Dr Greg Bahnsen - Economic Ethics: Honest Money (Part 6)

Months ago on economic ethics, which may seem something of a strange subject for a worship service. However, we have come to learn that God expects obedience from us, holiness in all walks and all areas of life. And one of the main areas of life, one of the key features or departments of our human existence is certainly the use of our finances, the use of our money. And so a number of facets, all biblical in orientation, having to do with economic ethics, have been studied previously. We've looked at the notion of private property, the idea of caring for the poor, the biblical view of wealth, and subjects such as these. This morning we're coming to a subject which, probably more than any of the others, will appear to be out of place in the Christian pulpit, the study of monetary theory. However, I trust it will become apparent to you, hopefully, in short order, that this is not at all something that stands outside of Christian preaching, but is something that the word of God has, something very definite to speak to, something which touches us not just in our pocketbooks, but in our hearts as well. Another thing we're going to be doing this morning, as well as continuing that series, is combining our ordinary exhortation with our children's sermon. Because Elder Andrus is on vacation, I'm going to be taking over that department of our children's sermon. And so, without having the children come forward, I want to begin this morning by asking them a question. It has to do with this piece of paper that I'm holding in my hands. I'm wondering if any of the children among us can tell me what is this piece of paper that I'm holding in my hands. That's a dollar. That's right. That's a $1 bill. Isn't says right on there. Federal Reserve note. This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. That's pretty fancy language for little kids, isn't it? That means you can use this to buy things and to pay off your debts. It says right there that you can do it. But what I want to ask you, you children, this is a $1bill. Whose picture is on this piece of paper? Michael, can you tell me whose picture that is? George Washington. That's George Washington's picture on this Federal Reserve note. Now, let me tell you something, children. This is going to be a little surprising. Probably be surprising to your parents, too. This piece of paper that I hold in my hand is really a picture of all of us. You look at yourself in the mirror and you probably don't look like that, do you? But there's a very important Sense in which what you see on this piece of paper is a picture of each and every one of us in this room. And if you listen closely to what I'm going to say to your parents this morning in the sermon, you'll understand why that is. And if you kind of lose track or at the end of what I have to say this morning, you still don't understand how this is a picture of each and every one of us. I want you to ask your parents at home because they'll understand when we get done. They'd better. Our scripture reading this morning comes from the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter one. So please turn in the Old Testament with me to Isaiah, the first chapter, and I will read it in its entirety. Isaiah, chapter one. Hear now the word of God. The vision concerning Judah and Jerusalem that Isaiah, son of Amoz, saw during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah. Hear, O heavens. Listen, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his master, the donkey his owner's manger. But Israel does not know. My people do not understand. Ah, sinful nation. A people loaded with guilt. A brood of evildoers, children given to corruption. They have forsaken the Lord. They have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him. Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted, from the sole of your foot to the top of your head. There is no soundness, only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil. Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire. Your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you, laid waste as when overthrown by strangers. The daughter of Zion is left like a shelter in a vineyard, like a hut in a field of melons, like a city under siege. Unless the Lord Almighty had left us some survivors, we would have become like Sodom. We would have been like Gomorrah. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Listen to the law of our God. You people of Gomorrah. The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me? Says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings of rams and of the fat of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats when you come to meet with me. Who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings. Your incense is Detestable to me. New moons, sabbaths and convocations. I cannot bear your evil assemblies, your new moon festivals, and your appointed feast. My soul hates. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong, learn to do right. Seek justice. Encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land. But if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. See how the faithful city has become a harlot. She once was full of justice. Righteousness used to dwell in her, but now. Murderers. Your silver has become dross. Your choice wine is diluted with water. Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves. They all love bribes and chase after gifts. They do not defend the cause of the fatherless. The widow's case does not come before them. Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty, the Mighty One of Israel declares, Ah. I will get relief from my foes and avenge myself on my enemies. I will turn my hand against you. I will thoroughly purge away your dross and remove your impurities. I will restore your judges, as in days of old, your counselors, as at the beginning. Afterward, you will be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city Zion will be redeemed with justice, her penitent ones with righteousness. But rebels and sinners will both be broken together. And those who forsake the Lord will perish. You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks in which you have delighted. And you will be disgraced because of the gardens that you have chosen. You will be like an oak with fading leaves, like a garden without water. The mighty man will become tender, and his work a spark. Both will burn together, with no one to quench the fire. And thus far, the reading the terrifying word of God. Isaiah's prophecy is the best known of all of the prophecies of the Old Testament. That isn't to say that it's well known, but of those that are known, it's perhaps the best known. And the opening chapter of Isaiah's prophecy is dramatic. It stands out. It's unique and extraordinary among all of the prophetic messages of the Old Testament, I, Isaiah, comes forth with an impassioned plea for the people of Jerusalem and Judah, roundabout to recognize that the Lord is ready to break into judgment upon Judah. The people of Isaiah's day would never have expected that. They prided themselves in their religious practices. They prided themselves in their following of the formalities of the festival seasons. They prided themselves in their name, the people of God, the Israelites. And yet Isaiah says, God doesn't hear your prayers. God doesn't care for your church services. God doesn't wish to see your sacrifices. In fact, all of that is not just unacceptable in his sight, which is embarrassing enough, it is detestable in his sight. He turns from it in revulsion. Isaiah says. Isaiah says, I see Israel like an abandoned hut in a field on a summer day where the sun has scorched all the melons, and there's one standing hut out there, and God will send the sword against it. You can understand why Isaiah was not popular in his day. You know, we like to think of ourselves who read the Bible and read these stories and see these situations develop in our imagination and in our reading, if you will, as the good guys. We like to think, well, yeah, but if Isaiah were here, we'd have him to be our pastor. We'd love to hear Isaiah preach to us. But you wouldn't. You wouldn't. You probably get irritated with me every once in a while, but believe me, I'm pablum in comparison to the indicting words of an Isaiah. Isaiah minced no words. Isaiah played no games. Religious religion was dead serious business for Isaiah. And what he wanted to say to the people of Israel is, your religion stinks in the nostrils of God. Your religion is detestable and unacceptable. Why? Why would Isaiah have such a detrimental message to preach? Why such an unpopular theme? Well, it turns out that a number of sins committed by the nation of Israel were prominent in Isaiah's mind. And one of those sins that we're going to be looking at today, one of those sins that Isaiah indicts has to do with their understanding of money. I wonder how you understand money if you don't understand monetary policy. If you don't have a holy attitude toward the exchange of money, do you really have any hope of escaping the indictment of Isaiah? Has our society any hope of escaping the indictment of Isaiah? That's why, as strange as it may seem, we need from time to time anyway not to make a hobby horse of it, but we do need to pay attention to this area of life as well. What do we understand about money and the proper use and constitution of it? What is money in the Bible? You know, when you look in a concordance, you won't find many entries under the name money. And there's a historical reason for that that I'll come to in a few moments. You need to understand that in the Bible, paper was not exchanged as money. Silver and gold were exchanged as money. And therefore, when the Bible speaks of money, it speaks of one's silver, it speaks of one's gold. And very interestingly, the Bible refers to money under the name of a weight or weights in addition to silver and gold. The word weights in the Old Testament refers to money used in ancient society. Money was spoken of and money was measured by by weight. And so here's an illustration. In 1st Chronicles 21:25, David gave to Ornan for the place 600 shekels of gold by weight. You see, that indication by weight indicates that this is a monetary measure. People measured out their silver and gold by weight, and that was used as money. In light of that, please turn in your Bibles to Leviticus 19, verses 35 to 37, where we read a very important law From God, Leviticus 19. At the 35th verse, Moses stipulates, inspired by God, do not use dishonest standards when measuring length, weight or quantity. Use honest scales and honest weights, an honest epheth and an honest hymn. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt. Keep all my decrees and all my laws, and follow them. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19, you see, condemns the use of unjust weights, the use of unjust money. Those weights, those units of money, which pretend to be one thing, but in actuality are another. Let's say you lived in ancient Israel and you're getting ready to sell one of your cows and you set the price of the cow. I have no idea whether this is an illustration given to scale or not. Let's say you set the price of your cow as one shekel of silver. So the man who wants to buy your cow comes and he gives you what he calls one shekel of silver. But it so happens that he's weighed out the silver, or that silver has actually been coined into a shekel by somebody who has made it 9/10 of a shekel by weight. Although he calls it a shekel, it's really only 9/10 of the shekel in actual silver. He has cheated you, hasn't he? He's given you not 100% of the price, but only 90% of the price that you ask for the cow. And yet you thought that you were receiving the whole price. And so that unjust measurement of money turned out to be a way of cheating you through fraud, through pretense, through hypocrisy, giving you a piece of money that says one thing or pretends by its appearance to be one thing, when in fact it is another. The law of God teaches us then, that a false measure of money defrauds people by false judgment just as much as does a corrupt judge in court defraud the society when he passes unjust sentence. You are to have just weights, just money. The Lord says you must have honest currency. And a society which does not have honest currency is not an honest society. It's a fraudulent society, it's a defrauding society, it's a cheating society, it's a greedy society. A society that tolerates judges that pass unjust sentence is the same kind of society that tolerates money, which is cheating money, dishonest money. And it's for that reason that later Jewish authorities declared, and I'm quoting now here, the sin of illegal weights and measures is greater than that of incest and is equivalent to the sin of denying that God redeemed Israel out of Egypt. The Jews understood, at least some of the commentators among the Jews understood the seriousness of this law from God. To cheat when it comes to your money is worse than incest, they said. And believe me, they had no happy view of incest. It was a capital crime among them. And they said, it's worse than incest for our society for you to have dishonest money. In Romans 13:1:4, Paul describes the ministry of the state for us. Turn in the New testament to Romans 13 and notice especially what the state is charged to do. Paul says in verse three, for rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the One in authority? Then do what is right, and he will commend you, for he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. And Paul goes on to say, that's why we submit to rulers. God's ordained them for a very good task and purpose. They are ministers of justice. They punish criminals in your society, those who would do you evil. They punish those who do good. They commend. The State very simply is a minister of justice. It protects the citizens of the society. And part of the justice which is appointed to the state to enforce part of that justice is the justice of weights and measures. Basically, what I'm saying is the State is charged with protecting us against fraud, stealing through pretense. And therefore there is a biblical warrant for the State maintaining strict standards of measurement and thereby citizens, for instance, against buying two pounds of apples at the market under the Merchant's label of £5. Because you see, he has a different way of measuring pounds. See, if I go to the counter and I think I have two pounds by weight and he charges me for five and he does so because he says, well, I understand what you mean by a pound, but what I mean by a pound is this. Then of course he's stealing from me. He's getting two and a half times the price that he should because he has a different definition, he has a different standard of a pound. Now, the lawful authority that is over us to protect us against that kind of pretense and that kind of fraud, that kind of cheating and stealing is the State. The state establishes just weights and measures. And so in the area of weights, remember that's a biblical word for money. In the area of money, this just protection against fraud leads to laws that define what we call legal tender. Legal tender is that tender, that currency that passes from hand to hand for the payment of debts, which is legal, which is recognized in the society, which the State regulates as just in terms of the state's God given duty to recognize and regulate legal tender, counterfeiting becomes illegal. See, the state says, this is legal tender. We have a monopoly on the declaration and the judgment of that matter about legal tender. So anybody who goes out and pray prints pieces of paper that look very much like that one I had in my hand a few moments ago. No matter how good it looks, if it's not printed by the state and regulated by the state is not passing legal tender, he is counterfeiting, he is defrauding his society. And that is rebellion against authority. That is an immoral practice because it's the practice of injustice through fraud. Now, I need to say that at the very beginning of this morning's message because down toward the end of my remarks this morning, I'm going to be indicting the state for fraud. I'm going to be saying the state is guilty of, in effect, counterfeiting. But that does not by any means give us the right to emulate the sinful practices of the state. The fact that the state may be guilty of counterfeiting does not give me the right to become a counterfeiter. And even though I do not agree with, in fact will severely indict the immorality and injustice of our monetary system today. That doesn't change the fact that the state is a duly authorized authority to establish legal tender. And I may believe its legal tender is going to fall like a house of cards someday, but the fact of the matter is that it is legal and that is the state's right to protect against fraud. And in this area, the fact that the state has the right to declare legal tender, however, doesn't demand that the state alone should print money. In our society, that's the way it is. And because the state has that law, we honor it. But there's no reason, given a free market analysis of an economic system, that the state alone should print or coin money. You see, there could indeed be multiple producers of coin or money in a society or operating on a free market, provided that the state takes swift action to prosecute and to punish all forms of fraud. You see, if you have 12 different agencies that are producing gold coins that are supposed to be 1oz gold coins, let's say the state doesn't have to be the agency that produces those coins, but the state should take very swift action when it is found out that one of those producers is turning out 9/10 of an ounce as a full ounce gold coin. You see, on the free market you have this advantage that all the competitors would be checking one another to make sure that fraud isn't taking place. And nobody in a competitive situation is going to let his opponent get the advantage through fraud. And so you would have each of the producers of coin or paper money, if you want, checking one another for fraud and then prosecuting through the agency of the state, that too would be a way of enforcing legal tender. So I don't want to be misunderstood. On the one hand, the state has the right to declare legal tender. That does not mean that the only way in which the state can regulate legal tender is by printing the money itself or coining the money itself. But the state does have that right. Now, what is money? We've been talking about it for a long time. We all think we understand it. But perhaps a word or two about it would be helpful before I proceed to the more important indictment of what is happening all around us today. Money basically is the overcoming of the difficulties of the barter system of exchange. You know what the barter System is all right. You have a farmer who has corn. You have a rancher who has cattle. And you have a merchant who makes, let's say, cars. Now, the man who has the cattle. May not be happy to have steak every night. He may like to have corn mixed in with his steak. In fact, he may even like to have a car. So he can go to town and buy a dinner at a restaurant every once in a while. And so if you're on the barter system. He has to hope that the man who grows the corn. And the man who makes the cars. Will be happy to trade corn and cars for cattle. Now, it so happens in our little imaginary society. That the man who grows the corn. Is really quite tired of that vegetarian diet. And he'd love to have a steak for dinner tonight. And so when he's approached by the man who has the cattle. He's glad to make an exchange of who knows how many heads of corn for so many head of cattle. Whatever they think is fair, and they make that exchange. But now, what if the man who makes cars and sells cars. Has enough cattle and enough corn altogether. And he's just not interested in the exchange? He's really interested in Persian rugs. He'd like to decorate his house. And so you. You have cattle, you go to him and you ask him if he would exchange a car. For about 100 head of cattle, let's say. And he says, no, I don't need any cattle. But I sure would like a Persian rug. I'll give you a car if you'll give me a Persian rug. And there you are, you're stuck. You want that car desperately. But your means of exchange, the commodity you would trade with him. Is something he doesn't need. And so you have two options. To forget the car. Or to run around looking for somebody who sells Persian rugs. Who wants cattle. So that you can get a Persian rug for your cattle. And go back to the car dealer. And then get the car that you want in exchange for that Persian rug. Well, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination and extrapolation. To understand how difficult a system that is. And so, very early on in human history. The barter system was exchanged for a system of monetary trading. Whatever is used to overcome the difficulties of the barter system as a means of exchange. Has got to be something that everybody is prepared to accept in exchange for goods and services. Indeed, the reason that a person will accept money in payment. Is that he knows that other people, in turn, will accept from him. That Money for what he wants. And so basically can. Basically we can say that money is an acceptable means of payment. Money is any acceptable means of payment. Now, are all means of payment acceptable? Not at all. How would you like it if we made air money, right? I delivered to you so many liters of air, all this abundant stuff round about us. Now, that wouldn't be very helpful. It wouldn't be acceptable at all. Ordinarily, people have used their most marketable goods as a media of exchange. Things like cattle, fish, salt, in some societies, women. We're glad we're beyond that today. Historically, however, through the development of means of exchange, gold and silver emerged as the most commonly accepted means of exchange, displacing through the exercise and competition of the free market. The other commodities that had been proposed, gold and silver, you see, are uniquely marketable and almost always in great demand, valued either for their scarcity or for their ornamental value. Indeed, all of the qualities of an efficient medium of exchange are satisfied by gold and silver. Whatever's going to be money, you see, has to be durable. Ground beef would not be a good means of exchange because, you see, it goes rotten so fast. So you have to have a durable means of exchange. It should be transportable. And if we had boulders from the high Sierras as a means of exchange, it wouldn't do us much good unless you wanted to live right in the vicinity of the boulders. Now you have to have a transportable and a durable means of exchange. One that is easily divisible into equal units, accurate units that can be measured. And finally, one that is relatively scarce. Air is not a good means of exchange because there's just too much of it for people to push around as money. And so it turns out that gold and silver have, through history, stood out as a good means of exchange. Please understand, useless metals or other objects, seashells, what have you, cannot, could not have become established as money simply by personal preference or personal decision. You don't get together and say, well, let's all make leaves from trees money. Okay, now that doesn't work. A society will not accept leaves from trees as a means of exchange. There's a reason for that. Whatever functions as money must have had a pre existing price, some consumer value. And it must have been in the immediate past that that value was recognized. And that's what grounds a demand for the commodity. There's a demand for silver, there's a demand for gold, there's no demand for leaves. And so the thing that distinguishes the commodity that we call money, that value Commodity gold and silver. The thing that distinguishes this commodity from all the others is that you don't use it up through consumption. People don't use up their gold and silver. Silver. They may use it for ornamentation and for jewelry, but they do not consume it. It is always available. It's there for use on demand. Above all, gold and silver are valued for the things that they can purchase and that's what makes them good money. Alright, enough background now. Now you can understand what Isaiah was so concerned about. Isaiah. The first chapter. Isaiah gives a prologue to his prophecy. In the first three verses, he explains that he has prophesied during the reign of four of the kings of Judah. He gives the burden on his heart. And then in verses four to nine, he explains the sinful condition of the nation. He says, you're a sinful nation, loaded with guilt, a brood of evil to the children who have learned corruption. And the sinful condition of that nation is first of all illustrated in terms of the hypocritical worship of Isaiah's day. Verses 10 to 17. These are powerful words. Isaiah calls Judah Sodom and Gomorrah. Boy, I mean, this is really terrible. God's people like Sodom and Gomorrah. And then he says, your multitude of sacrifices. God says, I don't want them. They're nothing to me. I have no pleasure in your sacrifices. Who's asked you to come and trample down my courts in this way? Your festival seasons, your new moons, your sabbaths, they're all detestable. I can't bear it when you come together for assemblies. Friends, how would you like that if God said that about our gathering together today? What if God in heaven were to say, I can't bear to see you come to church. All of your religious activities, they stink in your hands. When you lift them up to prayer, I see blood on your hands. And I won't listen to you. I'll turn my head away. And no matter how often you ask, I will not listen to your prayers. And so Isaiah indicts the hypocritical worship of the day. And then in verses 18 to 23, there's this tender appeal for repentance. God says, come, reason with me. Though your sins are like scarlet, I can make them white as snow. I can restore you, I can forgive. But you must do justice. You must repent. You must turn from your wicked ways. You must trust in me. And then God announces his coming judgment. In verses 24 to 31, he says, the day is coming when Israel will be removed, when in fact it will stand like an oak that has been poisoned, a disgraced garden, a shack in the middle of a field that will be torn down. This is the context of Isaiah's prophecy. And in that context, notice that what Isaiah is doing basically is bringing a covenantal lawsuit against the people. Isaiah is serving as a prosecuting attorney for God. He comes and he says, I call heaven and earth to witness this day. That's very important language in the Old Testament. If you read the book of Deuteronomy repeatedly, five or six times, you'll find in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses says, the witnesses to the covenant God has made with you are heaven and earth. To understand that, just a word about ancient covenant making. In the world of the Jews, to make a covenant required that stipulations be laid down, that promises be exchanged, and that witnesses come to verify the terms of the covenant. In the Old Testament, God made covenant with Israel. He laid down stipulations to is Israel, promises were made to Israel, and then God said, heaven and earth are called to bear. The whole created order bears witness to this covenant. That's the significance of the fact that Isaiah's prophecy begins. Hear, O heavens, listen, O earth. Isaiah is going back to that ancient contract, if you will. He's going back to that honored covenant. He's opening it up and appealing to the witnesses to come now and to stand against Israel. He says, heaven and earth, listen. This is the kind of people God has raised up. They are people full of sinful corruption, according to verse 4. And that sinful corruption is rooted in their becoming spiritual strangers to their heavenly Father. They don't even know who their Father is. They worship the wrong gods. They worship God in the wrong way. And that rebellion has brought injury upon themselves. Isaiah says, from the sole of your feet to the head, there's nothing but welts and wounds and bleeding sores. He says, you're not spiritually sound at all. You're an unhealthy people and the judgment of God is coming upon you. Isaiah says, sin is self destructive. Sin tastes good at first, sin seems pleasurable at the outset, but sin brings consequences. It destroys you. Specifically, Isaiah condemns two aspects of Israelite life, its religious and its social existence. The religious we've already talked about and we're going to pass over this morning to concentrate on that social area of transgression in the nation. I want you to notice these verses. Verse 10. Isaiah says, There, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, listen to the Law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. The rulers have departed from the law that begins the indictment. Then verses 16 and 17, your hands are full of blood. Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong, learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Isaiah says, your society is characterized by oppression. Your rulers don't care for the law. Their hands are full of blood. They don't listen to the widow. The cause doesn't come up there, the oppressed are not relieved. And then verses 21 to 26, the faithful city is a harlot, once full of justice, but now murderers dwell in her. The silver has become dross, the wine is diluted. The rulers are rebels, they are companions of thieves. They chase after bribes. They don't defend the fatherless. The widow's case doesn't come before them. God says that the day is coming when he'll restore Judges, counselors is at the beginning. You see, the religious and the socio political aspects of Israel's life are equally condemned by Isaiah. And it's in the context of indicting the social injustice of Judah. In Isaiah's day that he mentions specific sins. Now please listen very closely if you're going to understand what Isaiah's indictment amounts to, if you're going to understand the children's sermon this morning. Isaiah sometimes mentions specifics as literal instances of the nation's sinful condition. A good example is verse 17. There he says, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. That is a literal instance of what was going on in Isaiah's day that God found abhorrent, socially unjust. But in addition to such literal instances, Isaiah also gives figurative illustrations of the more general sinfulness of the people. He takes a specific instance as, if you will, symbolic of the whole of their unjust character. An example of that would be verse 16 where he says, there is blood on your hands. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean. Blood on the hands would indicate they are a murderous and violent people. But it's rather clear from the context that Isaiah doesn't mean simply that they are murderous. The blood on their hands is symbolic of the whole range of blood guilty crimes that are against them and stand on their record. And so sometimes he speaks of literal instances, other times he takes a specific sin as a general indictment for the whole of their fallen condition and their unjust character. And then of all things, sometimes he combines them in verse 21. Notice. See how the faithful city has become a harlot. She once was full of justice. Righteousness used to dwell in her. But now murderers. The faithful city is a harlot. Well, harlotry is a specific instance of sin. It's wrong. But harlotry is also, you see, in this case, a broad indication that it's a murderous and violent and unjust city. So what I'm getting at is that Isaiah is doing usually two things. When he mentions one sin, he's mentioning a specific misdeed in Judah society. And that specific misdeeds stands for the broader complex of sin that represents the whole society. But whether he is talking of the specific sin or he's talking about the general condition, please notice that all of the conditions he mentions are sinful in character. Even if Isaiah does not mean harlotry in the literal sense, he wouldn't talk about the sin sinfulness of Israel as harlotry unless harlotry were sinful. Okay, What I'm saying is that Isaiah, I think, was indicting the harlots of Jerusalem. But if he wasn't, if he was just talking about sinfulness of the city symbolized by harlotry, the fact is that symbol takes on its force and thrust because harlotry is, in the first place, wrong. And so whenever Isaiah mentions these specifics, whether as instances or general illustrations, what he mentions is an unrighteous condition. Now we have narrowed our focus and we can finally come to the heart of the matter. Verse 22. Isaiah says, this is the social injustice, either in particular instance or as a general illustration. This is the social injustice that makes you unacceptable in the eyes of God. Your silver has become dross. Your choice. Wine diluted with water. Isaiah has been speaking of adultery, verse 21. He now changes the illustration to the adulteration of wine and money. The base metals which were separated out or purged away from precious metals through the smelting process were called dross. And what Isaiah says is, your silver has become dross. Instead of the pure product, it's become the mixed and worthless metal. The fine silver, just like the precious wine of the nation, has either been diluted by or replaced with a metal of living lesser value. It's been replaced with dross. It's been diluted. You see, what merchants would do is they'd have fine wine, they'd advertise it as the best wine, sell it at top price, and instead of giving you a full gallon of it, they'd give you Half a gallon watered down with water or fruit water. And so you ended up buying diluted water and being cheated. And they'd do the same thing with their silver. They would leave the dross in. They'd mix it and they'd purposely do it and pass it as legitimate silver coinage. What passes is silver coins, Isaiah says, is dross. Now, quickly, some people have said, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong to do that. That's just a way of saying that the purity of Israel has been sullied, that the rulers should be noble people, but they're really unjust. Well, again, I remind you, I think that was going on in Isaiah's day. I think that was an instance, just like murder and idolatry and harlotry and all the rest that also point to the general condition of the people. But even if it weren't, it would not be an effective indictment of the people if it were not wrong in the first place. And Isaiah then teaches us, on the authority of God's inspired word, it is wrong to dilute your money. It is wrong to dilute your wine and to pass it off as the real product. What a fitting illustration of the dishonest hypocrisy of the people before God. Their money stands for them. God says, you come before me. You're supposed to stand in uprightness. You're to have the integrity of silver, the purity of gold before me. But you are dross and my sight. And it isn't at all inappropriate that the money you exchange between one another is cheating, dishonest money. It is supposed to be silver, but it is dross. It's supposed to be precious wine, but it's diluted and watered down. What I'm saying is the money in Isaiah's day was as dishonest as the lives as the inhabitants of the inhabitants of Judah. Their money was a reflection of them. And that's why what I said this morning is true, that the picture on our dollar bills is a picture of us. For the money that is acceptable in a society is a reflection of that society's ethical level. We learn from Isaiah's indictment, then, that God expects righteousness to come to expression in, among other things, an honest and undiluted means of exchange. Money should be exactly what it appears to be, not weakened or replaced, not something that's just a version of the value that was originally declared. So what's the application of Isaiah's prophecy to our day and age? Let me talk to you just for a minute about inflation. Something probably the most common, at least apart from the children in our congregation. The most common thing that all of you deal with in the business world, whether you go to the store to buy groceries or whether you're dealing as a businessman in commodities, is the problem of inflation. Inflation is the increase, the inflating of the quantity of money or credit acting as money within an economic system. Higher prices are not inflation. Higher prices are the result of inflation. So you shouldn't confuse those two. Inflation means the inflating of the monetary supply or the credit that serves as money. Now, historically, inflation has resulted from the discovery or the capture of significant quantities of precious metals. Some instances for you would be the Spanish conquest of peru, or the 19th century discovery of gold in California, the Klondike in Australia. All of these brought some form of inflation to the society at that time. But most commonly, inflation has been caused in history by reducing the amount of metal represented by the unit of economic accounting, thereby giving the illusion that the amount of real money has been increased. Let's say that you hand me 10 ounces of gold and you tell me make gold coins, and instead of putting a full ounce into each one of my 1oz gold coins, I put only a half ounce into the coin and I use it to coat something else like copper or aluminum or some other base metal. What's going to happen, you can see very quickly that it's going to give the illusion of our society or our monetary system jumping twice the amount of gold coin that it really has. That has been the most common form of inflation throughout history. The process of inflating the currency by clipping the coins, that is taking part of their weight out, or alloying the coins, reducing the precious metal content, has more often than not been the accepted practice in Western statecraft throughout history. In fact, the first recorded instance of that took place in the Solonian reforms in Athens in 594 B.C. debtors were then authorized to clip their coins to discharge their debts in drachmas, which had been lightened by 27%. Basically, a quarter of the drachma could be clipped off and you could still use it as a whole drachma. I think you can imagine the consequences in Athens of that. The sobering consequences led to the Greeks adopting laws forbidding the tampering with coinage after that, from which we have a whole Western tradition of pure coinage legislation. And so we come up to the 13th century until we finally find the best way to inflate the monetary supply with the advent of paper making. Paper making led to the convenient issuance of warehouse receipts for coin and precious metals, which had been stored there. I have this really heavy bag of 100 gold coins, and I don't want to carry it around from merchant to merchant. So I take it to a warehouse which we now call a bank. I bank that money, and the bank gives me a piece of paper very easy to carry. In fact, it could be broken down into 100 pieces of paper, saying, this is worth one ounce of gold at the bank. And then I go to the merchant and I buy what I want with these pieces of paper. And if he ever wants the gold, he can go and pick it up. You can see very easily that these pieces of money would start being used as means of exchange. Then people wouldn't always have to go and check on the gold every night. After they finish out their receipts at their store, they can go home and buy milk and meat and bread and whatever they want using the pieces. So the pieces of paper start being exchanged. Well, the bankers, especially Italian bankers, figure out very quickly that if people aren't going to always be checking on the storehouse of gold and silver here, they can issue more pieces of paper than there are actual pounds of gold in the bank. It's not hard at all, and nobody ever checks on it. So what's it hurt? That has become the most efficient and most common form of inflation throughout more recent Western history. In fact, the bank of England officially sanctioned that kind of fraud in 1694 at its establishment. And the United States Federal Reserve System officially adopted in 1922, the policy of manipulating the quantity of paper currency and credit, supposedly in the interest of a stable price level. And this all you see goes down and is swallowed by our society just like it was slippery piece of fish. It doesn't gag in our throats that our society officially says we'll issue more pieces of paper than there is gold or silver to back them. And that in the interest of a stable price level. Remember, in actual fact, such inflationary practices have always resulted in the steady depreciation of the money measured by the price level of common goods and services. We love listening to our grandparents talk about the price of a good dinner when they went out to eat in their day. We laugh. You know that you could get pork chop dinner for 25 cents in their day. You see, in the name of a stable price policy, the United States government has been defrauding this society for years. Because, as we've learned, we can issue paper. We can run paper very quick. You can't dig gold and silver out of the earth very fast. But you can make the printing presses run just as long as you want. And so we have a political ball game going on when it comes to choosing a man who's going to be head of the Federal Reserve, a man who's supposed to have the right kind of restraints for making the printing presses run or not. That is a man who's supposed to be a very delicate counterfeiter of money. US Dollars are no longer redeemable for gold, despite the fact that law and presidential proclamation have defined the dollar as one 35 ounce of fine gold. You see, there are far, far warehouse receipts dollars spread in our society than there is gold and silver in the actual deposits of the national bank. The US Monetary system declares one thing, but dishonestly is another. And so the backing for our legal tender, very simply put, my friends, the backing of your legal tender today is not precious metals, but simply the word and the goodwill your political leaders. Now, when people no longer want and no longer trust gold and silver, which rarely or ever has happened as far as I know, but if that should happen, then paper money backed with such precious metals becomes worthless money. Granted. And likewise, when people no longer respect or trust the word or character of our political leaders or the endurance of the social system that rest on them, when people are no longer convinced that the American system of monetary exchange is going to continue, then paper money backed by the word of our political leaders will become as worthless and will collapse. And if you do not believe that day is coming, you don't believe the prophecy of Isaiah. Isaiah said, sin will bring its own consequences. Sin will bring you down. And from the sole of our feet to the head of our head, there is nothing but welts and open sores in our society. And it's no surprise we live in a dishonest age. We live in a cheating society. We live in a greedy society and culture. Our people don't cry out against the government's fraud because we would gladly practice such fraud if we could get away with it. Because what counts in our eyes is not doing what is right, not doing what is just not being honest, but getting away with it. And if I get ahead and get away with it, it's all right. That is an attitude of heart. And our dollar bill is not sinful just for what it is. Our dollar bill is a picture of us. It's a picture of our society. It's a picture of our attitudes. It's a picture of our lack of any monetary integrity. You see, today we trade in political value, not precious metal value. And I don't mean to say the Bible demands a gold standard. As long as the standard matches up to all the qualities and characteristics that I talked about earlier, that could be our standard. But as a matter of fact, in our society, it is gold and silver and other precious commodities that are valued. And it's not the word of a politician who says, let the printing presses run. We see when the printing presses run, who gets to that money first. You notice when the printing presses run, the government doesn't decide to send an equal amount of those green dollars to each and every one of us who are citizens. It isn't like the government says, all right, everybody gets some of this money. No, that money enters the economic system through a very narrow channel. It gets to certain people first and then through trading, finally filters down to us. Obviously, the people it gets to first are in a very favored position, aren't they? I might not be quite as worked up about this. If the money got to the poor and the widows and the orphans of our society first, it would still be fraud. But as a matter of fact, it gets to the. The bankers first. It gets to the people who have no need for the surplus, no need for the favorite position, no need for the advance, no need for the leverage over everybody else. We are trading in political value in our society. We're not treating. We're not trading in precious metal value. And I want to warn you, as God's people, to keep that in mind when it comes to your investment. Investments for the future. The value of your money holdings will always rest precariously upon the whim and the fiat of your rulers today. If you trust your rulers, hey, then trust your investments. They'll always be there. But if you have reason to doubt the integrity of the men who lead this country, boy, you'd better know that your investments are not safe. For you see, if the United States repudiates its debt, if the United States should remonetarize our society, if the United States should devalue the dollar that affects you directly because you were trading in the value of the word of your rulers. Our silver has, in short, become dross. It's forced upon us as pretend silver and the culprit for the increasingly higher prices and for an economic system which is nearly unpredictable. Look at the ups and the downs, the devaluations, the debt repudiations, all the rest. The culprit for those increasingly higher prices, the culprit for that inability to make any rational predictions in our monetary system. Today is the United States government through its inflationary practices. It I'm going to say this very clearly. It is the greatest oppressor of the poor, the elderly, the. The widows and the orphans of our land. Far more than any landlord, far more than any capitalist who is hoarding things for himself. The government is working against those who are on fixed incomes, those who have the least monetary resources and the least flexibility to respond to the economic swings up and down caused by its political decisions. To run the printing presses. Washington issues credit to the banks. The bank gives it out to those they think are wealthy enough to be worthy of it. The prices go up, and those who are on fixed incomes suffer and suffer and suffer, and our silver has become dross.