November 4, 2020 Show with Jerry Bowyer on “What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice & Economics”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this day after Election Day, November 4, 2020, and we're still, as far as I know, waiting for a final outcome of that election.

So I hope that all of you will trust in the sovereignty of God no matter what the news turns out to be, because God reigns and He rises up, raises up leaders, good ones and bad ones, and we just have to trust in His sovereignty over the situation.

But I'm thrilled to have, for the very first time ever on this program, Jerry Boyer.

He comes by the very highest and strongest recommendations of my dear friend

Gary DeMar, President of American Vision, who I've had on this program many times, and he is a financial economist, public speaker for business conferences, frequent radio and television guest, author and journalist.

And today we are going to be discussing his book, The Maker vs. the Takers, What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jerry Boyer.

And it's my honor and privilege to be here with you, Chris. Great. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Jerry, whenever we have a first -time guest, we ask that guest to provide a summary of how they came to know

Jesus Christ, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them. So if we could have your story.

Well, the religious environment that I was brought up in was the

United Methodist Church, which, during my childhood, was old -style

Wesleyan holiness, replaced during my teenage years with Simon and Garfunkel hippie mainline churchism.

So that was a pretty jarring kind of switch, I think. So that's the kind of church environment.

My father figure was my grandfather, my pop -pop, and he was an atheist and a socialist.

So I kind of followed in his footsteps. He died when I was about 13 years old, and so I inherited his library, so I read a bunch of that stuff.

And that stuff taught me to doubt, right? You're supposed to doubt the priest and the president and whatever.

You're supposed to doubt capitalism and doubt Christianity, etc. And I thought, well, that's right.

I shouldn't believe these things just because I was brought up in this environment. And what happened is that I started reading more atheist philosophers, and I realized that atheism led inherently to despair and lawlessness and meaninglessness.

Bertrand Russell, the atheist, was especially helpful to me in that regard. He said, you have to build on a philosophy of complete and utter despair.

And I thought, well, it's even worse than that, because not only does it lead to despair, but it leads to despair about whether you can even know whether it should lead to despair, because it doesn't just destroy meaning, it destroys knowledge.

And there's no way to know anything once you abandon the idea of God. And I talked to the mainline hippie -type minister about my atheism, and he said, well,

I don't understand. Your mom believes in God, right? And I said, yes. And he said, your dad believes in God.

And I didn't really know my dad, but I said, I suppose so. So why don't you believe in God? And I said, well, it's not inherited. You know, tell me why

I should. So he wasn't very helpful. But I was searching, did a lot of searching, and spent a lot of my high school years reading the great books.

And eventually, God brought someone into my life who was a

Presbyterian minister, an Orthodox Presbyterian minister. And he exposed me to the writings of Cornelius Van Til, who answered, at that deep level, the questions that I was asking.

What is the foundation of knowing anything? Before we argue about what you know to be true or what you think you know to be true versus what

I think I know to be true, before all of that is how can anyone know anything?

And I saw that atheism led to nobody can know anything, you can't even know that you don't know anything.

Despair. And Van Til said, yes, so you have to believe God. Because that's the only basis.

And that felt like a death, to believe that. Because it is a kind of a death.

Or like a trust fall. Let's call it an epistemological trust fall. But I made that trust fall.

And there I've been ever since. So that's... Did that answer your question?

Was that on point? Oh yeah, definitely. Thank you very much for that. In fact, providentially, last week, you mentioned

Cornelius Van Til. We were giving away, last week, every day, a copy of the book

Van Til's Apologetic by Greg L. Bonson, because we had a week -long tribute to Greg Bonson.

And we were promoting a new ministry called the Bonson Project, where they are making all of Greg's literature available for free to the general public, and especially and specifically many of his lectures and sermons that have been transcribed.

Some of them, I think, are still being transcribed into a written form. Wow, where do I find that? Actually, it's bonsonproject .com.

B -A -H -N -S -E -N, project .com. And so that was all.

In fact, you can listen to the broadcast that we did all, every day last week, in tribute to Greg Bonson.

In fact, I'm going to read a commendation for your book, The Maker vs.

the Takers, what Jesus really said about social justice and economics. I'm going to read a commendation by Greg's son,

David, who I've had on this program as well. David Bonson says,

There are very few subjects that modern Christians get more wrong than economics, and very few people more qualified to help them get it right than Jerry Boyer.

The Maker vs. the Takers is all at once readable, logical, exegetical, and most importantly, biblical.

Jerry's ability to help readers unpack all a text has to offer is extraordinary.

The impact a Jesus -centered economics will have on our society is profound.

That's quite a commendation from someone who is himself, not only a

Christian, but a chief investment officer for the Bonson Group, and a trustee at the

National Review. Yes, a very wise and intelligent man who's walking in the footsteps of his father.

And going further, right? The father laid a foundation, and then David is taking...

But Bonson's thought, to some degree, remained inside of a kind of a subculture, a small subculture.

And I think, Greg Bonson, David is taking that out into a bigger environment, which

I think is wonderful. Amen. Well, tell us about, first of all, what compelled you to write

The Maker vs. the Takers. I get the idea, even from David's commendation, that it has a lot to do with the average

Christian having a very abysmally poor and perhaps even unbiblical concept of economics.

And I've been in Christian media most of my adult life, going back to the 80s

I began working in Christian media, and I've had my own Christian talk show since 2005.

And the thing that I've seen firsthand in the

Christian realm, there seems to be two extreme errors, and of course you would know there's probably a lot of flavors in between, but the two extreme errors that I see are those on the one end of the spectrum, on the far left, in fact many of these folks have come out of the woodwork during the last presidential election, which is still undetermined, who believe that if you really want to imitate

Jesus, you should be a socialist or something very close to that, and that Jesus abhorred rich people that remain rich, who do not give nearly all that they have until they themselves are just as poor as everyone else, it seems.

And then you have those who are involved in a heresy known as the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, who flaunt their pastors, in fact one of them that I remember seeing on television actually drove,

I believe, a white Rolls Royce onto the stage, and they flaunt their $5 ,000 suits, and their $20 ,000 or $30 ,000

Rolexes, and their diamond rings, and they have a gospel which is no gospel at all, it's a gospel straight out of the pit of hell.

So you have these two extremes, and perhaps you could tell us where the maker versus the taker comes in.

It doesn't come into that conversation, because that's the church's conversation, and I didn't want to have the church's conversation,

I wanted to have Jesus' conversation. Amen. So, I didn't write this book to rebut anything in particular.

I didn't do the research to inform the debate, because I didn't intend to ever publish the research.

I did this research because I wanted to know. I'm an economist and I'm a follower of Jesus, not in that order, and I wanted to know what

Jesus was actually saying about economics. I didn't want to take my best thinking and hang it on Jesus, which

I've seen people do. I'm from the free market camp, so I've seen free market people kind of take their best thinking, which is pretty good thinking, and hang it on a gospel text, and without really letting

Jesus speak for himself. And I was dissatisfied with that, but I didn't intend to do anything to rebut it or put anything else out there better in public.

I just wanted to know. So, I did a lot of praying and a lot of research.

My wife and I did this. We do our Bible study together. A lot of praying and a lot of research and looking at the original languages and a lot of reading biblical archaeology, because I wanted to know what's going on.

Jesus is talking about money and economics fairly often. It turned out he was talking about it more than I thought he was.

But even a cursory reading of the gospels shows that he's talking about it fairly often.

And a pattern emerged and a picture emerged. Then a few years later, a friend of mine who's in publishing was talking to me, and he said,

Well, let's talk about you writing a book. And I said, Well, I don't want to write a book. And he said,

Well, okay, but if you did want to write a book, what book do you have in you? And I mentioned three topics that I had done a lot of research on, the

Hebrew text of Genesis 1 through 4, and the statement in Chronicles, the sons of Issachar who understood the times and knew what

Israel ought to do, and the story of Jesus and economics in the gospel.

These are things I'd studied as my own personal study because I wanted to know. And he said,

Well, they all sound good, but that last one sounds like a good book. And he spent about six months talking me into writing it, and so that's where the book came from.

But there was not a sense of, I need to study the gospel so I can write a book. It was,

I need to study the gospel so I can understand better and know more. And then the book was a completely separate process and a completely separate decision.

Well, tell us, how on earth can we see, and how can we see, the economics in the gospels?

We stop skimming over material which we are used to thinking of as relatively unimportant, such as place names and the names of occupations, and instead treat those parts of the gospel not only as inerrant, but as also important.

And when we do that, and then do historical research, then we can see that as Jesus is traveling around the ancient area, greater

Judea, he is talking about, he's talking to people in different cities or different provinces from different occupations, and knew where he was and knew who he was talking to.

And if we take that into account, we see that he varied his message in very significant ways in different places.

His money message, as well as other messages. And when we take that into account, a picture emerges.

And we don't do that because we don't know that stuff. But if you interview somebody and they wrote a novel, and in that novel there's a rabbi who's traveling around America having conversations with people, and in one chapter of the novel he's at Wall Street and he meets someone in a $5 ,000 suit who's getting out of a limousine and going into a big building, we know that that person probably works in finance.

We know that guy. And then Jesus travels to Wisconsin and meets somebody in overalls, and we know that guy, or this rabbi, but then he goes to the

West Coast and he goes to the Bay Area and Silicon Valley and he meets somebody who's also being driven around, but he's in a t -shirt.

They live in a mansion. We know that person works in technology probably. And then he goes down to K Street in Washington, D .C.

with someone with Gucci walking around the hallways of Congress.

And this is a lobbyist. We know those stock responses.

And so someone who writes a novel, that wouldn't have to be explicated. That would be understood. But we don't know a publican from Jericho automatically.

Or we don't know a rich young archon in Judea.

We just don't automatically know what that means. Or we don't know what money changers in the temple actually did.

We don't automatically know that. So we don't know what Jesus' problem was with them because we don't know about their business model.

So we just skim over that stuff to try to get to the main point, and the main point is something theological or doctrinal that we think

Jesus is saying. If you slow it down and you pay attention to those details, then that's when it kind of bursts open and you can see the economic message.

So I'm always asking, where was he when he said that? So if somebody says, well, it's easier for a wealthy man to go through the eye of a needle than for a wealthy man to enter heaven.

It doesn't say to enter heaven, but it's frequently misquoted that way. It doesn't say to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is language for conversion.

But anyway, I just said it. If someone quotes that at me, I want to say, where was

Jesus when he said it, and who was he talking to? And the answer was he had just gone to Judea and that he had just finished talking with a senator, an

Archon, a Sanhedrin member. And according to one of the Gospels, he was actually looking at that man while he said that.

So this is about Sanhedrin members who were living by extracting, using political pool, wealth from people who were makers or creators of wealth.

So we can't just treat Jesus as though he's giving sort of fortune cookie advice that's applicable to anybody.

He was talking to that man in a social economic context. And if we lack that social economic context, we'll misunderstand a major part of that encounter.

Oh, I want to give our listeners our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own. It's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com As always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you disagree with your pastor over something that we're addressing today, or you're a pastor, you disagree with your fellow elders, you disagree with your denomination, or perhaps there is something going on in your family, a family feud is taking place with you and your spouse, or some other family members, and it is rooted in finance.

Well, I can understand that you would want to remain anonymous, but if it's just a general question, a biblical question, a financial question, just please at least give us your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

Obviously, you have probably encountered this, but there are Christians who are going to think, just by sheer virtue of us having this discussion, that this is a very unspiritual approach to the faith, that we should not be concerned with these kinds of things, that we really, you have all the way from the theologically minded, who might be even upset by a conversation like this, who think that we are adding something to the gospel that's not there, or you might have those from the mushy -gushy, modern evangelical world, who just want us to lift up the name of Jesus, not necessarily the biblical

Jesus, and hold hands and sing Kumbaya, and get along with everybody, and of course you even have those of the aforementioned camp of Christians that even though they might not call themselves socialists, they very often speak as though they are, who almost look upon personal wealth as something evil, but how do you respond to people who think that this is an unspiritual conversation we're having?

Well, I suppose I think that they have an unspiritual definition of spirituality, because the

Spirit of God, the rock Elohim, hovered over the tomb, and formed the world, the material world, and worked, according to Genesis 2,

God finished all his work which he had made and done. So the restructuring of the material world to make it better is work done by the

Spirit in Genesis 1, and human beings made in his image in Genesis 2 do something analogous to it.

So whatever idea they have about spirituality seems to come more from Plato than it does from Moses.

And we run into that a lot, and I mean I write about that in the beginning because people,

I have gotten that reaction, like somehow it's impious to talk about the economic aspects of the

Bible. But I'm going to let Jesus decide what's impious. So if Jesus is going to talk about economics, then it sounds like it's not impious.

So people can grumble about it all they want, but I'm going to follow where he leads, and he does.

He talks about economics a lot. But that reaction is definitely out there. And there's different reactions.

I think you've mentioned some of them. If you say anything positive about wealth, some people accuse you of being health and wealth gospel, which as you point out is a heresy.

So of course if you say something negative about it, then you trigger the other side. And I find when you have this conversation that people find it almost impossible to hear what

I'm saying often because what they do is they hear a little wisp of what I'm saying, and then they think, what thing

I don't like does that remind me of? And then they attack that thing that it reminds them of.

So as I've noticed something, and there's an age difference. Younger people tend to do this. Sometimes if I'll speak at a conference,

I'll just say, I think something positive about economic growth and productivity. I'll get pushback from someone saying, well, it sounds like health and wealth gospel.

And it's like, well, but it isn't. It's not the health and wealth gospel.

And that's my problem with the existing church conversation is money good versus money bad.

But that's not the conversation Jesus is having. Jesus is having a conversation about how you got the money.

And he's hard on the people who use political power to take it. And he's not hard on the people who work hard and are economically productive to make the wealth.

So we got to like fit our conversation into his. No, Galilee was a more entrepreneurial economy.

It was a lower tax economy. It was more decentralized. And Jesus doesn't have a single confrontation with anyone in Galilee over wealth.

There is no conversation with some wealthy neighbor about how he needs to give it all away.

Even though he had wealthy neighbors, we know that now archeologically. We've found at least one mansion within a two -hour walk of Jesus' home.

And there are pretty nice houses. There are pretty nice houses in Nazareth, even. Where's the confrontation there?

Well, that was largely an entrepreneurial economy. Every single confrontation he has occurs when he travels south and passes the long line into Judea.

And right off the bat, we get the confrontation with the rich young ruler. Then we have the key of the tax collector.

Then we have the confrontation with the money changers. All in Judea, all in close proximity to the capital area, and all in social proximity to the ruling class.

That's not a coincidence. Well, we have to go to our first station break right now.

And once again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com if you have a question. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the U .S .A. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Jerry Boyer and more of The Maker vs. The Takers, what Jesus really said about social justice and economics right after these messages from our sponsors.

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has uncovered an enormous amount of information about the economy, the economies that Jesus functioned in, and so it sheds light on the historical context.

You know, I was trained with the idea of what's called the grammatical historical interpretation of the

Bible, and I think a lot of people probably listening have been trained on that.

The problem is that it's almost all grammatical and almost never historical, the grammatical historical method, and grammar is certainly important, but, you know, the people

I read who talk about the grammatical historical method do a whole lot of lexicon and not a whole lot of, say, reading the

Dead Sea Scrolls, which is the historical context of some of Jesus, or reading archaeological reports from Nazareth or Sepphoris or Tiberius or Capernaum or Bethsaida or Bethany or Jericho.

So we're not really, I mean, theoretically we believe in a historical context, but as a practical matter, it doesn't get used a lot exegetically.

And maybe that has something to do with a wrong idea of what spirituality is or something, or maybe it's just the seminaries didn't teach it.

But basically, since, you know, in the past half century, we've probably done as much biblical archaeology as in the 2 ,000 years before that.

So do we waste that? I mean, for basically the first 1 ,500 years of the

Church, or let's say, you know, after about a year, after about a hundred years after Jesus, the next 14 centuries, almost nobody had a

Greek New Testament. Almost everyone was reading the Latin Vulgate. And Latin Vulgate had some mistakes.

So then what happens is, historically, these Greek New Testaments start coming into the possession of Erasmus and Martin Luther and others, and they say, oh wait, it doesn't say penance here, it says repentance.

And so those new Greek texts allowed us to go back and reinterpret the

Bible and reform our theology. And about a hundred years after that, we start to get Hebrew texts, which hadn't really been around a lot.

And then these people in the Netherlands, these Dutch Calvinists, start to say, oh wait, our ideas about what's going on in the

Old Testament aren't quite right either. And they start to have, like, a civil reform. They start to reform their political and economic institutions.

Because when you have new information, you have to update your exegesis. Well, okay, we're living through that now.

We have the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have archaeological reports, we know a great deal more about the historical context of these gospel stories than we ever knew before.

So how in the world could we not incorporate that into our exegesis, other than simple habit or laziness, or I don't know what stops us from doing it.

But there's not enough of it. And that's a shame, because when you apply historical context, it really helps you understand things better.

Okay, well, we have a listener in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, Ronald, who asks, sorry if I missed this before, having just tuned in, but what are some of the primary ways you believe your average run -of -the -mill

Christian, even those who are in very biblically sound churches, are getting the subject of economics wrong?

Well, probably mostly by not getting the subject at all. I think that the theologically soundest churches might have, let's say, a blind spot or a lack of emphasis, where every single conversation is, say, about Ordo Salutis, which there's definitely a lot of biblical material about the order of salvation, but there's a lot of biblical material about economics, too, and we tend to kind of gravitate towards sort of traditional doctrinal or systematic theology questions.

And I've got no problem with any systematic theology, but it's not the only thing going on in the

Bible. And so I think that we just simply don't talk about the economics at all, which is better than talking about it wrongly, but it's worse than talking about it correctly.

So, like, being economically aware, just the fact that I'm an economist, when I read the New Testament, I was economically aware.

Somebody who is a mom, or somebody who is a dad, or somebody who is in politics, or a lawyer, whatever our profession, the whole church is supposed to read the

Bible, we're going to be aware of our aspect of it. People who are Christian counselors will be, like, much more aware of how

Jesus is dealing with people in terms of their psychology than I'll be. But I'm more aware than they are about how

Jesus is dealing with economics. So being economically aware and marketplace aware and not suppressing that based on the false idea that it's impious or non -devotional or unspiritual,

I think is a good start in correcting that. Well, guess what, Ronald?

You have won a free copy of The Maker vs. the Takers, what Jesus really said about social justice and economics, by our guest

Jerry Boyer. And we want to thank our friends at Fidelis Books and Post Hill Press for providing us with these copies that we are giving away today.

And also, we want to thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, who will be shipping out this book to you at no cost to you or to us.

So thanks a lot, Ronald, for your question. Now, one of the most controversial issues that I have encountered in my life as a

Christian, and one of the reasons I say that is because it is something that has invaded my own theological camp, probably even predominantly invaded

Reformed churches. I happen to be a Reformed Baptist, and it has invaded our circles as well.

It's probably more present in Presbyterian circles, but it is nonetheless, it seems, a predominantly

Reformed problem. Not that this has anything to do with Reformed theology that has caused the problem.

In fact, I think it is actually something that militates against Reformed theology. But it is the social justice movement.

And obviously, you are addressing this as well, since it's in the subtitle of your book. If you could give us a summary definition of social justice, and how you are approaching it with the maker versus the takers.

Well, historically, the phrase social justice comes from conservative Catholic thinkers in the mid -1800s, who were using it as an attack on socialism.

So they were arguing that the abolition of private property is a social injustice.

Like everything else, the left stole that. So they stole that phrase.

And then often, when the left steals something, the conservatives then say, well, we don't want it because you stole it.

So then anybody who uses the phrase social justice must be a

Marxist. I'm trying to take that back. I'm trying to take back stolen goods from the left and with double restitution by saying, well, what is justice?

Justice is things being the way they ought to be. What is social? Social is that this involves a society, not just individuals.

So the biblical idea of social justice is things in a society being the way they ought to be, which would include rule of law, private property, an economic system that rewards rather than punishing economic productivity.

So I think that this is one of these shibboleth phrases, where because the left is pushing this, then we say, oh, we can't talk about social justice.

And I want to say, well, I don't want... Marxism is the opposite, in many ways, of Jesus's idea.

But I was taught in the catechism that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. Okay? And in Reformed world, we're pretty good at priest, right?

The propitiatory atonement, priestly. And in the world of Christian worldviews, we're pretty good at king,

Jesus is lord of all. But we don't pay all that much attention to prophet, the prophetic role of Jesus.

And all of the prophets denounced personal sin and also social sin. So if Jesus really is a prophet, he would be denouncing personal sin and social sin.

And he did. If you read carefully, that's clearly going on. But in a way that's very, very different than, say, the red -letter

Christians or the neo -Marxists or quasi -Marxists or critical race theorists or all these new isms that are trying to penetrate the church, acknowledge.

But here's the thing. I think one of the reasons they've been able to come in with that definition of social justice is because we've neglected

Jesus's definition. So we left a vacuum. Because kids, young people read the

Bible, and Jesus sure sounds like he's denouncing economic exploitation.

And if we say, no, no, no, he's not, he's just talking about people's hearts. And it sure looks like he's talking about economics.

We leave them with nothing else to go to but Marxism, which then they get at their

Christian college. So we left the vacuum, which they're filling. So let's push them out by putting the real

Jesus message back in front of them and in the center. Yeah, that reminds me of what occurred in the 50s and 60s with the civil rights movement.

You had conservative and fundamentalist churches all over the United States who were ignoring the sin of racism, and perhaps even supporting and promoting segregation, the

Jim Crow laws, and all these kinds of things. Or you had them just ignoring the topic because it shouldn't be involved in polite conversation to bring these divisive and horrible things up.

So you had the liberals take control over this. And, you know, it's ironic, one of the leaders in the social justice movement right now is

Thabiti Anyabwile. And nine years ago, I had him on this program, and he was saying things that I think are the polar opposite of what he's saying today.

But he has a book called The Decline of African American Theology. And he actually lays at the feet of not only the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, but even at the feet of the abolitionist movement of the 18th century, when it became a secular movement, as opposed to a

Christian one, as to the blame for the fall and the decline and fall of African American theology.

So it is somewhat interesting. And I see that I see that mirrored in what you were saying. Yes, we retreat.

And then the kingdom of Satan fills in where we retreat, where we don't feed bread to the children, then

Satan feeds the stone. I certainly understand the resistance to the social justice ideologies creeping into the church.

And I hate them. But the answer is not to abandon the conversation.

The answer, what's always the answer to the counterfeit, the real thing, which means we have to really open up our

Bible and study Jesus. And I think one of the things that's happened is that the left, let's talk about the red letter

Christians, you know what I mean by red letter Christians? Yes, those that think there's something innately superior about the specific words of Jesus, which many

Bibles have in a red ink. And they seem to put the other

God -breathed words of Scripture on a lower level of importance. Right.

And there's a specific group that is kind of on the socialist side. They call themselves red letter

Christians. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah, there's actually an organization called red letter Christians, which is like Virgin Churches and Socialism.

Shane Claiborne is, I think, and Tony Campolo are founders of this group.

So what they do is they read the gospel accounts, and I'd say they read it in a shallow way.

And if you, or another way to put it is, let's say you take the Jesus message and you turn it up to about quarter volume.

Jesus does sound a little socialist. I'm not saying he is. Well, then do you, who are rich, sound a little socialist?

You know, it's easier for that camera to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Eh, it sounds a little socialist, right? The rich empty. Okay. So what happens is, because that sounds a little socialist, they say, see, you know, and then a lot of the conservatives, they like reach for the dial and try to turn it down somehow.

Like, oh, he's just talking about our attitude towards wealth, or he's just talking about what's going to happen after the second coming, or he's just, you know, they try to, like, he doesn't really mean it somehow, right?

So they turn it down. And I'm saying, no, no, no. Turn it all the way up.

Really read the text carefully. And he doesn't, and he's not just talking about our hearts. He's not just talking about our attitudes about money.

He is talking about political economy, and he's denouncing the power of the state. So there's a whole lot of Christian apologetics against socialism, which tell us what

Jesus didn't say. Well, he said, have compassion for the poor, but he didn't say, use the government.

I'm not interested in what Jesus didn't say. First of all, I'm mainly interested in what he did say.

What he did say to the religious leaders of his day who were politically connected is, you are devourers of widowed houses.

And he said to the money changers who had a government -granted monopoly, fixed prices, and an unfair exchange rate, all under the power of the

Herodian monarchy because of their political connections. And he says, this is a robber's den.

So Jesus is very economically engaged. If you turn up full volume, though, what you see is that he is in a war, in a rhetorical war, with the power state and their cronies.

And the gospel, Luke's gospel, is perfectly clear. That's why they killed him, because they discerned that he was talking about them when he told the parables about economic exploitation, and that's when they set out to destroy him.

He was killed over his economic philosophy. Wow. We're going to our midway break right now.

I'm going to ask you a question before the break, and then we'll have you answer it when we come back.

The question is spawned by something that Chuck Bentley, CEO of Crown Financial Ministries and founder of that organization, said in his commendation of your book.

And it spawned this thought, or this question in my head. First of all, Chuck said,

Jelly Boyer's The Maker vs. the Takers is a tour de force. The teachings of Jesus are clear.

Either have a big state and a small God, or we can have a big

God and a small state. And I want you to pick up on that and explain that a bit further, because a lot of that even has to do with how we see our nation divided during this current election that we're still waiting to hear an outcome on.

In fact, there are some never Trumpers who even think that Donald Trump is too much of a big state individual, and he is not perhaps libertarian enough for them, or lack of a better term.

But we'll have you respond to that big state, little God, and big

God, little state after we return. This is a longer than normal break, folks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a little longer break in the middle of the show, because they are required by the

FCC to localize Zion Sharp and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida, with their own public service announcements and other local announcements.

So while they do that, we actually simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So I'm asking you to do something for me.

Please use this time wisely. Write down as much of the information as you can, provided by as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers.

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So please try to keep our advertisers happy. Also write down questions for Jerry Boyer on what

Jesus really said about social justice and economics, and send them to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jerry Boyer after these messages from our sponsors. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the

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Before we return to Joey Boyer and our discussion of the maker versus the takers, what

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Also folks, if you are not a member of a local biblically sound church,

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet earth, and I have been able to help many people in our audience in all parts of the world find churches, some of them just within a few minutes of where they live that they didn't even know existed.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com, put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to Jerry Boyer on his book

The Maker Versus The Taker is What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Jerry, you may remember before the break, I was asking you of how a big state in a little

Jesus or a little God versus a big God in a small state features in or factors in to The Maker versus The Takers.

Well, what you notice is the biblical pattern is that statism is associated with apostasy.

And so, for example, Jethro gives his son -in -law

Moses advice about delegation, and he says it's about choosing rulers that he could delegate to that choose men who fear

God and hate dishonest gain. See how those are linked together? So the idea here is that it is particularly important of rulers that they fear

God, and it's also particularly important of rulers that they not use their political power to extract wealth from other people, because that would be dishonest gain.

If you ever hear the phrase crony capitalism, that would be kind of an example of that. So we also see that the kings of Israel in Deuteronomy are forbidden to accumulate gold, to accumulate wives, to accumulate horses, and to accumulate gold.

And we see that part of Israel's apostasy was when they asked Samuel for a king like the other nations.

And God said to Samuel, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. So the growth of the state is associated with the rejection of God.

And Samuel, you know, prophesying from God, warns them of what will happen.

Your taxes will be increased, you'll basically have to tithe to the state. And, you know, your people will be pressed into service, and he will take that, the king,

Saul, will take the money, and he'll give it to his officers and to his associates. So that's the system that we see

Jesus denouncing and fighting in the New Testament, is the system in which the politically connected are wealthy, they don't,

Herod didn't fear God, he didn't hate dishonest gain, and he exploited the people financially and used it to keep the ruling class ruling and in power.

So there's always this trade -off, I mean, in my personal life, when I was a young teenager, an atheist,

I was a socialist. When I became a Christian, I knew that socialism was no longer defensible.

There has to be a plan. Human beings can't live without a plan. So if we don't have providence, if we don't have a sovereign

God who has a plan, our hearts will absolutely yearn for some other sovereign entity to have a plan.

And the second biggest thing under God, let's say other than the angels, who the atheists don't believe in, when you become an atheist, what's left is the state.

So that's why you have that trade -off between a big God and a small state, and a big state and a small

God. Okay, we do have an anonymous listener who asks, how do

I overcome greed when I am very successful in my business?

I have been accused of being greed, although I have been generous, if I do say so myself, and I don't think

I'm bragging because I'm remaining anonymous, but there is obviously a temptation in all of us, even the best of Christians, perhaps to hoard too much wealth.

So what is your advice in that area? Well, before I give advice,

I just, I kind of want to hear his heart or her heart, you know, because I think

I've heard a lot of this, and I think there's a sense that a lot of Christians have who are in the marketplace, that if they are entrepreneurs, or if they're financially successful, then that places them automatically in the accusation category of probably being greedy.

And the Bible never says that rich people are greedier than poor people. You can be greedy at any level.

And the other thing is, I find this very interesting, I've noticed that in the conversation, the religious conversation about wealth, there is a presumption that if you're in the marketplace, you're probably greedy, but if you're in ministry, you're probably not.

In a political conversation, there's a presumption that if you're a successful entrepreneur, you're probably greedy, but if you're a senator, you're probably not, or a congressman.

And that is not the way the Bible talks. Greed is something that everybody is subject to, because of total apartheid.

We all have evil in our heart. But in terms of the social side of this, every time that Jesus is dealing with greed issues in the

Gospels, again, he's not talking to entrepreneurs. He's talking to politically and religiously connected people.

So, partly what I'm hearing in this question is that this person feels accused, but isn't greedy.

He doesn't think he's greedy. He might not be. So I think we really need to change this a little bit, and not act like a particular economic class is guilty until proven innocent of greed, or a particular kind of social status.

I think, honestly, I think politicians are probably guilty until proven innocent category when it comes to wealth, and entrepreneurs are not.

Entrepreneurs are like the rest of us. So I've heard this from so many successful Christian entrepreneurs. They feel under accusation about being greedy, even if they're generous, because I think a lot of people misunderstand the biblical teaching about wealth in such a way as to condemn being a highly productive or a high -earning person.

The Bible never condemns that. It condemns idolatry of money, it condemns hoarding, and Jesus over and over again condemns people who take money through exploitation, as opposed to who make money through problem -solving and selling useful goods and services.

Well, Anonymous, you have also won the Maker vs. the Takers, what

Jesus really said about social justice and economics. Thanks to our friends at Fidelis Books and Post Hill Press, and also thanks to our friends at CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be actually shipping that out to you at no cost to you or to us.

So make sure we have your full mailing address and your full name. Obviously, we're not going to disclose that information on the air, so get that to us as soon as you can.

Going back to that question, because it is something that there may be some wrongly directed guilt at oneself, or even worse, at other people.

You know, there is, I think, a sin where perhaps somebody who is in a position of a pastor, and especially when the congregation may be lower income, middle income, struggling financially, and this pastor is perhaps one of those health and wealth preachers who is flaunting wealth, and actually using his wealth as a badge of God's blessing and approval upon his life.

But, you know, you also have men, whether they're a pastor or not, being accused of sinning.

In fact, you mentioned Tony Campolo earlier. I remember years ago him saying that if you own a

Mercedes Benz, you are in deep sin, and you've got to repent of that, because that's just a flagrant, horrible, selfish, greedy way to spend money.

Now, obviously, if somebody wants to purchase a car that's going to last them a long time, that perhaps is an investment that they want to pass on to their children to make sure they're driving a safe vehicle, they might want to spend more on a car, especially if they're not living above their means.

But, you know, address that issue. Well, I mean, another way of saying it is drop dead auto workers, you know, because that's a highly -added car, and people get paid a lot of money to build them.

Why shouldn't we build and buy excellent things? Now, you don't do that instead of paying your tithe.

You don't do that instead of supporting the church. You don't do that instead of supporting the poor. But, I mean, what is the standard?

Because it's a top 10 % of American society kind of car? Well, America is a top 10 % of the globe kind of country.

So, even owning a car at all is highly unjust by that standard if you look at it globally.

It's just envy, you know, with a kind of a theological pixie dust thrown over it.

But I've heard that. A friend of mine told me his pastor said that. He owns an expensive car. He's in finance.

He's successful. And he's also very generous. He's all of those things. And he says, I want a high -reliability car.

It's a tool for me because part of my job is to go around and meet with people a lot, and I want something that's not going to break down.

So, someone who has created enough wealth that they can buy a nice car without stealing from the

Lord and without neglecting the poor, God bless them. And that's a blessing to people who build that car.

And, you know, we have a conversation about Tony Campolo, who works for a university that's one of the most expensive tuition universities in America, and, you know, teaches socialism in a very profitable way with very well -compensated professors, and then ties debt burdens around the necks of the young people who go there.

So, there's a certain amount of economic exploitation that maybe we should talk about some of these Christian universities that are preaching exploitation.

You know, Mercedes -Benz might be a better deal for your dollar than a college degree from a left -wing evangelical university.

So, you know, that's the one I think is a little harder to explain, is sending your kids to learn socialism from Tony Campolo and spending so much money to do it.

Well, you know, your book, as you know, is broken up into five parts. If you could give us a summary,

I know that you've already included some of this, but tell us about Jesus and economic biography.

Well, it is that Jesus comes from an entrepreneurial culture, and that God didn't accidentally put him there, that he intentionally handed over the raising of his son.

And this gets theologically complex because the son is the second person of the Trinity, but he is in union with a human person.

And that person is the second person. So, you know, that's the orthodox theological teaching.

But there's a human person. He's not just God. He's fully God and fully man, which means he grew in wisdom and knowledge and in favor with God and men.

So, he had to be raised by the right people. So, God the Father sends his son to be raised by an entrepreneurial family and an entrepreneurial culture, and I think that's not irrelevant.

And then again, we see the pattern over and over again of Jesus. The Sermon on the

Mount, for instance, versus the Sermon on the Plain. Sermon on the Mount is given to a more northern audience, broader audience.

There's no denunciation of wealth. Sermon on the Plain is given to the ruling elite of Judea, and there he says,

Woe unto you who are rich. So, that's part of the Jesus story, is, you know, what he learned from an entrepreneurial culture and how in the background of all of this is a geography that we usually ignore.

I think another part of the biography is that economics is happening in his life all the time. I think I mentioned to you that, you know, in Luke's Gospel, when he tells the parable about the unfaithful stewards, which is about economic exploitation, the

Bible says that Luke says that they discerned that he was talking about them, and they set out to destroy him.

That they had economic motives. We don't want to lose our place when it comes to destroying

Jesus. This is something that, you know, very few people know about, but the fact that the crucifixion was going on in 33

AD during a Roman Empire -wide financial collapse. So, anxiety levels are higher.

And Pontius Pilate, who was associated with the banking clans, had lost his political power.

So, he goes into the mob and agrees to the crucifixion of Jesus, partly because of financial anxiety and socioeconomic forces.

Now, some people have a certain reaction to that, like, Oh, no, this happened because God planned this before the foundation of the world. And I said, there's no tension whatsoever between God planning this from the foundation of the world and the social and political forces by which that was accomplished.

So, we don't have to blind ourselves to what's going on. And finally, Jesus issues economic warnings to Israel, to Jerusalem in particular, about economic exploitation, which they do not heed.

And then what happens is, within a generation, Jerusalem is destroyed, and the war starts with a tax revolt.

You have an economic boom and then a bust, massive layoffs, excess debt because they weren't following the death forgiveness laws, and it ended up destroying

Jerusalem and eventually Israel. So, Jesus is giving us all sorts of theological teachings, but those are connected with economic teachings.

And the Jerusalem elite rejected both, to the destruction of their souls and to the destruction of their city.

Now, you have titled one section of your book,

Jesus and the Rich Young Senator. Explain why you titled it that way and tell us more about that.

In fact, there's a lot of confusion and disagreement in the body of Christ over that passage of Scripture.

And that actually, in the minds of some of our more Marxist -leaning, so -called

Christian friends, or professing Christian friends, they think that that gives them ammunition, that whole passage of Jesus instructing the rich young ruler to basically get rid of everything that he owns and follow

Jesus. But if you could... Yes. So, what I'm going to do is kind of treat this in optics. I'm going to sort of bring him into harmony rather than going back and forth and saying,

Luke says this part, says this part. You pull all that together. Number one, it's not irrelevant that he's a man of the state.

I heard once someone say that they had heard a sermon where the pastor said that this is like talking to Bill Gates, that Jesus is like talking to Bill Gates, he's a rich young man.

No, it's not. He is an archon in the Greek, a senator, a

Sanhedrin member, however you want to translate it. He was a member of the state.

He was politically connected, a member of the ruling class. There's a phrase, deep state, has certain political implications now.

But it wouldn't be, really, it would be reasonable to say he was a member of the deep state, given kind of the historic use of that phrase.

So, he's a person of the state. That's one thing. That's a detail not to be skimmed over. Here's another detail not to be skimmed over.

They have a conversation about the Ten Commandments, and Jesus lists the Ten Commandments, you know, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal.

And then he adds one. He says, do not defraud. Did Jesus get the

Ten Commandments wrong? Did he misremember the Ten Commandments? Oh, of course not.

So, why did he say do not defraud? It's already covered under do not steal. Why did he say to this rich young ruler, do not defraud?

Because this rich young ruler was defrauding. I mean, Jesus is pastorally sensitive, so he essentially is repeating the command not to steal, specifically not through defrauding.

The Greek word there is exactly the same Greek word that Jesus' brother James uses, say, about 20 years later, in the

Epistle of James, writing from Jerusalem. Again, it's all centered in Jerusalem. When he says to the poor

Christians of Jerusalem who are kind of sucking up to the rich, do not rich men defraud you.

Same Greek word. Isn't that fascinating? That it was part of the very nature of the

Jerusalem ruling class to be defrauding. So if we skim over that detail, we don't see that Jesus is really putting the guy, you are defrauding people.

Then Jesus says it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, but the

Bible says he was looking at him. So this is about, there's a social commentary aspect to this, that if we don't pay attention to apostereo, the word for defraud, if we don't pay attention to archon, you know, the name that tells us that he was a ruler, if we don't pay attention to the historical writings at the time about how the

Sanhedrin members were engaging in economically exploitative practices by using the power of the state against the poor, we'll miss that Jesus is not talking about Microsoft.

He never says any of this to Joseph of Arimathea, his friend who's a tin merchant, who's making an honest living.

He never says it to any of the investors up there in Sepphoris. He says it to a man of the state who is part of a class that lives by defrauding.

Okay, we do have another listener question. We have

Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, I'm sorry if I missed this, but I did have trouble logging into the live program.

I don't know if there's something wrong with my computer, but I just got through. I was wondering if you have covered

Acts 2 .45, which seems to be the go -to passage of your more socialist, professing

Christian, where they began selling their property and possessions, speaking of the disciples, and were sharing them with all as anyone might have need.

Yes, so that's a kind of a classic passage used by the sort of the neo -socialists.

The problem is that, you know, in the story with Ananias and Sapphira, Peter says that it was voluntary.

You could have kept it. So this was not a mandatory sharing, that's one thing. It's also not a state sharing, that's another thing.

But let me add, so some people have heard those arguments, right? I mean, we've had this argument where the socialists say, move point to Acts 2, and then we say, well,

Peter says it's voluntary and it's not the state. But let me add, again, let me add some historical context that might shed some more light on this.

We have, with Jesus in the early church, an anti -temple movement. Jesus is highly critical of the temple and critical of the elite, and it's eschatological in the sense of it's predicting

God's judgment is to come. If you look at other movements like that that are similar at the time, like, for instance, the

Essenes, they shared goods in common, but here's the difference between the

Acts 2 church and, say, the Qumran community and the other groups. In the

Acts 2 church, it's voluntary. But if you read in Josephus and in the Qumran literature, it's not voluntary.

You could not join the Essene community. It was required of you that you get rid of your private property.

So for anyone reading this at the time, they wouldn't be surprised at the sharing. The shocking thing would be that this was the only anti -temple kingdom movement that didn't make sharing mandatory.

The expectation for groups like this was that they would all be communal and mandatorily communal, whereas in this case, they're not.

So this really is, in some ways, in the context, a very anti -communist compared to the expectation.

Well, Harrison, you have also won a free copy of The Maker vs. the Takers. So please make sure we have your full mailing address in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, so that cvbbs .com

can ship that out to you. And once again, we want to thank our dear friends at Fidelis Books and Post Hill Press for providing us with these giveaway copies.

We're going to our final break right now. It's a question that you want to ask, please send it in immediately, because we are rapidly running out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Jerry Boyer after these messages.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. And Jerry, if you could, before we go to any listener questions, as our time runs out,

I want you to have a few minutes of uninterrupted time to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding this topic today.

Well, there's so much. Let me just hit a few highlights. One is, if you are out there in the marketplace, working hard and being productive and earning a living,

God affirms the core righteousness of that mission.

Because one of the ways is by being a creator, but the other way is by putting his son in a similar situation.

God did not come incarnate as a priest, at least not a Levitical priest.

He came incarnate as a carpenter. And I think that a lot of Christians, and I heard it in one of those questions before, that there is a wounded heart for many

Christians. Now, we all have sins. We should feel wounded in our heart for our sins, but it's not a sin to be an entrepreneur.

And there are a lot of people who are wounded and shamed about having that kind of calling. And what

I find is, as I've talked about this message, that's the pastoral thing that I've seen the

Holy Spirit do in the audience, is to let them know that they're affirmed in that calling.

So I think that's an important thing. I think another important thing is not to make overly important distinctions between false theological teaching and economic exploitation, because the two work together.

So sometimes, as I've talked to, say, some theologians about this, and I say, well, Jesus was angry with the religious leaders because they were used, like, for instance, the money changers, because they were stealing.

They were violating the law, in this case, against the law about just weights and measures. And then sometimes people say, no,

Jesus' problem with them was that they were teaching a false gospel, a gospel of good works, to which

I say, those things always go together. If I can convince you that you have to go through me to get to God, you have to do works for me, or you have to do some kind of obeisance before me in order to get to God, as I'm part of the religious hierarchy, it's going to be about 15 minutes before I figure out that I can get your credit card number.

And so the idea of Pelagianism, you know what I mean by that, like works righteousness, is very closely tied with exploitation by the state economically.

Most of Martin Luther's 95 theses were about economics. So I think that this kind of getting a feeling for where you're coming from and the world that you're in, which is very similar to my world and background, it's that I think that sometimes we forget that false teaching leads to economic exploitation, and they support one another.

So we should point that out more. I think we'd reach young people more if we said, you know what, you're right, there is a lot of injustice in the world.

But where does it come from? It comes from a world where we don't accept God's grace, so we try to justify ourselves.

And it comes from a world where some people can use the power of accusation to make themselves rich at the expense of everybody else.

I'd say those are the kind of the important takeaways that I would want people to walk away from this interview with. Great, thank you.

And we do have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says, can you please define the difference between those who are heretics, who say that if you are obedient to God, you will certainly achieve wealth, and the proverbial counsel that we find in the

Old and New Testaments about how we can preserve an income and not become poor by the way we live, which are not obviously always 100 % guarantees, because things could come upon us in this life unexpectedly, through no fault of our own, other than the fact that we are in a sin -cursed world that would leave us, at least for a time, impoverished.

That's a great question. Is it Susan or Susanna? Susan Margaret, it seems to be one name.

That's important. So I would say there is the health and wealth gospel, and then, which is heresy, and then there is,

I think, the defensible position, the biblical position, and one you see with history, which is that in general, where you have the true gospel preached, prosperity tends to occur as a side effect of that.

So in the Reformation, we saw people change their lives. So what do you do? You change your lives, you repent of your sins, you stop, you know, with the wine -bibbing, and you stop with the gambling, and you start working hard, and you're not supporting a mistress, and you have all these

And what happens with sort of the Calvinists in the Netherlands is, almost, they like, wake up after a generation, and they're one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

So there are prosperity implications to the gospel. One of the standard presentations

I do is global economic, 2 ,000 years of global economic history in 20 minutes or less, and I go through GDP data over the past 2 ,000 years, and you can see that where the biblical worldview takes hold, prosperity explodes.

The problem is, at least the health and wealth prosperity people that I've listened to or seen on television is, they're not talking about proverbial wisdom.

They're saying, if you give me money, then you'll get wealthy. The Bible doesn't teach that, quite to the contrary.

So if you live prudentially, like the way Proverbs says, and your society is reasonably just, then you will tend to be more prosperous.

Of course, if you live a righteous life and you're a very unrighteous society, like Jesus lived in a wicked and adulterous generation, and he lived a perfect life, and they murdered him.

So, and Job was a perfect and upright man, and terrible things happened to him. So God's sovereign, right?

So these aren't promises, but there is a pattern, and the pattern is, if you defer gratification, if you under -consume, if you avoid debt, if you avoid all forms of dissolution and dissipation, the probability is much higher that you will accumulate wealth.

Well, I want to thank you so much, Jerry, for being such a superb guest, and I definitely want to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in the near future, in fact, multiple times.

You've been just wonderful and very informative. I want to make sure that our listeners have the website of Post Hill Press, in case they want to further explore this book, posthillpress .com,

posthillpress .com. And keep in mind, folks, if you want to purchase this book, we ask that you order it from cvbbs .com,

since they are a sponsor, and nobody's going to lose out that way, because cvbbs .com is to purchase it from Post Hill Press.

So we thank you. And, Jerry, do you have any contact information of your own that you'd like to provide? Well, I'm easy to find on social media, whether it's

Facebook or LinkedIn. In fact, I think that's how you and I first met. So feel free to ping me.

I won't feel that it's impinging on my time. And thank you for being such a superb host.

It's a joy to find a radio show that's hosted by someone who's morally serious and theologically informed.

That's not the norm, so it's joyful to find that exception.

Wow, thank you. You've made my day. I needed to be cheered up today looking at these election results.

But I want to thank you so much for being our guest again. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater