The gremlins got us again. Technical difficulties keep us from posting a new Jesus Changes Everything Podcast today. We hope to have everything up and running next week.
It’s a volatile real estate market out there. Prices have, in the past few years, shot through the roof faster than, well, faster than the last real estate bubble we had. And they have also come crashing down, when the bubble pops. How well you do buying or selling depends on whether it’s a buyer’s or a seller’s market. Or does it? Follow me through this scenario to see which part of the magic trick you missed.
Suppose I own a house that in this market could sell for a million dollars. It matters not how much I owe on it, if anything. It matters not what I paid for it, if anything. I sell it for a million dollars. Now, if I want a house in a similar neighborhood, or a similar size, you know, say an exact replica of the house I just sold, how much will I need to pay? Right, a million dollars. So how much have I gained through this supposed red hot market? Nothing.
Still not seeing it? Ok, let’s try it this way. Suppose I buy a house for a million dollars. Now suppose the market tanks. I sell my house for a measly $10,000. Calamitous, right? No. I’ve lost nothing. What would it cost me to buy an exact replica of the house I just sold? $10,000. Before the sale I had a house that the market valued at $10,000. After the sale and the buying of the other house I have a replica of the first house valued at $10,000. Samesies. What did I lose in this burst bubble market? Nothing.
In both scenarios I had a house and after selling it I’m able to buy a house that costs what I sold my house for. Moving from one market to another, moving from one sized house to another may change up things a bit but the bottom line is that whether it’s a buyer’s market or a seller’s market makes little difference if you’re both a buyer and a seller.
The key to understanding basic economics, it seems to me, is never leaving part of the equation out. Henry Hazlitt’s classic, Economics in One Lesson, which I commend most highly to you, upended the old saw that breaking things is the path to wealth simply by doing just that, showing the part of the equation we leave out. When we think we’re getting a free lunch, we can be certain we’re not looking at the whole thing. We know that because there isn’t such a thing as a free lunch. Wealth doesn’t come by invisible and unknowable forces but by creating it. That means working, producing, meeting the interests of consumers who will freely pay for what you provide.
Buying low and selling high is all well and good. But if you’re buying the same thing you’re selling and at the same time, you’ll not likely find yourself getting richer or poorer. Just be sure you don’t find yourself duped or deluded.
We continue our Monday Bible study at 7:00. Please note we will not be serving dinner, and will be online only tonight due to unsafe roads.
We air the study on Facebook Live (RC-Lisa Sproul). Within a day or two we post the video of the study right here for those who would like to watch on their own schedule.
Our study considers God’s call that we be as children. Tonight- Wonder
This common take has become a cliché. Many clichés, however, reach that status by virtue of being true. How many times have you heard a preacher say, “The indicative drives the imperative”? Well, maybe not that way exactly, but something like that. Throughout the New Testament we believers are told that we have been declared just, and so should live just lives, that we’ve been declared holy, and so should live holy lives, that we have been made the children of God and so should live as His children. What we are told, when it is true, should change not only what we do but what we are.
Which is where the preaching of God’s Word comes in. Our perspective on it has taken a significant tumble. We think the sermon is where the pastor, or someone he has chosen, shares his or her thoughts. In response we might find those thoughts informative, entertaining, inspiring. Or not. We sit in our pews assessing a performance before delivering our verdict.
A sermon, however, is no mere message. It is grounded in God’s Word, grounded in His authority and given with authority. The sermon is a God ordained means by which we are increasingly changed into the image of Jesus. It tells us what He has said that we might be what He has called us. Understanding this not only ought to change how we prepare and how we bring a sermon but how we prepare for and how we listen to a sermon.
Consider it this way. I receive, from time to time, feedback on the things I write. I want to listen because it will likely help me in the future. But, however much I might give an ear, a reader has no authority over me as a writer. An editor, on the other hand, does. The reader may be wiser, have more insight but the editor has authority. I expect to be changed by the editorial remarks, even though the editor is far from infallible.
There’s a third ingredient in my writing. I may read books on writing. In fact, I have. Some have even been written by professional editors. But those book writers were not my editors. They, again, even if they have far more credentials than my editor, are not my editor. I don’t expect them to make my writing better. I don’t give them authority, even though they might have that authority over writers they work with. So it is with the preaching of other pastors. They have authority over the sheep God placed under their care. The rest of us may benefit from their wisdom, but they are not the ones who will give an account for us. (Heb. 13:7)
We must then come as the sheep that are eager to be fed by the under-shepherd that the Great Shepherd has placed over us. We must come expecting to be changed by the authoritative preaching of His Word. The church will reform as we are re-formed by the ordinary means of grace and their extraordinary power.
The question on its face seems rather insane. It demands not just a “no” but a “by no means.” If not a “why would you ask such a stupid question?”. I ask the question, however, because God Himself once asked it. God’s people were wondering why in their return from exile they weren’t enjoying the blessings God had promised. God sent the prophet Malachi to tell them. Among God’s complaints- men were robbing God by not paying their tithes.
Now it is not my intention here to argue over the tithe, one way or another. I desire instead to affirm the most basic, most fundamental economic reality there is- God owns everything. Unless we get this truth, from the top of our mousse shaped noggins to the bottom of our Bass Weejuns we’ll not rightly understand either economics, nor our calling in His world.
God put a man and a woman in His garden. He called them to dress and to keep that garden, to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the ground. God didn’t give them the world He had made, but He did put them in charge. He called them to be His stewards, and gave them a job to do.
If we understood this we’d understand the problem with bloated governments, mandates from Health and Human Services. The problem isn’t that the state steals from us, but that it steals from God. Because He is the Master, the Maker, and the light of the sun maker, He is the one who delegates His wealth to the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. When a petty thief, or a grasping state decides that it knows better how that wealth ought to be handled it is not merely stealing from men, but from God. And in so doing affirming that they know better than God.
In like manner when we by His grace manage to keep what He has given us, when we multiply it, when we invest it, we are being wise stewards of what is His. His mind you, not the church’s. If we are handling what is God’s as He would have us, caring for our families, serving our customers, giving to the church what we ought, can anyone find fault?
Yes, God could. For we have forgotten one thing. God also commanded His people this- that they should “spend the money for whatever your desire- oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household” (Deuteronomy 14:26).
That God owns everything doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy what He has given. It means we must enjoy what He has given. We have obligations, but they are to Him, the Owner. God commands us to care for those under our care. He wants us to support the mission of the church. The Father wants us to invest in future productivity. He wants us to enjoy. All of these honor Him. All of these acknowledge Him as our Lord.
More wisdom on biblical economics is available here.
I will not dispute that these are not the best of times. As a nation we are drowning in red ink. Around the globe, soldiers, civilians and believers are falling by the sword. Yet, the liturgy of our year, by which we devote times and seasons to specific emphases calls us to a day of thanksgiving, followed by weeks of feasting over the incarnation of our Lord and Savior. How do we manage the disparity?
By giving thanks and feasting over the incarnation of our Lord and Savior. Our Pilgrim forefathers rightly devoted time and energy to giving thanks to God for sustaining them in the new land. They went to that new land, however, that they might be free to worship their Savior. The winter before, when so many died agonizing deaths, they were still able to worship, and He was still their Savior. The hardships, like ours, were real. The unchanging reason for gratitude, however, was real also. The foundation of our thanksgiving isn’t comfort, health and prosperity but forgiveness, peace and adoption.
All of which came to us because Immanuel came to us. Is there anything in our contemporary and temporary hardships that should diminish our joy in His coming? Is there anything that suggests His promise to be with us always (Matt. 28:20) has been broken? Is there anything that frees us of our calling to be of good cheer (John 16:33) because He has already overcome the world? Will we, who profess to believe that three days after He was murdered our Lord walked out of the tomb alive, never to die again, believe that He has the whole world in His scarred hands?
Please do not misunderstand. It is not my intention to deny the reality of hardships. Jesus Himself wept over the death of Lazarus. We ought to weep over the scourge of the murder of the unborn. But we must also, like Martha, believe that those who have passed will be raised on the last day (John 11:24). Death and sickness are still with us, but they are passing.
Nor is it my intention to deny the sorrow of watching a culture become increasingly bloodthirsty and hostile to Jesus and His bride. I suspect that the same shepherds who were told of the birth of Jesus and rejoiced later learned of the murder of the infants of Bethlehem under Herod’s orders, and wept. The broader culture remains hostile toward us. Jesus, however, told us this was coming. Indeed, “Be of good cheer, for I have already overcome the world” is immediately preceded by this warning,
Jesus answered them, “Do you now believe? Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation.”
We are to count it all joy. We are to give thanks in all things, to learn to live faithfully whether abased or abounding. How do we do it? We remember what we are due in ourselves, what we have been given in Christ and all that we have been promised. Give thanks. And rejoice.
This week’s all new podcast features more of Lisa’s God honoring poetry, nuance on honoring military authority and more. Check it out, a true bounty of tasty podcast goodness.
I love Twitter. (And refuse to call it X). When I first heard about it I confess I was conflicted. The social commentator in me was appalled. My inner Neil Postman took the curmudgeon approach, bemoaning the dumbing down of our discourse to 140 characters. Has our attention span really dropped this far? The poet and the economist inside me, however, formed a strange alliance in embracing Twitter, the economist loving the streamlined nature, the poet adoring the challenge of cramming as much wonder, as many surprising moments of epiphany wrapped in beauty into 140 characters as possible. I almost begrudged the shift to 280 characters.
As a theologian my job involves making distinctions, often ones so subtle they are hard to see. Precision and nuance chisel the outcome of that trade. On Twitter all of these hats I wear often clash. The use of the most potent poetic image may mean, from time to time, that qualifiers are left off. On the other hand, using the qualifiers not only clouds the beauty of the image, but puts you over the character count.
Consider this glorious truth- Jesus changes everything. I admit that with the exception of Jesus, the words themselves are not startling. They’re pedestrian even. But the thought is supposed to be shocking. Everything? All of us face the temptation to divide our lives into the sacred and the secular, the holy and the mundane. Jesus is given charge over our prayers, our eternities, our deepest selves. But isn’t a peanut butter sandwich just a peanut butter sandwich? Isn’t such the same for the most devout believer and the most wretched and lost soul? No, it’s not.
The peanut butter sandwich is to the believer not just bread and peanut butter, but the answer to our prayer that He would give us this day our daily bread. It is a fulfillment of the dominion mandate, to rule over the creation. It is a foretaste of heaven, manna from on high. It is an occasion for worship, a gift, like all gifts through which we behold the glory of the Giver. Jesus changes everything.
Except, of course, that He doesn’t. It’s just not strictly true that Jesus changes everything. What we miss in such pithy shorthand is another sublime reality- that the God of heaven and earth, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, has never changed, will never change. Insofar as the Godhead is a thing (and more theological nuance could argue that while real, the Godhead is not, strictly speaking, a thing) it is one thing that stays the same.
Contra Einstein, the speed of light is not that fixed point by which all else is relativized, an ontological North Star, but God is. There is no shadow of turning in Him. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. The Westminster Shorter Catechism describes the living God to us as a spirit, infinite, and eternal before adding this fourth attribute- unchangeable.
I, along with the whole of the created order, depend upon Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega. He is about the business of bringing all things under subjection- in less poetic language, changing everything, from Twitter to peanut butter sandwiches. But, to His everlasting glory He does not and will not change. Consider this piece then a footnote, the fine print. Jesus changes everything. Except Jesus.
We will not meet for our weekly Monday night Bible study this evening.
We’d love to have you with us next Monday, in person if possible. Invite your friends. Our study considers God’s call that we be as children.
