The vitriol poured upon the Covington schoolboys is nothing short of astounding in our lifetime. I suppose maybe the 60s, they wasn’t living then. Were the teenagers perfect? No, you can slice and dice that all day long certainly.
But did they deserve public shame and humiliation? Not after we saw the one hour video. No, and certainly they did not deserve death threats. But people thought they deserved it.
Who? Who would think this way? Or as a former attorney, I think he was assistant attorney of the nation, Daniel McCarthy, asked in his thoughtful essay what makes a liberal wanna punch a child? But a more pressing question for Christians is what makes a Christian leader want to publicly ridicule a child? Because that happened. Across Facebook and especially on Twitter, I read various so-called evangelical leaders. They are, but I would say so-called, I’m reformed.
They’re not my leaders. Even a writer for the Gospel Coalition. Pile on the teenagers before hearing the facts.
Young men who cannot drink and cannot go to war. Almost all of them retracted their social media dog pile contribution, almost. In the midst of all the vitriol, what’s interesting is that from both the left and the right were several themes about why the boys were worthy of such hate.
And you saw some of these things because they’re white, because they’re conservative, because they were rich or privileged. Although I don’t know for a fact they’re rich, I suspect many of them are probably middle class. But that’s privileged in America these days.
That’s what you have to realize. That’s the connection to the Covington brothers, the Covington boys. They’re brothers in arms right now.
Baptism by fire. Guess they just made more conservatives, huh? And since this idea is being taken up within the Church of God, and we just finished Micah, who speaks much about justice, even economic justice, for lack of a better term, or social justice, properly understood. I will finish the book with a reminder that it’s okay to be middle class.
To be a little prosperous, but not necessarily rich. Of course, it’s okay to be rich. Abraham was filthy rich.
But I think many of us are just satisfied not being poor. And I think many of us have been poor, and we were satisfied even then. But it’s okay to be middle class.
Middle class is a broad category. It’s not the rich. Rich is closer to I don’t need to work.
That’s how I look at rich. I don’t really need to work. My money’s making its own money.
The money just pops out pretty well. Whereas poverty is just, you’re trying to keep your head above water. That’s poverty.
Just struggling, gotta work two jobs. You’re in debt and everything else. I mean, there’s no precise definition, because even middle class today, a lot of them have a lot of debt.
But we know it enough that it’s kind of like you’re barely surviving. You’re kind of keeping your head above water, and then on the far end, you don’t even need to swim. You’re on a yacht, right? And then everyone in the middle, the middle class.
Or as we’re reminded in Proverbs, you know, Lord, I don’t want to be so poor, and I curse your name, nor so rich that I forget you. Somewhere in the middle. And that’s relative to us, of course.
In our society, it’s relative to what we call the middle class. In other words, we read the word of God, and we see that it’s okay to be prosperous, if not even rich. And how should, therefore, we use this gift for each other? Now, we read in the larger catechism question, Westminster larger catechism question 141, what are the dues required in the Eighth Commandment? That’s the stealing commandment, right? Or that’s the summary of God’s law.
What are the duties required in the Eighth Commandment? About halfway through. A providence care, or careful paying attention, provident care, and study to get, keep, use, and dispose. Pretty precise there, right? Those things which are necessary.
Oh, I got that, you gotta have shelter. I mean, Paul talks about that, right? You gotta have shelter, and with food, we shall be satisfied. These are things that are necessary.
And convenient, so it’s above and beyond that which is necessary. Before the sustenation of our nature, and suitable to our condition. They mean the social economic condition, where you are in life and society, suitable.
And it continues on, and an endeavor by all just and lawful means to procure, get, children, preserve, hang on to, kids, and further the wealth, not just sit on it. Further the wealth, and outward a state of others, as well as our own. That’s how the Confession summarizes what I’m gonna go through a number of verses defending this proposition that it’s okay to be middle class.
It’s in the churches, it’s in conservative churches. You’re gonna have to feel guilty, they tell us. The illustration always comes to my mind when I hear this kind of pietistic guilt, or as one, the one about Dr. Coppice when he was on the Christian, the Diaconal Committee, and the guy back in the 80s was saying we should sell everything, right, to help the poor.
You shouldn’t have all these things that you have in life. Well, what about your yacht, or your boat, whatever you had? Well, no, I keep my boat. Okay, really? Well, then we know what the agenda here is.
It’s not very serious. Or on the flip side, kind of, the salesman, Dr. Coppice gave this story as well, it stuck to my head, the salesman going around, you gotta buy my product, why? Because it keeps the nutrients in your food, and aren’t you supposed to maintain your health according to God’s law? Catch that? They’re manipulating you. Happens even today.
What we’re seeing right before our very eyes, I would argue. On a number of political issues, frankly. Let’s all become poor collectively as a nation so we can make the rest of the world rich.
Would be another way of looking at some of the issues. And no, we’re not called to do that. I’m gonna argue here that we have to take care of our own families, our own communities, and our own nation in that roughly hierarchical order.
And I had a whole sermon on that, of course. You combine all those sermons and you get this, okay? God calls us to better our lives. Not in the way that you hear from Robert Shuler and all those guys, right? The prosperity gospel people, where they’re saying, no, God promises you this.
And if you give me money, he will bless you. Or if you do enough good works, God will somehow miraculously drop money from heaven. What we have are a few ways of proving this truth.
Direct passages such as 1 Timothy 5a, but if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than the unbeliever. Now what it says here, but if anyone does not provide for his own, the word provide there is to be careful, to pursue after. Provident, that’s what you got from that phrase, provident care in the confession.
It’s the text they’re using. It’s not just haphazard effort to take care of your family, but a provident care, a careful studying of, and a paying attention to, especially the man of the house. Proverbs 27, 23, and 27.
It’s a number of verses there. I’ll take the first and the end to give you the essence of it. Proverbs 27, 23 and following.
Be diligent to know the state of your flocks. There there’s that word diligence, not unlike provident to pay attention to, and attend to your herds. You shall have enough goat’s milk for your food, for the food of your household and the nourishment of your maidservants.
Now, Proverbs, of course, typically writes in black and white format to get your attention, the starkness. And the Proverbs here calls us to work hard and work smartly. A lot of Proverbs do.
I could have picked other ones with respect to that, right? But here, it talks about having enough prosperity to feed the household, including the servants, to have flocks and herds. That’s not a poor person. Poor people don’t have that.
The poor person is the slave in the Old Testament, right? They’re working for someone else. They don’t have servants working for them, and they don’t have all this food and the flocks and the herds and the like, like Abraham. So it’s a picture more of the middle class here, if not the rich.
Ecclesiastes 2.24, another passage in Ecclesiastes 2.24, nothing is better for a man that he should eat and drink, that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This I also saw was from the hand of God. God gives this.
God gives blessings, which means it’s not a bad thing, is it, to even in fact seek out those blessings. Nothing’s better for a man than he should eat and drink, and his soul should enjoy his labor. Not just have enough food that you’re not starving, but he’s enjoying it.
When you’re starving, it’s not always enjoyable. You just, you eat enough to get by. I’ve been there.
I remember those days. We ate lots of rice and beans. Natural law talks about this, and natural law is often reflected in Proverbs.
And the other way of looking at it is, a lot of the Proverbs you’ll find reflected in other ancient Near Eastern societies. They have a lot of similar Proverbs. And that’s not a mistake, because God gives the same law to everyone, doesn’t he? It’s written on their hearts in nature.
Proverbs 13.4, the soul of a lazy man desires, and has nothing, because he’s lazy. Not working, not doing what he’s supposed to do. But the soul of the diligent shall be made poor.
No, shall be made middle class. No, shall be made rich. If it’s true for the rich, it’s true for the middle class.
If it’s okay, it’s actually a proverb. It’s encouraging not to be lazy, but rather work. You can even be rich.
But I think most of us would be happy just being middle class. It’s okay to be middle class. God calls us to labor, and often labor, when done right, in the right conditions, and God’s providence leads to wealth.
And part of those conditions, of course, it takes a society working together. If you just try it on your own, it’s very hard to do if you have other people fighting against you, and that’s what we’re finding out now. The laws, the taxes, and things like that, it’s all going back and forth.
So, other natural law verses and proverbs. Proverbs 10.4, he who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. Proverbs 10.22, the blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
Proverbs 11.25, the generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself. These are not just interesting observations. The proverbs are there to motivate you towards these efforts, towards being richer than you are now, because it is relative, if you are able, of course, if you are able.
Proverbs 31, the Proverbs 31 woman, what’s she doing? That’s clearly a picture of someone who’s not dirt poor. Our Proverbs 31 women today, and they are there. I know they don’t feel like they’re a Proverbs 31 woman, but they don’t have servants anymore.
They have washers and dryers. That’s their servants, very much equivalent. So, God has been good to us, especially in our part of the world, in the Western civilization, that collectively, when we’ve worked enough and been diligent enough and paying attention enough, we have been prosperous.
And if you know the history of Western civilization, it has grown and grown in leaps and bounds, especially in the last 100 years. By implication, we see in the Bible, not only by direct passages about blessings from God and how we are called to work to that end, but by implication, the gifts and blessings are our commands. What God has as a blessing is that which you should be praying for.
Ecclesiastes 3.13, what we have here, and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy, and enjoy the good of all his labor, the excess. It is a gift of God. God’s given the gifts, and when he gives the gifts, he’s saying, ask for the gifts.
I’m a generous God, he tells us, doesn’t he? Ask, he says, and the door shall be opened. Seek, and you shall find. God is not cursing you with food and drink, is he? It’s another way of looking at it.
Are you being cursed with too much food, too much drink? Not in the sense of its prosperity. Of course, if you’re a glutton, yeah, there’s a problem there. It’s you messing up God’s gifts and his excess of blessings upon you.
Extra food and extra drink are blessings from God, and therefore, we ought to seek them out. In fact, we know that the means and causes, occasions, and provocations thereunto are good things. And so we read in Ephesians 4.28, let him who stole, steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need.
Now, how can you give to him who has need if you’re dirt poor? Well, the means, causes, occasions, provocations means you have to be at least middle class to start giving a little more money than what you have, right? At least middle class. It’s a command of God in Ephesians 4.28. Don’t steal. I don’t think many of you had this problem for a while, if at all.
Don’t steal, but rather work, and you all are working. Work with your hands, do good things that you may have extra something to give those who are in need. In other words, try to be middle class so you can give to other people, and that’s historically been the case.
It’s the middle class. And I read that in the sermon in Micah 3, I think it was, when I was reading, or Micah 2, when I was reading some of the old laws from the 1,500 to 1,600 old books explaining why you need a middle class, or the yeomanry, right? That they called them. And one of the arguments was, they give more money.
They help the poor. So we don’t wanna, as it were, squish the middle class. And this is back before we had capitalism, right? As they talk about today.
So it’s a longstanding tradition in the church. Genesis 49.20. We read about, bread from Asher shall be rich, and he shall yield royal dainties. He’s gonna be prosperous, and he’s gonna give that prosperity to others.
The royal dainties. It’s a blessing from God. In this case, it’s a blessing that turns out to be a prophecy of how good they’re gonna be historically in taking care of the rest of the tribes with their dainties.
It’s okay to have dainties. That’s not, dainties aren’t things that you need for food, are they? They’re extra food. They’re nice little things.
Heaven, in fact, is a world of wealth, isn’t it? What do we read in Revelation? We read of streets of priceless gold and gates fashioned with precious pearls. Wealth. Wealth beyond comprehension in heaven.
Then, of course, the illustration of the Old Testament where God has prospered Abraham. Job lost it and got it again. David.
Wasn’t because God was cursing him. And it didn’t come out of thin air. How did it come upon them? More often than not.
Through diligent work and hard labor. You don’t read that often. There’s not like a whole list of what they did.
But you know, they did a lot of work. He had servants. He’s directing them.
I mean, he had to start at the bottom. Originally, Abraham did it on his own when he was a young man and built up this prosperity. And God multiplied on top of the prosperity through his providence.
In other words, God uses means. Of course, he’s always free to work against them and around them, so it may not always come to pass. And then the practical consequences of this truth that’s been established by direct passages, by implication, good and necessary consequence, by illustration, by natural law, even, under the direct, I would put that under direct command of God.
The practical consequences. I’ll pick one in the larger catechism. And let me, I didn’t repeat the reading of it here.
Whoops. We have here 141. The provident care to study, to get, to keep, to use, to dispose.
Those things which are necessary and convenient for the sustenation of our nature and suitable to our condition. Suitable to our condition. In other words, it could be tempting to live like you’re rich when you’re poor.
That’s not suitable to your condition. To live like you’re rich when you’re middle class. That’s not suitable to your condition.
Or on the flip side, when you’re rich and middle class, but you live like you’re poor. That’s how I understand that passage. And I agree with the larger catechism in that regard.
It’s what’s suitable to our position. It’s what we’re called to do. Neither higher nor lower.
It’s an echo of the Proverbs that also says, neither too much money nor too little money. And you’re supposed to live in accordance to God’s blessings upon you. Nothing more nor nothing less.
So, we continue on then. To the second point, God calls us not only to better our lives and by implication, our families, I was saying, but each other. First of all, a reminder again, it’s done for God’s glory, not for selfish gain.
This great whole ride, I can do whatever I want when I get all this money. No, it’s done for a purpose. That’s what the communists always tell us, right? We’re gonna use it for a good end.
Trust me. It’s just that we don’t trust them. For God’s glory.
What you have is from the Lord. 1 Samuel 2.7, the Lord makes the poor and makes the rich. He brings low and he lifts up.
It’s his decision, not ours. What you have is for the Lord at the end of the day. Wealth is not its own goal.
Proverbs 23.4, do not overwork. Isn’t that interesting? Do not overwork to be rich because if your understanding cease. So it says you should be diligent, you should labor that you may be rich, but here it says don’t overdo it.
Don’t overwork, don’t go too far. And that is often relative to your spiritual state, your maturity and the like, of course. And a fight, if you had a fight between godliness and wealth, I hope godliness would win every time.
Rather have my children grow up poor, loving Jesus, working for the kingdom, even as a doorman in the house of the Lord than to be rich and lose their souls, which is what we don’t teach in America anymore. It’s all about prosperity. It’s all about the bottom line.
For your family, it’s for God’s glory, of course, the broadest sense in all that you do, but it’s gotta be applied to the concrete, right? Everyone can walk around, oh, it’s for God’s glory. Yeah, but what does that look like? What does that mean? Besides your heart disposition, which I cannot read, I just take your word for it. It’s for your family and your children, 1 Timothy 5.8. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
And what’s interesting here, I’ve not seen this before, is that it says provide for his own, especially for his own household. There’s two things going on here. You got a household and you have things that are your own.
Perhaps he means friends. At the very least, he means your extended family. You take care of your extended family, you take care of your friends, but out of all of that, you better take care of your household, especially the household, your family, your children, your wife, and of course, your grandchildren.
It took generations to collectively gain the kind of social and institutional wealth we have today, didn’t it? We know this, we don’t always think about it, but maybe you want to make an exercise out of it. Sit down and think of all the strands in society, what it took to give you the wealth you have today and through your family and the laws and institutions that they were given the kind of freedom so they can invest and work hard and build up their wealth and their family, both in education and monetary and land and everything else, and the freedom and the security that we have. It took generations to get where we are today.
Think about it. So all that was created through cooperation in our society. Same kind of laws, same expectations, more or less, and often done for the sake of our children and their children’s children.
Even the selfish of them in the past, I think, probably gave at least some of their money to their kids when they died. So it’s a generational thing. It’s a snowball effect, as a matter of fact.
To give them, and that’s certainly our goal, to give our children and our children’s children a better heritage. And it’s a wrong kind of godliness to say, oh, no, no, we’re really godly, and it’s really supposed to be just a Bible heritage. No money, no land, no knowledge, no books, that doesn’t count.
We’re not called, of course we’re called to do that. None of that changes when you become a Christian. In fact, it’s reinforced, like we see in the gender roles, as a matter of fact.
We ought to be thinking not only of our own, but our children and our children’s children, as we are able. And that has social implications, doesn’t it? Thinking about what can we do, what kind of laws, who we’re gonna vote for, to think downstream. To maintain what we have right now.
For your nation, and that dovetails very much into your nation, because your grandchildren, your child may marry someone else in the church, now you’re tied together, and then you have a community, and all this interconnection in America, this great family tree. We are supposed to work the kind of wealth that we have for our children and our children’s children, and for the nation. And I’m not gonna go through what I think is obvious to you all, that we are called as leaders, and even as families, to do what we can for the prosperity of our nation.
Of course, relative to the extent that we have to take care of ourselves, and of course, it’s very, very wicked. Even the case of Joseph’s case, that I have here, they were very wicked. In Egypt, he still took care of them, didn’t he? Because he was a leader in that case.
How much more, Christians taking care of other Christians, and the Christians in Christian communities. So there’s practical considerations. A nation should be dedicated to taking care of their own people.
That’s why you make a nation, not to idolize it, not for many other reasons, other than to take care of people who started it, so it was for their children. I mean, our forefathers made the nation for their children, their lives in honor, for us today, even though they never saw us. That’s the way we ought to be thinking.
And we have laws that make it easy to lawful employment, for instance. We have a long tradition of that. Lawful efforts to further our wealth, and not restrict those efforts.
And so questions like, do socialism and open borders, do they help or hinder these general approaches to help make a middle class? That’s the kind of question we ought to be asking at policy levels, it seems to me. Do companies even ask this question, or are they quick to hire, as we saw with Oracle? Foreigners, it came out, and they got in trouble for it. They were quick to hire foreigners before they hired locals, and they weren’t hiring local minorities.
That was actually quite interesting in the article. They’re not thinking that way. They’re not thinking, hey, this is a nation, this is a family of sorts.
You can go too far with the family metaphor, obviously. We’re not a family family. But we should be thinking of one another.
That’s what it means to be a patriot. How we can give each other jobs more quickly than we can give strangers a job. Why is that a radical thought these days? But unfortunately it is.
And it undermines the wealth that they could have had. I talked about it in the other sermons, right? This is the first generation. We’re not doing better than our forefathers, at least monetarily.
And certainly not with the opioids. That’s another matter. So, these are practical things to ask yourself.
In politics, and in Christian circles, I pointed out they try to make you feel guilty about being middle class. Of course, if you squandered your money, if you idolized your money, you ought to repent of that. And I preached about that six months ago.
But that doesn’t mean, just because it can be abused, that it’s wrong, therefore, to be middle class, to be a little more prosperous, to work to that end for our children and our children’s children. If we have not, we should feel guilty. We should not feel guilty and should not encourage the destruction of our sovereignty and the accumulation of national prosperity over the generations to save the whole world, as I pointed out before.
These are considerations I don’t hear people talk about, even in Christian circles. It’s this larger theme of prosperity for ourselves, for our children, our children’s children, our community, and our families, and our nation, and also for God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is his rule among men, among his people, in particular.
And so, wherever we are, there he is, and we ought to do these things for his kingdom and for the growth of God’s kingdom. The prosperity that we have, whatever we eat or drink or whatever we do, should be to the glory of God and for his kingdom. That’s why we give money to the church.
That’s why we help one another, even monetarily. Why is there a diaconal if prosperity is wrong? Because it’s not. We have extra money to give money to one another and our needs through the deacons and through the session.
We ought to pursue in moderation, not overwork, to be perhaps a little more prosperous than we are now and not be lazy if that’s a problem on your behalf. Or on the other hand, if perhaps you are overworked, you think too much about prosperity, you might want to back off a little bit. But at the end of the day, the point here is that it’s okay to be middle class because it is a blessing of God that we ought to be using for our family, our nation, and especially for God’s kingdom.
Let’s pray. Our Lord, our God, our wonderful, sovereign, prosperous, and rich King of Kings and Lord of Lords, you own all things and you have in your providence blessed this nation and blessed Christians in particular, Lord, over the generations. May, Lord, we continue with that blessing if only because we wish to use it more to strengthen churches and to help one another and to help your kingdom above all.
In your name we pray, amen.