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Hi, I'm Rob West. That's from the Christmas story in Luke chapter 2. The angels announce the coming of the Savior to a group of shepherds.
It sounds simple enough, but there's more to the story. Jerry Boyer joins us to talk about it, then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. This is Faith in Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey. Well, our guest Jerry Boyer is the author of The Maker vs. the Takers, What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics. It's a book loaded with amazing insights about Jesus' time on earth from an economic perspective, and I'd really encourage you to pick up a copy. Jerry, great to have you back.
Always a pleasure, my friend. Jerry, those angels carried probably the most important message in history, so why deliver it to shepherds? Weren't they the social outcasts? Yeah, that's an interesting point, because it's a little complex, because I've heard sermons about how shepherds were social outcasts.
And there is some evidence for that, but I think we kind of need to fill out just a little bit more historical detail. Shepherds were, under the tradition, social outcasts for the reason that you can't necessarily control where your sheep go. So your sheep might go into somebody else's property and eat their grass, thereby you're committing theft against your neighbor. Now that seems, you know, I mean, unless you have a really big flock of sheep and you don't have fences, that's probably not going to be a huge problem. But they like to multiply rules, so shepherds were seen as negative.
However, you have to add something. The temple ran on sheep, right? The temple had a sacrificial system, and it used a lot of sheep, which means that there's a sacred purpose to sheep.
Therefore, what they did is they set aside a certain area. You know, in those days, what do you say, in that country, there were shepherds, country in Greek, korra. There was a country, not like a nation, but a zone, a province, set aside where sheep could be raised because they needed sheep for the temple system, which of course implies, which is in fact historically true, that the area of Bethlehem and those environs, that country, was where sheep were raised for the temple system. And if you stop for a moment and think about that, and by the way, we have it in the archaeology that, you know, Bethlehem is not that far from Jerusalem. And you had a tower called the Migdal Adar, which was sort of at the upper left corner of Bethlehem.
So it was like a short tower. And when sheep were basically herded to Jerusalem, someone would stand over and look down and look at the sheep and say, oh, wait, that one splotched, or that one has a missing ear, pull that out, so that they were only unblemished sheep that could be used in the temple sacrificial system. In other words, Jesus, the Lamb of God, was born in the city where lambs of God for the temple were bred, which I think is an extremely powerful foreshadowing, even there in the gospel story, of Jesus's ultimate purpose and death. It's almost like, Jerry, God had a master plan in all of this, huh?
It's almost like it really is. And what that means is that God's master plan includes economics. So different places in the world specialize in different things, right?
Wall Street is finance, and Silicon Valley is technology, and here in Pittsburgh, where I am, industry and steel, and now, you know, healthcare. So regions have regional economic concentration. Capernaum and Bethsaida were fishing villages, for example. You know, Tyre and Sidon, they produced dye.
By the way, a dye discovered by a dog. So that shed certain light on Jesus's conversation with the Syrophoenician woman. So every place that Jesus set his foot was a place where there was an economy. And if we know what that economy was, then we'll understand more of what Jesus is saying in those various places. Now, Jesus wasn't actually saying anything in Bethlehem yet. God the Father was saying something by sending Jesus. Jesus wasn't speaking yet.
But in God's providence, the center of creation of sacrificial lambs, lambs of God, was there. So God's plan includes economics, and sometimes Christians tend to think money talk is dirty talk. No, the economy is God's plan too, just like family life, just like church life.
That's exactly right. We're talking with Jerry Boyer today about the economics of the Nativity. What about Mary's economic philosophy?
Did she have one? And what about the birth of Jesus threatening the ruling temple class in Jerusalem? We'll talk about that, plus the Magi, when we come back with Jerry Boyer. This is Faith in Finance. We'll be right back. . Are you overwhelmed by financial fear and anxiety? At Faith Fight, we hear it every day. People weighed down by worries related to wealth and money. But financial anxiety isn't about the size of your bank account.
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Take control over your health care costs with a program from CHM that could save you up to 40 percent. Learn more and enroll today at chministries.org slash faithfy. That's chministries.org slash faithfy. It's great to have you with us today on Faith in Finance. I'm sure you're going to read Luke Chapter 2 at some point during this Christmas season as you think about and reflect on the Christmas story, the birth of Christ. Well, what about the fact that there's an economic backdrop to everything we read in Scripture and could that in fact enlighten what God is telling us through the Scriptures? Well, we're talking about that today with Jerry Boyer, our resident economist. Before the break, Jerry was sharing with us about the economics of Bethlehem and perhaps how that was foreshadowing what Jesus would ultimately do to pay for the sins of the world on the cross. But Jerry, what about Mary, obviously a central figure in this story? We know a little more about her than we do Joseph.
Does she have an economic philosophy? Yeah, she pretty clearly does, because when she goes to visit cousin Elizabeth, she sings a little song or writes a little poem that history knows as the Magnificat. So why is it called the Magnificat? Because she starts out by saying, my soul magnifies the Lord or magnify the Lord, my soul.
And in Latin, that's magnificat. So a lot of great music has been written around that. And there's a lot of economics about the rich being torn down, those who are on the thrones being deposed, about the rich being sent away empty and about the poor being filled, about the humility of God's handmaiden. She's referring to herself that way. There's a lot of economics and kind of politics going on there.
And again, remember, you have to look at location. So when the angel announces to Mary that this is going to happen, you don't have a Magnificat. You don't get the Magnificat until she visits Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a Judean. So remember, Judea was richer and a more hierarchical society, more kind of cronyist in many ways. There was a kind of the ruling class was kind of living off of others. There was a society that was more like—there was an aristocracy there. You don't really have that in Galilee. I mean, look at how Mary and Joseph, they're living in a humble village, and she's a descendant of David. So you didn't have a functioning aristocracy, but you did down in the south. And Elizabeth was of such high status that her husband was able to offer sacrifices, or I should say incense, although incense is a kind of sacrifice in the temple, because that's when it's announced that John will be conceived. So their higher status, their higher socioeconomic status.
So there's a reversal. Mary goes to the hill country of Judea, and the first thing Elizabeth does is subordinate herself to Mary. And so does John in her womb, subordinates himself to Jesus.
He leaps for joy, and Elizabeth marvels that the mother of our Lord would come to me. Now, if Mary didn't have Jesus in her womb, then Mary would have been subordinate. There wouldn't have been, oh my, my cousin Mary is coming to visit me.
I am so honored. Mary was lower status. But in this case, there's a reversal. And that reversal, only after that does Mary give the song, the Magnificat, about a reversal. The aristocracy is going to be set aside, and the humble, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount and on the Plain, the meek will inherit the land, will inherit the earth. And interestingly enough, and I credit my wife Susan with noticing this in the book, we actually line up statements that Mary makes in that Magnificat song with statements that Jesus makes in the Sermon on the Plain, which is his sermon to the ruling class, which is different than the Sermon on the Mount.
And some of the words are almost verbatim. In other words, Mary's song gets taught to Jesus, her approach gets taught to Jesus, and then in one of his most important sermons, he recapitulates in that sermon some of what he learned from his mother. By the way, the Gospels don't say where Mary was raised, but Eusebius, the church historian, says she was raised in Sepphoris, which is near Nazareth, which was the financial capital of Galilee, and it was also a cultural capital. So it's fairly likely that Mary would have been economically and culturally sophisticated.
They had Greek theaters there, they had banks there. Mary would have been around sort of the ways of the big city in the region, would have been exposed to multiple languages. So she is, she's humble morally in that she humbles herself, but she writes this beautiful poem and she's raised in a metropolitan, sophisticated area. So she's fairly likely the one who was the big intellectual influence on Jesus. And people don't like to think about Jesus having intellectual influence, but he's God and man. The human nature learned, right? The divine nature didn't learn, but he's fully God and he's fully man, so he learned. So the God-man learns from his mother, and that shows up in the Sermon on the Mount exactly how much he learned from her.
Wow, that's fascinating. All right, Jerry, the other economic backdrop that we have going on here is the fact that the birth of Jesus threatens the ruling temple class in Jerusalem. How does that help to illuminate this story? Well, it's interesting, Mary and Herod both understand more than anybody else around them what the birth of Jesus means.
They just react differently to it. Mary understands that it's going to upset everything and bring justice to the world, and she wants that. Herod understands that it's going to upset everything and bring justice to the world, and being an unjust, oppressive tyrant, he doesn't want that. In some ways, I think Herod understood the birth of Jesus more than many Christians do, because we think he just came to change our hearts.
But if he changes our hearts, everything else changes too. He came, the prophesied Messiah was going to bring justice to the earth. He was going to cleanse the temple.
Hold on a second, what? He's going to cleanse the temple? A whole lot of people's living depended on a dirty temple, a crooked temple, a temple where when people went to buy sacrifices, they had to pay double because the money changers were giving unjust exchange rates. So, so Herod understood that his livelihood and the livelihood is, by the way, says Herod was disturbed and all Jerusalem with him. Think about how corrupt Jerusalem was, that the birth of a Messiah who would bring justice to Israel was seen as trouble in the national capital.
I mean, you can imagine that in America. Let's say someone says, Jesus is going to come back and get rid of all the evil in America, and everyone in Washington, D.C. is really worried. You know, we all should be worried, but they were especially worried. They understood the Messiah was going to cleanse the temple. He was going to set things right. He was going to treat the poor equally, and that would have ruined their lives. It would have ruined their livelihoods in particular. By the way, that's why later in the Gospels, it wasn't until Jesus told a very explicitly economic parable that Luke says that they discerned that he was talking about them, and then they set out to destroy him. When Jesus confronted the money changers, he was confronting the evil of the temple and starting in motion the cleansing of the temple, which actually eventually ended up to the destruction of the temple and the destruction of all Jerusalem in 70 A.D. So, the people who worshiped power, in some sense, got the power implications of Jesus' message better than we do. Hmm. Wow.
Jerry, quickly, we've got just a minute left. Of course, in Matthew chapter 2, the Magi come to worship the baby Jesus and give him very expensive gifts. What was timely about that? Well, I think what's timely about that is the gifts match the gifts that are described in Torah for the temple. And basically, by giving him things that you would bring to the temple, basically, that starts the theme in the Gospels, which is throughout, that the temple is completely corrupt and that Jesus is the other temple. So, throughout the Gospels, you have a competition between two temples. One temple devours widows' houses, Jesus says. The other temple feeds widows and raises them up from sick beds and feeds them out of himself. So, basically, the gospel is, in some sense, a conflict between two kingdoms, two temples, and two economic models. One is taker and the other is maker. Maybe that would be a good title for a book. I think so. In fact, Jerry is the author of The Maker vs. The Taker is What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics.
Pick it up. You'll see this conversation and much more. Great stocking stuffer. Yes, it is.
Absolutely. Jerry, thanks for stopping by, buddy. Thank you. Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas. We'll be right back with your questions. 800-525-7000.
I'm Rob West, and we'll be right back. We're grateful for support from Timothy Plan. For more than 30 years, they've served clients on a biblically responsible journey to invest in a way that honors God and gives dignity to people's lives. More information is at TimothyPlan.com. The investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses are contained in the prospectus and summary prospectus available at TimothyPlan.com.
Mutual funds distributed by Timothy Partners LTD and ETFs distributed by Foresight Fund Services LLC. Do you feel like your hands are tied with debt, preventing you from serving God? If you have credit card debt, Christian credit counselors can help. Through our debt management program, we can get you out of credit card debt about 80% faster while honoring your debt in full. For more information on how Christian credit counselors can help, visit christiancreditcounselors.org. That's christiancreditcounselors.org, or call 800-557-1985, 800-557-1985. So thankful to have you with us today on Faith and Finance, where we apply God's wisdom to your financial decisions and choices.
First, an email. This one comes to us by way of Laurie, and she writes, My husband is planning to wait until full retirement age to take Social Security. I'm going to take spousal benefits, but I'll only be 65 when he retires. Can I take spousal benefits then, or will I have to wait until my full retirement age? Laurie, you can take spousal benefits once your husband begins taking his benefits.
So we say he's got to walk through his door first, and then you can take them after the fact. Now, if you haven't reached full retirement age, your benefits will be permanently reduced by about one-twelfth of 8% for every month you take them early. And that's a permanent reduction in your benefits. So it would be better for you to maximize those spousal benefits, which by the way, you can get up to 50% of his benefit as a spousal benefit. But you will need to wait until full retirement age. So can you take them early?
If he's taken them first, yes. But it'll start reducing it down from that 50% of his benefit max down to whatever it is based on how early you're taking it. So my advice to you would be if you can wait, absolutely wait. Now, let me say to everyone else, just this idea generally of if you're healthy and you've got other means and you can wait, I like the idea of waiting.
In fact, if you wait from full retirement age to age 70, it'll take about 12 years to be paid back for what you gave up during those years between full retirement age and age 70. Once you get to that point, then you've got to check about 25% higher for the rest of your life. That's a good thing to have. Thanks for writing to us. By the way, folks, if you have a question, send it along, askrob at faithfi.com. Let's round out the broadcast today with your questions heading to Ohio. Hi, Katie, thanks for your patience. Go ahead.
Hello, thank you so much for having me. So I am 35 and I'm headed back to work after being a stay-at-home mom for the last nine years. Nice.
And I am excited. I'm going to work at the elementary that my kids go to, just card time, but my income is not necessary. We have maxed out my husband's 401k and we have to do a backdoor Roth IRA because of how much he makes, so we max that out. And then I'm wondering if we have probably about $600,000 saved up already in our retirement accounts, so we are just planning on saving mine. And I have to contribute 10% to SIRS just because of the public school, but I'm wondering if they have a deferred comp option. I can tell you what that is, but I didn't know if I should just invest in that. We were thinking probably I'm part time, so maybe like it'd be about $800 a month that I would put into that.
Or is there something else you would recommend other than deferred comp? Yeah, well, for the benefit of our listeners, SIRS is the Employees Retirement System of Ohio. It's a defined benefit plan, and you guys are in a great position.
I mean, you've mentioned several things here that I love. First of all, you've been a stay-at-home mom. What a blessing.
Now it sounds like you're excited to go back to work, but you're doing it in a way where you're actually going to be there with your kids. That's amazing. You mentioned the backdoor Roth IRA, which is a great tool for those of you who your income has eclipsed the max to allow you to contribute to that Roth. Doing a non-deductible contribution to a traditional IRA and then converting that to a Roth is a great strategy that the current tax code permits. Don't miss that if you're in that situation.
That's what Katie's referring to. You know, I think you guys are ripe for two things. Number one is, if you haven't, doing some longer-term retirement planning with an advisor who shares your values as a believer who could really help you dial into how much is enough and what is your financial finish line. Because with you guys being so well-planned, you've already got $600,000 put away, you're maxing out your husband's retirement plan, you're doing the backdoor Roth. I mean, you guys could very easily be in a position where you're on track to, I'll say, over-accumulate.
Now, what is over and under? Well, I can't tell you that number. That's between you and your husband and the Lord. But I think just having that conversation and then once we know what enough is, we can put a plan together to reach that and that may free up some additional cash flow that you say, you know what? This portion of this, especially my income that's now all surplus, we may want to increase our giving or do other things with it because we're already on track to save every bit of what we think is our financial finish line. And that number can change over time and so you guys might want to revisit that every couple of years. But I think going through that exercise would be a great opportunity for you guys just to celebrate what God has done and really develop a vision for what's possible through your generosity. I think in terms of for that portion that you do decide, yeah, we want to continue to put aside even more than we already are, I think using that deferred comp option makes a lot of sense. You know, going into the 457 that you have available and just putting that into a growth stock environment or a properly diversified stock portfolio.
But just given the fact that you guys are probably 30 years away from considering transitioning away from paid work, you probably want to be largely allocated to the stock portion. But does that all make sense? Yes. Yes.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Absolutely. Do you guys have an advisor, a trusted believing advisor that you could kind of lean into this with? We do.
My aunt actually works for an investment company, so we've been, they were the ones who suggested that plan. So just wondered your opinion on it too. I like it. I value yours.
Awesome. Well, thank you, Katie. All the best to you and your husband. You sound like wonderful folks and it sounds like God is doing some really cool things in your lives as you transition into a new season. So thanks for being on the broadcast. We appreciate it. To Virginia we go. Hi, Vicki.
How can I help? Hi, thank you for taking my call. We have a HELOC and it matures about two years after our mortgage will be paid off. And we had to recently use it. And the people at the bank said best case scenario is to always hold on, open a HELOC at least after you pay off your house. And that will be a red flag in case someone tries to use your house or get a loan off of your house in a fraudulent situation. Would you recommend that or do you agree with that or is it just the bank trying to make us spend more money?
Yeah. You know, I wouldn't leave a HELOC open for that reason. I mean, if you're concerned about a fraudulent title transfer, which we're hearing more about lately just because there's companies that offer, quote, title lock insurance, even though it's a misnomer, there is no such thing as insurance against fraud. And so what I would say is if you're concerned about that, I'd call your county records office and see if you can put an alert on your title that would allow them to notify you if there was any changes or any request for changes. But with regard to that HELOC, if it's paid off and you're not planning on using it, I don't see any reason to keep that open. It's probably just sitting there as an enticement for you all to spend money, which I wouldn't want you to do unless you'd really thought through it and prayed through how you're going to use it. So I would say if you're ready to close that down because you don't have a use for it, I would do it without looking back.
And I certainly wouldn't leave it open just because it will prevent somebody from trying to steal your title. Okay, okay. Thank you so much. All right, Vicki, thanks for your call today. Hey, a big thanks to my team today.
I certainly couldn't do this without them. Amy, Jim, Dan, Anthony and everybody here at Faithfi that makes this happen. If you want to support our work, every gift doubled till the end of the year. Faithfi.com.
Just click Give. We'll see you tomorrow. God bless you. Bye bye. Faith and Finance is provided by Faithfi and listeners like you.
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