“Wealth gained by fraud dwindles, but the one who gather by labor increases it.” Proverbs 13:11; “They were well fed lusty horses, each one neighing after his neighbor’s wife, shall I not punish these people, declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 5:8-9
All rule and authority comes from the Lord (Romans 13:1). To deny this is to deny being a Christian because it would mean that there is a competing authority somewhere. This would mean that God isn’t truly and totally God, that He’s limited by another force in reality. We repeat: there are no authorities except from God and those that exist are only legitimate insofar as they operate according to the principles of Scripture.
The weakness of modern Christianity is the unbelief in the comprehensive authority of Jesus Christ, which leads to the negation of the Great Commission. The modern ear despises Matthew 28:18-20. It reads, just so we’re clear:
“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’”
We bring this to your attention today to point out what should otherwise be obvious but isn’t due to the relativism of the age. Jesus Christ doesn’t say, “some authority” or “most authority” or “I have authority over those that agree with Me.” Total and comprehensive authority resides in the person of the risen Christ. There is no moral law, no commandment, no action, no vocation, no activity, no endeavor, no recreation or anything else under the sun over which He doesn’t have absolute and unrivaled authority. Like with all of Scripture, there is only one true meaning of the verse in question. Yet, there are multiple applications of this truth.
In light of this, we consider the modern American government. It claims authority outside of God. It claims to act on the power of “democracy” – which means, for all intents and purposes, that the majority has moral power to determine, on its own, right and wrong. To this we say with Francis Shaeffer that all rule outside of God’s law is tyranny, it’s illegitimate.
In Romans 13 the Scripture tells us that God ordains government to punish evil. That’s it. The Lord grants authority and defines its limits. A government may not under any circumstances define its own mandate lest it invalidate itself. An abusive father is a tyrant and so is an abusive government. Tyrants claim raw power rather than act within the mandate of the Lord. No man (or entity) is a law unto himself.The question is from where the authority comes from. In days past there was the doctrine of the so-called “divine right of kings.” This was the assumption of sovereignty in one man. Democracy, as understood today, is the doctrine of sovereignty of many men. It’s still the same ruse. Man is the measure of things, not God.
So, we ask ourselves if true sovereignty rests in Jesus Christ alone or somewhere else. If Jesus is true then all authorities on earth are limited and defined and the responsibility or both rulers and the ruled is to the Lord. If, on the other hand, sovereignty rests in men then it’s the government that will raise itself up as ultimate. The ultimate responsibility of the ruler is to the state as the state has no higher authority and its law is final. Whether this humanism works out in a monarchy or in a democracy is of small importance since man is still, through the mechanism of the state, the final authority in ethical matters.
An easy quiz will check your allegiance.
When government proposes something, or when a vote on this or that comes up, do you first and foremost consider the biblical warrant for it? If, like so many, you say that your religion has no bearing on government than you are presently a polytheist. That is, you worship more than one god. You believe that the state, in this case through the tortured devices of democracy, has authority over ethics and right and wrong.
If this describes you, then you must surely repent and turn to the Lord. What great news it is that He’s full of grace and love toward those who come to Him with broken hearts – hearts broken by their sin and idolatry, which the Bible calls whoredom. Yes, turn to Him and flee the worship of the false god of statism.
Our verse in question today from Proverbs points out a major source of sin in our culture and the most obvious manifestation of our current idolatry.
The government, believing itself to be the ultimate authority, claims godlike power to literally create wealth. Our current political leaders assume to make all dependent upon the savior-state and to do this they print money. Over against this, read Proverbs with biblical discernment and see how the Lord teaches wealth creation. Diligence, effort, production over time, frugality, savings and investment. That’s the biblical model for wealth creation. It is the Lord’s decree. When the Lord tells us that “abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor” (Proverbs 13:23), He’s commanding us to work. When He says, “consider the ant, you sluggard” (Proverbs 6:6), He’s telling us that our economic life is our responsibility, not the state’s.
Proverbs is a book of economics, law and politics. The reason we don’t see this clearly enough is because we’ve been conditioned to think by the tyrannical state rather than Scripture. Consider Proverbs 13:22 that tells us that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. This doesn’t just mean that you should leave your house to your kids. It doesn’t just mean that we shouldn’t squander our wealth on ourselves. It means that the family is our “social safety net.” Social security and welfare by the government, which is gained through forced taxation, is a violation of God’s commandment and an attack on the biblical working of the family. In 2 Thessalonians 3:10 we read that no one should eat if he isn’t working. In 1 Timothy 5:8 we’re told that someone who doesn’t provide for his family, and care for them, has literally denied the faith!
Did Abraham care for his family? Did Issac? Did Jacob? Didn’t Joseph? The path to wealth in every case was consistent work – despite setbacks, chicanery (especially in the case of Jacob with the unscrupulous Laban!) and even slavery and false imprisonment – and dependence upon the Lord. Faithful living with consistent and focused work is God’s prescription for wealth. The government today, playing god, fractures the family. It preaches and financially supports family breakdown through sexual sin. It encourages and legalizes promiscuity by celebration of abortion. Its so-called welfare programs encourage men to abandon their children. At every turn the state preaches a false-gospel and dependence upon it. Childcare, healthcare, education, college, food…everything is for the state, from the state and to the state. There is nothing over which it doesn’t claim sovereignty. Worse, there’s nothing that the dependent masses don’t look to it for, rather than following the principles of the Lord.
Government money is the state’s manna from heaven. No longer do millions of idolatrous Americans look to family and church for support but to the soulless and bureaucratic nightmare that is the state. Like God supernaturally fed the Israelites in the wilderness, the state prints “stimulus” checks as it orders you to stay home for your own safety, closing business and churches because all authority, it declares, resides in it. And the whores of America lapped it up. “Save us,” they cried. “Feed us,” they pleaded. Few bothered to ask by what authority the state could force millions to stop obeying the Lord – to stop working.
Though its mandate is to punish evil, that is, actual crime, the current state is itself lawless. It breaks the eight commandment by taxing one’s labor and property and, in doing so, claims that all property and labor belong to it. Our political campaigns are orgies of covetousness…fixated on what “the rich have” and making others “pay their fair share.” No one bothers to ask by what right one person owns the labor and property of another. Why? Because the state is god and it can do anything it can make legal. God’s law is irrelevant to them.
So, once again, we call America to repent of this egregious sin and turn back to God. The state is a false messiah and we must not worship it. We obey the law for the sake of the Lord while calling for the state to repent and cease its evil ways. Currently, America thinks it’s rich but, because of its profligate and counterfeit ways, it’s actually a nation of debt. We’re printing money (through the complex mechanism of quantitative easing) to pay for things we shouldn’t be doing. We’re using false scales (the biblical way of describing our inflationary economic policies) to pay people to live in sin and rely on the state. Citizens speak of money, not productivity. Economic stewardship and service through one’s vocation to the glory of the Lord, no matter one’s payment, is lost. Freedom and win-win agreements are literally against the law, buried under an avalanche of regulation.
Unless we repent we are warned. “Because I called and you refused, I stretched out my hand and no one paid attention; And you neglected all my counsel and did not want my reproof; I will also laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your dread comes, when your dread comes like a storm and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on me, but I will not answer…because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord. They would not accept my counsel, they spurned all my reproof. So they shall eat of the fruit of their own way and be satiated with their own devices. For the waywardness of the naive will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. But he who listens to me shall live securely and will be at ease from the dread of evil.” Proverbs 1:24-33.
Yes, turn to Him and He will take away your sin and He will be a Father to you, teaching you every good path. But stop calling on the name of the false god, the state, and instead call upon the name of the Lord. He alone is our sustainer and provider.
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