The story has been told the Great Coach, Vince
Lombardi, began his tenure as head coach of
the Green Bay Packers.
By gathering together all the players that
he had not chosen that he’d not traded for,
that he’d not drafted, now when they were
gathered together and they were sitting in
his feet, he spoke these profound words.
He held up a football and he said “Gentlemen,
this is a football.”
It’s my task this evening to talk to you
not only about economics but a bit about our
teaching series “Economics for Everybody”.
And I suspect that many of you are more frightened
by the prospect of studying economics even
for a half an hour than those professional
football players were afraid of learning the
basics of football.
We'll in order to follow in Mr. Lombardi’s
footsteps and in order to hopefully allay
some of your fears, I'd like to begin exploring
what it means that economics is for everybody
with something deeply simple.
This is a Bible.
And it begins with these words “In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth”.
In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth.
Everybody clear on that?
Am I going too fast?
Apparently so.
In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth.
Now, as I’m persuaded as a Calvinist, as
a Reformed Presbyterian that if we understood
“in the beginning, God created”, just
those first four words “in the beginning…”
– that’s five isn’t it?
– “In the beginning, God created”.
I’m a theologian.
Not a Mathematician.
In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth.
If we understood that, we would have no more
questions, no more debates, no more arguments,
no more dueling verses over the question of
the sovereignty of God, either over Providence
in our day-to-day affairs, of the rise and
fall of nations, much less the redemption
of our soul.
When you come to understand that once there
was God and nothing else, you come to understand
that God is the source of everything else
which means He is necessarily All-Powerful
over everything else.
When we talk about God's sovereign power,
we do not mean that if you were to take all
of the power in the universe and you were
to measure what percentage God had and what
percentage things other than God had that
God would have 51%.
But rather, all power is God's power.
All authority is God's authority.
And when it comes to economics, friends, it’s
the same basic truth.
If we understand “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth” then
we will have such a lead forward, such an
assailable foundation for our understanding
of economics because we would understand this.
God made everything and therefore God owns
everything.
This is the most fundamental, most basic.
This is a football kind of principle that
God owns everything.
Now, I suspect that there's no one here in
this room thinking of themselves “Wait a
minute, everything?
Common now!
God may own a lot of things.
He owns the cattle on a thousand hills.
But everything?
No one’s thinking that.
You don’t know God owns everything.
Right?”
But as we just learned, there’s a problem.
Is there not?
Getting things that we know in our heads out
of the theoretical realm into our hearts and
then out of our hands because if we believe
that God owned everything, it you would have
a profound impact in how we understand what
should happen with everything.
That said.
Even getting that God owns everything, He
can leave us in a bad place.
We’ll hear people say “well, yes, God
owns everything and because God owns everything,
therefore should decide who gets it”.
Because what we mean by God is someone distant,
someone aloof, someone who really is never
having anything to do with anything in our
day.
So because God owns everything, no one owns
anything individually, therefore collectively
we can decide who gets what.
The problem with that, friends, is that God
owns everything.
And He's not distant.
He's not aloof and He does decide who gets
to have what.
God decides how His creation should be distributed.
God decides how His creation should be treated.
God decides what should be done with His creation
and God tells us what He's decided in His
word.
I start out doing a series called “Economics
for Everybody”.
I’ve written a book called “Biblical Economics”.
And as soon this stuff begins to come out
of my mouth, what do I hear from well- intentioned
Christians?
“Wait a minute, the Bible is not an economic
textbook”.
I had one guy say in the internet yesterday,
“I really don't think Christians should
be speaking to issues of economics.
They should be talking about things like work”.
Because everything belongs to God and because
God speaks to us, we can know what should
be done with everything because God speaks
to everything.
Remember this book tells us, this little tiny
book that fits in my pocket that equips us
for every good work.
So what does God say is supposed to happen
with his stuff?
Funny you should ask.
You turn the page, a few pages, after God
has made everything.
God makes one last thing.
He's made the universe.
He's made the planet.
He's made the seas.
He’s made the land.
He's made the flowers.
He’s made the plants.
He's made the creeping things that creep upon
the ground.
He’s made the fishes and then He makes a
caretaker.
He takes the dust in the ground and He molds
it and He shapes it and He breathes life into
it and He gives this man the first job.
What was the first job?
Fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule all of the birds in the air, the fish
in the sea and everything that creeps upon
the ground.
Dress and keep My garden.
God establishes Adam as His steward in His
house.
You see, it all belongs to God and he says
to Adam “I want you to take care of it.
I want you to go out into that jungle.”
It's a pre-Fall jungle which is a much nicer
jungle than a post-Fall jungle.
It’s a pre-Fall jungle and it never gets
above 68.
“And I want you to shape it and mold it
and change it.
I wanted you to reflect the glory that I manifest
in the creating out of nothing by taking the
something, by taking the dirt and making things
useful, making things beautiful, making things
effective.
I want you to mirror My glory in creation
by recreating.”
Of course, turn the page again and God discovers
that Adam is not quite equipped to do the
job.
He says “it’s not good that man should
be alone.
I shall a make a helper suitable for him.”
Suitable to helping with what?
The only thing Adam needs help with is the
only thing God has told him to do because
the only obligation Adam has is to do what
God says.
So Eve is made as a helper to fulfill what
theologians call “the Dominion Mandate”
– to fill the earth and to subdue it.
So Eve was made.
The two of them were given this charge.
You turn the page and then all blows up.
You can eat any of the fruits of any of the
trees in the garden except one – that’s
the one they ate from.
Then God sends them out of the garden and
God says to Eve “In pain you will bring
forth children”.
God says to Adam “You shall get your bread
by the sweat of your brow and there will thorns
and thistles”.
Do you understand the glory of these curses?
What God is saying is “I still have your
same jobs for you.
It’s gonna be more difficult.
It’s gonna be more painful.
But I want you to keep doing the job that
I've given you.”
You turn the page again, there's Noah.
We did a bad job.
We did a horrible job.
Everybody gets wicked.
God destroys everybody but Noah’s family.
They get off the ship.
What does God say when they get off the ship?
“Be fruitful and multiply.
Fill the earth and subdue it.
Rule all the birds in the air and the fish
in the sea and everything that creeps upon
the ground and you may eat the meat now”.
How about that?
Noah said “the pigs too?”
God said “not yet”.
Bacon is for a yet better age.
You turn the page again and there God establishes
not only our called exercise dominion over
the creation to work, to take the dirt and
turn dirt into stuff but He establishes and
codifies property rights.
“Wait a minute, RC, you said God owns everything”.
That’s actually what the Bible says.
God owns everything.
And when God who owns everything says “you
can own something”, you know what that means?
It means you can own something.
That's what that means.
When the Owner give something into your care,
it becomes yours to care for under His authority
and for His glory which means other people
can't take it.
Thieves cant’ take it.
Governments can’t take it.
And even guilt can’t take it.
What do I mean by guilt?
Well, here’s what we do.
God gives us something and with it because
it belongs to God then therefore, what I think
God wants you to do with it as well, I think
you need to do with it.
I think some of you spend too much money on
your hair.
You all should me more spiritual like me.
This Dominion Mandate, friends, abides and,
in fact, we’re living in the midst of it.
Look around this room.
You're sitting on wooden benches with cloth
seats, wearing wool jackets and cotton shirts
and leather shoes.
I've got unbelievably complicated electronics
wrapped around my head.
There's lights.
There’s computers.
There's cameras.
Do you realize that everything in this room,
everything that you see was once dirt?
It was dirt.
Some dirt fed grass and the grass fed the
cow.
And the cow, not only became the hamburger,
but he became my shoes.
Other grass fed trees and men took the trees.
They cut them down.
They molded them.
They shaped them.
They cut them.
They painted them and they nailed them together
and you’re sitting on them.
Everything here was once dirt – dirt that
men took and sifted and heated and separated
and molded and shaped.
It might have been liquid dirt.
It might have been oil.
It might have been sand that became silicone
ships or glass.
All dirt, all in its original natural context
is not so useful for us.
But men reflecting the glory of God molded
it and shaped it and separated it and heated
it and remolded it and here we are in a great
big room where it feels almost 68 even though
out there it’s 88.
We’ve enjoyed this kind of blessing, this
such astonishing progress, in fulfilling the
Dominion mandate in this country for so long
that we’ve come to believe that it’s natural,
that it’s normal, that it happens by itself.
But it's not true because when Adam and Eve
ate that fruit, even though God said there
are now be thorns and thistles, you shall
get your bread by the sweat of your brow,
now your children will come with pain, there
was a bigger problem.
Now the problem is people are no longer merely
content to work as God’s stewards and eat
of the fruit that they’ve earned themselves
but now because sin has come into the world,
we face the temptation, not only to cease
from difficult work but to steal from our
neighbors, pushing in that direction, encouraging
that kind of mindset.
I want to suggest to you, strangely enough,
is an alternate story of creation.
You see, there's another theory out there
widely held that says no, it's not true that
once there was God and nothing else and God
made everything.
This theory says “Once there was nothing
and then there was everything”.
Poof!
The nothing was just sitting there forever
and ever and ever and then one day it exploded
into everything.
Now can you see how that might impact how
we understand economics?
In one view, God and people work and out of
that work, things are produced and ownership
is established.
What though if stuff just happened?
What if stuff just comes about poof?
Let’s suppose that I had worked hard and
I'd save my pennies and I had invested a thousand
dollars and I have purchased a square yard
right here.
I've also purchased some tools.
And in this square yard, I take my tools and
I dig underneath the carpet and I dig underneath
the concrete and I dig underneath the sand
and out of my labor, I find little tiny pieces
of gold.
Then I sift them and I separate them and eventually,
out of the square the yard of land, I end
up with a big old pile, say as big as these
stairs, a big old pile of gold ingots.
I saved.
I bought.
I worked my gold.
Now, suppose instead of all that, I didn’t
saved, I didn’t buy, I didn’t work –Oh!
– there’s a pile of gold as big as this
pile of stairs.
It’s just there.
Now, whose is it?
Right?
I didn’t own a land on which It came from.
I didn’t do the work.
It just happened.
To borrow a phrase – I didn’t build that!
What are we gonna do with it?
Well, it would seem reasonably natural since
it’s nobody's stuff and it just happened,
maybe we should divide it up.
That’s a good idea.
I think we should divide it up by persons
and so I’ll take mine and all of my children’s
share.
Oh, wait a minute, that’s not…
Maybe we should divide it up by household.
Maybe we should divide it up by Baptist since
this is a Baptist Church.
Maybe we should divide it up, what do you
say, Chris, Ligonier employees.
Right?
This is our conference.
And what begins to happen is the Baptist form
a coalition.
The Ligonier employees form a different coalition.
The Baptist, Ligonier employees, they don’t
know what to do.
And then the Ligonier group thinks, you know,
were not as many as these Baptists.
Maybe what we ought to do is hold a meeting,
invite people, see if they want to join our
group.
Let’s serve donuts in our meeting.
Right?
Pretty soon it’s going to be Ligonier Big
Belly Coalition group.
I think I shall be the chair.
And what happens is this, not only are we
bickering and fighting politically over who’s
gonna get this gold but you know what we're
not doing?
We're not working.
When our attention is given to scrambling
politically for slices of the pie, nobody's
baking pies.
Sin comes and impact was going on.
To put it in another way, economics has consequences.
Economics has consequences.
What I'm trying to get us to grasp, friends,
is that economics is centered in our calling
in terms of our calling as men to be stewards
under God.
That the decisions that we make are going
to economic – economic decisions will always
be profoundly moral decisions which means
we must go to the word of God to know what
to do and how to do it.
And because God owns everything, whatever
he says goes.
And now becomes not just the issue of 401
case in imports and exports and in monetary
policy but it becomes an issue of obedience
to the living God.
The reason we made this series, the reason
we believe economics is for everybody is because
everybody is called to be a steward under
God and to obey all that He commands.
And God speaks to the issue of where and how
we get our daily bread.
So we made these series twelve parts.
And because the producer, somehow, felt it
wouldn't be as much fun if you had to look
at my shining face the whole time, we worked
in and weaved in clips of Charlie Chaplin
movies and old cartoons and we tried to make
it fun, we tried to make it enjoyable, we
tried to make it accessible and we tried to
make it not scary.
This is economics like Vince Lombardi the
whole way through.
And we’ve been trying to get it to as many
people as we can.
That part of that process led us to make this
shorter version “Economics has Consequences”.
Just two hours on one DVD.
Bits and pieces taken from each of the twelve
lectures to just give us a basic picture.
Subtitles: Liberty, Tyranny and the impact
on Christianity.
Now, God owns this and He has placed it under
the stewardship of Ligonier Ministries and
Ligonier Ministries, being free to do so,
has determined to give away a thousand of
these tonight in your hearing.
There's five hundred of them underneath that
black, no gold bars, I’m sorry – five
hundred over there, five hundred over.
And it's time for me to be done.
What we love for you to do is to come forward.
We’re gonna hand these out to you.
We do have a strict policy.
We want you to just take one per household
but we would like to see all one thousands
of these given away.
We’d also like you to watch them so that
next time you'll know what a football is.
Alright, let me go ahead and close us in prayer
and then come on down and get you one of these.
Let’s pray.
Our good and gracious Father, we thank you
that you do indeed own all things, we thank
you that you have bought us again with the
blood of your Son.
Father, we ask that you would make us more
faithful servants in your vineyard.
And we ask that you would be pleased by your
grace to give us- to return us again to a
place of liberty so that we might faithfully
serve you as our one true master.
And we ask this all in the precious name of
Jesus Christ, who is our one and only true
king, amen.
Thank you all for your attention.
