(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.) Okay, you're in Genesis 2. Go ahead and hang tight there for a little bit. Boy, the first few chapters of Genesis are always amazing, aren't they? Every time I hear that red, I think, boy, there's so much there. Well, tonight I want to talk to you about an often overlooked subject in the Bible. While it's yet little discussed, the concepts are found all throughout scripture, and it's really right under our noses, and the subject is economics. So the title of my message tonight is going to be Economics in the Bible. My aim tonight is to establish for you the principles that God has placed in His Word regarding economics. Does the Bible discuss economics? Absolutely it does. Economics, as I said, is everywhere. So what is economics, you might say? It's not finance, right? Brother Jerry gave us a message, like a three-series message on finance, debt and savings. Go back and listen to it again if you didn't hear it. So what is economics? Economics is different. Economics deals, it's a science, it's concerned with the allocation, the distribution of resources in our society, how things are produced, how things are distributed amongst society, amongst our people. These goods are really services. Goods and services are derived from resources that we have available to us. It's essentially, it's how we get people, how we get the things that we need, right? How do we go about doing that? The Bible has specific ways about going, about doing that. But as you can imagine, if the Bible says there's a right way to do something, then the world would say there's a different way to do something, right? And that's what we always run into. The Bible gives us principles regarding economics, which we'll see in a moment, but the world always teaches something different than what the Bible teaches. And it's not going to be just a little different or a slight difference here or there. It's typically completely different. It's like it's perfectly wrong all the time. So that's typically what happens on any subject in the Bible. It's just flat wrong. It's perfectly wrong. It's the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. So these principles, just like all of their principles in the Bible, are under attack by the world daily. It's an incessant, never-ending, it just will never cease. We're always being under attack as Christians in every aspect of their life, and economics is no different. So tonight I want to look at what the Bible teaches, and I want to give you those principles that the Bible teaches. And then we're going to look at one of the trendy economic systems that the world has to offer, and that's called socialism. Socialism is really trendy. It's been around for just a couple hundred years, but nonetheless it's gaining a lot of popularity. And you say, well, we're in America. Why on earth would you preach about this? Well, did you know that 35% of our national income is spent by government? 35%. Did you know that they did a poll in 2019, Pew Research? I just couldn't believe this. Forty-five percent of people have a positive view of socialism. That's one in four. And of course, the number one reason I want to preach about it, other than it being against the Bible, is Monopoly. They've ruined it. Has anyone played this? I was up visiting my brother, and Hannah got this out, and she's like, hey, Dad, he was playing Monopoly. I'm sweet. I'm the wheelbarrow. And she's like, no, no, we don't. There's none of that. It's a card game. Okay. So she gives me the card. We're playing the cards. And I was like, okay, when do we start? And she's like, I start right now. And then she gives me a card, and she takes one of my properties. I thought, what on earth is this? And I was like, okay. All right. Okay. I don't like this, but all right. Okay. So it's my turn. And I'm like, okay, I want to charge you rent. How do I do that? And she asked me to pay rent. I'm like, okay. Pay me some rent. She pulls out a card. Cancel rent. And I was like, we're done. Think about it. All the games in the world, they have ruined Monopoly. I mean, this is the game that you play, right? You want to teach your kids about it. The socials have ruined it. Anyway, I say that jokingly. But what's interesting? Here's something very interesting. And you, of course, you'll see this view espoused by presidential candidates and cabinet members and justices and it's all throughout federal, local, state level. I mean, it's everywhere. But like I mentioned, it hasn't been around that long. But it's curious, if you look at the 19th century, if you look at all the stuff that came out of there, right? We had Joseph Smith, and we had Charles Taze Russell, right? We had all sorts of false doctrine, William Miller. But there's two guys, two guys that told the biggest, fattest whoppers, and we're still dealing with him today. The first one was born in 1809, that was Charles Darwin. Think about the impact that he has had, okay? And then the other one is Karl Marx, and he was born about 10 years later. Now, Darwin wrote his book, right, The Origin of Species, and I think Brother Jared has given us the full title before, Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, meaning there are some races that are better than others. And of course, Hitler used that in his final solution, right, to the Jewish question of World War II, right? He used evolution to justify his superior race over inferior races, right? Of course, you won't learn that in public school. They won't teach you that that was Darwin's handiwork there. Okay. So Marx, he had another lie. He was born about 10 years later. So Darwin in 1809, and Marx in about 1818, and Marx was a philosopher, economist, wasn't really good in any of them. His number one book, The Communist Manifesto, that's where we get a lot of this nonsense. There's 10 points, but the Marxists and communists now have a whole laundry list of stuff that you can read about. It goes from everything about raising your kids, and they cover everything, complete control. So these all came out of the imaginations of these men, these fanciful imaginations of Karl Marx and the fascination of Charles Darwin. Of course, we're just going to focus on Marx and his economic system. So tonight my aim is not to be political. I don't want to be political, okay? I want to be biblical. Because what you get when you get away from the Bible, it never goes well. You end up in sin, death, and destruction every single time. If the philosophy of the political economy is wrong, then you know what we're going to see? Sin, death, and destruction, and trust me, it's astonishing, okay? It's not that this is just a wrong philosophy. This is an anti-biblical philosophy, right? You must first kill God when the state becomes God, and I'm not really going to get into a lot of that. I'm just going to focus on just a few economic principles, okay? So ideas have consequences. These two lying demons of the 19th century, and again, we're just going to focus on Marx, think of all the spiritual and physical death. When you think you have an idea, you don't know. You don't really know. The stuff that I've been looking at, I'm going to share with you tonight, will just really shock you. And the irony, of course, is what did Darwin have? Darwin had a hunch and a series of anecdotes. That's what he did. He had a tape measure and some finch beaks. That's what he had. He didn't know the cell. He didn't know about DNA, or he didn't know the digital code that's in there and information. There's always a mind behind information. He had no idea that information existed. But it's only the Bible. Well, if you're going to attack the Bible, you better do your homework. Of course, he didn't. And Marx even had less. He just grew up actually from wealth, but he just squandered his wealth. He never paid his debt. It took him a long time to get out of college and lived off his parents. That's Karl Marx in a nutshell. Go back and look it up and all that stuff's true. So it's interesting. Karl Marx died in 1883, thankfully. And at his funeral, his co-author Joseph Engels, he gave the eulogy. And he said this very interesting. Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, of course, it's not a law. So Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history. And so Marx taught that you would have this feudalism and it would come to mercantilism, then you go to capitalism, and then finally we would reach this utopia of socialism. And just to give you a little idea before we get into what the Bible says, now go ahead and turn to Isaiah 14, Isaiah 14. And this is going to give you a little insight into who Karl Marx was, because you know that he was a poet? Well, he wasn't really, but he did write one. So I'm going to read you what Karl Marx wrote in Isaiah 14, 13. In fact, let's just read that real quick. And you can have that in the forefront of your mind when I read this poem to you. Isaiah 14, 13. This is known as the five I wills of Satan. This is what was going on in Satan's mind, right? Against the most high, against the God. For thou has said in thine heart, here's the five I wills, the first one, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit upon the mountain of the congregation in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Now that's Satan. That's the murderer from the beginning. That's the father of all lies, okay? You can usually recognize his children. Here's a poem from one of his children. Worlds I would destroy forever, since I can create no world. This is Karl Marx. Since my call they notice never, and then I will be able to walk triumphantly like a God through the ruins of their kingdom. Every word of mine is fire and action. My breast is equal to the Creator. There's Isaiah 14, 13. And I shall build my throne high overhead. There's Isaiah 14, 13. So here is Karl Marx writing this poem. I'm going to skip a few verses out of courtesy to you. And it says, See the sword, the prince of darkness, sold it to me. And with Satan I have struck my deal. He chalks the signs and beats the time for me. So apparently Marx thinks that he struck a deal with Satan and Satan was helping him out. Interesting that he would, interesting that he would put that down. By the way, our world does not take this serious, right? You see in Jude where Michael is battling over the body of Moses, he doesn't make a railing accusation. He just says, Lord rebuke you. But the world teaches us that you can go down to Georgia and have a fiddle playing contest with the devil. I mean, it's absolute craziness, okay? So turn to Genesis 1, turn to Genesis 1, please. So what I want to get into is show you the principles that the Bible says, okay? Now, I'm not saying God's a capitalist. I'm not saying any of that. What I'm saying is the Bible has principles. And if you stick to these principles, you'll always end up in the right place, okay? If you go away from the principles, you're going to end up in the wrong place. So now let's see what the Bible says in Genesis 1, okay? I want you to look at verse 26. And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Look at the word dominion, okay? Dominion, if you don't know the definition, it means basically to have sovereign or supreme authority, okay? It's the power of governing, controlling, the power to direct, to use, dispose of, if you so mean. And then we see another word in there of the creation, or word I'm going to give it. So man had dominion over the fish, the animals, and over all the earth. Now all the trees and plants and animals, I'm going to call them something. We may get protested. They're called resources. That's what they're called. They are resources, okay? Sorry PETA, but they're resources. In fact, I used to have a bumper sticker on the back of my car that said, I love animals. They taste great, right? People really like that. But God has put those there for us. Look at verse 28. And God blessed them and said unto them, be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion, there it is again, over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living creature that moveth upon the earth. Well, there's another word in there, subdue it. And subdue it, they're right before dominion. Subdue means to conquer by force, to tame, or to soften, okay? So man has the dominion, so we have the authority over God, God has given us authority over the earth to control it, to subdue it, to tame it, to take forceful action, right? So if I have a tree on my land, I can cut the tree down, I can trim it, or I can just let it sit there, right? God has given me authority over that tree, right? That's how that works. Turn over to Psalm 115. Psalm 115. Right, we're familiar with the verse, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof and the world that dwell in it, but go over to Psalm 15, I want to share two verses with you there. Psalm 115. And this will show you that there is an authority, obviously, because God was the creator, but then he gave that authority over to us for the earth, I want to show that to you. Psalm 115, look at verse 3, but our God is in the heavens, he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. It's God's choice what he wants to do, okay? Psalm 115, look at verse 16, just go down a few verses, verse 16, the heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's, but the earth hath he given to the children of men. So God has given the earth to mankind, to have dominion over it, to subdue it, to control it. Turn to Genesis 2, and I'll go one more step further. In fact, God has designed creation just for us. I'm going to be human-centric here. It's for us, okay? Now I want you to think about this, okay? Man, we're unlike the angels, right? We're unlike the angelic host, in many ways, namely, we have dependency. For man's life, he needs food and water, he needs air to breathe, shelter, sleep, unlike the angels who appear to not have any of such physical dependencies, it doesn't appear that they need any of those things. Man's physical life is tied to these dependencies, right? What happens if you don't eat, right? How long can you go? What happens if you don't drink any water? What happens if you stop breathing? Okay, Brother George, I'm going to challenge you to hold your breath for this whole message. Go. It's not going to go well for Brother George, right? Can you live without shelter? Well, maybe in California. Okay, let's mark that off the list, right? But you get my point. God has built man with these inherent physical needs. Why? Why has God given man these inherent physical needs? Have you ever thought about that? Like when he has Eve, you know, don't eat whatever the fruit was. Why not drink something? Why not drink that water? Why did he choose eating? Okay, there's a reason for these things. Anyway, I want to answer some of these questions at the end, but why the physical needs? Why does God place in man these inherent physical needs? And I want to answer that for you at the end of the sermon. So there's an incentive, stay awake. So God has placed man in him and these inherent physical needs that the angelic hosts don't seem to have. Let's go over to Genesis 2.8, Genesis 2.8, Genesis 2.8. Now this is pre-fall. We're still pre-fall here. Okay, Genesis 2.8, and the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man who he informed, right? So we have this general creation, and then we have God plants a specific garden. Okay, he planted it in itself, he said, and he formed Adam outside of that garden and placed him inside the garden. So God created man and placed him in the garden with all the resources man needed to meet those physical needs, right? In the creation account in Genesis 1, we see all the resources created before man was created, right? Everything was already in place. The table was already set, and then he puts man here, right? It was created for us, and we're to have dominion over it, okay? He gave us the physical needs but surrounded man with the resources to meet those needs. Look at verse 16, Genesis 2.16, and the Lord God commanded the man, saying of every tree of the garden thou mayest eat. So man was commanded to eat. This is important because creation provides man's physical sustenance, okay? God placed man amidst a creation full of all the natural resources to appease this dependency constantly daily, right? Even pre-fall, Adam still had a job to do. He still had to dress the garden, right? Look at Genesis 2.15, Genesis 2.15, Genesis 2.15 says this, and the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. So Adam had a job to do, to dress it and keep the garden, he had to work it and maintain it. Now it was before the fall, so I suspect that it was a rather mild activity. There's no thorns, you know, so he probably didn't have to labor that hard to get that. I bet you stuff just kind of low hanging fruit just kind of came right off the tree, I don't think he had to do too much. So nevertheless, he still had to do something. He still had that physical dependency that needed to be met. Now turn over to Genesis 3, turn over to Genesis 3. Now we're getting to the point where it's going to be post-fall, okay? So Adam and Eve had sinned, okay? Adam wasn't deceived, Eve was deceived, Adam followed his wife, he chose to sin. We'll pick it up just for context, we'll go to Genesis 3.16, unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception in sorrow. Thou shall bring forth children, thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee. In verse 17, and unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow thou shall eat of it all the days of life, thorns and thistles shall bring it forth to thee, so here you have the thorns coming, and thou shall eat the herb of the field, in the sweat of thy face thou shall eat bread, so you've got to labor for that bread now, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it was thou taken, for the dust thou art, and the dust shall thou return. So we see the sentencing of Adam and Eve, right, the sentences were replaced on them for their sin. So let's review this. So God in his innocence and wisdom has designed creation for man, he has set man amongst his creation, he's given man physical, he's given him spiritual life and given man an intellect, he's given man his commands, he has given man dominion over earth and told man to physically subdue it. It is the application of man's mind and his moral being and his labor that are required to meet his physical needs. This is how God set it up literally from day one. This is how we set it up. Now Genesis 3 17 says something interesting, it says, the ground is cursed. But it will be difficult to get a yield more than it was prior to the fall, right? What we now see is economics forming. Economics is essentially the science of how man meets those physical dependencies that are inherent to him, that God placed in him by a creation that God gave him to use, okay? Man must develop, produce, allocate and distribute those resources in order to live. He has to do it, he has to make products and services to survive. This is what economics studies, right? Think of a country, the total value of the production of goods, the making of stuff, right? Or services, serving people. In a given year, if you summed it all up, it's called the gross domestic product, GDP, right? You ever think you hear GDP in a sermon? There you go. So Adam, post fall, has the same problem we all have right now. We, what we do, we have to provide for ourselves and our family. Now before we get into that, which I will show you in Genesis 4, I want to camp here to point something else out. This is something that is constantly missed, okay? People miss it all the time and it is a fatal, fatal error, okay? I want to show you this, talk a little bit about the nature of man. If you would please go to John 2, please go to John 2. While you're headed over to John 2, I'm going to read you a very familiar verse from Jeremiah. Jeremiah knows very well the nature of man. The heart is deceitful above all things. This is Jeremiah 17, 9, you're going to John 2. And desperately wicked, who can know it? So man is deceitful and desperately wicked. This is man, right? This is what we tell people so many, right? We're all, we're not an unjust man on the earth, do with good and sin if not, right? All systems, whether political, economic, familiar, all must understand, recognize and anticipate man. Who is man? What is his nature? What is his condition? It's fallen and sinful. For example, parents must know, expect and plan for their child's disobedience, right? As a parent, you have to know, my child's going to, this is how we're going to handle it. Political institutions and lawmakers must understand and put in place efficacious laws and rules for society. First anticipating man's most sinful condition while they themselves recognize the same failing within themselves. This is why you should have a woman in government because they're cut from the same cloth that everyone else is. They're sinners too, okay? So Marx didn't understand any of this, this nature of man. Neither does nearly all of our politicians, economists and government officials today. They have no idea. They think somehow man is good and he's going to run around and all this stuff is going to be good. No, man is evil at his heart, okay? And so you have to anticipate that. Government must wield the sword judiciously, right? This is Romans 13. People must be punished, right? We have to have that. In fact, any form of government, whether the political form or economic arrangements, if it fails to take into consideration the sinful nature of man, it will fail every single time. And you can take that to the bank. Now that is, by the way, is an interesting thing that our founding fathers did understand. They knew the nature of man. They read the Bible. I'm not saying they're all saved, but they understood the nature of man. King David understood too. He says in Psalm 139, search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. David understood. Of course, God understands the nature of man. You're in John 2. Let's look at what Jesus thinks. John 2, look at verse 23. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. Jesus Christ knows what's in man, okay? He knows. So let's go back to Genesis 3. So this is the ingeniousness of our founding fathers, that they understand the nature of man. And of course, as we change our society and we change things and how things are done, a quote I used to quote all the time, I don't know if I can quote it out, but John Adams says this government was made for a moral and religious people and it's wholly inadequate for the governance of any other. So you have to have the right type of people, right? You got to have people who are doing the right thing, so that's helpful. But if you set your system up wrong from day one and you think a man's going to be good, your system will fail. Your system will fail. So you're back at Genesis 3. So I'm going to read you 17 again, 3.17. And unto Adam he said, Because thou has hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and has eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. So God sentenced Adam, this was his punishment. Look at that. It says it was for his sake, for Adam's own good. Think about this. Well, on the one hand it was punishment. Difficult labor is actually a blessing. Can you imagine if making a living took five minutes? I mean, as a man, what would you do with the rest of your time, right? If it was easy, you know how much trouble we would get into as men? Just walk out, takes you five minutes, boom, boom, boom. It's almost like God anticipated the nature of man, right? We see it firsthand as soul winners. You go out to some of these neighborhoods and you see these guys lying around doing nothing. They're up to no good, right? They're up to no good. Don't they have physical dependencies? They do. Somebody must be meeting those physical dependencies for them. It must be a wicked system that is meeting those physical dependencies, right? If a man doesn't work, he shouldn't eat, right? We're familiar with that verse. Turn to Ecclesiastes. Turn to Ecclesiastes. So you see how the Bible really thinks of everything. Who would have thought that there was economics right there in Genesis 1, 2, 3, and we'll see it in 4 as well. Ecclesiastes 2, look, I'm glad that it's hard to make a living. If I had less time, I myself would get into a ton of trouble, right? So God actually blesses man by making it difficult. So when you're out there and you're sweating and you're making, we really should be thanking God that most all of our time is consumed from sun up to sun down to make a living, right? That's why it says there's profit and labor always, Proverbs 14. Even though you may not make a lot of money, it's still a profit to you to get out of labor. It's still a profit to you to get out later. Ecclesiastes 2, 24, it's what King Solomon says, there is nothing better for a man than he should eat and drink and that he should make his own soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God. Yeah, that's right, because God set it up that way. From day one, that's how he set up the creation. So not only does work keep us out of trouble, it's good for us. God set it up that way, right? It's supposed to be that way, whether or not we like it. The physical labor actually impacts our soul. This is interesting, Ecclesiastes 5, 12, Ecclesiastes 5, 12. The sleep of a lumbering man is sweet, whether he eat little or much, but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. So whether you're rich or whether you're poor, okay? There's much difficulty with riches, right, thinking Brother Jared went over this extensively, he mentioned it this morning, right? You fall into a pit if you're trying to be, fall into a trap, a pit if you're trying to be wealthy. But anyway, so the laboring man, when he gets home, you know, you guys are working hard, you get home. I mean, my wife chides me a little bit, but as soon as I'm down, it's out, I mean, lights out, we're done, right? So this is the nature of man considered, right? So we need to understand the nature of man, okay? So let's go back to some more economics here, Genesis 4, Genesis 4, okay? So Genesis 1, we learned about being the resources being created, the authority over the resources given. Genesis 2, we saw the dependencies of man's being established, the eating and drinking, right? Genesis 3, we see the nature of man, right, we see that sinful nature and how it affects our economic activity, right? Our labor's different, it's much more difficult, okay? In verse 4, or verse 1 of chapter 4 here, Adam knew his life, and she conceived and bore Cain and said, I have gotten the man from the Lord, verse 2. And she again bore his brother Abel, and Abel was a keeper of the sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. So we have these two brothers, Cain and Abel. So we see already, Cain made his living by the ground, right, he was a farmer, okay? And Abel, by some sort of husbandry, he's a shepherd, so sheep, okay? So we already see the curse comes in, right, it becomes difficult to make a living, right? And we already see people dividing their labor, it's called the vision of labor. Labor is separated into very specific areas, right? Man specializes his particular effort so he can economize his labor, right? So it saves him time and he gets an increase in production, right, it makes him more efficient. This is called economy of scale in economics. We have a division of labor and we have economy of scale right in Genesis 4. It's almost like God knows economics. Well, we see this all throughout the Bible. Some of the occupations that come to mind, let's just focus, of course, on the positive occupation, but think of all the specialization. We see the tillers of the ground, which we just mentioned, and the shepherds, right, herdsmen, right? Amos was a herdsman of Tekoa, he grew sycamore figs also. We have hunters and fishermen and merchants and money changers and fullers and healers of stone and timber and tree fellers and hosts, right, innkeepers, governors and kings and bakers and cutpairs and soldiers and publicans and scribes and religious. All these people that are trying to make their own living in a very specific way, right, they economize that. So all people specialize in trades to economize their labor so they can be more efficient and they can produce more, right? Then people trade those products and services for other products and services, right? Hiram, remember, he provided to Solomon. Solomon was building the temple, right, in 1 Kings. So Hiram got food and Solomon got the trees and the huge stone. That's what he wanted. So there was an exchange, okay? Brother Jared went over Ezekiel 27 a few weeks ago. We saw the marketplace that Tyre, of Tyre, the Prince of Tyre had set up there, right? And so all the people from all over the world would bring their wares, the Asherites made thy benches of ivory and fine linen with broader work from Egypt and Tarshish was the merchant by reason of the multitude of all kinds of riches with silver and iron and tin and lead. And here's the next one I pulled out. Dedan was thy merchant in precious clothes for chariots. Now that's highly specialized, right? But they could do that because there was a need for that. So you see, that's called in a comparative advantage when you can produce something better than other people can, right? These are all things that are underneath the text of scripture. They're all there for us to see if we're looking for them. So we see that requires labor for man. Not only is it a blessing to you and your family, but it also blesses others around you. That you engage in economic transactions with other people enriches everyone. What would be the purpose if you were saved and you didn't go tell anybody about it? It's not a great parallel, but it's kind of similar, right? So if you just keep everything to yourself, and I'll read some proverbs later to show you, but this system here where you specialize, you actually have to go out and you have to serve your fellow men. You have to do things for people you wouldn't ordinarily do. We go out and give the gospel because we love the Lord and we don't want people to go to help. Okay? So write this down, guys. Production is wealth. If you want to make money in this world, production is wealth, okay? The opposite of that, of course, is true. Consumption is destruction of wealth. So if you want to make money, production is wealth, okay? How do you produce and who do you produce for, right? When you produce something, you're doing it for somebody. Somebody maybe who you've never met, but the production of that good or service for somebody, right? He's one of the wealthiest people in the world, right? Think of the United States. He's probably the wealthiest guy, Amazon guy, right? He's the wealthiest guy. He probably serves more people every day than everybody else. It's that simple, right? Wages and salaries, aren't they determined by consumer demand? The more people demand what you do, the more money you'll make, right? So if you're working for somebody five days a week, the Bible says you can labor a six-day a week, take that trade and apply it on the sixth day, and you'll increase your production, you'll increase your wealth, right? Production is wealth. Serve more people, serve your fellow man, and you'll make more money, right? That's pretty much production is wealth. The last thing I will say on this is God set it up that if you don't work, man, you starve. You starve. And I mentioned that already, 2 Thessalonians 3, 10. For if you don't work, you should starve. Okay, so now I'm going to take, Karl Marx wants to abolish land. So go ahead and go over to Joshua 13, 7, Joshua 13, 7. Karl Marx says he wants to have the abolition of the ownership of private property. That's what he wants. He wants to abolish the ability of anyone in here to own property, zero property. Now we're talking land first, and then we'll get to possession, so we're going to see what the Bible says about that. We're going to see what the Bible says about that. So Joshua 13. So they've conquered, they're in the promised land, and Joshua 13, look at verse 7. Now therefore divide this land for an inheritance. Remember that word inheritance. Onto the nine tribes and the half tribe of Manasseh, verse 8. With who the Reubenites and the Gadites have received their inheritance, which Moses gave them beyond Jordan eastward, even as Moses the servant of the Lord have given them. So God gave to the 12 tribes, and we'll talk about Levi here in a second, an inheritance. What did he give them? He gave them land. So God wants them to own land. God is for private land ownership. Acts 17 says that he's given borders and things for government. You live here, you're given a time and a place. So God wants people to be able to own land. He gave an inheritance to the people. God divided them in territories, and all the tribes, some on the west and some on the east side. But what's interesting, and I'll get to this in a minute, is to Levi, God was their inheritance. God was their inheritance. So you're saying, oh, well, Ryan, you mean they don't own property, they can't own land? Well, I'll get to that. In any event, I'm just going to read you Exodus 6 says, it says, I will bring you into the land concerning that which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it for you an heritage to the Lord. So God is giving them an heritage, calls it an inheritance. We saw in, we'll see in Proverbs 13, I'll just read it to you here because we're a little short on time. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children, and the wealth of a sinner is laid up for the just. So God's saying you're a good man if you leave an inheritance. So God is clearly for inheritance of private property, he's clearly for giving it. By the way, Marx is against inheritance. He wants to abolish all inheritance, he's one of his 10, the first one's private ownership of property, I think that's gone, and the third one I think is all inheritance, okay? So Joshua 13, 32, these are the countries which Moses did distribute for an inheritance in the plains of Moab, on the other side of the Jordan by Jericho eastward, but onto the tribe of Levi, Moses gave not any inheritance, the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance. Now turn over to Joshua 21, Joshua 21, 1. So now we're going to see, so apparently it looks like God doesn't want the Levites to have any land at all, they're landless. Well no, Joshua 21, 1 says, then came the heads of the fathers of the Levites unto Eleazar the priest, and unto Joshua the son of Nun, and unto the heads of the fathers of the tribes of Israel, and they spake unto them at Shiloh in the land of Canaan, saying the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses to give us cities to dwell in, with the suburbs thereof for our cattle. And the children of Israel gave unto the Levites out of their inheritance at the commandment of the Lord these cities and their suburbs. So God still made sure the inheritance just came away from the other tribes, so if you looked at verse 4, the Kohathites got stuff from Judah, Kohath got stuff from Manasseh, Gershon got stuff from Naphtali, and the Levites were kind of spreaded around and also fit in with the cities of refuge as well, there's some connections in there also. Turn to Leviticus 25, turn to Leviticus 25. So not only does God want to make sure that you have the ability to own land, at least for His people there in Israel, but He also put rules in place to protect private property. Leviticus 25-24, and look, when we're reading this, look for that word redeem and redemption, it's all over, it means to buy back, to buy back. In all the land of your possessions ye shall grant your redemption for the land. For everything, all the possessions that I've given you, the Lord God has given you, you will have a process of redemption, okay? If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother has sold, so they can get it back. And if the man hath none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it, then let him count the years of sale thereof, and restore the overplots. So they have to do an economic calculation, figure out the land of the value, and then they have, they can, the guy gets it back, unto the man whom sold it, that he may run on, return unto his possession, possession, possession means ownership, but if he not be able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it, and he's out of luck? No. In the year of jubilee, and in that jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession. Okay, turn in, turn to Exodus 20, turn to Exodus 20. So you see the Bible very heavily favors private ownership of property, very heavily favors that. Didn't the Proverbs 31 woman, didn't she buy a field? She planted her own vendor and bought a field, right? And she was a righteous woman, right? Her price was far above Proverbs. Okay, so of land and even possessions, if I had to sum it up, all in one verse, it would be this, this is what the Bible says, the position on private ownership of lands, goods and services, it's right there in Exodus 20. It's really this simple, thou shall not steal. If you can steal something, it doesn't belong to you. Case closed. The Bible says you shouldn't steal. That presupposes ownership, right? Thou shall not steal. It's really that simple. We could just go home. Okay, now turn to Proverbs 24, 30, Proverbs 24, 30. I want to look at two vineyards. There's two vineyards that can really teach us a lot. Proverbs 24, 30, two vineyard owners, Proverbs 24, 30, two vineyard owners. I'm going to read you 24, 30 through 33. This is the vineyard of the slothful, that's how I'm going to return to him. I went by the field of the slothful and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding. And lo, it was all grown over with thorns and nettles and covered the face thereof and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I said and considered it well. I looked upon it and received instruction. So he learned something just from looking at this guy's operation. He had a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one travaileth and one that wanteth as another man. Turn to Mark 12, turn to Mark 12. You know what was happening in this guy's vineyard? Apparently not much. Apparently not much. But we can look upon it and we can receive instruction, right? And so I want to contrast that with Mark 12. Now let me preface this, okay? I understand this is a parable. There's a certain rich man. This is Jesus speaking. He's giving a parable of this rich man but he plants the vineyard. I understand but it's just sometimes I want to look at the anatomy of the passage like how does this really work? What's this look like? So Mark 12, verse 1, and he began to speak on to them in parables. This is Jesus speaking. A certain man, a certain man planted a vineyard and he set and hedged about it and digged a place for the wine fat and built a tower and led it out to husband men and went into a far country. And at the season, he sent to the husband men a servant that he might receive from the husband of the fruit of the vineyard. Of course, we see the rest of the story and he sends his servants, right? And they get killed and finally he sees the son and they look at his heir and so we're familiar with this and certainly Jesus didn't give this parable, I think, to teach economics but there's some principles in here that I want to draw for it. So we have this vineyard of a certain man. Let's envision this vineyard. So there's land, okay? So it's hedged, kind of like fenced around, you know, maybe some hedges, okay? It has vines. What do the vines grow on? They have kind of like those little trellises or those little cables or ropes where they have the vines go on, okay? How do you plant those? Do you have tools? He probably has tools, right? He has tools to plant, tools to prune, he probably has tools to harvest. Now he has a wine fat, it's kind of like a vat, so he probably does something with like juice maybe, meaning he has to crush them, he has to store them. So he probably has equipment to trot down the grapes and convert it to juice, okay? If he's doing that, he probably has some wagons and animals to pull the wagons to market, right? He's not going to carry them on his shoulder, right? He has a tower and I want to talk to you more about the tower. The tower is to overlook the crop, to watch for intruders. He probably has structures to house the tools and the equipment and for the animals to live in. He probably has some tools to feed the animals. Maybe he grows his own silage, I don't know. Remember the foolish guy in Luke 12 with all the big barns, right? They had barns back then, they could store stuff, right? The certain man might have barns of his own that needs tools and equipment for that. He has husbandmen, right? He has laborers. He might even need a place for the laborers to stay. Maybe he has to have facilities to feed his men. Maybe he needs the night watchmen to overlook his crop. The certain man has quite an operation. He's able to leave it and go into a far country, right? Can you imagine just leaving your operation, I'm going to the far country. If you're a businessman, you're like, whoa, how far is the country, right? That'd be the question I'd be asking. So he probably needed a manager and maybe a bookkeeper. Remember the guy in Luke 16 who had that wicked steward? He still had a steward though, the guy who was, you know, doing stuff he shouldn't, he couldn't give an account of all the goods. So he probably had a manager, steward might have a bookkeeper, so he probably has ledgers and pens and papers and file cabinets and all that stuff, right? You get the idea a lot like this vineyard of the slothful man, right? He probably had some of that too. I bet you he inherited his though. This parable of the certain man obviously is about God, right, as I mentioned. But there's a lot that we can learn from this parable, right? Marx would tell you that this certain man was an exploitive capitalist. The whole operation was a bourgeois scheme. That's what he would tell you about the term for rich guy and Karl Marx, that there's proletariat, which is all the working class and bourgeois, right? And so his evolution, by the way, was that you'd have feudalism, mercantilism, I might have mentioned it, then you go to capitalism, you end up with a socialist utopia, right? So he was always, part of the reason he was broke, by the way, Marx, he would always get stipends from his parents and when they're all dead, then his buddy, Frederick Engels would send him money every month because he worked a few odd jobs at papers. But he would always, always spend his money on the next revolution. He's always looking for the next revolution. Whenever there was just a sign of discontent, he's sending money. Some of his kids pretty much died in poverty. I mean, it was just, he was an awful father, just a terrible man, terrible man, a bunch of other wicked stuff he did too. Anyway, so I love those ad hominem attacks. Okay, so what's going on in this guy's vineyard compared to what's going on in the other vineyard? So I just had a few proverbs here of this guy, Proverbs 24, this, this Flawful Man. Proverbs 19 says, Flawfulness casts us into a deep sleep and an idle soul shall suffer hunger. But you know, think about this. Let's say the guy did a little bit of work, okay? But how many people did he make his product for? He used it for himself, he used it for himself. Turn over to Proverbs 11, turn over to Proverbs 11. I came across this verse, and this verse should be a whole sermon. So contrasting these two vineyards, Proverbs 11, Proverbs 11, and I'm thinking here in the context of seeds, Proverbs 11, look at verse 24. There is that scattereth and yet increaseth. There is that withholdeth more than is meat, but attendeth to poverty. The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth shall be watered also himself. He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him, and blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it. So your initial reaction is, well, how if you scatter something, can it increase? Well, if you scatter to produce, it comes back to you. If you sow the seed and you scatter out, the more you scatter out, the more you return. But if you keep more to yourself, you'll get less in return, right? So we should be liberal souls when we go out and we sow in, we should be very liberal. We should scatter, we should scatter, right? It works with physical, it works with spiritual, right? So this guy, the sluggard, I don't think he was doing much scattering. He's like, how much do I need for my family? Okay, we're just going to do a little corn in the field, the heck with everybody else, right? But the liberal soul would say, thank you for what I have, and he would just plant the whole thing because it's a blessing to everybody else. So the servant, the certain man, right, he serves mankind, he serves his fellow man by pursuing his own self-interest, right? How do I make money for my family? Well, I'm going to be a farmer, or I'm going to be a shepherd, or I'm going to do this, and I'm going to produce, I'm going to produce more than I need, right? I have salvation for myself, but I'm going to make sure other people have salvation. It's freely given, freely received, right? I want to go out and give it more. So think about this, so the certain man, he serves his own needs, right? He gets food for himself, but he pays wages to the laborers, and then they can eat. Other industries flourish, think of the marketplaces that he brings them to, where he sells his goods. The vendors, the other vendors that are, think of his vendors, right, who provide him all the things that he needs to grow the grapes, things he needs for his vineyard, right? Turn to Luke 14, turn to Luke 14. So you see how the Bible's saying if you scatter, there's an increase, right? So we scatter with our soul weaning, right? We should also be scattering with our businesses and other things that we do. We should look to serve our fellow man. That's who you're serving, by the way, when production is well, you serve your fellow man. By serving your fellow man, someone you maybe have never met, your fellow man pays you because he served someone else. You get out and serve people, and it will never hurt you, it will never hurt you. Even if you don't get paid, still there's profit in that labor, still there's profit in that labor. So Luke 14, so let's look at this tower, the certain man in Matthew 12 had a tower, but Luke 14, 28 says, for which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he hath sufficient to finish it. So the tower had to be first planted, where to build it, how much will it cost, where do I get the materials, right? These are things this guy's thinking, right? What do these things cost, do I need an environmental impact study, right? Are there endangered species on my land, right? These are all things that people have to think about, right? This certain man reminds me of an entrepreneur, right? He sees the demand to people's needs, right? They need plumbing, or they need electrical work done, or they need whatever it is, they need milk, whatever it is, right? This guy sees the demand for grapes, or maybe grape juice, he has a vision, he makes a plan, he sits down, he calculates the cost, he builds the tower, he hedges it, he has workers, all of this stuff goes by, he builds this tower. By the way, how long does it take the tower to be built? How long does it take grapes to grow? How long does that take? Who pays the bills and the salaries when there's zero production, right? Entrepreneurs. Where you know it or not, I've just given you in what economics calls the four factors of production, land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship. They're all here in the Bible. The Bible doesn't speak anything negatively about these. By the way, do you think that God would place himself and his son in a parable in Matthew 12 as a wicked property owner? He's not going to place himself in any parable or any store that puts himself in negative light. He's God. He's perfect. Okay? So it's okay to plant a vineyard. It's okay to have laborers. It's okay to own land. It's okay to have capital goods and those types of things, okay? So Marx is against all that. He's against all of the things that I just said. But here's the interesting thing. Sitting down and making the tower, did you know a Marxist can't actually do that? Did you know they cannot do economic calculation? Sure. They can do math. I had math classes from my socialist college professors. But they actually cannot figure out what things cost. You know why that is in a Marxist economy? Because the government owns everything. When you go to sell a house, what's the first thing that you want to do? What's my housework? What's your real estate agent do? We've got to go look at comparables. What if no other house had sold ever? And what if none of the building materials had any prices on them down at Lowe's or Home Depot? If you have a true Marxist society, the government controls all the factors of production. Nothing is ever bought or sold. You can never know the price of anything. Number one, that's a problem. So you can never plan ahead how much stuff costs. And then secondly, you don't know if you have the right use for something. So you see a tree. Huh. Should that be a skateboard or toothpicks or pencils or what should I do with it? You don't know because you don't know what it costs. You don't know what the best use of that is. These are all things the Bible shows us, but the Marxists cannot accomplish. That's why their system, aside from the fact that they can't figure out the nature of man, they get that wrong. That's why it will always fail because you never can determine a cost. That's why they have to have capitalist countries around the socialist countries. Anyway, so turn to 1 Kings 4.25. And again, I'm not saying God's a capitalist. I'm not, please don't confuse that. We're just talking about economic principles. So what's interesting is God uses our physical dependencies to try to get our attention. He has famine. Famine is what? You don't have any food to eat. Uh-oh, I can't eat. I die. He has drought. Oh, I need water to drink. I don't have water. So God tries to get our attention through those physical dependencies. So the time when Israel was most blessed financially was during the time of Solomon, 1 Kings 4.25. During that time, God's greatest blessing on Israel was during this time. Production in Israel was under private ownership, 1 Kings 4.25. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely. And Judah and Israel dwelt safely. Every man under his vine and under his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. Of course, the opposite is true. When God punished Israel, he removed that blessing. So we saw in Judges 6 with Gideon, they're up living in caves. Every time they try to grow something, somebody comes down and steals it. I mean, I guess it's their land, but they don't really have control over it. So any time God wants to get your attention, what he does is he takes those physical needs that he's made inherent to you, and then he starts to put you on a lean diet, starts to get your attention. That's what Brother Jared mentioned about the antichrist a few weeks ago. No buying, no selling, no trading. Meaning, you are not going to be able to meet your physical dependencies that God has placed in you. The antichrist is going to control that. Isn't that how we interrogate and torture prisoners? No water for you, no sleep for you. Right? It's a way to achieve things that we want from people. I'm going to have to speed up a little bit here. So one of the things you're also going to notice is that in this system of communism, I'm going to show you in a minute, the wicked always seem to obtain to power. Have you ever wondered why that is? Because you always hear it's like, well, if we just have the right people running this socialist government, then it would be great. Well, here's the problem. When you want to take total control of the society, people don't want to give it up. I don't want to give up my car or my land or my business. I mean, I work for their mind. It was all fair and square how I made them. So you must compel people by threat or by force in order to get them. So a man has to surrender his liberties, his freedoms, his mind, his intellect, his possessions. The average person who supports these things, think about this. There's typically a line they won't cross. They're like, okay, we need to go across and shoot your little neighbor. Ooh, yeah, I can't really do that. But there are certain people that will do that. Sons of Belial, reprobates, they have no problem. So that's one of the answers. So while many people want to achieve the ends of Marxism, this utopia, there are a few who will do whatever it takes. There is a line most people will not cross. What I call the do-gooders and the useful idiots who are front people that they use for them, they're the line they won't cross. However, there is an R who will do anything to rise to power. You know that Lord Acton, he says, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts? Absolutely. Each and every time you see it. Think of Hitler, right? How did him and his band of merry men get to power? They lied and cheated and stole and they burned down the Reichstag. They did all sorts of stuff getting to that point of power. Okay, getting to that point of power. By the way, he was a Nazi, you know what that means? That's what it's for? National socialist, right? He's a socialist. But you know what, I think of Israel, particularly the northern kingdom. It was one dynasty after another dynasty changing through treason and assassination, turning to 1 Kings 16. And they're just constantly doubling down on the previous wickedness of the former. So you had one king, one dynasty, right after another, one family replaced by another. Sometimes kings were assassinated by their own servants and officers. 1 Kings 16, 8. In the 20th and 6th year of Asia, king of Judah begot Eli, the son of Bashah that ran over Israel in Terzah two years, and his servant Zimri, captain of half his chariots, conspired against him, and he was in Terzah drinking himself drunk in the house of Arzah, steward of his house in Terzah, and Zimri went in and smote him and killed him in the 27th year of Asia the king of Judah and buried him instead. So Zimri was a servant and he killed his boss. Of course Zimri lasted about a week after that and he was dead. But Proverbs 29 says this, If a ruler harken the light, all his servants will be wicked. So not only will the wicked guy be in charge, you'll have a whole room of other wicked people. So Proverbs 29 2 says this, When the righteous are an authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. So you can kind of make a connection. The more wicked the government, the more totalitarian it will be, the more control it has, the more people they're going to kill because they have absolute control. So when I see these t-shirts of Che Guevara of Cuba, or Mao Zedong of China, or these little acronyms for the 99 or the M bill, whatever those people are, you know what I see? One, they're just fronts for your soldiers. All I see is Gath and Hel falling right behind them. That's all I see. And I'm going to show you what I mean. I'm going to show you what I mean. Turn over to Proverbs 6 17. But you know what matters? Here it is. If you're really for social justice, if you're really for social justice, and you know you're not because here it is, if they're for social justice, if they really got justice, you know what that would mean? It means they would be the ones in hell. That would be justice. If I got what I deserve, all of mankind would be in hell. Now that would be justice. Well, they don't want that. You know what matters? Mercy matters. Grace matters. Eternal life matters. Romans 2 11 says God's not a respecter of persons. There's no respecter of persons with him. Galatians 3 28 says this. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither bond nor free. There is neither man nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Coming to the foot of the cross, we all come the same way. That's equality. That's equality. This is what Jesus said. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by me. Now that's equality. We all come the same way, right? He's not a respecter of persons. So let's look at the record of Marx. Now, besides myself, who was alive in 1975? Brother Tino, I'm sure you were there, okay? But probably not many of you were alive in 1975, okay? There was a man, and by the way, here's a book. I don't recommend you read it because it's awful. It's the Black Book of Communism. It chronicles over 100 million people that were killed in the last century by communist regimes, okay? 1975, I was about a year old. The country is Cambodia. The government is Khmer Rouge. And the ruler, his name is Pol Pot. Has anyone heard of Pol Pot, by the way? He's the most effective communist ever. No one's ever heard of him. He was a Marxist. Ironically, just as Marx, here's the interesting thing. He came from money. He was well educated. He attended college in France, just as Marx did. Pol Pot joined the French communists in the 40s. Marx had similar groups that he joined when he was in college. Pol Pot came to power in 1975. He was only in power for three years, until about 1978. Like I said, I could have chosen anyone, but he was the most efficient. Pol Pot's goal, among other things, was to make everyone equal, particularly economically. He wanted the government to have controls over the means of production, right? The land, the labor, the capital, entrepreneurship. He wanted to bring everyone back to an agrarian lifestyle in the last time, so they could achieve the next step in Marx's economic utopia, right? He wanted them over in socialism. So it's no surprise that you have never heard this. You really have to look for this stuff. So Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime took control in Cambodia. In 1975, the best estimates have the population of Cambodia at 7.5 million. Cambodia is mostly an undeveloped rural country. About a third of the people, two and a half million people, live in the capital city of Phon Phin. Pol Pot took the entire city of two and a half million people, and in 72 hours, he evacuated the whole city. He wasted no time. Look at Proverbs 6.17. A proud look and a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief. Okay? So all the people were forced to leave the city and go to the countryside. I mean everyone. Elderly that could not leave were shot, hospitals were closed, patients that could not travel were shot, and many people died on the trip. You get the picture, okay? If you had glasses, he killed you, because that means you could read, right? If you could speak a foreign language or you went to college, dead, okay? You could not own anything, even the clothes on your back were not yours. But everyone had the same job. Everyone had the same amount of income. Everyone ate the same. Everyone was equal. I mean that's a positive. Everyone was equal. There was no inequality. Couldn't get married unless you had permission. Kids were separated at ages five or six, and people spent all their days working in the rice paddocks. You might have heard of the killing fields. Okay. These are living, breathing people made in the image of God, physically killed, starved, maimed, or tortured, right? Did anyone get a chance to give them the gospel? He's killed all these people. Took their chance to hear the gospel away, right? Killed them physically, and unfortunately many of them probably ended up, because they're outside of Christ in their sin. Here's an interesting statistic. He killed about nine to ten percent of the population every year. You know the travesty? One of the other travesties? He was out of office in 78. He died of old age. I mean it's crazy. You would think the Human Rights Commission would have had him, called there and there. No. Okay. And by 1980, because other regimes took over them, 4.5 million or roughly 40 percent of the population was dead. Never even heard about it, right? Socialism was in more control, right? Of course they hate God, the socialist rulers. You can be a socialist and still be a Christian, right? I'm not saying that. I'm saying the type of thinking, right? The socialists hate God. They're typically atheistic, and they love death. Look at Proverbs 8. Proverbs 8. We're running short on time. I'll just read it to you. Proverbs 8 says this. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul, all they that hate me love death. These guys love death, these socialist leaders. They love it. Okay? But here's the problem. In countries like Cambodia under Pol Pot, it's hard to know the totality of the death. These are the best estimates. Do you know why? Because all the eyewitnesses are dead. No one's around to see all the roadside killings and all the stuff that happened, the mass graves. So let me sum it up for you this way. So if you total all the death, not from just war, mass killings, famine, persecution, et cetera, it's a term they call democide. And it's not what you think, just democide. You have an estimated total death from 1900 to 1999 of 262 million people. Okay? That doesn't include the 70 million we killed here on abortions. We're not even getting into that. Let me give you perspective on what happens when you leave the Bible and you follow the wicked imaginations of man. If the average height of a person is five feet, how far could you stack the bodies? We're in Fresno. You could stack the bodies from here to Phoenix, and then you could go from Phoenix, you could go to New York, and then you could go to Paris, and I'm not done, and then you could go to Moscow. And once you went to Moscow, you could go clear around the globe. Not once, not twice, not three times. You could stack the dead bodies from these communist regimes six times around the globe. Six times. That's what you get. This is not a T-shirt that we should be wearing, right? This is serious stuff. This is serious stuff. So let me give you some applications here. The first physical application is don't be a communist dictator. There you go, right? Don't be one of those guys. Now, the second one, and I'm saying that jokingly, of course, the second one, I'll give you a spiritual application, and it goes back to the earlier points, right? Did you know our physical dependency on creation isn't an example, and it's an illustration of our spiritual dependency. It is likened by God onto spiritual things, right? Have you ever heard of anybody that has never drank anything? Of course, everybody's had to drink something, right? Okay. How about eating, right? Everybody's had to eat something. I'm just going to have to read these verses to you because we're over time. Did you know that Jesus Christ is our food? John 635 says, And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. So God has set up His physical creation to teach us spiritual truths, right? We're out there laboring. Can I do anything to get saved? No. I have to look to Him. I have a spiritual dependency on Christ, physical dependency on the creation that God has given, but I have a spiritual dependency on Christ. John 4 13 says, Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him shall never thirst. But the water that I will give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into a everlasting life. So Jesus Christ is our water. He's our food. He's our water. Did you know that Jesus Christ is our garment? Plenty of parables to this verse. Romans 13 14 says, But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lustre of. Galatians 3 37 says this, For as many as ye have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. So he's our food. He's our water. He's our garment. Did you know that if you don't sleep you'll ultimately die? Sleep deprivation. That's how they torture people. But did you know that Jesus Christ is our rest? Hebrews 4 9 says, Therefore remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest he also hath ceased from his own works as God did for his. Did you know that you cannot live without breathing? Well guess what? Jesus Christ is our spiritual life. He has quickened us. 1 Corinthians 15 45 And so it was written, The first man, Adam, was made a living soul. The last Adam was made a quickening spirit. So just as God has breathed life into man, Genesis 2, like he had the man made of dust, he breathed life into him. So Jesus Christ comes and quickens our spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into us and quickens us. Did you know that Christ gives us inheritance? So clearly he's not against inheritance. Ephesians 1 11 says this, In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. So God gives that inheritance. And the last verse I'll leave you with here. I'll close. 1 Peter 1 4 To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, in that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. So we have this inheritance that's incorruptible and it's reserved for us. I'm going to read you one of my favorite verses here and we'll close with this. Colossians 1 Colossians 3 Colossians 3 And it's verse 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ also, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. So God provides us what we need for our physical lives and he also provides us what we need for our spiritual lives. Don't be a communist. Answer your questions. Let's pray. You