Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Men. What if the best of the American dream was never about McMansions in the suburbs, big fat investment accounts, and buying more stuff than any of us uses? What if it was actually an echo of a biblical vision? Every man sitting under his own vine and fig tree with none to make him afraid.
[00:00:21] George Washington wanted that for every family in this country, and he built toward that end. He said it in letters and he prayed for it for the nation.
[00:00:30] As we hit America's 250th anniversary, a real question is, are we still fighting for it? Not because we're Americans, but because we're Biblical men and we follow the King of the Universe.
[00:00:46] I'm Steve Manuel. This is the finale of our America series on Abraham's Wallet.
[00:00:53] Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
[00:00:58] Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet. This podcast, if you're new, exists to inspire and equip fathers and grandfathers for multi generational faithfulness, leading your home, stewarding what God has given you, and applying scripture to every area of life, including the nation he planted you in.
[00:01:17] This is a loner episode Today. I'm just going to share about the midrash that I was in this morning and I'm going to close the series with a godly vision for you and for me and by extension, the good old usa. Before we get into it, I just have to say this up front. On August 21st through 23rd, that's coming up like in less than a month and a half ish, we're going to host the third annual Abraham's Wallet retreat in West Harrison, Indiana. It's a weekend built for men just like you, with solid teaching, honest conversation, and real time to think and pray and plan for how you lead your family well in this generation.
[00:02:03] And if you think I'm just a casual listener, I don't even know your guys whole thing that you do. And I really only know like one other guy that even thinks this way. Perfect. You're one of us.
[00:02:17] We actually had guys at our last retreat in November who had never listened to one episode of Abe's Wallet. They came because a friend invited them and they had amazing and fruitful time.
[00:02:30] I just have to throw this in as a teaser because I want to tempt you. I would like for you to be there. I would like for new unknown faces to appear. And I'm just going to tease you to I hope this teases you that I'm told we might be exercising some of our second Amendment rights at this retreat, if you catch my drift. There could be some pow pow sounds there. So I throw that in. I'd love to see you there. Go to abrahamswallet.comretreat to grab one of the remaining spots. That's abrahamswallet.com retreat.
[00:03:06] The reason that I'm kind of pushing this right up front this week is because the deadline for signups is approaching. The deadline is July 20, so if you haven't had, if you haven't gotten a spot, now's the time to move.
[00:03:21] You could pause this right now and go to abrahamswallet.com retreat and sign up. That would be great. Okay, we have been in a four part series called America and let me quickly bring you up to speed. If you're just joining us.
[00:03:34] Episode 1 We Reclaimed the biblical call for every Christian to seek the good of the place where God has put them.
[00:03:43] Jeremiah 29:7 isn't just for ancient exiles. It's for you and me right here. It's for where any believer finds themselves.
[00:03:53] Episode 2 We looked at America's uniquely Protestant Christian heritage, the faith of the founders, the biblical worldview baked into the founding documents, and why that heritage is worth knowing and celebrating instead of apologizing for. We're going to get to some negative examples of that in just a minute. Episode three was us pushing back on the modern idea that Christians should stay out of anything labeled political.
[00:04:23] We showed that many of the biggest fights today aren't politics at all. They're creation order questions that Scripture speaks to directly and that Christians must also speak to directly. Silence is not an option for Abrahamic dads, at least, at the very least, in your own homes. Today, Episode four, we're asking a very important question, which is what exactly are we fighting for?
[00:04:51] Not just what we're against, the positive vision that we're laboring toward as Christian men in the land.
[00:04:58] Now, I said that I wanted to start with a midrash that I was in this morning. And a midrash is just a, it's, it's a, it's an ancient form of Bible study. It's a discussion as opposed to somebody teaching.
[00:05:12] And we looked at a couple of really key passages.
[00:05:18] One is Micah 4, and one was Isaiah 32. Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries.
[00:05:25] They heard God's voice at the same time. They, again, they lived during each other's times.
[00:05:31] And there is, we don't know if somebody was cribbing off of the other one or if God said exactly the same words to the two of them. But there are passages in both books that are exactly the same, word for word. They're exactly the same.
[00:05:44] They are both visions of what I want guys to understand as the good life. We might even do an episode that's specifically just reviewing some of the ideas around those two chapters, because I think it's very important for us to have fixed in our minds what is the vision of if everything went right, what would that be like? Would it just be piles and piles of money, us rolling around in money?
[00:06:12] What would that be? And those passages describe it so in verses 1 through 5 of Micah 4, this Prophet gives us a picture of shalom.
[00:06:25] It is the shalom. I'll say more about it in a second. But this shalom picture is where God's kingdom reigns.
[00:06:34] And he describes the mountain of the Lord's house being established and nations streaming to it. And then there's a beautiful passage which says, I'll read it to you directly.
[00:06:45] They shall hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, so that the implements of war may become the tools of agriculture.
[00:06:59] Nations shall not lift up sword against nation, nor shall they ever again train for war.
[00:07:07] Each of them shall sit in security and peace under his vine and under his fig tree, with no one to make them afraid, for the mouth of the omnipotent Lord of hosts has spoken it.
[00:07:27] Now, that's not just poetry that those few verses from Micah 4. It's the biblical picture of, as I said, shalom. And shalom is real peace. But sometimes shalom is just translated peace, so that we would say the peace of the Sabbath to you, Shabbat shalom.
[00:07:47] Now, but the word peace doesn't get it.
[00:07:51] It's not just the absence of conflict, but shalom encompasses everything being right. It's the presence of ordered liberty, of fruitful labor, of security, of independent families, and freedom from fear and tyranny. All of that is baked into the word shalom.
[00:08:14] So when you see a well ordered vineyard, shalom.
[00:08:21] One of the ways to see this these days is when you see beautiful landscaping and everything's tailored. Matter of fact, this morning my daughter and I were driving by a funeral home, and I must have just been landscaped. The flowers were fantastic, the lawn looked great. And I looked over it and I told her, that's shalom. You can tell that work has been done here. It's ordered and it looks fantastic. But we can also see shalom in the way that a family runs. We could see shalom in a business operating well. You can see shalom when there's good Government, and it serves the people's freedom, et cetera. So that's shalom, and it's wholesome productivity.
[00:09:09] Every man under his own vine and fig tree. You could ask, well, where did the vine and fig tree come from? Well, presumably he. He gardened. You know, he did some. He did some farm work, and these things grew. And he's in his own home and he's resting now from his own work, which he's going to go back to. He's got his own family. There again, there's. I like the phrase wholesome productivity. And there's a fitting, even Shabbat within that productivity, because he says he's sitting underneath this fig tree. This is what righteous government and a just society are supposed to make possible.
[00:09:48] It's the biblical picture of this full, ordered, healthy, productive, prosperous society. It's the kingdom of God on earth, a place where godly homes can flourish without being crushed by chaos. That I use that word choicefully. Chaos is the best translation of the Hebrew word ra, which we often translate as evil or just bad. I think my Bible translates it bad.
[00:10:21] But the word ra means the absence of everything I've been describing. It is the polar opposite of shalom.
[00:10:29] Where there is no shalom, there is Ra, and where there is Ra, there is not shalom. So shalom is this ordered fruitfulness, and Ra is chaos and wickedness and anarchy. And of course, where there's anarchy, bullies arise and there's oppression and all sorts of madness that happens under Ra.
[00:10:51] So it's a place where godly homes can flourish without being crushed by chaos or by overreaching power.
[00:10:58] And of course, overreaching power is its own kind of chaos. So, brothers, this is the vision. This is actually what we're fighting for.
[00:11:07] In a way, it's the whole Abrahamic mission. It is taking that which God has entrusted to you, removing the Ra, the chaos, and bringing order and beauty and fruitful management to it. That's shalom. We're fighting for shalom and we're fighting towards Micah 4. Four in your home. That's what you're fighting toward when. When everyone's at peace and you're all playing a card game together, your family. Like, this is great. I mean, the air conditioner's running, the dog's been fed, the dishes are all washed and put away, and we're all playing cards together. This is shalom.
[00:11:46] And everyone's behaving and it's with. This is just peaceful. This is great. Yeah, that's shalom. That's what we're fighting for. That's the biblical idea. Micah 4. 4.
[00:11:57] And that's enough for the day for some of you. We could say, we're done here. You could stop right now, press pause and just muse on that. And that would be great, because I love that whole idea that's put forward. But here's what's remarkable.
[00:12:12] George Washington, the father of our country, if you're in the usa, listening to this, he kept coming back to this exact image that I just described.
[00:12:24] In August of 1790, President Washington wrote a letter, get this, to the Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island. This is referred to as the Newport letter.
[00:12:37] Newport, Rhode island, bunch of Jews living there, and Washington writes them a letter to the Hebrew congregation. Listen to what he said.
[00:12:47] I'm going to say it as I imagine George Washington say it. May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
[00:13:15] He's like quoting Micah 4, 4 word for word. And he was saying that this is what America should be, a place where people, particularly people of faith, particularly people who submit to and follow the God Jehovah, the Lord of hosts, as he's described in Micah4, can live in peace, free from persecution, free to worship and work and raise their families without fear. And as an aside, I also really like that good old George called out that the USA should be a place for Jews to feel secure. Maybe this is why there are now almost as many Jews in the USA as there are in Israel. And that's a blessing. It's great.
[00:13:59] Washington didn't just use this language, this Micah 404 language. Once he used variations of vine and fig tree. DRUM roll how many times?
[00:14:10] Over 50 times in his lectures and in his letters, he used that phrase because to him it was the golden ideal that he was constantly trying to promote and he wanted to move towards that end. As he left the presidency, he wrote to friends. I've read some of these letters he wrote to friends about finally being, quote, seated under my own vine and fig tree. And he was talking about Mount Vernon, which is the multi generational family home of the Washingtons. I think we've already said in this series, well worth a visit.
[00:14:49] But in his mind, and it is where he actually went when he retired from public life, he would be free from the burdens of public service, able to enjoy his family, the farm and the fruit of his family's. Labor in peace.
[00:15:05] George Washington was thinking of shalom.
[00:15:08] I don't think that it's nothing that George Washington actually came from a place where he was already experiencing that. He experienced already multi generational prosperity. And he could see this is what happens when there is a family that operates this way. Then he went into public service. He's vying for that ideal the whole time. He and he says 50 times and I can't wait to go back to sitting under my own vine and fig tree. And that's what he did. And of course Mount Vernon he returned to all the time while he was in office. But he wanted that same blessing for the whole country, Not a centralized empire where he's going to become a Roman dictator.
[00:15:58] We mentioned this, that actually people wanted that.
[00:16:02] It's shocking. You can kind of think of the parallels between George Washington and Jesus. They wanted him to be basically a dictator.
[00:16:12] And there are statues that you can find in D.C. i think I've seen one or two in the Smithsonian where he is depicted as a Roman senator. I mean with the toga, with the sandals, the whole thing. And from what I know of Washington, I think it'd be scandalized at these representations of himself. He's not trying to build an empire. He wants the blessing for every family, a nation.
[00:16:43] Not where the government owns everything or controls everything, but a republic. Oh, that magic word. A republic where free men under God could sit under their own vines and fig trees, secure in their property, their families, their conscience.
[00:16:59] And this vision is deeply biblical and it is deeply American. I really want you to know that if you don't already know that. Now this is the bummer portion of the episode. Let's be honest. A lot of what we see around us today is an outlier to that original vision.
[00:17:18] I'm not going to use too many specific details because I don't want to belabor the point, but I'm just going to say we've got exploding government reach into every corner of life. We talked about this quite a bit in episode two.
[00:17:35] We've got millions of families who are having to make do without a father because the government has rewarded the separation and destruction of families Our government now allows for and even rewards divorce, welfare, which is people not working, fatherlessness, and even the murder of one's own babies via abortion. We have families that can barely afford to live on one income because of the way the economy has been constructed.
[00:18:10] We've got children being radically sexualized in public schools. We've got a culture that mocks the Very idea of a father leading his home. We've got economic policies that punish thrift and reward debt and we've got leaders by the hundreds who are more interested in growing the size and power of the state than in protecting the vine and fig tree life for regular families.
[00:18:36] I have to use this as an example because it just happened, you know, on the morning that I'm recording this, it just happened yesterday. You might have heard that New York just primaried a congressman and two would be assembly women who hate Israel.
[00:18:52] One said outright that she's excited to serve, not the usa, which she says is a blanking disgrace.
[00:19:00] That's what she says about the country.
[00:19:02] But she's excited to take her post to serve the interests of Islam.
[00:19:08] Think about that. All three of these people that just won these primaries yesterday in New York, they're all avowed socialists, read communists, think that the country is a disaster.
[00:19:21] And this woman, one of these women in particular said I'm not here to serve the country, I'm here to serve the interests of Islam.
[00:19:30] These kinds of trends, it's just shocking to think, but these kinds of trends should disturb us.
[00:19:38] Not to the point of we panic or despair or we go into conspiracy thinking, but with a righteous clarity, just being able to. Jesus said, you guys have a problem.
[00:19:49] You cannot read the signs of the times.
[00:19:53] And as Bible followers, we're supposed to see what's happening around us and be able to understand what's happening.
[00:19:59] The founders in agreement with the Protestant Christian worldview that shaped them. I could just say the biblical worldview that shaped them. They wanted a nation where the average godly home could thrive in safety and prosperity, where a man could work hard, keep the fruit of his labor, raise his children in the fear of the Lord and not live in fear of his own government or the chaos raw in the streets.
[00:20:25] So what do we do?
[00:20:28] We don't idolize America. And by the way, you know, I am an overt fan of America and I got that honest. It came through my generations.
[00:20:40] And my father served in the army, as did my brother in law, as did my uncle. My uncle, I might have said this in earlier episodes, so forgive me, but my uncle lied about his age.
[00:20:53] He lied and said he was 16, I think. Or did he lie and say I don't know what the age was, it was way off, it was like if he had to be like 18 to enter the Navy. And my uncle Jimmy, I think he was 15.
[00:21:07] And in those days there's no digital record. It's sort of your Birth certificate and your word. And if you could fudge your birth certificate. Yeah, no, no, I'm 18 for sure. We need to go into the Navy.
[00:21:19] So this patriotism that, that I embody, some people call it idolatry. Oh, how dare you. You shouldn't. You shouldn't love a country at all. No, just to define it, idolatry is when your allegiances get out of order.
[00:21:35] So if you don't attend your. Your daughter's wedding because there's a Cowboys game happening at the same time and you really love the Cowboys, there's some idolatry happening because your allegiances are out of order.
[00:21:47] So it's fine to say, oh, no, I'm a fan of the usa. I'm a fan of Australia.
[00:21:53] Great. I'm a fan of Turkey. I'm a fan of Nicaragua. Nicaragua, wherever you live. That's fine. Be a fan of those places. They just can't usurp your allegiance to the king of kings.
[00:22:05] So we don't idolize America. We don't pretend it's the kingdom of God. Our ultimate hope is in King Jesus and in the new Jerusalem, when Micah 4:4 is made real and justice comes to earth as the throne on which God himself sits. But we also don't shrug and say, oh, it's all going to burn anyway.
[00:22:26] I find that attitude among Christians. I think that it has been conditioned into them by the culture to say, ah, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. That's not what an Abrahamic family thinks. Abrahamic dads steward. What God has given them, including the citizenship that he's given them. He planted us in this land.
[00:22:51] Let me come up with this. Acts 17 says, he chose the time and places that we would live. He chose for me to live in this nation at this time.
[00:23:02] So at this time and wherever you are listening to this, you speak truth about creation order starting in your home.
[00:23:11] We teach our kids real history. We pray for our leaders and for the welfare of this place. I don't care who the leaders are. We're praying for them. If I lived in New York, I'd be praying for Zoran Mamdani. Oh, God, I might as well pray it right now. Oh God, by your spirit of mercy, would you interrupt Zoron's life?
[00:23:33] Oh God, would you bring truth and righteousness to that man? And even through that man, in spite of himself, I pray for him that he might be confronted with you and that you would reveal the truth to that guy.
[00:23:49] And I pray that he would be a great leader.
[00:23:52] We're supposed to pray for our leaders.
[00:23:57] We also vote with clarity.
[00:24:00] We don't vote for whoever showed up the best in a 60 minute debate. And we thought, you know, this was the. One of the big things about.
[00:24:09] It's routinely cited as the first televised debate was the reason that JFK beat Nixon.
[00:24:22] Because Nixon, he had a five o' clock shadow, he was kind of sweaty, didn't look good in the makeup. JFK was looking like, looking fantastic. And America looked at those images and they're just kind of like, I like that guy.
[00:24:38] There it is.
[00:24:39] But that's not how Christians vote. God says, stop judging by mere appearances, we don't vote. According to this guy seemed like, I don't know, he seemed like a nicer guy. Seemed like a, he had kind of a grandfatherly vibe.
[00:24:56] So I voted for that. We don't. That's not how we vote.
[00:24:59] We support policies and candidates that move us back towards the Micah 44 idea ordered liberty, family strength and economic freedom.
[00:25:14] Those three things. And by the way, just let me make a little commentary right now. I've known Christians who considered themselves and described themselves as liberals and progressives and they think that they could slap a biblical kind of slogan or grab some Bible phrases and throw it onto that idea and it makes it Christian.
[00:25:41] But let me just say, anybody who is trying to go back to something, back to founding father's principles, back to a biblical model, see this back motion I'm making with my thumb back. That's called conserving. We're trying to conserve, we're making a reference to the past.
[00:26:04] We're trying to conserve that thing. That's where you get the term conservative is we're going back. We're trying to conserve something that we think was holy and noble and righteous. A progressive is somebody who thinks, forget all that old stuff, bull ring. There is an undreamt of future that does not include those old stodgy ideas. And there is a, there's a crazy future of wonder out there somewhere and we're straining toward it. So maybe a family is three moms and a dog.
[00:26:40] That's a, that's a family.
[00:26:43] No, say the conservatives who open up a Bible. No, a family is defined by God.
[00:26:50] And in as much as the founding fathers or even our current leaders agree with biblical truth, we're on board with them as well. It just so happens, and this is one of the main points of this whole series, I'm trying to stress to you. It just so happens that the Venn diagram of biblical truth and founding fathers beliefs on a couple of key issues.
[00:27:14] Ordered liberty, family strength and economic freedom is almost 100%. They're almost a complete overlap between the biblical ideas and what the founding fathers were going for.
[00:27:29] Ordered liberty, family strength and economic freedom. Some of us listening are even called into civic leadership ourselves. You're definitely called to be a leader.
[00:27:40] Well, I don't even have to ask a question about that. There's no question. Everyone listening is called to be a leader. If you're born again and Jesus is your king, you're called to be a leader. Tough luck.
[00:27:53] That's reality. Or I should say God bless you instead of tough luck. What a wonderful gift and opportunity.
[00:28:00] So leadership isn't a question. It's whether you're supposed to be a civic leader and lead other families. That's a question.
[00:28:08] That's a good question. And I think that's part of what an elder is. Because families around you start nudging you in the ribs and go, like, you're our leader, we need you to lead more. Well, if that's you, then you should start asking, how do I lead at my church? How do I lead other families? And now how do I lead other families more broadly? Maybe that's something God has called us to. So we do all of this while refusing to make politics an idol. As I said, we engage without worshiping the system. We fight for the vine and fig tree vision without thinking any political victory will save us. So I don't like being told that by preachers and influencers that if I'm interested, if I have an interest in political policies and in leaders, that I'm making an idol of politics and I must have a hope that the political leaders will save us.
[00:29:04] And I always look around going, who are you talking to?
[00:29:07] I don't have that hope at all. I do think that we have a godly responsibility to execute with as much influence as we can the thing that God has called us to. I don't have any illusions about. Oh, if we could get the right person in office, we'll all enter the new Jerusalem. That's foolish. I don't think that. But the truth is worth it. These things we're talking about, they're worth it. And your generations and your families are worth it. Abrahamic dads this is our lane.
[00:29:37] We model courageous engagement without making politics an idol. We speak truth about creation order in our homes first and in the public square. We teach our families God's eternal truths which touch every arena of life. And we refuse to hand the future of our children and grandchildren. Over to lies I said this last week. If we get branded as political or rabble rousers or whatever else in the process, just by speaking truth, may God judge us, so be it.
[00:30:09] My hero Jesus was branded the same way. No problem.
[00:30:13] And as we celebrate our country's 250th anniversary this year, let's resolve to think and act like godly men who happen to live in America, not with fear or even nostalgia leading the way, but with clear eyes and and steady faith and bold obedience. Salt and light in a generation that desperately needs it. Right here in the good old usa Stars and Stripes forever.
[00:30:39] Amen.
[00:30:41] Now, guys, if this episode stirred something in you, if you're serious about becoming the kind of Abrahamic father who leads his family with courage and clarity in this moment of American history, I want to invite you into something we've just created for you. It's the retreat that I mentioned. Abrahamswallet.com retreat. When's the deadline, everyone?
[00:31:00] Yes, it's July 20th. July 20th. Abrahamswallet.com Retreat just a little simple idea and then I'll close. But a simple idea. What's one step that you could take? This next week at your dinner time, Your next dinner time, read some of Micah 4 aloud and pause on verse 4 about the vine and the fig tree.
[00:31:25] You could, it's not hard to find, read just a little short section of the Declaration of Independence. Or you could read some of Washington's Newport Letter to the Hebrew Congregation and then pray gratitude for this land and ask God how your household can work toward the vine and fig tree image in the days ahead.
[00:31:46] Okay, before I leave you, I'm going to one more time read the lyrics to a to a patriotic hymn.
[00:31:53] This one was written in 1876 for America's 100th anniversary 150 years ago. It's a prayer of blessing, so you might as well just pray in agreement as I read it right. So it's just a prayer of blessing. And it's called God of Our Fathers.
[00:32:10] God of our Fathers, Whose almighty hand leads forth in beauty all the starry band of shining worlds in splendor through the skies Our grateful songs before thy throne arise Thy love divine hath led us in the past in this free land by thee our lot is cast Be thou our ruler, Guardian, guide and stay Thy word our law Thy paths our chosen way Ancient paths by the way from war's alarms, from deadly pestilence Be thy strong arm Our ever sure defense Thy true religion in our hearts increase thy bounteous goodness, nourish us in peace.
[00:33:08] Aka Shalom.
[00:33:10] Aka Micah 4:4 Happy 250th anniversary, America.
[00:33:17] God bless you and God bless the households of godly men that you host.
