Biblical Economics 1

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But let's begin with a word of prayer.
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Father God, thank you for this opportunity to study your word and to be about the business of the church and worshiping you and seeking to know you better.
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And this morning, Lord, as we engage in a subject which is certainly affects us individually as as citizens of the United States, but also individually as citizens of the world, because Lord, we know that the subject of economics is something that that affects all people everywhere in different ways.
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And Lord, as we engage the subject of different economic theory, we just pray, Lord, that our that our philosophies, our theories and our desires would be centered and focused on the word.
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We love you, Lord.
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We thank you for your word.
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And we ask that you bless this time of teaching in Jesus name.
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Amen.
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All right.
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Last week, we began our study of Christian ethics and I wrote up on the board again what the crux of last week was.
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I said, this is this is really what we need to understand Christian ethics is about.
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The overall goal for making ethical decisions should be to understand and obey the teaching of the entire Bible with regard to any particular situation.
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That's what Christian ethics is.
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It's not just what I think is right.
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It's not what you think is right.
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It's about what does the Bible say is the right thing to do in this particular situation.
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And sometimes it's not always as clear as we might like it.
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It might be nice, you know, if the Bible told us, yeah, you do need to take that job in New Hampshire or, yeah, you do need to marry Jane instead of this person or that person.
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Or, yeah, you do need to be in this particular situation or this church or whatever.
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And the Bible is rarely answers our questions that simply.
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But yet, when we're faced with ethical dilemmas, the Bible oftentimes and more often than not, is fairly clear in regard to what it is that God would have us do.
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And there are many situations that we're going to be talking about in the next few weeks.
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But I gave you a list of things that of which you could choose from last week.
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And I said, which of these things? And the first the first one right out of the gate that you guys said you're interested in was the role of government, economics, stewardship.
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So I said, hey, that if that's an interest and that's something we want to focus on, I want to begin with the subject of biblical economics.
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So that's what we're going to do today, whether or not we finish.
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I don't know.
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I tried to condense everything into one lesson.
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I'm going to be reading some material to you this morning because there are certain things about economic philosophy that is that I have found in different areas and have brought to this that express it better than I could in my own words.
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So I'm going to be reading some things to you this morning.
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But the thing that I want to bring up as we begin, and I'm just going to make a space for me right here.
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We are going to be trying this morning to understand to to to I'm teaching economics to major economic systems which are often compared in the United States.
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Can anyone guess what those two would be? The two economic things are often compared in the United States.
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OK, capitalism and he said communism.
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But I would say the two that are most often compared today is capitalism and socialism.
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And we'll talk a little bit about about the difference.
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But and I've heard there's some people who make jokes and say capitalism is or socialism is just capitalism without the guns.
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But there is a little bit of a different understanding between socialism and capitalism, particularly as who owns what, but particularly the big debate today is, should we be capitalist? Should we be socialist? Should we find some type of a hybrid in between? Is there a hybrid in between? That's the question.
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And the question then falls to our feet.
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Does the Bible address this issue? Does the Bible even tell us anything about economics and how we are supposed to or what best would be the way to have an economic situation? So let's begin with the one that I imagine we're least familiar with of the two, and that's socialism.
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In fact, I was talking to my stepmom about this class and she said, used to in school, you had to take a class which she called communism and Americanism.
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That was the name of the class was communism and Americanism.
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So capitalism is so steeped in the way we operate in America that there was a time in which it wasn't even called capitalism.
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It was called Americanism.
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It's just the way we do things and everything else was socialism or communism or something like that.
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It was communism and Americanism.
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So I imagine of these two, we are least familiar with this one because this is the one that we don't or at least haven't been operating in since the beginning of our nation.
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So we're going to talk a little bit first about socialism and here's what I'm going to read to you about.
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Most philosophers through the centuries have believed that history is shaped by ideas, the pursuit of actual reality or human reason.
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But there is one famous philosopher who instead argued that the driving factor behind all human history is economics.
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Karl Marx, you may have heard of that name, Karl Marx.
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Karl Marx was born to German Jewish parents in 1818 and received his doctorate at age twenty three.
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He then embarked on a mission to prove that human identity is bound up in a person's work and that economic systems totally control a person, arguing that it is by his labor that mankind survives.
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Marx believed that human communities are created by the division of labor.
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Marx studied history and concluded that people had for hundreds of years been more agriculturally oriented, but that the Industrial Revolution was a game changer.
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In Marx's mind, because those who had freely worked for themselves were now forced by economics to work in factories instead, this, Marx felt, stripped away their dignity and identity because their labor defined who they were and now they were reduced to mere slaves controlled by a powerful task master.
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This perspective meant that the economics of capitalism was the natural enemy of Marx.
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Marx surmised that capitalism emphasized private property and therefore reduced ownership to the privileged few.
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Two separate communities emerged in Marx's mind, the business owners or the bourgeois and the working class, also known as the proletariat.
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According to Marx, the bourgeois use and exploit the proletariat with the result that one person's gain is another person's loss.
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Moreover, Marx believed that the business owners influenced the lawmakers to ensure their interests are defended over the workers' loss of dignity and rights.
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Last, Marx felt that religion, this is a key aspect of Marx's philosophy, Marx believed that religion was the opiate of the masses.
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Which the rich used to manipulate the working class, the proletariat are promised rewards in heaven one day if they keep working diligently where God has placed them, i.e.
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subservient to the bourgeois.
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See, that's that's Marx's philosophy.
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Well, all religion does is promise you rewards in heaven.
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And it's just a way of keeping you down.
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It's just a way of keeping you working, keeping your nose to the grindstone and not trying to raise up to anything else.
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You're satisfied with your lot in life.
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In the earthly utopia Marx envisioned, the people collectively own everything and all work for the common good of mankind.
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Marx's goal was to end the ownership of private property through the state's ownership of all means of economic production.
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Once private property was abolished, Marx felt that a person's identity would be elevated and that the wall that capitalism supposedly constructed between the owners and the working class would be shattered.
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Everyone would value one another and work together for a shared purpose.
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So Marx's philosophy was this.
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If no one owned anything and everyone owned everything collectively as a communal society, everything was shared by everyone.
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Then we would all come together and work toward the common good.
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Well, it does.
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But we're going to that's what we're going to that's what we're going to address in a while.
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But yes, that this is Marx's philosophy is that, yeah, if we all just come together and share everything, no one will ever go without.
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Everybody will always have more than enough.
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And you know what? There won't be any fussing or fighting because there's no private ownership.
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And private ownership is what causes a lot of fighting and fussing and infighting and wars.
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And, you know, what are wars fought over often is the accumulation of property and land.
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So his utopia was one with no private ownership.
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Now, let's compare that just for a second with capitalism.
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We understand now what socialism is.
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Socialism is a is the combined we everyone is part owner and everything.
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And we all share everything together.
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And then, yes, the problem with that.
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Oh, absolutely.
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We're going to yeah, we're going to talk about the problems with them in just a second.
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But yes, I yes, I think socialism has many failures.
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In fact, I think the major failure is its lack of understanding the natural depravity to humans heart, because that's what that's the result of human depravity, is that if I find out that I cannot work and someone else will work and we both get the same thing, then certainly I'm not going to work.
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And we see that display itself in our society.
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Let's look at capitalism.
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We look at socialism.
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We did a little history who Karl Marx was and what socialism is all about.
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Capitalism, on the other hand, is a little bit more difficult to define because there's no real consensus on a precise definition of capitalism.
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However, one might attempt to say that it is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods.
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That's the term capitalism by investments that are determined by private decision and by prices, production and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
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You've heard the idea of free market capitalism.
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You've heard that term before.
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Well, free market capitalism is one type of capitalism.
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And it's the type of capitalism that most people in America, when you hear people talking about, you know, capitalism is what we should do.
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We should let the market decide or you hear those terms.
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They're talking about free market capitalism.
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Free market capitalism consists of a free price system where supply and demand are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by the government.
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Production, or excuse me, productive enterprises are privately owned and the role of the state is limited to protecting property rights.
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The state is not involved in the economic system in developing prices or setting prices.
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Prices are set by supply and demand.
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And ultimately, this is something I think we need to understand.
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Ultimately, the issue of capitalism or socialism, these are not the only two economic systems.
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And the reason why we're talking about these two is because these are the two that are often touted today as the two that are in the most opposition to one another, particularly in the United States.
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Really, if you break it down, though, what you have is the difference between what is called collectivism and individualism.
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So socialism is collectivism.
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It's about the whole.
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Capitalism is individualism.
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It's about the individual.
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And that's really no matter what economic system you look at, whether it's socialism, communism or any of the other welfare state, you could go there's a whole list of things you could put on this side and would all fall under the category of collectivism.
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And then, of course, under capitalism, there's free market capitalism.
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There's other types and different state capitalism, things like that, that would all fall under here and it would all fall under what we call individualism.
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So really, that's the that's the two divides.
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And really, when you come down to it, and I tend to like to simplify, I tend to like to take very difficult things and break them down to their to their most simplest parts.
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And we talk about economics.
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That's to me the most simplest part.
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You either have those who are who say we want the economic system to be focused on the collective or we don't want the economic system to be focused on the individual.
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And that's the two.
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That we see here now, the question is we're going to get now to what you were talking about, Daniel, is are there inherent dangers in either one of these systems of economics? Well, from a critical standpoint, either one of these systems could be broken down and demonstrated to have faults.
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Critics of socialism, which we've already we've talked a little bit about critics of socialism, say that, number one, it encourages lawfulness, but more so critics of socialism say that it demands a system of government that is free from corruption.
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And they've never had we've never ever had that.
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Right.
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We've never had a government that was absolutely free from corruption.
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On the contrary, in socialist nations where the government is given more power, the power has tended towards corruption, as they say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts.
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Absolutely.
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Well, that's what we've seen in these socialist nations where all the power is put into the state and the state has control over everything.
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The politicians that are running the state often become corrupt as a result of that much power being vested in them.
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So, again, critics of socialism say you have to have a absolutely benevolent government, an absolutely irreproachable government.
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You can't you can't have a government that can be swayed by corruption.
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And because such a government has never existed, it doesn't work.
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It's a system.
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Now, critics of capitalism say that it encourages greediness.
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It's all about the individual.
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It's all about building up one's own estate, building up one's self, building up one's business.
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And as such, we are willing then to destroy the competition.
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We're willing then to put others down.
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And that's one of Marx's arguments, which, you know, you have the business owners are willing to enslave, you know, you have the bourgeois and the proletariat and those are willing to enslave and work them to death for their own gain and one man's loss is another man's gain.
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And and such a system breeds selfishness and greed.
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And how many of you ever seen the movie Wall Street? OK, a couple of people taking the loop loops on what it would that actor stand up and say, Kirk Douglas, greed, for lack of a better term, as line from the movie.
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Because his argument in the movie was that greed itself is what fuels capitalism because we want thus we work for what we want and we get and then we get more and we want more.
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So we work harder to get more and want more.
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And there's just this constant cycle.
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The constant cycle is formed.
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So you see, both both systems have things that can be grabbed a hold of and said, look, this is not a good thing, obviously.
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So the question becomes, oh, by the way, those are very generalized arguments.
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And this is a generalized class.
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I mean, who can teach a full economics course in 45 minutes? This guy knows I can't do it, but I'm doing my best.
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I'm boiling things down.
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And really, when you boil it down, those are two of the basic arguments against the two systems.
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But really, we're not here today for an economics lesson.
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We're here today to ask the question, what does the Bible teach? Because really, we're if we are as Christians going to support an economic idea, we're going to support a system.
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Shouldn't we support what the Bible teaches is the best way? Shouldn't we support what the Bible teaches is the way that it should be? So the question is, does the Bible support an economic model? Well, there are some who contend that the early church was an example of socialism.
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And you mentioned that earlier.
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So I want to look at that very quickly.
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Let's turn to Acts chapter two.
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Let's go to the Bible and see what it says.
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It begins in Acts chapter two.
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We're going to look at a few verses here, but particularly this is our starting point, Acts two forty one.
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Or rather, let's yeah, we'll start verse forty one, this talks about how many were being saved, it says, So those who received his word were baptized and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
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So the church grew exponentially very quickly.
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Remember there.
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How many people saw Jesus resurrected? First Corinthians 15 tells us there were about 500 that saw Jesus resurrected, that you had the apostles and you had the women who saw him, but also that there were other people who had been following him, who did see him.
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And it was a number of around 500 people who physically saw him alive.
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So now the church has exponentially grown to three thousand.
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I mean, from five hundred to three thousand is a huge jump.
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So now comes a you've got an entire church with these with these twelve apostles who are now in a leadership position over a large body.
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So they have to begin dealing with the structure.
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I mean, honestly, what our church has, you know, maybe eighty, eighty five, ninety people on a regular basis with four elders, they had three thousand people, twelve apostles.
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Now, I understand the twelve apostles were were specifically gifted to that task.
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But still, it's a monumental task.
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And it says in verse forty two, And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and prayers.
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By the way, verse forty two is often been seen as an outline for how the church is operate.
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That's the things that we are supposed to do together, break bread together, pray together, devote ourselves to teaching.
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And, you know, this is just sort of an outline of church life.
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And all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs are being done through the apostles and all who believe were gathered and had all things in common.
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First mentioned there of what you mentioned before about having everything, they had all things in common and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
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And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
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And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved.
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Now, initially, I want to make a point.
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It says they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
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Did they sell themselves into destitution? Well, the next line says they were meeting together in their homes for fellowship.
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So what did they maintain? They maintain their houses.
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That's a that's a that's an obvious build out of the text where they're you know, there are some people who say as Christians, we shouldn't own anything, we should have nothing, we should sell everything we have and live a life of destitution.
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Well, guess what? When we do that, we rely on other people to take care of us as a natural result.
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If we do if we sell everything we have and own nothing and we have no no means as a way of producing, we don't we have we have to rely on other people to take care of us.
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This says they maintain their houses.
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They were meeting in their homes, but they were willing still to give up everything in a sense of selling all so that no one went without.
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Now, just going on, we're going to look at Acts four kind of in a comparison.
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Acts four, go to verse thirty to turn a page over, says now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.
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And no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.
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Again, no one held anything back.
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Everything was shared.
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And with great power, the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ and great grace was upon them all.
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There was not a needy person among them for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles feet.
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And it was distributed to each as any had need.
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Thus, Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles feet.
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So I read through that just to give you not only are they saying this happened, but they're giving example.
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This guy sold and he brought the money and put it at the apostles feet.
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Everything was held in common.
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Who were the distributors? Who were the ones who decided who got what? The apostles, they were the leaders, they were the ones and somebody says, man, that sounds a lot like socialism, everybody sells everything, everybody gives the money to a centralized leadership and that centralized leadership doles out what is needed by the group and everything is shared.
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Nothing is, oh, boy, that sounds an awful lot like socialism.
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Now, it does sound like socialism.
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Yet here is the key.
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And I want you to hear this because this is absolutely important.
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Everything that was done in Acts chapter two and in Acts chapter four was done voluntarily.
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The difference between the early church and modern Marxist socialism is that Marxist socialism says you must share everything and it is the state which is in control in the early church.
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They shared everything, but they shared everything with two differences.
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One, they shared everything voluntarily.
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And number two, they shared everything under a benevolent leadership which was trusted and ordained by God.
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The leadership, that was the only leadership ever in the history of mankind that was not corrupt, the apostles.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And they wanted to ensure none of them went without.
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And at this time, you have to also remember the situation where they're in.
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They're in a situation where land and property and everything is being seized because they're considered part of a radical movement and some of them are even being killed for their faith.
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It hasn't gotten to the point yet where Paul is one of the ones who is seeking to kill them.
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Stephen has not yet been stoned.
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So Paul, still at this point, is one of the ones seeking out their death, you see.
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So this is a this is a radically different governmental situation.
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And thus it called for a radically different economic situation.
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But I do want to show you this part, which I think answers any questions if there are any at all.
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Look at chapter five.
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What is chapter five, verse one to eleven about? If you have Bible, it probably says it at the top.
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Ananias and Sapphira.
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What happens with Ananias and Sapphira? And I'm sorry.
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Well, they get killed.
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OK, that's the last part of the story.
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Let's just back up a hair.
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Ananias and Sapphira bring a gift to the apostles, but it's a partial gift of what they sold their land for.
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Here's the thing that most people miss.
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This follows right behind the Barnabas story.
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Barnabas sold his property.
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He took all the money, put it at the feet of the apostles.
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Ananias and Sapphira said he got some recognition.
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There's yeah, he got he was praised for his.
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Well, let's do that.
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But hey, we don't give everything.
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So we'll sell.
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We'll hold back some for ourselves and we'll tell them that we gave them everything.
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Here's the key to this.
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But Peter said, verse three, but Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? Verse four, while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? You see, a lot of people think that they got in trouble for not bringing the entire amount.
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That's not why they got in trouble.
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They got in trouble because they lied about it.
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He said it was yours before you sold it.
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And once you sold it for that money was yours after you sold it.
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You could have given as much as you wanted or as little as you wanted, but you lied to the Holy Spirit.
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And of course, there's this passage here which described the Holy Spirit as being God, because he says you have not lied to men, but to God.
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He says you've lied about this.
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It wasn't the gift that was the concern.
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It was his his his his brazenness in coming before God and saying, here is everything I have, knowing his pockets were lined with the rest of the money.
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That was the problem.
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And again, it goes back to the issue of what I said before, this was not forced.
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And I think that's Peter's point here.
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It was yours to do with what you wanted.
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In socialism, it's not that way, by the way.
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In socialism, it's not yours to do with what you want.
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It was sold.
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It was that they gained that.
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Yeah, this whole situation is based around their their lie and their their deceitfulness.
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It's not about socialism.
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And like I said, those who try to because I've heard people make the argument, we'll say Ananias and Sapphira, God demands everything be shared.
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And if it's not, you die.
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Well, that's not what the story is about.
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And I think it's easily demonstrated from the text that the story is about being willfully deceitful against God who can lie to the Lord our God.
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Well, I again, going back to the text, the issue of the text is it was yours before you sold it.
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You know, you didn't have to sell it and the money was yours after you sold it.
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You didn't have to give it.
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It's your money.
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Everything is voluntary.
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Now, as far as the sharing is concerned, they're sharing things.
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But again, going back, the houses were still their houses.
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You know, the shared communal society, there was still a private ownership that was going on in some respects on certain issues.
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On certain things.
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I think based on what Peter says in the text, I don't think that there could have been a holding to them to say you have to give the money.
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I don't think that that was the rule of the I don't think anything was said.
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You have to do anything.
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I think it was the desire of the people to do it.
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I don't think it was a forced socialism.
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No, I don't.
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I don't see that here in the text.
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And again, again, going back to text while it was while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? It was yours.
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And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Was it not yours to choose how it was spent? If they gave it to the apostles to use.
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Absolutely.
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It falls back to the issue of their deceitfulness.
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Yeah, they wanted to they wanted what Barnabas had, which was that pat on the back for doing the good the good thing, you know.
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Yeah.
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Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.
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And she said, yes, for so much.
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He's giving her the opportunity to come clean.
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Tell me how much he sold the land for that much.
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No, you didn't.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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The key to socialism is that all things are commonly property or excuse me, are common property by law and that the idea of private ownership is ultimately wrong.
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So the question becomes this.
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We're getting low on time, but I do think I'm going to be able to.
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No, we'll see.
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We'll try.
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The question becomes this.
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Does the Bible teach that private ownership is right or wrong? And I would begin by simply citing a very simple reference.
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And I know some people might find this too simple.
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But follow me, please.
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When I go to the decalogue, the decalogue is the Ten Commandments.
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When I go to the Ten Commandments, I find two individual commandments which specifically reference ownership and property rights.
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The Eighth Commandment says thou shalt not steal.
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Well, the only way that makes any sense at all is under the realm of private ownership.
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You can't steal what's commonly shared by everyone.
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So that's number one.
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Number two, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's donkey, thy neighbor's plow, thy neighbor's oxen, thy neighbor's wife.
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So that goes back to the issue of not only are we not to take what is someone else's, but we're not to sit and look at what someone else has and believe we should have it and they should.
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And again, these both to me are speaking to ownership rights.
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The creed of socialism is this from each according to his ability to each according to his need.
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In essence, each is to produce all he or she can so that the thing which is produced can then be shared by the whole.
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But as is seen in many situations, when one can get away with not producing, yet he is cared for by another who does produce, he is more likely to continue not producing as his motivation to produce is taken away.
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And that's one of the dangers, again, getting back to the problem with the heart.
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The problem with the heart is if we can get away with not producing and enjoying the spoils that someone else has produced, we will.
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So now I have a new question for you, the Bible obviously teaches that ownership rights in some respect are correct because it says thou shall not steal and thou shall not covet.
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But let's boil it down to something even more, more important.
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Does the Bible say we should work for what we get? Oh, yeah.
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Oh, yeah.
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And I would reference three passages very quickly.
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Second Thessalonians 310.
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These will be quick for us to get to if we can.
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So let's let's look at Second Thessalonians 3, verse 10.
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Most of you probably heard this for I hear Bibles.
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For even when we were with you, we would give you this command.
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If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
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Right there is an initial command about the responsibility for us to work for our own bread.
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And if he's not willing to work.
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And I do think that we have to stress something here.
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It doesn't talk about ability.
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It talks about willingness because there are certain people who are very willing to work, as we've had in this church, who are very willing to work and have worked hard in and around the church, have had difficulty finding jobs.
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And thus we help them in their time of need because obviously they're not unwilling to work.
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They're in a situation of economic depression, you see.
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And we have people who cannot work, people who are physically unable, whether it be a physical problem, a mental problem or a health issue that has kept them.
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And what does the Bible say about that? The Bible gives us two beautiful pictures.
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It says we are to take care of the widow and the orphan.
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Why? Why does it say that? I don't think it's saying only widows and only orphans are worthy of our protection.
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I think what it's giving us is an example.
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Widows were women whose husbands had died, no longer could take care of them, and they did not have the economic way to take care of themselves.
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They the jobs that were available to them were were few and far between.
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They didn't have the economic means to go out and take care of themselves.
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So the church was to look after those women who couldn't take care of themselves.
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And of course, orphans, children who obviously can't take care of themselves.
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We look to people who have genuine, legitimate needs and we help them.
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But when you have the slothful person, when you have the person unwilling to work, then that person doesn't get to eat.
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That's a hard call to make because it comes back again to motivation.
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Motivation is an act of will.
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And he said when they're motivated by selfish slothfulness, don't eat.
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I mean, that cuts the socialistic system right off at the knees, especially welfare state, things like that, because I know a lot of people that are very happy to live off the government.
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And I've heard people say, well, it's the government's money.
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The government has no money.
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The government produces nothing.
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The government only stewards or manages what private industry produces and pays by taxes.
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The government does nothing to make money in and of itself.
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It doesn't produce.
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All right.
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Now, second Thessalonians 310, that's if you don't work, you don't eat.
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First Timothy 5 8.
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First Timothy 5 8, I think this passage is very important, but if anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
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Again, it's in the same vein as second Thessalonians 310.
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We have a responsibility to provide for our own, particularly husbands, fathers have particularly provide responsibility to provide for their own.
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And something that's interesting here is a Votibachum points out when he talks about relatives and then it says especially members of his own household.
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Votibachum points out that the relatives there most likely was focused on parents that were old and needed taking care of, because obviously we take care of the members of our own household, but that's mentioned.
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But who are the relatives that would need are taking care of the parents who had gotten to the point where they were too old to take care of themselves and that that's part of the fifth commandment to honor your father and mother is that when they get to a point that they need to be taken care of, that's where we step in and take care of it.
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So I think that's that's just that's not part of the lesson today.
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But again, going back to biblical economics, what are we to do? We're to take care of our children, but also we're take care of our parents as well.
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Finally, and we'll finish here and then we'll we'll do the rest of the lesson next week.
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Ephesians four and twenty eight.
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Ephesians four and twenty eight.
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This kind of brings everything we've talked about full circle.
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Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor doing honest work with his hands.
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That goes along what we've been saying.
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We do honest labor with our hands.
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But what is the purpose of our labor as Christians so that he may have something to share with anyone in need? We do not labor for our own barns to be filled.
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We do not labor.
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Now, we don't let our children go without, obviously, go back to the verse we looked at before.
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If our children are going without, we're not doing our job.
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We're worse than unbeliever.
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But that's not the point.
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The point.
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You remember the guy in the parable Jesus said this guy built barns to take in all of his grain.
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And what did he do when he had more than he needed? He tore down the barns and built bigger barns.
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And what did Jesus say that night? His soul was required of him.
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And all of that which was his meant nothing.
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And that's the way we are when we make money, we make money not just to build up our own estate.
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We make money so that we can share with those that are in need.
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John Wesley, and I don't usually quote Wesley, so here's a good example of a time where I can I can cross denominational bounds.
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John Wesley had had a great economic model, and we're going to we're going to start here next week.
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But I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to put this down as what we're going to talk about next week.
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John Wesley's economic model was simple.
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He said, you make all you can, you save all you can, you give all you can.
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He says, because in doing so, you make all you can.
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You're not being lazy.
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You're working.
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You save all you can.
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You're not being frivolous.
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You're being a good steward and you give all you can.
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You're not being greedy.
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And in such, I think it was a simple but profound biblical model for economics.
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We're not lazy.
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We're not frivolous and we're not greedy.
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We are good stewards of what God has given to us.
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All right.
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And next week, we're going to go over just we're going to finish this up and maybe start on something else.
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But I got three more pages, so we'll see.
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See how it goes.
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All right.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for this time to study together today, and we pray that it will be used for your glory and honor.
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We love you.
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We praise you.
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We thank you in Jesus name.