
words; it’s the sin of theft.
Now let’s apply this, first apply it in the normal straightforward way and then
the spiritual application that parallels with our salvation in Christ. Today, or ever since the middle ages we have
a phenomenon known as banking. Banking
is not necessarily bad but there are certain portions of banking policy that
all the world follows, that are hostile to the Old Testament intents. Now we don’t pretend that it’s going to
change overnight. But as Christians in a
Christian country you should be aware of certain facts. I’m going to show you some of these facts,
then I’m going to read a portion to you by one of the great American Christians
of our country who protested this, one of the founding fathers of the nation,
to let you hear that this isn’t just coming out of the Old Testament. Americans who have been alert doctrinally
have had their eyes on this for centuries.
There’s a thing in
banking known as fractural reserves.
Fractural reserves work something like this, very simply. If you deposit $100 in the bank, certain
banks with certain conditions, can issue, if say 10% fractural reserve, that
allows them to issue $900 that don’t exist.
In other words, for every $100 on deposit they can push out $1000 into
circulation, but of those $1000 that are circulating, that have been printed
there’s only money to back $100 of them.
Now the bank is gambling and the whole system is (?) on the gamble that
everybody won’t demand, in the old fashioned case the silver certificates or
something, that you wouldn’t come back and demand your money back. They hope that you won’t. So they’re loaning… this also is a violation
of the problem of indebtedness, but fractural banking is excused under the
guise that we must cause economic growth.
God caused economic growth in Israel without doing this. But fractural reserve banking would have
violated Old Testament law. It would not
have been permitted within the jurisdiction of Israel. And the money, therefore, that is in
circulation is like the dross; it passes for being valuable but it is nothing
more than fiat money. Remember the
concept of fiat law, the idea is law just hanging in thin air because men say
it, or is it grounded on God’s absolute value.
The same with money; is the money fiat money that’s hanging in thin air
or is it grounded in something valuable.
The Bible condemns fiat money.
Now there’s a man
who spotted this happening in our colonies; the problem that we have, inflation
and so on, is not a new one. We had it,
the most drastic time, even worse than it is today, in the time of the
Revolutionary War. There was a man by
the name of Reverend Witherspoon, 1723-1794.
I want to read some things about this from his essay and from the
preface to the essay. At this point, for
those of you who are interested in further study let me recommend several
sources. There is a book called Introduction to Christian Economics, by
Gary North. I have asked Dr. North to
come to Lubbock in the fall of next year to lecture and to present a public
forum on the Bible versus modern economic theory. He is an articulate Christian spokesman of
Christian economics. That is one book. This one I am reading to you is An Essay on Money, written by Reverend
John Witherspoon.
Here’s some background on Witherspoon, no charge for this, this will help you
in your history. “Reverend John
Witherspoon, 1723-1794, is one of our great but neglected Americans. He was President of Princeton, then called
The College of New Jersey. He was a
signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Continental
Congress, a philosopher, a theologian, economist and Presbyterian leader. His students included many members of the
Constitutional Convention and in the Federal Union his students included one
President of the United States; one Vice President of the United States, ten
cabinet officers, twelve Governors, twenty-one Senators and thirty-nine
Representatives.” You’d say that the man
had a mild influence on early American government. At the age of four, by the way, Witherspoon
was reading the Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament. He didn’t wait until sixth grade to start.
And so he began to
write this essay. Now I’m going to read
portions of the essay and I want you to listen for two reasons. I want you to see how he’s applying doctrine
to a contemporary situation, but then just as series of interest I want you to
think whether this essay which was passed around in tract form on the streets
of Boston and New York, and the early cities of America as a tract on the
streets. Think of this; it was written
popularly, for the man in the street without a college education. Listen to the dialogue and the language level
and it shows you how far we’ve come.
“The one point of
central weakness in our government is in the colonial civil government with the
frequent use of paper money on ignorant and unfound monetary views. As a result of Witherspoon’s” this is
introduction at this point, “As a result of Witherspoon’s teaching a new concept
of money, a sound monetary policy suddenly gained ground. The Constitutional Convention gave the
Congress only the right to coin money, not to print it, Article I, Section
VIII. It limited legal tender to gold
and silver coins (quote) ‘Thereby barring paper issues’ Article I, Section
X. Unfortunately it included also the
power to (quote) ‘borrow money on the credit of the United States,’ Article I,
Section VIII, which quickly gave the unsound money advocates an opportunity to
circumvent the Constitution’s intention by inflationary deficit financing. The opponents of the Constitution saw it as a
hard money document and opposed it on this ground. When asked what harm has paper money
done? Charles Cotesworth Pinckney answered, ‘What harm, beyond losses
by depreciation, paper money has corrupted the morals of the people, has
diverted them from the paths of honest industry to ways of ruinous speculation,
has destroyed both public and private credit and has brought total ruin on
numberless widows and orphans,’” and he was speaking out of experience because
this was right after the Revolutionary War.
Now here’s where
this brings argument. First, what is
money? It ought to be valuable, rare,
portable, divisible and durable. Whoever
will examine the matter with a pension must perceive that any one of these
qualities being wholly or greatly wanting, the system would either be entirely
ruined or remarkably injured. Let us
examine them thoroughly.” And he goes
and in the course of this essay for the man on the street and examines the five
characteristics of money. See, people
weren’t busy watching instant news commentators and Walt Disney and Mickey
Mouse on TV in those days, and the result was that they had more time to devote
to serious reading.
And Witherspoon
goes on: “The above principles will clearly show that what is commonly called
paper money, that is, bills bearing that person holding them is entitled to
receive a certain sum specified in them is not properly speaking money at all. It is barely a sign, without being a pledge
or standard of value and therefore is essentially defective as a medium of
universal commerce. I will afterwards
speak of the different kinds of it and point out their real and proper uses,
but in the meantime I observe that to arm such bills with the authority of the
state and to make them legal tender in all payments is an absurdity so great
that it was not easy to speak with propriety upon it.” Now what Witherspoon is attacking in this
essay is, and we have to cut it short because of our time, is that he’s saying
paper money is all right under certain conditions, like a check would be all
right under certain conditions. But when
you invest the paper money as legal tender, that means the person has to accept
the paper, under any conditions. If you
owe me money, I might not like paper money, but it’s legal tender and I must
accept it if you pay me that. Now if you
don’t arm paper money with legal tender, what’s going to happen when the
citizens don’t like paper money? They’re
going to start paying in gold and silver, they’re going to go back to a
conservative financial standard and what’s going to happen? The paper money is not going to be used;
they’re going to be bypassing it in their normal business transactions. In that way the population, the free market
corrects a poor currency.
And this is what
Witherspoon warned us against, and he said, “If you make a law that I shall be
obliged to sell my grain, my cattle, or any commodity at a certain price, you
not only do what is unjust and in politic but with all respect be it said you
speak nonsense, for I do not sell them at all, you take them from me; you are
both buyer and seller and I am the sufferer only.” And then another statement, concluding
statement, “Those who refuse doubtful paper and thereby disgrace it or prevent
its circulation are not enemies of our country but friends of our
country.” Now that’s the work of a
Christian, a man who applied the Word of God at a great moment in our history,
of course nobody listened to him, as usual, and so we go on until we reach the
present stage where this chart will show you, here is the amount of gold that
we have and the red line is the amount of money in circulation. So that’s where we stand and you figure how
that would go over in the light of the verses that we have shown you.
There’s one more
verse we want to turn to, Revelation 13.
Why is money such an issue? Is it
some pet sin, some hobby horse of God?
Or does God actually have a reason?
Are there sinister forces that operate in the realm of finance more
clearly than operate in other areas?
Revelation 13:17, this is the great view of the antichrist at the end of
the world. Antichrist is able to attain
world control. Verse 16 first, “And he
causes all,” this is antichrist, Satan’s man, world dictator “both small and
great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or
in their foreheads. [17] And no man
might buy or sell, except he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or
the number of his name. [18] Here is
wisdom. Let him that has understanding
count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is
six, six, six.”
Now in that
passage, apart from all the prophet complications of the number, look at the
simple obvious fact. Where does the
beast, where does antichrist attain his power?
Isn’t it in the area of economics?
Isn’t it in the area of finance?
He ties up the freedom of a person to buy and sell. Now we can deduce something from that; that’
can’t happen if you have an integral currency, so you can deduce immediately
from this point that the beast has already debauched the currency. He controls the credit; he controls the
currency and the only thing you’ve got left to do is barter if you want to buy
and sell illegally under his reign.
That is part of
the biblical doctrine of money; I hope you have seen that God values certain
things. We in our rebellion against
values always overturn God’s value and therefore we overturn His gold and His
silver, that He has ordained to be part of creation for a specific purpose for
man. And we have deliberately in the 20th
century gone against it, all the way back, really, to the Revolutionary
War. God is not pleased, to Him it is an
abomination, and yet how often do you ever hear the Word of God applied in this
area.
There’s one
further, final application of this, and that is, when we become Christians that
imputation idea, you know that idea that a thing doesn’t have a value by itself
but God, somebody has to credit it with value, Jesus Christ credits you with
His righteousness. That’s what
imputation means for you as a believer, and it’s all done not because of
something in you or something in me.
That’s a gracious sovereign act of God; He has decreed that you are
absolutely righteousness in His sight.
That is imputed righteousness, given only to those who are believing in
the Lord Jesus Christ.