The Bible says the borrower becomes slave of the lender. So is there any time that the bride of Christ should become a slave? Welcome to The Conquering Truth. I'm Dan Horne. I'm Roger Booten. I'm Charles Churchill. And I'm Joshua Horne. You know, many churches now have mortgages, and usually the reason that they say they have a mortgage is, oh, God is blessing our ministry so much that he's sending all these people, so we have to build a bigger building, and the only way we can do that is to have a mortgage. Or they'll say, if we just had a nicer building and a better facility, then we'd attract people. A big part of what triggered the Reformation is that the church started to borrow money. The Roman Catholic Church borrowed money to build these lavish buildings because there had really been a shift from the people to the buildings. And they said the building is what makes the church rather than the people being the church. But the Bible has a lot that says about lending and borrowing. So how is a church taking on a mortgage? I mean, how does that show a false gospel in action? I think it's an interesting phrase that you said. It shows a false gospel. So I hope that's a little bit shocking to people. Because I think there's a part of it where we've... I wasn't intending to be shocking, Charles. I know, you hate to shock people or offend them. But there's a part of it where so many of our episodes are about how the gospel has become shallow, and how our understanding of what it means. And you mentioned the Reformation, and one of the things that came out of the Reformation was sola fide, by faith alone. And there's this part of it where when you look at what Christians are to be known by, it's their faith in God. And if you only think of salvation or the gospel as something that happens in a moment, if you think of it as this instantaneous thing you believe and then you go about the rest of your life, then it doesn't make sense to think about these other things as part of a picture of the gospel. But if you think of Salvation is being the beginning of that faith, that the faith begins and it grows over your life, and as your life is characterized by walking in faith, that you're looking to God, that you're saying, we are God's people, we're called by Him, we're chosen by Him, and the church in particular is this picture of the Bride of Christ, then all of a sudden something like a mortgage becomes a picture of, are you having a picture of a people called out of the world, someone who has become the bride of Christ and is looking to her husband, who can provide for her? Or are you looking to someone who's saying, no, we're still slaves to the world? Because Christ, by the gospel, bought freedom for his people. He bought liberty. And he provides for that liberty. He provides for the needs of his people. When we think about it, when you think about faith, right, you know, we've been, as a church, we've been going through Hebrews 11. It says in Hebrews 11 that by faith we understand the visible things are not made by things that are seen. And when you get a mortgage, fundamentally, you're saying the world is in charge of God. God is not in charge of the world. Because what you're saying is God is not the one who's providing. It's our work that's providing. It's the bank that's providing. It's all these other things. And God can't really do it, right? Because if God could, he clearly would have given us a church. But since he can't do it, we have to kind of come alongside and help God. So when I said that it was a false gospel, it's because it's testifying very basically to a false faith, which is a faith in a God that cannot act in the world. And it's putting a dependence on men instead of on God. It's not that different than saying, well, I have to work for what I get, and whatever I get, it's all me. None of it is a blessing from God, as opposed to the view that everything comes from God, and I'm a steward of that. I mean, if you take that from the individual level to the church level, then it's relying on men. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ says, you're worried about what you eat, you're worried about what you drink, you're worried about what you put on. But if you seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then all these things will be provided for you. I mean, that's inherent to the gospel that God blesses and God curses. And God blesses you with what you need and what you need to fulfill the work that he's given you to do. And when you start to say we need to go to man, you're really saying man's more powerful than God, which is a false gospel. I mean, one of the primary arguments for kind of taking out a mortgage is because of the uncertainty of the future. In a sense, there's this part of it where you look into the future and you go, I don't know what's going to happen, but right now I can secure this thing today, and I'm guaranteed that I just have to work this amount off. I'm sort of locking things in place that I can kind of control and that I can manage. And there's a part of it where faith is going, no, the future is not uncertain, the future is in God's hands. That God is orchestrating these events, that he's guiding these events, that he's causing, that he's going to provide for those things that he wants me to do. That's just very much like a father, the way he provides for his children, where the children, the day that they need something, they have what they need. The day that they need this amount to go and do this thing, he provides those things. And the children don't have to sell themselves into slavery, because of the uncertainty of the future. A child doing that in his father's household would show an extreme lack of trust in his father. And so, I mean, there is just this part of it where it is your attitude towards the future, it's your attitude towards God and towards your faith. Right, and that's why in Philippians 4, 17 through 19, it says, Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that abounds to your account. Indeed, I have all and abound. I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God, and my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." Paul's saying, look, God provides your need. And Paul goes, look, I have times where I don't have much, but that's fine. I have times when I have a lot, that's fine, because God provides my needs, and he will provide your needs. And a mortgage is saying, God can't provide our needs. And they're going, but we have so many people coming, we have to build a building right now. And you're going, but God provides your needs. So we did an episode a few months ago on debt, more generally, because this episode is about churches getting debt or specifically churches getting mortgages. And in the episode a few months ago, we were saying, you know, well, I mean, first of all, we're saying that, I mean, there's a lot of ways that people try to work around and say that, well, debt isn't really slavery, a mortgage isn't debt, that's slavery, et cetera, et cetera. But I mean, it's not saying you're in chains, literally. But it is an obligation that is a lesser form of slavery, but still a form of slavery. But we did say that it's not inherently wrong to have a mortgage. So what's the difference between an individual having a mortgage and a church having a mortgage? Because couldn't an individual say, well, if I have a mortgage, then I'm not trusting in God to provide for me? Well, I mean, there is a difference between the promises that are made specific to a church. And, I mean, people are slaves. There's a big difference between, you look at, you know, various places in scriptures, like in Esymus. In Esymus was told, go back and be a slave. that you can be a slave and be a Christian. So we have a consistent pattern of saying you can be a slave and be a Christian. What you don't have anywhere in the world or in scripture is the idea that the bride of a king can be a slave. And you're rejecting the kingship of Christ to say that his bride has to be a slave. If his bride's a slave, then he's not a king. And I think that picture, I mean, because there is a part of it where those commands, Paul does say, hey, if you're free, don't seek to become a slave. And so, I mean, and you could take those arguments. Those arguments are good arguments against getting a mortgage at times. I mean, there are people who go and get a mortgage, and there's times where they should not. I mean, because even as an individual, it is a form of slavery. It is a form of you, you know, you're bound to do certain things. You don't have the freedom you had before. And, like you said, there could be a time where that's the right thing for you to do. It can be your right thing to do. But the argument's more against it than it is for it, right? I mean, it's not like you should just sit there and go, hey, I'm an individual, woohoo, I can go be in debt. God actually says your goal should be to be free. But it is fundamentally different, the bride of Christ, the collective bride of Christ in an individual, because, I mean, there's always been slaves that are individuals, and there's saved slaves. There's no contradiction between saying that you're a slave and you're saved. Those aren't inherently a contradiction. To say that for the bride of Jesus Christ, though, is fundamentally different. especially because there's promises like in Philippians 4, and there's other places in Scripture that promise that He will give us everything that we need. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you. And we go, but we can't get them through God, which is really reducing the power of God. You know, and just going back to that Philippians passage, if people want to misinterpret that, you know, if they think we're saying, well, God will, it'll be like manna that it'll, the money will just appear. I mean, Paul, there was an offering taken. So these were people donating. So that's, that's a normal way for it to happen, which is different than going to get a mortgage and then asking people to donate to pay off the mortgage. And I think it's really important to recognize that what typically drives it, what typically drives it is covetousness. Because the reality is you do need a place to live, right? I mean, we do need shelter. That's kind of a, you know, we're weak creatures. We need shelter. But there's been plenty of times in history where the church has been strong and it met outside. The church the meeting of the people. It is not the building. So you can't say that the church is hurt by not having the building because it's not that fragile. The church is stronger than that. And I mean, when we did the episode on individual debt, we talked about how the people frequently buy houses much larger than they need, and churches fall into that same category. It's often the case where what the church says is, even if I could afford a building, I'm not satisfied with the building that I could afford. I'm not satisfied with that. I don't really want to steal a building. I want brick, and I want it to be big, and I want it to have a gymnasium, and I want to have the— For the glory of God. Oh, of course, for the glory of God. I mean, you know, when your team beats the local heathens, you know, that's something that's that's in your gym. That's going to be great. You know, I mean, and it's going to be it's going to be a gospel event because you'll invite people there and you'll probably preach the gospel at halftime, you know, and you'll sell hot dogs, too, and that'll help pay off the mortgage. I mean, but you have been in church for a long time, Charles. I mean, and But that is the attitude that people have very often, and there's this part of it where, I mean, I know within our church there have been moments where we've had to ask ourselves, do we want to keep doing some of the work that God has given us to do, or do we want to put the money into a building? And there's been real times where that was literally the question before us. We have money, Where should we put it? And it doesn't mean that if someone chooses a building, there could be times where you go, a building will enable us to do X, Y, and Z. If we have a building, we can use it. But most people, the building sits there most days of the week. The building isn't used that much for the gospel, and there's other work they could be doing. The answer is, are you really thinking about it that way? Are you thinking about it in the context of we're going to war and is what we need a building or do we need to be spending our resources on something else? You have to have a Christian school. That's exactly. That's where you train the soldiers. It is a guns and butter type thing. And people think that the church building is a gun when the reality is, right? I mean, that people, when they're trying to defend themselves, when they're in war, they don't spend a lot of money on luxuries. They spend a lot of money on the weaponry that they need to fight the war. And sometimes that is a church or building. I'm not denying that they're useful, but that's not what we're here for. We're not here to collect buildings. And I think the mentality of it, of a lot of churches, is kind of pictured by the ads that I don't, for some reason, I've been seeing on Facebook a lot, which the ad is, you know, see how much money your church can get, you know, for a mortgage. So the idea is, you know, how much money can you get? How big of a building? you know, do you qualify for? How big of a mortgage? You know, and that's the idea. Well, how can we fit this into our growth plan so we can end up as the biggest church in the city? We can be a mega church. Our pastor can be, you know, nationally famous. It's all part of, I mean, these typically fit in to a big plan for a lot of churches. Well, that comes back to what you were saying about covetousness. You know, James says in chapter four, verses one through three, where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desire for pleasure, that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war, yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. And our pleasures can be something that seems great, like we'd like to have a nice church building to fit more people in so we can preach the gospel to them. But Joshua, you described, I think what happens a lot is it's sort of the keeping up with the Joneses or the Presbyterians down the street or whatever. The people who are running those ads, they're paying money, which means they're successful, which means that the reason that they're successful is because it is covetousness that is driving so much of the building program, because that's what those ads are appealing to is covetousness. Look at how big of a building you can have. I mean, it's pure covetousness. It's not about, well, let's figure out what you need. We'll help you figure out how to be the best stewards of the money that you can be. Nobody's running ads like that. They're all running ads. we'll get you the biggest building that we can get you." Because they're appealing to covetousness, which is James 4. And God says, hey, the reason that you don't have a building is because you either don't ask or you ask in a way that I know that you're not asking out of faith, you're not asking out of desire to serve God. You're asking for your own pleasure. When you talk about that lure, there's kind of two parts to it. I mean, one of it is, what is the purpose of the church? Because if you're asking yourself, where do we need to meet? What do we need to be able to meet? And there are churches that it would be harder for them to meet in homes. There are churches where that would be difficult. But I mean, you can buy an ugly church building. I mean, you can buy, you know, I mean, you can buy warehouses are pretty cheap. You can, I mean, if you're saying all we really need is a place that we can put chairs in, that's all we actually need. If that's what you're looking for, because there's this part of it where if you think about it from the mortgage perspective, what they're looking at is they're going, these people have gathered together resources, they've gathered together people. So they've put together people and we want to turn those people into a long commitment to pay back money to us. Why is the church wanting that? God's gathered you together. He's brought you all together. You're saying the Spirit of God has called us together. Is that what he called you for? To immediately become slaves to the building you're in? He called you together to do work. He called you to spend this resource on really specific things. And so there's this part of it where, I mean, you should ask yourself, if this is what we think we're called together for, is the Holy Spirit doing this? Is this the work of the Holy Spirit? Because God's Spirit calls His church together to serve Him, not to immediately go and become servants to the world. And what you're obviously saying is that God is a terrible slave master. Because a good slave master gives the tools to his slaves that they need to do the work. If you're not receiving the tools and you say we have to go borrow the tools from somebody else, you are saying God is a horrible master. Right, even Pharaoh gave them straw. until he stopped. Right, but when he did it was because he was very angry at them. But you're treating God and saying God is like Pharaoh and Pharaoh is a picture of Satan, right? That he won't give them straw. And you're saying God is exactly like Pharaoh. Well, that's a big problem. That is a false gospel. As opposed to asking the question, are we doing the right work? Right. Is this what God would have us to do? Are we even praying and asking for God for it? Right. Are we just saying, let's pray and ask the local bank for it, which is what most churches end up doing, is praying and asking the local bank rather than asking God. Or they do ask God, and God goes, no, and they go, we're doing it anyway. Right. Because, I mean, if you take James literally, he's going, you either don't ask, or when you do ask, you asked wrongly. I mean, I use that example with my children all the time, going, when you come to me and ask me for something, if you're going, hey, I spent all my money on bubble gum, I spent all my money on candy, I need you to increase my allowance, why would I do it? But when they come to me and say, I want to learn how to do this skill. I want to learn how to do this thing. This will enable me to do X. I think if I learn to do this, it's there the next day. It's provided for. When they're doing the things that are aligned with my will, I provide. And that's what it means to ask amiss. And so do you, people just, they don't believe the verse. They go, God lied. He said if we asked according to his will, he'd give it to us. And he didn't because we know he wants a building. Right. And when you do it with your children, your children might go, I want you to send me to medical school so that I can become a brain surgeon and make lots of money and help people and then maybe not make lots of money, maybe go to Africa and serve people there and never make any money. No, some of them want to make lots of money. Yeah, but let's say one that's saying, I just want to serve God. So here, give me $1.5 million. And you go, no, I don't have it. God never says, no, I don't have it. Right. So he is the perfect father. He's the father with unlimited resources. He can do whatever he wants. The visible is framed by the things that are not seen. And so because of that, when we use a human example like that, we always run into the limitation that we're finite. God's infinite, so you can't say, well, he just didn't have it, so we have to go figure it out another way. No, the answer is he didn't want us to have it. And then we go, but we have to do it another way. Well, why? Because God already said no, and you're saying we don't care. I mean, it's a really serious problem that people don't realize. And I do think that, you know, you look at what happens to Israel when Israel goes into the promised land. Moses says, look, when you get into the promised land, you're going to go, we have to have this. Deuteronomy 17, 14, when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me. I think churches are going, but we don't feel like a real church unless we have a building. Well, they're doing the same thing that the unbelieving Israelites did that God judged them for. Because they said, we have to have a king. We have to be like everybody else. And churches go, we have to have a building. We have to go borrow money because we have to have a building. We just can't survive without a building. And there's lots of ways to survive. But they say, we have to have a building. And they're failing the test. I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize that kind of what you're saying is a part of covetousness is refusing to hear God's answers to your prayers. Right. And they don't think about the fact that that's what they're doing when they desire certain things, is that God is telling you what to desire. God is telling you. He is shaping what you should desire as opposed to you shaping. And they don't understand how God tries your faith so that you can understand if you're faithful or not, right? God says in James 1 that He gives you these trials so that you can see if your faith is real, whether you will walk by faith or walk by sight. And so, all of a sudden, you have all these people come, And the temptation is to go, more people will come if we just have a bigger building. So let's go borrow money instead of going, well, God can also bring somebody that will give us enough money to build a building if he wants to. And so, they're his sheep. He won't send them here unless he wants them here. And maybe we figure out what the best thing to do. But to say, God gives us situations where we're tempted. It's not that he's tempting us with sin, that's what it also says in James 1, that he doesn't tempt us with sin, but it's our sin that he is revealing to us when he puts it. And the people that go, but we have all these people and our ministry is going to grow. That's all about self-pride and all about how important you are. And so then they go and go, we have to borrow all this money to build a church because of how important I am for the gospel. Well, that's a test and we should see it as a test. I think God gives those tests. You know, we were recently, we were traveling, we were at a church in North Florida. A friend of ours, her dad is a pastor there, and an old, old church building that they literally are outgrowing. Most of the year they have to have two services, and they started building a new one. And then they had some zoning things that cost extra money that they didn't plan for. And then they had a contractor that they had given $70,000 to, and they went bankrupt and they lost it. And I was talking to him and he said, Yeah, some people want us to get a mortgage, but I think we're just going to wait. You know what I mean? And the building is half built. You know, there are lots of excuses there to say, well, these things happen. That's even more pressure. Right. And it's there and they're going to do what people have done throughout history is you build what you can and then you stop until you have more resources. Yeah. And so we just need to recognize that if it's a true church, it's God that grows it. and he can provide everything that's needed to grow it the way that he wants to grow it. That doesn't mean that we don't have real stewardship responsibility. We do. We have to be wise in the resources that he gives. We need to be asking him and not asking to spend it on our own pleasure, but asking him in sincerity. But in the end, we also have to trust the answer that God gives. And we can't say, well, we see these symbols, signs in the world, so therefore, since God didn't really make provision for this because he didn't know this was going to happen, we have to do something else. I'm sorry, that's just not, that's fundamentally a different view of God. And I don't think people recognize with the church mortgage how fundamentally it's a different view of God. It is making God like Pharaoh. Part of what it comes down to is trusting does God give us everything that we need. In 2 Peter 1, 2-4, grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. So Peter's saying here that God gives us what we need. He gives us what we need to do his work. And if we're desiring things above that, it's worldly lust. It's the lust of the flesh. It's that covetousness that's manifesting itself. And I mean, it's really important to see what he's connecting here, right? He's saying he gives all things that pertain to life and godliness. Well, worship is part of godliness. The activities of the church are part of life. This is one of the all things. You can't just say it doesn't apply because this does. And notice that he's tying it to, has given us great and exceedingly great and precious promises. Well, the fundamental great and precious promise that God gives is eternal life. And so what he's saying is, hey, if you can't believe that he can give you, in this case, a church building that you need, why do you think he can give you eternal life? That is ridiculous. If you don't think he has the power to give you a church building, which is a physical thing, I mean, men can give somebody a church building, right? There's lots of people who die and they bequeath land and funds to build a church building. Men can give church buildings. And you say, God can't, but he can give eternal life? No, man can give eternal life. I mean, it's just this thing that's just so out of order, and Peter's putting it here, and he's going, you get it, right? If he can't give you all things now that you need, then why do you think he can give you eternal life? Because they're tied together. If he can't do the one, he can't do the other. church building a mortgage where you have to say we have to have this and God can't provide it is really it's a testimony of unbelief and understand he's not going I want to encourage you to trust him with the mortgage he's going if you don't trust him in the mortgage you don't actually believe in eternal life you're just saying you do right it's all a game it's like when it says in the Bible if you don't if you don't love the brother you can see how can you love the one you can't see and he's going you know I mean it's like If you can't trust that he can provide for you now, why do you think he can provide for you for eternity? Right, you're just saying about eternity because you have no alternative. You're just going, well, I hope that works out. But when actually, that's not faith. It's just going, well, you know, here's hoping. And this idea that God is able to provide everything that we need is also talked about in second Corinthians nine. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you that you always having all sufficiency and all things may have an abundance for every good work. So there's talking about how God, you know, abounds towards us and gives us the things that we need specifically for good works. And so if it's something where we're saying we don't have what we need, is it is a really good work? And again, it's that picture of the slave master who goes to his slave, go, go make bricks and I won't give you straw. I'm sorry. That is, that is... saying that God is like Pharaoh. God says, I'm not. I give you an abundance. I'm just not giving you just enough. I'm giving you an abundance for every good work. And so if you're looking and saying, but we don't have enough to build this million-dollar church, well, the answer is, why do you think it's a good work? Why do you think in the definition of good work is it's a work that God wants you to do, that God is decreeing for you to do? So in a prescriptive way and so that idea that you can just go out there and just say well It's a good work because I want to have a church building. No, God is saying I didn't give it to you It's not a good work I mean if you look throughout the history of the world in every organization or government business The way you tell what the businesses or government's priorities is what gets funded Funding is, you know, Congress has the power of the purse. If they want to shut something down, they just go, it's not in the budget. There will be $0 allocated to this. If a boss doesn't want a particular program to go, he withdraws its funding. If he wants it to happen, he puts it. We've been involved in projects before where they did layoffs in the middle of the project. And they asked, who got laid off? And he says, who didn't get laid off? And they said, people associated with this project. That is a clear answer. We're putting our money where we want things to go. And we act like God doesn't do the same thing. God, that verse is basically, God's like saying, do you understand finances? Do you understand things? I'm going to support you when you're doing the things I want you to do. And we go, God's a liar. God, he's not. And God says he will. And it's not like we haven't read like four verses that all say the same thing. And it's not like that's not the whole pattern of scripture, is that God is in control. He's in sovereign. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. We could go verse after verse after verse. And the answer is, if God wants you to have it, he gives it to you. If he doesn't want you to have it, he doesn't. And you can always rebel and get things through rebellion But don't turn around and say that you're doing it out of service to Christ. It's not true. You said there, God gives in abundance, and he does. But I think to clarify, too, he may not give enough for a million dollar church. He gives abundance for the good work. For the work. And so I think, again, taking that back to the individual level of somebody who wants to do hospitality, which God calls us to do, and you're in a tight spot. So you can still have people over to your house and have soup. and show hospitality. It doesn't always have to be. The widow with Elijah had a little oil and a little flour and gave him bread, and that was tremendous hospitality so that it's recorded in Scripture. Right. And so it doesn't always have to be. It may not be the church that we think we'd like to have to do all these, even if they're good, to do all these programs. But God may be saying, no, you can have this. And I started out in the introduction talking about how this was a big problem. that in a lot of ways triggered the Reformation, right? The indulgences and the selling of it to finance St. Peter's Basilica. And we look at that and we go, yeah, but we're not doing that. Of course people are doing that. They want the million-dollar church because they get the acoustics right, and if you get the acoustics right, people feel like they worship. Well, that's what the Roman Catholic Church did. It's all these techniques to make people think they're drawing near to God when they're not drawing near to God. You want a big, open expanse. I mean, there's techniques that you can use to fool people into thinking they're worshiping. And that's why you build a million dollar building instead of a $250,000 building in a lot of cases is to give people a false sense of worship. And then you turn around and say it's a good work. That's what the Roman Catholic Church was doing. And when you buy that $2 million building, you better bring the people in or else you're not going to be able to pay your mortgage. Right. You know what I mean? It's like the self-fulfilling thing is I've got to draw the people together because otherwise, how can I afford everything I use to draw them together? Right. And then all of a sudden you've done you're to the second main point that we want to bring in our list of talking about it is, it's a false gospel because it's not about freedom, that it really is slavery, that all of a sudden those people that are going to that church, they now have a real obligation. And that obligation matters, and they have an obligation to the world that they now have to fulfill. Where do you get the idea that that's a righteous obligation? Because it's pretty, you know, critical point because a lot of people could say, well, you know, yeah, God will provide everything we need and he's going to provide it through a mortgage. But then, so then the question is, is a mortgage the same as someone giving you a check? And then the argument comes down to that no debt is something different than actually having the money and that you actually are put under an obligation and an obligation that's not appropriate for a church to be under. As I was thinking about this this afternoon, I was thinking that, you know, Israel is sitting there under Roman rule and they say, you know, Jesus says to them in John 8, 31 through 33, then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, if you abided my word, you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. They answered and said, we are Abraham's descendants and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free? They're basically in bondage to Rome, in that they're blind to their bondage, because you see it later. They want to kill Christ, and they can't kill Christ, so they have to go to Rome and get permission to kill Christ. Even though they've been plotting to kill Christ, they can only murder him in a back alley, because if they do it openly through a legal system, it has to be Rome that does it, because they're in bondage. They are not a free people, but yet they're blind to their bondage. And I think this is this is recurring in the church right now, but there's a lot of churches that say, we have a mortgage, we're free. And it's like, no, God says you're not. And we have to recognize, he says you're not, and that means you're not. And God says, the gospel, the picture of the gospel is you're free. You're free from that obligation. You're free from that obligation to pay for your sins. But that freedom manifests itself in lots of different ways, including you should not go and be a slave of another man. And I think that's a result of a watered-down gospel. A fish doesn't know it's wet. So you get used to all the other things that are taught around you. And so this just seems, you think, well, I have a mortgage, and most people I know have a mortgage, so why wouldn't a church have a mortgage? And the person in the pew frequently doesn't feel the weight of the mortgage on them. Because I can leave and I can go to another church anytime I want to. But part of the purpose of the church, you look at it, one of the things it talks about is being able to set an elder free to study the word and to preach the word with freedom. Well, if your church has a mortgage, your elder's not free to do that. Your elder is basically going, if I preach the word boldly and people leave, we're never going to be able to pay this off. I mean, there's this part where it's like, how many, I mean, I don't know any pastor who has a mortgage that doesn't think about that. I mean, that, it weighs on him. There are many pastors who are in a, you know, they're in a really bad situation trying to figure, how do I attract people? And they're not asking themselves, how do I preach the word faithfully? They're not asking, how do I, how do I actually rebuke people in the church? They're like, I can't afford to rebuke anybody. Attendance is down right now. We're barely scraping by. And I know of many pastors that are in that very situation where they're going, yeah, this is what I should say, but you know, the congregation's not ready to hear it. Which what they really mean is they can't say it because people will leave, and if they leave, they have an obligation. And we have to recognize just how serious that obligation is, right? I mean, the Bible talks about it. You can't just dismiss a dead. God says that's wickedness. And we've referenced this verse several times. We'll go ahead and read it. Proverbs 22 verse 7, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender. That's pretty important verse when thinking about debt. And it's one that, as we talked about before, a lot of people want to explain away, but you can't explain away the reality that you have an obligation to a person and the bank isn't there micromanaging you, but it is a real restriction on the things you can do. And it ends up coming down to the point of being a restriction on what the pastor says. Yeah, we quote the second half a lot, but a lot of times we don't quote the first half. But these are parallel statements. Right? The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender. A lot of times in Proverbs, it says the same thing in two different ways. The church who goes, we need to go borrow from this rich man, you are making him your ruler, which we've talked about it some, right? All of a sudden, you're concerned about that bank that has this mortgage, so you're going to change how you preach. But you've chosen to have a different ruler than Christ. That's what it means to take a mortgage. You have a different ruler than Christ. And you alluded to it, Charles, it may change the preaching. What about a church discipline situation? What if someone that you know is one of your biggest owners and all of a sudden they really need to be under church discipline and how do you address that? People talk about, like, speaking truth to power. You know what I mean? And they kind of have this idea that this is what those who are righteous should do. And they should. I mean, the righteous should be doing these things. And there's this part of it where if you have to worry about everything, if you're constantly worried about money, if you're worried about if you're barely making it, you're not going to be in a position to do that. And they act like people don't do that. I mean, I remember when You know, when we have videos about VOM and how we had to deal, you know, there were things that came up with VOM. When that happened, one of the things that came up is there were people who were going, hey, if we go after VOM, they're going to sue us. They're going to come after us. And there was a part of where people were, I remember being afraid. The church that we were at before the split, they insisted that I go talk to an attorney. So I went and talked to an attorney and there's like, you know, three attorneys in the room. There's the one we normally dealt with, who was like a senior partner of the firm. And then there was, I mean, as a business, not as a church. And there were two other people there. And the other two people are going, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And then after the meeting, the senior, you know, attorney came over to me and said, if it's true, they'll never say. Right. And you didn't need that, right? Because the reality is you do the right thing. Who cares? But the reality is God protects in certain ways. And if you're afraid of that all the time, of course you're going to respond. And the reality is you shouldn't be afraid. God can provide. And if you're sued and lost, he can provide you the money to pay for it. And people want to go, I can act in fear today, and tomorrow I'll be brave. And the mortgage is the first act of fear. The mortgage is giving in to fear. Tomorrow, you're just going to give in to fear more. You've already begun walking in that way. You've begun to walk in that pattern. And you've started to look at the world in that way. So that there are people who go, I believe that God could give us a building, but guess what? He doesn't do that. Well, guess who he doesn't do that to? People who don't walk by faith. Well, it's just kind of the fear of missing out, right? Well, prices are going up. There's this piece of property and we can get a really good deal on it right now. And if we don't do it now, we wait until we save up. We don't save up, then we'll miss that and we'll never get. And so it might not even be It's a good investment. You'll be able to sell the land later if you need to. Yeah, exactly. So it's just, you know, wanting to, being afraid that you'll miss out on an opportunity that God hasn't provided funds for. Right, that God doesn't want you to do. But in the end, you're elevating money as a master because you now have a real obligation that, again, the wicked borrow and do not repay. So as a church, the idea of not repaying that mortgage and declaring bankruptcy and just saying, forget it, you're basically saying, we are wicked. We are a synagogue of Satan. We are not a church. So any pastor who's trying to be sincere has to go, this has to be a really high priority to pay off this mortgage, if they pay any attention to scripture at all. And so then you get Matthew 6, 24, no one can serve two masters, for he either will hate the one and love the other, or else he'll be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. A mortgage forces you to serve mammon. It forces you to. Because you've committed to it. Because you've committed to it. And you go, yeah, I'm going to serve Mammon, but I'm serving Mammon because I'm serving God. And God goes, not how it works. Right. God will even look at you and go, you made a commitment. You've made a commitment to serve Mammon. Go serve Mammon. And people go, no, no, no, we're serving God by serving Mammon. And God says, you love the one and hate the other. That you're putting yourself in a position that biblically doesn't exist. that you can serve mammon, or you can serve God by serving mammon, that doesn't exist as a biblical category. And it's something that even if we're going into it with the right understanding, even if you're saying, well, yes, I'm taking on this obligation, but I'm going to walk by faith, I'm not going to worry about the money. I mean, there's verses like Exodus 23, eight, and you shall take no bribe for a bribe blinds the discerning and perverts the words of the righteous. So, you know, technically, It's not a bribe, but the point here is that when money is in the equation, it's going to affect even the righteous. It's going to change the words that even the righteous say. So you have that preacher who is set on doing the right thing, but it is going to blind his eyes and pervert his words to some extent, because that's what happens when money gets involved. And I do think that it is a bribe in this sense. The pastor who actually advocates for the mortgage He actually now has a personal obligation to get it paid off. And so that person who's giving money to pay off that mortgage, they are giving him a bribe. Because they're fulfilling a personal obligation. Well, that's what I was going to say. Because there's a part of it where, when you're a servant, if I, as an employee of Data Tech, took a loan from someone that I was supposed to, so that I would do work for someone else, while I'm working for you, there's this part of it. While you were working for me. Yes, but I mean there's this part of it where I've violated our agreement. I have taken a bribe because I've taken the benefit of that, but I have to pay the other person back and I actually owe you first. And so there's this part of it where if paying that loan back required me to do work on data text time, And so you're going, we're bought with a price, we're owned by God, and now I'm going, no, I've traded this to the world, that I have to do this work for the world. It is a bribe, it absolutely is. And that tithe that people are paying, that you're pushing people to tithe, and then you go pay it as a mortgage, well, you're taking their tithe and you're not giving it to God, you're giving it to a bank. Right. Yeah, and what also happens is that you end up putting pressure on people to give, because you have to, because you have to get this mortgage. And you know, God says he only cares about giving in a certain way in 2 Corinthians 9-7, so let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity. where God loves the cheerful giver. And now all of a sudden, and I mean, I've heard it many times, not that many, because most of the churches, I don't think I've ever, I've never been in a church. I've never attended or been a member of a church where there was a mortgage. No, that's not true. I was never a member of a church, but I did attend a church for a while that had a mortgage. But if you look at it, you know, They always talk about the building fund. They're constantly having to raise it, and they're constantly having to bring it up. And they're not saying, be a cheerful giver. They're saying, we really need this money. And when you look at Israel, Israel, and we're going through Jeremiah now, and it says the same thing in Jeremiah, is that they're oppressing the poor. And so because of that, God's going to destroy them. And I've seen people going, and they're saying it in the church. And some of the people who are most affected by it are usually the poorest people. And a lot of times with mortgages in churches, they end up actually oppressing the poor. They're doing the opposite of what the scriptures say that we're supposed to do. Instead of caring for the poor, instead of caring for the weak, you put this obligation. And it's not that much different than a televangelist. It really isn't. You know, we need this, the building, this church is just thriving in the ministry. It'll be a great blessing. You'll be here. It'll be so exciting. Give money. Oh, they give people like stock in the church. They'll put a number of bricks in the church that you own. Right. They can put your name on a brick. I've seen that done. I mean, I have a family member. where they asked people to take out second mortgages. How much can you commit? How much can you take out a second mortgage so that we can do this? And I mean, they were just shocked. But there's this part of it where the answer is, the church is in debt. And there was a, I mean, I don't think it was the right way to approach it. It was like this pressure thing. But the answer is, the church really is in debt. Are you a part of this church? Because the church is in debt. And it doesn't mean they should take out a second mortgage. They should pray and ask God, have someone come buy this building. Will you please come and- Get this albatross out. We have sinned. They should, you know what I mean? We have sinned against you, God, because we have become slaves to this. And that's, and people go, and this is one of the differences with a house, although you have to be careful with this difference is that, you know, I'll tell you what a church building is basically worthless because you have to sell it to another church or tear down the building. Most church buildings, the way they build them, they're not useful for anything else. So, It's not like they're holding a mortgage and they go, like, if you have a mortgage on your house, you can go out on the market and probably in six months, in most cases, you can sell your house. Yeah, you might take a loss on it, but you can sell your house and get out of that mortgage. Not with the church. The bank's going to eat the loss because the church, the land keeps its value except for the cost of demolishing the church and removing it. I mean, you might get the parking lot out of it, but in general, churches have no value except as churches. And so this idea that you're buying something that's useful. No, you're not. You're buying something that has a single use. I mean, it kind of, with what you were talking about, about putting pressure on people to give and putting this undue pressure, it changes the focus of how you even think of love and how you think of even what your obligations are to one another. If you look at a verse like Romans 13, 8, owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves one another has fulfilled the law. And so all of a sudden, this part of your obligation to one another in Christ starts to become skewed by this other master that you're serving. The things that God wants, the things that he desires, a contrite heart, he desires service, he desires you to be a volunteer, he desires you to be free to serve him. And all those things you're not, you're having to instead, everything becomes about finances, everything becomes about serving the world, everything, because so much of the labor of the church is not financial. So much of it is about your life. It's about your time. It's about where you're doing things, as opposed to aiming you towards things that generate money so that you can pay this thing back. And so it begins to skew love in a really dangerous way, because your obligations are no longer towards God, but toward the world. And yeah, you read the book of Acts. And in the book of Acts, they didn't have buildings. They just didn't. And that doesn't mean it's wrong to have a building. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is they fed the widows. Right? That's a big story in the book of Acts, is they fed the widows so much so that the Jews got very upset with them because they were feeding the widows and they were caring for the widows and the Jews weren't. And so that's the story of Acts, not we have a building. They said, this is how we spread the gospel is we care for the widows. Now we say, this is how we spread the gospel by having a big building. Well, no, our obligation that's the biblical obligation is to care for the poor. It's not to have a building. Is the requirement that you're all able to gather into one room, is that even the primary requirement? And sometimes the answer is, if you think that's the requirement, maybe you're too big of a group. And the answer is, God is trying to say, you should be raising up men that can teach others also, like it says in, as Paul tells Timothy, that this is what you're supposed to be about. Maybe you're failing to do that, which is why you think you need a bigger building. Well, get over it. Maybe you should just raise up men so that you can keep it smaller. That may be the pressure that God's putting on you, right? And you're saying our solution is to reject God and get a mortgage. And the verse you just read is the focus should be, how do we best love one another? And like we said, part of the answer may be, a building may help you do that. But if it really will, God will provide. Right. I mean, that's how you answer the question is, oh God, we need a building. And God goes, I think you do. So therefore, I'll provide one. I'll provide a way. I mean, yes, God does just give people buildings, or yes, God does just sometimes give them the money to do that. This has happened over and over and over again. I would suspect in history of the Protestant church that most church buildings, probably a significant majority, were given by one or two individuals where they die. A lot of times they bequeath it or they go, yes, I'll fund this and they'll do it. And God uses one individual to do it. And we think we should have this big building fund and everything. That's not that's that's really atypical. Instead, we go to the rich banker and say, give us money. One guy who gave a lot of church buildings was Henry VIII who took them all from the Catholics. That's another way to do it. But that's also judgmental. Take it from the Catholics. Confiscation. And understand what's happening right now is you look at a lot of these churches in America, and especially in Europe, this is really prevalent in Europe, is they're going out of business. And they're useless for almost anything else. So they're cheap. So a lot of people move in there and do other things with them. People live in them. They turn them into a home. I mean, a church turning to a home is pretty painful. You know, and so they're doing things like that with them, which is just showing the judgment on the church, as opposed to, and I do know of a church that, yeah, the church down the street was going out of business. Well, guess what? Cheap way to get a church. And we shouldn't think God doesn't judge that way. And God says he takes the wicked lay up for the righteous. I mean, that's a promise from scripture. And so there's so many ways that God can give you the building. But we go, God's not sovereign. He's not in control. bankers, they're the ones who rule the world. It's the Rothschilds. And no, I was mocking, I was not serious, just for clarity in case somebody takes a clip. I think that's what the commenters are already saying. I think I've seen that before. And what it does is it puts the church into bondage, which scripture says we should not do. Galatians 5.1, stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. It goes back to the point from the beginning of the gospel being about freedom. And when you do that, you're rejecting the freedom of that and you're putting yourself in bondage. I mean, if you're a confessional church, go and look in the Westminster or the Second Lent a Baptist Confession, the chapter on Christian liberty, and read that chapter where it talks about all the different means by which Christ purchased liberty for his people. And it is, I mean, it's not just— I'm not saying you should just sell yourself into slavery for a few dollars. Right. I mean, it is so many different aspects by which God has bought liberty, and he bought it for a purpose. You see each of those things that he's freed the church from, and the church goes, let's go back to that. I want to go back. I want to serve something else. Another thing about the church is we need to recognize that this is a sign of God's cursing, and it's a sign of disobedience. And to understand that, you have to understand that God calls the church a nation. In Romans 10, 19, it says, but I say, did Israel not know? First Moses says, I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation. I will move you to anger by a foolish nation. The church is a foolish nation. That's what Moses said would come and that would provoke the Jews. It talks about this in Romans 11. And there's all these things, but it's important to recognize that national statements apply to the church. Now let's go to the national statements about when God says, this is what I do if a nation obeys, and this is what I do if a nation disobeys and refuses to follow my commandments. So in Deuteronomy 28, 41 through 43. The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head and you shall be the tail. Moreover, all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statutes, which he commanded you. God is saying when the church borrows, he is cursing it because they won't obey what he says. And it's not that the mortgage is the testimony of or is the disobedience, not that I'm saying that it's not disobedience, but he's saying What drives the church to the mortgage is the disobedience. They won't listen to God, they won't obey God, so they go and get a mortgage as a cursing. And they go, but look at this wonderful building. And look at the Reformation, or the Roman Catholic Church, and there's 30 years war and all these other things that happen. And this is the cursing that we're supposed to look back and remember the history and go, this is what it looks like when God curses the church. for being a sinful nation that won't obey him? I mean, the real answer is, I mean, people should read that verse and go, so the church maybe should be lending money more than it should be borrowing. Well, now let's read Deuteronomy 28. Yep. Because this is what God says he will do if you obey. The Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself. Just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways, then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you. And the Lord will grant you plenty of goods, and the fruit of your body, and the increase of your livestock, and the produce of your ground, and the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give you. The Lord will open to you His good treasure, the heaven, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hands. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. The sign of obedience is you don't borrow, you lend. The sign of disobedience is you borrow and you do not lend. This sounds like the time of Solomon. Right. And we go, but the church should lend, and the answer is yes, it should. It says, open your hand wide to the poor. It talks about lending. It talks about that if you, the church should be this resource, that you have these resources that, I mean, as a church, we start a prosthetic clinic. I mean, that's the way you lend, right? And we lent money to start that prosthetic clinic that the clinic has to pay back. It has to pay back by making prosthesis for people who are in need. But yeah, we lend. That's not wrong. That is biblical. We lent to some of the orphans that we lent to to try to start businesses. Right, we had a lending program. The same with widows. We had a lending program to widows to do some microloans, not financial loans, but we gave them clothes that they could resell as a means to provide for themselves. Should the church lend? Yeah, it should. If it's a faithful nation, if it's obeying the things God says to do, yeah, there's a place to lend. There's not a place to borrow. And that lending is, the lending of the church is very different from the lending of the world because the goal of it is not, I mean, I'm not, people have this attitude that every banker is an oppressor and that's not even, that's not fair. But the church in particular. Every banker is a slave master is probably fair. Right. And I mean, and, and there's a part of where there is a form of that in a sense of. But you're going to be very, right. And, and let me flush that out a little bit, right? Because we think slave master is evil. Well, no, slave master is a guy who, who can be a guy who is, who is freeing somebody from an obligation that they couldn't otherwise pay. And so it's not inherently sinful. It can be. They can sin in doing it, right? But it doesn't mean it's inherently sinful. Right. If all he asks you to do is work and he pays you for your work over time, that's not evil. Right. If what he's doing is basically prepaying your labor. And so there's this part of it where, I mean, you look at it, I think when you think about that wrongly, you think about the church lending, and you don't think about it correctly either. The church is super eager to become a slave, and they're not eager to actually help those who need to be loaned to, because there's a part of it where God actually desires them to be in that position so that they can be a blessing to the poor. We've loaned to the poor that haven't paid us back, and we go, okay, whatever. God will pay us back because he owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He can restore it. It doesn't matter. It's up to him. It doesn't mean we should be bad stewards, but if we're doing it out of faith, if we're doing it with a true desire to help the widows and orphans, to help the poor, we should expect God to bless that. Even if he takes all the money away. It doesn't mean we're not lending to those orphans anymore. Right, it doesn't mean we're not lending to those orphans anymore. I mean, there was a part of where it was a, we knew going into it, it was very likely to be a learning experience. It was very likely to be something where we said, what are the ways, is this the right way to help them? Or is there a better way to help them? You know what I mean? But that is what- Well, it was a replacement of a different way that we were helping them that we thought was hurting them rather than helping them, so. And we just found out we're better at hurting them than helping them. But we really helped them with that, right? I mean, you met with them, right? And you basically said, understand the wicked borrow and do not repay. Don't kid yourself if you take this money and make no attempt to repay it. Don't kid yourself and call yourself a Christian. You're not. You're wicked. And that's worth the money. And that's worth the money. Right. Because one of the things that had been done wrong to them was people had told them they were Christians by just them saying a prayer. People had told them they were believers with nothing to back that up. And so there was a part of it where you were helping them understand, going, this is a way for you to understand. Are you just poor and you have faith in God, or do you have no faith? And we found out they don't have faith. And that was good for them to know. The other way it preaches a false gospel is it has this picture, and we don't think about it, but it's throughout the scripture, right, is that Judah is afraid of Assyria coming down, so it goes and gets help from Israel. from Egypt or Israel, the Northern Kingdom, they're afraid Syria's gonna attack them, so they go to Assyria to get help. Everybody's going to all these nations for help. And there's a reason why God gives this as an example. He gives this as an example because this is faithlessness. This is rejecting God. You're saying that man is more powerful than God. God says, trust me, I'll give you deliverance. And they go, we need the chariots of Egypt. And, you know, it says this in Isaiah 31, 1 and 2, Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but who do not look to the Holy One of Israel nor seek the Lord. Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster and will not call back His words, but will arise against the house of evildoers and against the help of those who work iniquity. You know, just like it's a sign of cursing. Here he's going, you're going to Egypt, you're going to the bank for help. Instead of trusting in me, instead of coming to me, you're going, I need to go to Egypt for help. And understand, every banker who that church comes and asks for money, the bankers all recognize that that means that they consider him more powerful than God, him more able than God, that maybe God can do miracles here and there. But on a day-to-day basis, the banker's more powerful than God. The testimony to the world when you get a mortgage is you basically testified to a God who has no power. Maybe a God who occasionally wakes up and does stuff, right? But you're talking, you remember with Elijah where he's mocking the prophets of Baal and saying, you know, maybe if you yell loud enough, Baal will respond because obviously he can't respond all the time. He has to be taking a nap. And that's basically the God that churches are testifying that Jehovah is, that Christ is, when they get a mortgage, is that he can't act all the time. Maybe occasionally he'll wake up, but he can't act all the time because, hey, you know. He's busy. And he doesn't care about those little things. He doesn't care about his bride. Who cares? Right. As opposed to like Christ saying, you know, he notices when a sparrow falls, right? He notices when... Right. He had the hairs on your head numbered. Right. And he closed the lilies in the field. And so why do you think he won't care for you? I mean, how many of these churches with mortgages in their church library has a book on George Mueller and his big thing was saying, don't even ask for money. God will just give it to you. Now we could argue, you know, does Mueller have problems? Is that wise? But if you have it in your library and you're saying, this is, what a godly man, and then you're saying, well, of course we have to have a mortgage. I mean, we can't even ask people for money and then pay it. We have to borrow the money and then beg for money. And you know, you pick this example from Isaiah, but I mean, how many times in the, in the old Testament is basically Israel or the judge or the leader at the time, they go to a nation, they go to man for an answer rather than going to God. And a lot of time you see them juxtapose where they'll, you know, they'll go to God and he tells them what to do and he gives them victory. And then someone else comes and they run to their neighbor and ask for help. Right. I mean, then you have King after King and the book of Kings. where an army comes against them and they go and take the stuff from the temple and sell it to the point where you're wondering how are you still finding things in the temple to sell because the previous six kings all stripped the temple to sell. Well, they go from gold down to like iron and bronze, yeah. Yeah, but they're all not putting their trust in God. They're stealing from God to pay for armies of heathens to fight against their enemies. And it's all because they won't rebuke the oppressor. They won't care for the widow, the fatherless. They won't deal with the poor like they're supposed to. So God makes them poor. He puts them in that situation. And churches go, oh, look, we've got 4,000 people here. We only owe $10 million on our building. And God's looking at them and going, you're really poor. I mean, as a nation, we have 37 trillion, I think, in debt. I mean, we're poor, but yet we think we're rich. And there's a lot of churches that are identical, that the nation is reflecting, the U.S. nation is reflecting the character of the churches, because there's lots of churches that think, oh, God is really moving here. And the reality is they're incredibly poor and they think they're rich. if you're still around in the podcast, I have to say that cause I'm sitting in this chair, but if you are still around and say you're a, uh, an elder or pastor that's come into a church with a mortgage or maybe someone who initiated a mortgage in there and you're thinking, you know what, this is really a bad idea. What should they do? Well, what they can't do is just say, well, forget the fact that we have a mortgage. We're now second Baptist church. And now what one thing that they can do is see if they can get rid of the building, right? To get rid of the mortgage or reduce the mortgage obligation. Maybe they lose 50 cents on the dollar, but if they have 50% equity in it, so what? Lose the 50% on the dollar, sell the, sell the building for half of what you paid for and get out of the debt. That's how seriously we should take it. Now seriously, we should take the judgment. And sometimes maybe the answer is you have to deal with the sin that happened, and that you just have to deal with it. But it's really important to understand Psalm 3721. And I mean, I've referred to this a couple of times, but this is really significant. The wicked borrows and does not repay, but the righteous shows mercy and gives. Once they've gotten in that situation where they borrowed, they have to repay, or they are wicked. this is such blasphemy towards Christ to call yourself a Christian church and not repay a mortgage. And so when you're in that situation, do what you can. Stop doing all your other garbage that you're doing because you know, that most churches spend a lot of money on a lot of things that they don't need to spend money on. Stop doing all that and try to get out of poverty. And bring the congregation along with you through repentance. Absolutely. I mean that, you know, it needs to be, you know, we need to come out of this because we've sinned by going into this. We have sinned. We've looked to things other than God. And if you do it, I mean, if you pursue it as repentance, it is about growing in faith. It is about acknowledging that we have not looked to God and it's going, how do we look to God? In what way should we be looking to Him? If we're looking for this building and He didn't want us to have it, what did He want us to be doing? There was work that He had for us. What is that work? Can we still do that and still pay for the mortgage? Oh God, help us to do that. You know, I mean, it is, we've sinned, not just how do we get out of the mortgage, but how do we begin to please our father? How do we begin to please our husband? How do we begin to do these things that he desires of us? And, and you should expect God is merciful. I mean, and you doesn't mean the next week you should, God magically is going to take care. I mean, he could, but you shouldn't go. If I obey, I know next week he'll do that. Right. Now, if your repentance is real, if you're—I mean, God pays his debts, and if you're his bride, he will pay the debt of his bride, even when his bride sinned to get into the debt in the first place. But it doesn't mean that he won't make you sweat to get out. I mean, there's no promise that says it's going to be easy. 2 Corinthians 7 talks about what real repentance looks like, a vindication to clear your name. It's like having a zeal to do the work. And so that's what the church needs to have, and they should expect God to bless them. If they have real repentance, they should expect God to bless it. It's really important to, like what you were just saying about what work do you have to do. I mean, when it says in Psalm 37, it's giving this contrast because this is a standard Hebrew form, right? Is you say one thing and then you say the same thing in a different way, or you say one thing and then you say the opposite of it. In this case, it's saying the opposite, right? The wicked borrows and does not repay, but the righteous shows mercy and gives. The reality is when you're saying we have to borrow, you're saying we're not gonna walk in righteousness. Because the reality is the church is supposed to be giving. It's supposed to be caring for the poor. It's supposed to be caring for those who have needs. It's supposed to be caring for the widow inside of it and caring for those who are outside. This is what it's supposed to be doing. And the mortgage, we have to just recognize the Bible's saying these are two sides. If you're borrowing, you know, and don't repay, then you're wicked, and the righteous gives, and... What do you have to give? It's a tug-of-war, you're on one side or the other. Even if you borrow and repay, you have less to give. Right. And until you repay, you're in the case of that you look like the wicked. And so you shouldn't go, oh, we're going to show how generous we are by we're going to care for the widows, we're going to do all these programs, we're going to do all this stuff while you're failing to We'll take out a second mortgage. Right. And you're acting wicked, and you think that you can be righteous and give when you're acting wickedly. So the first thing you need to do is stop focusing on, oh, I have this work to do, and go, I have the first work I have to do is for the church to appear holy before God and before man. That's the first job of the church. Yes, the church should do all these other things which testify to the holiness, but if you're looking like you're wicked, that's the first thing to deal with. And like you said, I mean, just think about this in the picture of like a real husband and wife. The wife goes out and gets into debt on her own. And she takes, you know, and she is in like massive debt under her name and her husband didn't know about it and she can't pay for it. If she comes to her husband and says, I've sinned against you, like you said, he's going to forgive her. But he's also going to expect her to learn her lesson. And sometimes, yeah, practice is how you learn the lesson. Right. And so there's a part where, I mean, he wants her to understand that she needs to learn her lesson. I mean, but I mean, this is a real thing. I mean, that is the attitude the church needs to have, is imagine how you would feel as a husband if your wife went out and got massively into debt and came back to you and said, well, I've got all this debt, so we're going to have to deal with that. It's not in Proverbs 31. Right. She's not buying a field with the money that she... She's buying a field on credit. Yeah, exactly. And she's like, I bought this field and there's nothing in it that's useful. It was very expensive. What's on it? A church building. And so, I mean, the attitude you would have towards that is that would be a really bad position. I mean, that would be, you would be really wounded to see that your wife has done that. The church needs to actually view that that's what they've done to God. That's what they've done to their husband. And similarly, using that example, a lot of times what the husband would do is go, well, you better figure out how to run the household more efficiently with the money that I've been giving you because you need to start showing that. And maybe at some point he goes, yeah, you're making a real effort. I can see that. So I'm going to help out and eliminate it. But you don't just go, oh, I'll give you the money. We shouldn't have that. Because she's just going to go out and squander money again. Because she's just going to go out and squander it again. She's not going to learn her lesson. And so in the case that you were talking about, the church should expect to suffer some pain because it is through scourging that we learn things. It's through scourging that we get the peaceful fruit of righteousness. And so God doesn't just scourge individually, he also scourges local bodies for their sin. And we talked about that shifting of resources, and so I don't know how it can't take away from doing the work of the church. Deuteronomy 15, 7-8 says, if there is among you a poor man of your brethren, Within any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand from the poor brother, but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs. We've referenced this multiple times. if all of your resources are tied up in paying off a mortgage, you may open your hand wide, but there may not be much in it. And so your ability to help a particular brethren or to help multiple brethren is reduced or eliminated because you have these other obligations. And so your obligation to do what's right before God has been diminished or taken away. And, you know, in the context of Deuteronomy 15 is actually lending much more than it is, you know, giving, right? It's not they're hungry, so you give them food. If they're hungry, you give them food. But if they want to start a business, you help them start a business is more the context of Deuteronomy 15. And so, I mean, if you think about it, how many churches in America would I mean, if you thought of a percent, how many have a mortgage versus how many would lend money to people in the congregation? The biblical commandment is to lend money to people in the congregation, but yet how many have a mortgage? And then they go, but we couldn't do that. We'd never do that. That would be inappropriate. That would be inappropriate. It's like, do you pay any attention to what God says at all? Right. It's much simpler just to be a slave. Because in the end, what the real issues are thinking of is, that sounds messy. That would be complicated. You don't mix money with things. Getting involved with that, that would require us to expect something of one another. It would require us to keep track of things. It would cause some uncomfortable situations where we would be trying to encourage someone to actually grow into maturity Oh wait a minute, this is the work of the church. You know what I mean? I mean that the church would actually have some element of real skin in the game as opposed to these fake things that we do and we call the gospel. It would actually be doing work that actually affects the world, that actually teaches, that actually shows how you build, how you repay, what it means to do that, what church discipline is about, all these things. But no, We'd just ratify it. Slavery is simpler. I think a lot of times it's the fear of, well, what happens if it goes wrong? What if we lend this person some money to start a business? And then they don't repay. Actually, it's great. Because I've done this personally. And it's great because a lot of times the wicked borrow and do not repay. And you don't have to deal with them anymore because they flee. And that's usually what happens. And so you go, there's a loss. Actually, there's not. A lot of times what you've done is testified just like the orphans in Nigeria. We've testified to them that they're wicked. What more obligation do we have to them? And to clarify, these orphans were adults at the time that we did it. Yeah, they were adults. They were little kids. Yes, thank you for pointing that out. We gave that seven-year-old $10,000. And you know when you get with it. And so there could be real blessings in that. But people are afraid of that. I agree with you. They're afraid. Well, what? it's just going to make the situation really embarrassing. And if the guy's desire is really to repay, I have people that owe me money that their desire is to repay. They can't repay someone for years and they're not embarrassed. There's no problem. And then there's other ones that I know will never talk to me because they're wicked and they, they reject God and they're, you know, and that's a blessing. People show up years later and go, I need to repay you. You know what I mean? So, I mean, it's a, It's a very—there is a practical application of the gospel, and I think we've talked about doing an episode on some of this because it really occurred to me with some of the work we've been doing in Nigeria how much that work is not at all separate from the Great Commission. That it is part of the Great Commission, where we said when we're going to start this prosthetic business, to do this, to be able to be a blessing to people, we're going to have to teach people in Nigeria what it means to be ethical in business. And that's teaching them to observe all the things that God has commanded you. And there's this part of it where the church goes, we'll just teach them in a theoretical sense. But no, there's a part of it where you actually start to be involved with them in their lives. We'll go for a week a year and teach them in a theoretical sense. Right. Sorry, that doesn't work. You teach them at Sunday school and it's like, but no, you teach them all the things that God, you make disciples of the nations, not just where a person out of that nation, but you're actually discipling the nation in a way that you're actually going, this is what your culture should look like. This is how you should live. And it's impossible. which is why it requires faith, because it's not you doing it, it's God doing it, because it's impossible. And it's a lot harder to do that and to have an impact on a foreign country like that than it is to have a building. But yet we go, we need a mortgage for a building. And so how can you be prepared to do hard things when you can't even do simple things, right? The Bible talks about, what, you're gonna deal with the chariots when you won't even deal with the footmen? And that's where we are, and that's why we look at the church and we see how weak the church is in America. And it can't even deal with the footmen. It goes, oh, no, our building, we feel a little cramped here. We need a new building. And it can't deal with the most simple difficulties. And then we go, but why doesn't the church have an impact in the world? It doesn't have an impact in the world. The same reason the Roman Catholic Church didn't have an impact on the world. It forgot what it was there for. Christ says that if you have the faith as a grain of a mustard seed, you can move this mountain. The gospel will go forth into the world, that you can move this mountain. And we haven't gotten past having the faith to have a building, but we wonder why the gospel isn't going into the world. And the answer is, like you said, we haven't done the small steps of faith. And trusting God for a building is tiny. and trusting God for not having a building. That's the problem that people have is they're willing to trust God if he gives them a building. They're just not willing to trust God if he doesn't. What if he says no? It goes to this shallow view of God and what a church is. If we're meeting in someone's home or if we're meeting at a local school, Well, that's, you know, people aren't going to come because it'll be, especially home. Meeting in a tent. Right. Yeah. People won't come. So we won't be able to, and you make these excuses, people, we won't be able to grow and we're going to, you know, everyone's going to miss out because we don't have a building. We're so great. Everybody's going to miss out on us walking by sight. It's like, good, thank you, that's good. This is another thing that we have to recognize what we're doing because it really is evil. And we talked about this when we were talking about the U.S. debt. We did a episode on debt, U.S. debt. And it's kind of like, we're 37 trillion in debt. Well, everybody knows that the people living today cannot pay that money back and will never pay that money back. And so what we've done is we've created an obligation on people who are in the future. And when the country was going into debt, this was the big argument before we just started to be so greedy and so self-centered that we just embrace it and say, well, I want this now. I don't care who pays for it. Before that, people went, how can you do this to your children? How can you do this to the people who come after you? When a church does a mortgage, it needs to recognize it's doing the same thing. It wants something now. They're not signing up and saying, okay, we want this mortgage now, so we guarantee we will stay at this church until it is paid off to make sure that God does not appear to be wicked, that Christianity does not appear to be evil. We will stay here forever. Nobody does that when they do a mortgage. They go, we'll do a mortgage and then, oh, The pastor said something that hurt my feelings. I'm leaving. And so what people, churches, when they do it, they're always doing it where they're assigning an obligation to somebody else in addition to themselves. And that is evil. When you get divorced, at least they kind of like divvy up the debts and the everything. Whereas when you leave a church, they don't go, OK, let's make sure you take your percentage of the mortgage with you. Yeah, we have a million dollars here. We have 500 people or whatever. That'll be $20,000. I'd like it right now pony up and I mean and the other part is is when you you're calling your children to a faith Come and come and worship. Let's come and serve this bank That's what we're all gonna do. This is what our faith is. Let's come and do this Let's come and let's sing and let's hear preaching and let's pay the mortgage And that becomes what part of your worship is. And that's what you're calling your children to. And you wonder why they don't see your faith, why they don't see your faith, because you didn't have any to call them to. And you're putting an obligation on them that you're like, come to this church, and then they heard they hit 12 or whatever, and they have a paper round. You go, you need to tithe. You need to pay off the debt I put you in. You need to participate in paying off that debt, because come on. And I mean, it really is wicked. And we, you know, people used to think well enough to understand how wicked this was at a national level. And if it's true at a national level, I mean, it's so much worse at a church. But yet people do this all the time. They not, the next generation of the church, they're putting them in, but they're putting it into the people next year when they decide that, hey, I got a promotion, so I'm going to move. Well, That's just evil. Right. Well, and Charles, you know, the way you describe it, nobody says that out loud. Nobody says that part out loud. And it's kind of what we were talking about at the beginning where the Pharisee said, Oh no, we're children of Abraham. We've, we've, we've, we've always been free. They, I think that most people just think that they're free and they're, they're just like the Pharisees who thought, you know, they thought they were free, but they really weren't. If they thought about it. when they see a need somewhere and they go, why don't we go do that need? And they go, well, we'll talk about that and pray about that. And the reason it doesn't go anywhere is they go, we don't have the funds to do that. We can't put our resources there. Our resources have been pre-allocated. We have to put this into the building. And remember what they think too, because let's be serious. That person who says, I'm going to leave, they don't go, but I have an obligation. They go, it is the church that has the obligation. It is the bride of Christ that has the obligation. Not me. Yeah, I'm part of the invisible church, but I don't have any response. This is just the bride of Christ that has the obligation. I don't. It's hard for me to express just how disgusting this is to me when people do this. Well, it kind of ties. We did an episode on church membership and the importance of church membership and understanding. I mean, I think that ties into that as well. If you really have an understanding of what that means and what that obligates the church to you and you to the church, you would think about that differently. You're either arguing that you're separating yourself from something evil that owes that money, and that's a good thing, or you're separating yourself from something holy that owes that money. What does that say? You know what I mean? It is very legitimate for somebody to attend a church for a while, and they're not a member yet, and they go, you have a mortgage? I'm leaving. I want to separate myself from the wicked. But when you participated in it and then you separated from it, you're saying that church is holy. You're saying it's Christ's bride, but you're also saying she has to pay for it. Christ has to pay for it, not me. It's creating an obligation for Christ that is blasphemous. I mean, that's what it is. It is blasphemous because you're denying the very nature of God. And I would put that on the list of questions you ask when you go to a church. Do you have a mortgage? Will you ever take on a mortgage? Does the church have a position statement that they will never take on a mortgage? But we keep, we should probably mention, because we keep getting comments saying, this is a great episode. I agree with this. And that's why I don't go to any church. I just stay at home and worship at home. Like, well, we're not. Well, we already have comments. At least two, right? Guys, I have a comment. I think it was two. They're pouring in. We didn't have any comments. But we're not saying that this must be that you should never never go to a church that has a mortgage because all churches have problems especially if it's in the past but I mean it's very easy for people for us to make ourselves you know, to say we are holy and anyone who falls short of what we see is wrong. But you know, the fact that I'm just going to stay at home, that's not a problem. Even though God says, don't forsake the gathering of the saints, you know, you don't have the freedom to stay at home. Right. Yeah. Yeah. If there's, we don't want to feed their excuse to say, I can just stay at home. Right. Yeah. But at the same time, it also means that if you're going to that church and you're going, okay, the only, all the churches in town have mortgages. Or the other ones are apostate, because if you have a choice between one that has a mortgage and one that's apostate, it's still better to go to one that has a mortgage, right? It's do not forsake the gathering together of the saints, those who are being sanctified. But at the same time, it also means you recognize that this is a serious area that needs to be sanctified. And those conversations, you have a duty to have those conversations. my vote's going to be that we put our money towards paying this off. So we're out of this as quick as we can. My vote will be if we can sell the building that we sell the building. So we get out of this position and say, yeah, maybe we find another church, another church that's getting ready to take on a mortgage and maybe we can split the building and use it some, you know, maybe we can have somebody meet in the afternoon. I mean, there's ways to do those kinds of things and to deal with that. And That's the woman running the household titer. It's running the titer ship, right? I mean, I need to leverage what I have. I need to use it more wisely. I want to cut down on my grocery bill. I'm going to start a garden, right? I mean, it's that idea is that you go, how else do I get another revenue? How else do I get in? And not by watering down the gospel, because then you're not bringing honor to God. But how do I do things to be wiser about the use of a better steward? You water down your comforts. Yeah. A mortgage for a church really testifies to what they think about God. It's really important to understand the concept that if God can't provide you a building, why do you think he can provide you eternal life? We need to think and understand that God is in control of the visible, the things that we see in front of us, or how can we trust his promises about the things we can't see? And a mortgage is a testimony of that. Do you trust that God says, I will give you abundantly all the things that you need for good? Thanks for joining us. This has been The Conquering Truth, a project of Reformation Baptist Church. If you found this helpful, you can visit us online at theconqueringtruth.com and subscribe here or in your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching.