National obedience to the law of God has the interesting side effect that it ends up aiding and abetting the cause of the Gospel in ways one might not at first suspect. When this happens, the Bible becomes a weapon of mass instruction (where the Bible uses "instruction" as a synonym for wisdom and discretion, as in the Proverbs). A short explanation is in order.
The Bible teaches that when one borrows money, he must have sufficient collateral -- something he can use to give to the person who loans him money -- which is of equal or greater market value than the loan he borrows. This guarantees that the guy loaning the money will get it back even if the borrower finds out that the future does not favor his economic welfare, making him unable to repay the loan.
In other words, he needs to be able to present the borrower with an economic hostage. This enables the borrower to go on about his business without the money he has loaned with every reasonable expectation that the loan will be -- or else already has been -- repaid. The Bible calls this "surety." Today, we might simply call it "insurance." The word "sure" shows up in either case, in the word chosen.
Likewise, when nations print paper money or coins, they are effectively taking out a loan from the people with money already in their hands. This requires surety. So just what exactly is the government supposed to use for surety for the entire economy? The Bible says they should do this buy using money which has either real value in it (make coins out of silver or gold and use that as your money -- this is called "monetizing" precious metals), or else they should insure the money they print by holding a value equal to that of the dollar in gold or silver as a way to insure that, should the money for whatever reason become valueless (as when people stop accepting it for payment), that each person holding the (now) worthless paper can now redeem it for it's stated value in silver or gold from the government.
This is called "redeeming" the symbolic money (paper dollars or other currency) for real or universal money (the gold or silver). Gold and silver never lose their value, except the Bible records only one instance where silver became as "common as stones" in Israel because Solomon had flooded the local economy with a surplus of gold from Ophir and other nations.
Now by insuring your economy this way, two things happen. First, the economy becomes very fruitful -- it grows because foreign investors will plunge their money into an economy where they have their investment already insured. They value gold dollars over non-gold currency of any other kind. Businesses buy insurance already, spending billions every year on a kind of "price insurance" in the form of futures contracts to try to maintain STABLE prices over specified periods. This is called "Hedging."
Why do businesses pay so much for insurance? They thrive in stable economies, where everyone does exactly what he or she promises -- "I will deliver these good to your warehouse on next Tuesday at 4 p.m." If the delivery does not show up on time, the company depending on the shipment schedule may face many angry customers, who also build schedules and figure in that shipment arriving on time. Angry customers equals lost business.
So businesses put a premium on stability and predictability, spending a great deal of money to provide various kinds of surety or insurance, so they have happy customers, and protect their good name. In Business, your reputation precedes your profit. This is why the decalogue places "thou shalt not steal" right next to "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
Thus, nations which follow the biblical mandate to secure their economies with gold and silver find that business will thrive there, and investors heap money into it. The dollar of that nation backed by precious metals itself becomes a highly valued commodity.
So what does this consequent prosperity have to do with the Gospel? Well, I'll just take a wild stab at this one. First, redemption forms the heart of the Gospel, in what many have called the "Great Exchange," wherein the Lord Jesus, the Great High Priest and Good Shepherd laid down His life for his people because they were deep in debt, and need surety, a way that someone GUARANTEES that the price (wages) of their sin (likened to debt in the Bible) will necessarily be paid. The Lord Jesus by His once for all sacrifice paid the price to satisfy fully the wrath and justice of God, and removed the sin of his people altogether (called "expiation") by eradicating their indebtedness to God. This forever establishes them in God's favor, and removes any possibility of a punitive penalty being imposed upon them for their future sins as well.
This is eternal security, called "surety" in the Bible. It comes by redemption, which is -- unsurprisingly -- typified or portrayed in the Bible by silver. The price paid for the betrayal of the Lord Jesus, resulting in redemption for His people, was exactly 30 shekels of silver, the going price of a slave on the open market in the days of the apostles. Jesus died the death of a slave, who was king of kings (and whose formal charge read "King of the Jews") to free those enslaved to sin all their lives.
Now only those who truly and fully rely upon the surety of Christ for the payment of their sins can have any true interest in it, because the work of God does not tolerate any man-made admixture with it. If you would be saved by your own works, then you must provide the infinite surety God requires (good luck with that).
This is only accomplished by what the Bible calls repentance and faith, which some have called the "twin sisters of conversion." Saving faith in Jesus Christ not only acknowledges, but rests upon altogether, the redemptive work of Christ, counting on Him alone to justify (acquit) a man before God, and not from anything we have or can do. This faith the Bible represents as gold, because of its many characteristics, which each has in common with the other.
Gold has several characteristics, traditionally five, which give it its nearly universal appeal. For the sake of length, two will have to suffice here.
First, gold is malleable; it is quite soft in pure form, and you could bend a small bar with your fingers if inclined. The seven lampstands, called the Church of the Lord Jesus are made of pure gold, represented by the gold of Havilah (for the gold of that land is good), and that of Ophir -- Havilah and Ophir were brothers. The gold produced there was of especially pure quality in its natural form.
Today this matters little, since our technology enables us to purify any gold to an extraordinary degree compared with ancient times. But the Church is to be soft and malleable in the hands of the Mastercraftsman who shapes and molds the saints to a vessel suited to putting on display God's glory (which was in the holy of Holies in the Temple, near the lampstands).
This is the nature of saving faith. It makes those otherwise stiff-necked and stubborn in their own ways malleable to the Lord, and given to doing His will rather than their own.
Gold is also (obviously) of great natural beauty. The beauty of saving faith is that of a quiet and calm spirit, set upon doing good works with a good eye (charity or largeness of heart) toward others, and great care for the preferences that God has in all of life (the fear of the Lord), especially in matters of the worship and government of the Church (holy matters even more than common ones). The Bible calls this "the beauty of holiness" (i.e. the beauty of the saints). This gives them great value in the sight of God.
In each case, saving faith in Jesus Christ makes the saints like gold (valuable and glorious) to their Redeemer. Whereas those who remain in their sins are said to be "worthless men," while the Lord Jesus explicitly wants "profitable servants." He ordered the making of golden lampstands, so we already knew this, didn't we? And each is of precisely the same pattern as the others, since God wants each church to show the same dominical pattern as all other true churches, rather than all manner of liturgical or governmental diversity. He requires outward catholicity or uniformity.
When Christ was asked whether it were lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, He responded with an inquiry of His own, "Whose inscription do you see on the coin?" Now, the Lord's House is His gold and silver also. So when you wish to know if this or that is a true church of Christ, the question is the same: when you look to its people and leaders, whose image do you see? Are they profitable servants to the Master to whom they render the tithe in money?
When Jesus finished the saying, "Therefore give to God what is God's," He implied that that which bears God's image properly belongs to Him (as it is with Caesar and the coin). The Lord wishes His people to use money to acquire people (mammon is for building God's kingdom). Thus, profitable servants are those who bring others into it.
Nations which provide for the redeeming of what is inherently worthless (virtually) on its own, by providing surety for it in the form of gold and silver, show that what is worthless is redeemable by that which is of great inherent value. This is the Gospel in brief. National economies which follow the biblical pattern become very valuable and stable very quickly, like a man with a calm spirit who does what he says he will, and promotes the welfare of his neighbor as well as his own (the standard of living rises for everyone in the economy so governed).
The Gospel has a like effect on the lives of the saints governed by Christ, who rely upon Him alone as their surety before God in this life and the next. But this good news must come from the golden lampstands, to transform nations. Although it is the duty of the chief civil authorities to require those under their authority to do justice in economic affairs, and to so order them accordingly, yet true value must begin where God lives, in the house of the redeemed, and in the house of faith and instruction.
For "The mouth of the righteous is choice silver," and "like apples of gold in settings of silver is an answer timely given."
For those homeschoolers interested in history, a great way to study it is to follow the development of money, which means gold and silver, through history. This provides a neat focal point on which the Bible has much to say, and around which you can group other ideas you will learn there. One commentator always said, "Follow the money," if you want explanations for why this or that happened. There is some genuine merit in this, since money never fails to motivate men.
Here is a link to a brief history of gold, beginning in the ancient world that might help you create some other great study ideas.
http://www.onlygold.com/TutorialPages/HistoryFS.htm
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