Faithful Finance - Part 5

June 25, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

Faithful Finance - Part 5

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Alive, Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish the book of Deuteronomy, we're going to step aside for a few weeks and publish a workshop I did in August of 2024 called Faithful Finance. In that workshop, I explained our current economy, our current financial situation,

and did it from an economic background and a historical background, and most importantly, did it from a biblical perspective. In that workshop, you're going to find out why we are where we are as an.

As a nation as far as our economy and what we should be looking at and why we should be looking at it for the future, not only for the future of the finances of individuals, but the future of the finances for our churches and for our country.

And so I would encourage you to just spend some time listening. Even though it is being published here a year later,

it is still true and it is still current for today.

Property rights. This comes from the setting up of our government in light of the philosophy of natural things or science and in light of the word of God. Because even though many of our founding fathers may not be believers in the sense that you think they're believers, all of them were deists.

They believed in God.

Most of them believed in Jesus.

And so however you take that,

they were definitely men who had considered the depths of God's Word.

And so for me to say that any of them weren't Christians would be a. Would be a little bit problematic,

okay?

They just might not be the puritanical Christian that I would like for them to be at the moment, which would change in 10 years, okay?

Because my puritanical view of Christianity will. Will change as time changes, but God's word never changes. And they pursued God's word.

Property rights. We have the right to control our own property that is produced by our will and labor. If others control the product of our will and labor, they enslave us,

okay? And that's what we just got through talking about,

all right?

Freedom. Freedom as far as an economic system. And by the way,

the right to liberty or freedom that they were talking about in the Declaration of Independence is in reference to and economic freedom,

okay?

Because they would have said, you really don't have freedom without economic freedom, okay? That's what. That's how they would have understood it, and that's why they would have said it that way.

An economic system grounded on respect for private ownership tends to diffuse power and to strengthen individual autonomy from government.

Property rights.

Property rights have therefore traditionally seen. Has Therefore, traditionally seen as safeguard of liberty because it sets limits to the reach of legitimate government. Notice it's saying it sets limits to the reach of legitimate government.

All right? And that would be the government that they were trying to create in. In the Declaration of Independence. And. And as you read through the Declaration of Independence, they define that government has a legitimate and rightful purpose.

If you do not believe that government has a legitimate rightful purpose, first of all,

you stand opposed to God's word,

okay? Because the author and the ordainer of government, the Creator, the anointer of government, is God himself.

And the Bible clearly teaches that even bad governments, God is in control of. He's sovereign over all things. And so he's sovereign even over the worst of governments in human history.

He is sovereign over them. You go, well, why does God allow that? Well, God allows sin,

okay?

In fact, his very existence is why sin is.

Because sin is God is God and sin is not God. So if God exists and there's anything other than him,

well, that would be not God.

And so also,

there are going to be governments to prove that God is holy and that they are evil.

And so those governments exist and they are rightful if God has allowed them to exist. But when we say rightful governments, we're talking about just governments. And there are just governments that do justly by their people,

that protect and preserve their people's autonomy and their rights.

Are you listening to me? A just government protects the autonomy and the rights of individuals as God defines those rights.

Are y' all anybody? That's some deep stuff right there. Okay? America's founders understood clearly that private property is the foundation not only of prosperity,

but freedom itself.

Meaning if you don't have private property, you can't really have freedom.

Thus through the common law.

State law. Common law is the law from England, the law that had been begun as a part of this whole renaissance that began with the Magna Carta, the first charter between a sovereign and the people that ultimately was the process of taking the sovereignty away from an individual human on the earth and giving it back to the people.

The Magna Carta is the first step in that process of taking that power and control away from an individual human being other than Christ,

and giving it back to the people.

America's founders understood, understood clearly that private property is foundation not only of prosperity, but freedom itself. Did I tell you all that? I'm not telling you all to buy anything today.

I'm just making sure you understand that I'm giving you information. And as you'll notice, I'm trying to give you orient your mind in a scriptural way toward government and economics so that at the end you can make right decisions being led by the Holy Spirit in your life so that you might glorify God and store for yourselves treasure in heaven.

Okay? That's the whole purpose of our meeting today.

He says, thus through common law, which means law from England, state law,

and the Constitution,

they protected property rights, the right of people to acquire, use and dispose of property freely,

to own it,

to change it in its nature,

to create value in it,

and then to alienate themselves from it, meaning to exchange it,

okay?

To give it to others for. For something.

Now,

how that's done is through the bar was originally at the very beginning of humanity. It was done during the. Using the barter system.

And so these.

We have a farmer's market nowadays. That's a. That's a vestige of that barter system.

You have farmers who have produce to. To sell,

and they come and sell it. Now in history past that, you would have these, these festivals in these markets all the time.

In fact, cities or towns developed so that people could come to those cities and towns and exchange their.

The product of their labor and their work for other people's labor and work.

And so your wife says, you know, we're cold at night. We need a blanket for everybody to lay under. We need somebody to go get a blanket. I want you to take all this cabbage and go trade it for a blanket.

Well, little do you know, go to the village, and you're there at the village. And the blanket making lady,

she don't like cabbage.

Now you're in trouble. You make cabbage. You need a blanket and you ain't got. And the blanket lady says, I hate cabbage. I don't want any cabbage. And it's going to cost a lot of that cabbage.

And I don't know what I'm going to do about cabbage. So I'm not doing it.

But she says, I like honey a lot.

Lo and behold, the beekeeper loves cabbage. His whole family, they're like cabbage eaters. In fact,

the symbol on their flag outside their offices has a cabbage right in the middle. They just love it.

So you go over to the honeymaker, you trade him some of your cabbage for some of his honey, and then you take that honey back and you give it to the woman who makes the blankets.

But what if you can't do that?

There's a problem.

The border system is so limited,

and the being able to figure out how much cabbage is worth how much Honey is.

Well, it's not a good economic system.

It's actually a terrible economic system.

And the things that you want and need may not be produced by someone because the things that you want, need are only needed and at certain times by certain people.

And. And so they can't create it and spread it over a whole region because the only place they can sell it, this town.

And so nobody's incentivized to do the most important things, some of the things that are the biggest things, because people only need it every once in a while.

Make sense?

Shoe cobbler. Somebody making shoes might really do good business in a town like Venice.

But In a village 200 miles from Venice,

people don't need shoes as much.

And so he can't invest his whole life in making shoes because he's not going to make. He's going to be. Be creating items that he's not going to be able to sell.

So the barter system is. Well, it's just not the greatest economic system in the world.

It's not.

So we have to. We created as humans. Now, I want you here, man, because I'm going to use a word here.

We created a technology,

okay?

And technology is taking something that is found in the natural world, adding my labor and will to it,

and changing it such that it's functional for somebody.

So shoes would be technology.

Actually,

honey would be technology because honey in its purest form is protected by a bunch of bees and in a honeycomb.

But if I take it and I get all the honey out in a jar and I use that jar to sell that honey, I am doing technology,

all right? And when I say technology, I'm using the purest form of technology,

human effort and will,

changing a physical thing so that it has more value.

Does that make sense?

All right,

so currency had to be created.

And currency is an intermediary or a medium of exchange for goods and services. All right? Now, that's the key word there. It's a medium of exchange.

It's what I use to exchange the product of my will and labor.

Now you go, well,

why do you keep bringing up the product of your will?

Well, if you think about it,

my profession,

both as pastor and as attorney,

is a product of will, not so much a product of labor in the sense of me putting physical influence over a natural thing to create a product to give to somebody else.

Make sense?

Somebody. Some people will come into my office and pay me to give them advice,

which would be paying me to give me their.

Give them the product of my will.

Will you give me advice? Yes. Will you pay me for that or give me a medium of exchange for my advice?

Yeah. And then I might produce something.

I might take ink and put it to paper and file something for you or make a will for you,

which is, by the way, even the name will means this is what I want to I will to give the product of my life to somebody else.

That's what a will is, or a testamentary instrument. It is me saying after I died, the product of my life, I want it to go here as you go today.

I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you. He'll and that he will give you hope and peace today.

In Jesus name.