The Bible is full of economic wisdom which often goes neglected in our day because the Bible, the book for all of life is too commonly reduced to a devotional manual and “non-spiritual” truth is discarded.
Psalm 126: 5, 6 Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goes forth weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
Here we have a famine in view; the precious grain is sown with tears, because life depends upon its harvest. Present advantages must be sacrificed for future benefits. Sowing seed constitutes an investment in the future. A Society without hope is present-oriented society. It is a consumer society; it eats up its seed grain rather than planning for a future harvest. It becomes something that God condemns, a debt-oriented society, rather than a saving and sowing one. It pays no heed to the six-year limitation on debt, nor to the principle that the goal is to owe no man anything save to love one another (Rom 13:8). A debt society is death oriented; it makes saving, thrift, and future-oriented planning difficult or unprofitable, because it encourages consumption but not production. The tax structures of our time are anti-Scriptural with a vengeance. The moral order is reversed; debt becomes an asset to these humanists, and wealth a liability and an evil. Money today does not have gold or silver behind it but debt.
No country is underdeveloped because it lacks resources; rather, it does not utilize its resources; its capital is not productively employed. Neither its human resources nor its physical resources are put to productive use.
He who is future oriented sows with hope in the Lord, “shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bearing his sheaves with him.” The result is not only productivity, but joy…In Psalm 144:12-15, David prays for an obedient people, a faithful people, faithful to their covenant God and His law, “That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace…happy is that people, whose God is the LORD.”
Such a society begins with your faithfulness and mine. It is time to say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 14:15).
Excerpts of
Chalcedon Report 192
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