I want to give a lecture here for the next 45 minutes on subjective value and market prices. And I just want to give you some of the motivations behind this. On the one hand, Austrians are very unique amongst economists. And I'll give you a snapshot of this at the very end of the lecture, because we actually do believe that value is fundamentally subjective. And I'll tell you in this lecture what that means. And the second reason why this is such an important lecture goes back to the reason of why we have prices and what prices function in the economy.  T-shirts cost $10 and sweaters cost $20. And you're fairly able in pretty short order to determine how many T-shirts you want to buy or how many sweaters you want to buy so on and so forth. And prices are really what enable this ease of computation and this ease of life to happen. They summarize, as we'll show here as the lecture progresses, a whole body of knowledge into one number that you can look at and then compare with other numbers, other prices, to make our buying decisions. But before we just look at prices or before we even accept prices as existing, we need to have a theory for why prices are formed. What are the factors that affect prices or what are the different ways that prices would change in the economy? What are the factors that would change them? And this is again, one of the strong parts in Austrian economics in that we have a very causal realist, a very realistic explanation for why prices form in the economy, the functions that they serve and the things that will change them. So Professor Salerno touched on this in his previous lecture, but I want to go over it again quickly because it's so germane to the topic. Before we can talk about prices on goods, we need to understand exactly what we're talking about what economic goods are. And again, Karl Manger, one of his great contributions in his Principles of Economics was to outline the criteria that define an economic good and these are the criteria that must be met before we can consider a good to be economic in nature and before we can economize on it and before we can value it and exchange it and determine a price on it. So just to quickly list through the different criteria, first of all, there must be something out there that satisfies a need and this is very important. The need of course is something that we need. You perceive yourself to be in a state of discomfort or you're not entirely happy about something and you have a need to make your life better and the thing out there is going to be something that would satisfy that need. Maybe you're thirsty, for example, and you see water as being something that would satisfy your need to alleviate thirst. And of course, a causal connection needs to be made with that need. So the water in that example is the thing that's going to satisfy your thirst. And thirdly, you have knowledge of this connection. You know that water will alleviate thirst or that close alleviate nudity or I don't know why I thought of that example. They say when you're public speaking you imagine the audience is naked. I'm not doing that right now by the way. Luckily I'm behind a podium, so. And then finally, somebody has to have command over that good or that thing that will satisfy that need and that they know has a causal relationship with the desire, the need that they need satisfied. And so we get into property rights here, defining who owns what and who has a command over what different type of resources. So that's the background. We need these goods, these things out there to satisfy these criteria before we could consider them to be economic goods, subject to valuation and exchange and the price formation process. Now, Austrians have a very specific, a very clearly defined theory of value which we call the subjective theory of value. And the theory goes something like this. Things exist out there, goods exist out there but we only value them according to our needs and our needs exist only in our mind. And so if the need only exists in our mind the value that we attach to a good must be exclusively a product of our mind as well. The goods, the economic goods objectively exist.  They all satisfy the previous four criteria that we looked at. But the need that each one of those goods is satisfying at any given moment exists only in our minds and so the value we attach to those goods is only within our mind as well. And if the value only exists in our mind and since you're the only person who understands and knows what you're thinking there's no way that we can compare these values interpersonally.  And that value that you attach to the chair and serving that need or satisfying that need you cannot compare to somebody else. Like person over here might not be tired and they see the chair and they don't value it because they don't really want to sit down. Person over here has been walking all day long and they're very tired and they really want to sit down and so they value the chair very highly. But we can't really compare the two values in these people's minds. Only they know how much they value the chairs. So there's no interpersonal value comparisons. The other factor is that since the value is only created or it's only a product of your mind and it only exists as regards to a good satisfying and specific need, as your conditions change the value that you associate with certain goods will change as well. So we do not have constancy of value over time. And as an example of that, you can imagine that in the morning you wake up and you're very hungry so you go out and you get breakfast and of course since you were hungry you placed a very high value on food. But then immediately after you ate once your hunger is satiated you no longer value food so highly because you're full and you don't need food anymore. Or sleep of course in the evening when you're tired you value sleep very highly because you're very tired and you need it. And sleep is the action which will alleviate your discomfort of being tired. But then when you wake up in the morning, well if you rest well when you wake up in the morning you're no longer tired and you no longer face place a very high value on sleep because you've obviously just alleviated the discomfort of you being tired by sleeping for the evening. So we don't have a constancy of value. It's constantly changing. We can't say that you will always value this good at this high level or this lower level or anything like that. Or to put it in other terms, we can't come up with concrete relationships between the value you place on something and how much of a good you will consume. Example, price of gas falls by 10%. And maybe you respond by consuming 20 gallons more gas per month. But that would be something that you do this month and it's not necessarily something that you would do every month. So we cannot say that there's a constancy between the changes in the value of a good that you have and the amount that you'll actually consume or the amount that you would want to consume. Now when we talk about the subjective theory of value, the value that we're talking about we express it in terms of what we call utility.  Or in other words, a good is only valuable according to how useful it is to make you better than you were before. This is what we mean or economists mean by the concept of utility. So utility is almost synonymous with usefulness. And within utility, which is the way that we describe the value or allude to the value that a good will have, we have two laws. The first is what we call non-saciation, which is the law that you would always prefer to have more of a certain good to less of a certain good. And here, when I talk about stocks of goods, I mean homogenous goods, like you would prefer to have five bottles of water available to you, then four bottles of water, then three bottles of water, so on and so forth. And if you think about why this is, it comes because the more of a unit of a good that you have, the greater amount of needs will be able to be satisfied. And since you value satisfying needs or alleviating your discomfort, you would always prefer to have more discomfort alleviated than less discomfort. You would always prefer to be happier than less happy. And the more of a good you have available to you, the more of those wants you can satisfy and the happier you'll actually be. An objection commonly arises, and maybe you're thinking about it right now. What would happen if, you know, surely five bottles of water is nice, but if I had a thousand bottles of water, I probably wouldn't be all that happy with that. I mean, what am I gonna do with a thousand bottles of water? And there's a couple of different ways that you can address this objection. The first is to say, well, if you had that many bottles of water, they probably wouldn't be an economic good anymore because you wouldn't have a need that a thousand bottles of water satisfies. Like, you have a need for quenching your thirst and cooling yourself off, and I don't know, you like the taste of water or something like that. And five bottles of water satisfies that need, but having a thousand bottles of water is not necessary because once you consume a couple, you no longer have the need that you need to alleviate it. So we would no longer be dealing with a case of economic goods. Or alternatively, you could say, yes, you would prefer to have a thousand bottles of water because even if they don't satisfy a need directly for yourself, you could always trade them away to somebody else, exchange them to somebody else in order to obtain something that you want of more higher value, and that's something that I'll get to a little bit later on in this lecture. The second law of utility is what we call the law of diminishing marginal utility, and this is one of the great contributions that Professor Salerno would have alluded to in the marginal revolution of 1871. So the law of diminishing marginal utility says that for any given stock of goods that we have, bottles of water, the value we place on each subsequent unit of that good will be less than the one before it. Example. Say you have four bottles of water in front of you. The first bottle of water that you consume will be consumed to satisfy your most pressing need or your most urgent need or your most highly valued need. You're thirsty, and thirst, quenching thirst, and staying hydrated is pretty important. So of these four bottles, you pick up your first one and you drink it, and that's the need that it satisfies.  The second bottle of water that you consume, you pick it up and it satisfies a less pressing need, a less urgent need. So after you've satisfied your need to quench your thirst, the next pressing need is, let's see, refreshment. You're no longer really thirsty, but you want to be refreshed. So you drink the second bottle of water, fantastic. And then you've got the third bottle of water in the stock, and you pick that up and you drink it. And the reason why you've drunk that bottle, drunk, drank. Drunk did, you know. Once you consume that bottle of water, it satisfies the third most pressing end that you would have or the third most highly valued end that you have. So maybe you just like the flavor of water, the taste of it, or it's, I don't know, it's gluten-free and you're on a diet and that's why you're consuming it. And then as you continue going down through your stock of goods, the stock of good, each subsequent unit that you use serves a less valuable, less urgent need than the one before it. And so the value as you go down, the units of goods, has to become lesser and lesser and lesser, or in other words, diminish. Finally, when you get to the fourth bottle of water, it's like, I don't know, you're socially awkward and you're just looking for something to bide your time while you're talking to people. And it doesn't go away as you get older, it's just the drink changes, I guess. And so the two of these laws taken together are how Austrian economists talk about the utility that we get from consuming different goods. And then you can put this in the context of changing the size of the stock of goods you have available to you. So in my example, I had four bottles of water. What would happen if I added a fifth bottle of water to it? Well, first of all, from the first law of utility, I know that I would be happier or more satisfied than I would be if I only had four bottles of water. The reason why is because that new fifth bottle would be able or would allow me to satisfy a new need, and so once that want is satisfied, I'd be happier than I was before. So maybe the fifth bottle of water, now I'm not thirsty and I'm refreshed and I've got my tool against social awkwardness. And now I'm looking at just giving it to a friend and helping somebody out or charity or something like that. And that's less important to me than the other four needs, but it's something so I'm happier as a result. Of course, the change in my happiness is what diminishing marginal utility is telling us. So my change in happiness from having that fifth bottle will be a little bit less than it was from each of the preceding four bottles, but it's still positive, it's still something. And as I keep adding stocks, units of water, bottles of water to my stock of water, my utility will continue increasing, I'll be happier, but at a diminishing rate, each subsequent unit will make me less happier than the one before it. So we use utility to measure the usefulness or to describe the usefulness that a good has in satisfying your wants, and utility abides by these two rules or they're two laws that we can always depend on. So what do we do with it? Well in Austrian economics, we use what we call a value scale to describe the goods that we have and how useful they are to us. And the value scale has a couple, not oddities, particulars to it that are important. So the first is, as you go down here, I've ranked these first, second, third, dot, dot, dot, so on and so forth, 10th, 11th, 12th if I had room. And what that means is that at the very top of the scale is my first most valued and my first most valued thing that I would like to do are action. And then as I go down the scale, this is my second most valued activity or action, my third most valuable and blah, blah, blah. So for example, in this hour of time, your most highly valued use of this hour of time is attending this lecture. And I'm not making that up because you've demonstrated it to me through your demonstrated preference of showing up here. There was many things that you could have done during this hour of time or this 45 minutes, but you showed up, so thank you, by the way. Because instead of showing up for this lecture, you could have pursued your second most valued end, which was sleeping for an extra hour, fantastic. And, or you could have eaten even more breakfast, great, I guess, or dot, dot, dot, down the list. And I guess as you get down your list, eventually you get to, could have chatted it up with Professor Salerno for an hour, but you came here and listened to me instead, so that's great, I know you valued this more. But Joe should feel good about himself because at least that's above talking to David Gordon. Where is Dr. Gordon, is he here? He's not, so obviously on his value scale, his other activities are above attending this lecture, so I guess he got the final laugh on me. But we have this value scale where we go down, and there's a couple, like I said, there was a couple oddities or particulars that we wanted to talk about with this value scale, and the first is that it's a value ranking.  The 100 meter dash. We've got a first, second, third, and dot, dot, dot place winner, or losers I guess is the place may be. I didn't mean to circle David Gordon when I said loser. And in the race, we don't really care that the first place person, we don't say that they ran that race twice as well as the person in second, or we don't say that they ran the race five times better than the person in fifth or anything like that. The person came first, it's a qualitative statement. We know they did better than the person who came in second, and we know the person who came in second in the race did better than the person who came in third, and so on and so forth. So we have a qualitative ranking, and we can't really compare quantitatively these different rankings. So we can't say that you value attending this lecture twice as much as you value an extra hour of sleep, even though attending the lecture was your first place option, your first place alternative, or most highly valued alternative, and sleep was only the second. There's no quantitative comparison that we can actually make. Also, using the previous laws of utility, as we go down this value scale, we not only know that these will be less valuable uses of your time, or less valuable actions that you could pursue, we know that if you did these things, they would make you happier, but at a diminishing rate. That's the law of diminishing utility. So let's say you attend this lecture, first of all. Fantastic, you make yourself happier for it, hopefully.  Okay, the extra hour of sleep would make you happier as well, but it would make you less happy than attending this lecture. So you'll be better off, but by a little bit less than just attending this lecture did. And then eating will also improve your lot. You'll be better off for it, but less than that extra hour of sleep increased your satisfaction or utility by, and so on and so forth. And then, of course, you get by down to Joe Salerno, and talking to Joe for an hour is great, but it's obviously not increasing your lot as much as eating for an hour, sleeping for an hour, attending this lecture for an hour. Now Joe is not on speaking terms with me, so I don't have to worry. I can strike this off my preference scale. And of course, we don't just have to have actions, activities on our value scale. We can put all sorts of economic goods on it. So for example, money. Now Rothbard and Man economy and state, I've used some notation that he makes use of. The hamburger is in parenthesis because it's something that you don't have. It's something that you can imagine yourself having and you can imagine where it would fit into this value scale relative to the things that you do have, which in this case or in this example are money since those are not in parenthesis. So in this particular value scale, you would first prefer to have $5 in your pocket, then you would prefer to have one hamburger, your first hamburger that you're gonna eat, then you would prefer to have $4 in your pocket, $3, and then you would prefer to have a second and so on and so forth. Actually, I'll give you an example. I went out for breakfast this morning. Don't judge me. I went to McDonald's and there's no interpersonal comparisons of utilities. So you can never judge people for these things. I went to McDonald's because they have Egg McMuffins and where I come from, they don't have Egg McMuffins. I don't know, it's the small things in life. And so I went there and they had a deal to, I don't know, it was like two for three bucks or something. I don't know if you saw that, great deal. So I bought two Egg McMuffins and then I went back, I valued them more than the money that I had available to me and I bought two of them and I ate my first Egg McMuffin and it was fantastic, to be honest with you. And then I was sizing up the second one. With each bite actually, it got a little bit less fantastic. Like the first bite was really great and you can imagine why that is through diminishing marginal utility because of course the first bite I was breaking my fast for the morning, so that's fantastic and then the second bite is like, oh, it tastes so good. And the third bite, so on and so forth. And then I finished off the whole thing and a whole series of wants had been satisfied and then I sized up the second one and it looked pretty disgusting. And I was, oh, why? And I still ate it because it was better than the alternatives that I was gonna do. I had some regret after the fact. Do you know you buy things and you have regret? And regret is a good example of the non-constancy of your values. When I bought these Egg McMuffins, not even 10 minutes prior, I valued the two of them more than I valued my money. And then after I ate the first, I had these pinches of regret.  And I in a way wish that I didn't buy two, I still ate it so actually I'm lying to you that I wish I didn't buy two because I still ate it. I demonstrated to myself that I did value that second one. But my value scale had changed and my eyes were bigger than my stomach I guess at the moment when I bought. And of course I valued two very highly because I was very hungry. But then once I got through once my one Egg McMuffin, my value scale changed and all of a sudden having something to alleviate hunger was not so important to me. And so I changed my mind. Now, I don't wanna go into this in too much depth because Professor Herbener will look at this when he gives a lecture on time preference. But we can also place different goods or want satisfactions on this value scale in different inter-temporal periods or different temporal periods I should say. So for example, you could value having 10 bucks in your pocket right now more than you would value having $10 in your pocket one year from now. And Professor Herbener will explain why it is that this relationship of valuing $10 more now than in the future has to hold true. And then we can go down our value scale in the standard way of all the different things that we would rather have, of course, $10 now, 10 bucks in a year, $9 now is better than $8 now and so on and so forth. But maybe $8 right now is preferable to having $10 two years from now for whatever reason. So now we can start looking at inter-temporal values. I'm, like I say, not gonna go into too much detail with it. Actually, that's all the detail I'm gonna go into with it so that I don't steal Professor Herbener's thunder. Now, the values and the value scale is important. But what happens if you have things on your value scale that you think other people would like more than you do or would satisfy other people's wants more than they satisfy yours and you see that other people have things or goods that would satisfy wants that you have and they're also goods that you don't have so you need to obtain them? Well, in other words, to obtain happiness in life or to increase your satisfaction as much as you can, we partake in exchanges. And exchanges happen in many different forms. Some of them are permanent and some of them are temporary. So for example, I bought my two Egg McMuffins this morning and that was a thoroughly permanent exchange because I don't really think McDonald's wants me to go back and reverse the transaction. And some exchanges are temporary. So these are like loans. I'll give you something and you'll give me something back and then we'll just exchange it again in the future so there are temporary exchanges that we could partake in. In my lecture later on financial markets, I'll get into some of the details associated with temporary exchanges. And for an exchange to take place, we need economic goods. So we need to have things that abide by the criteria that Karl Manger laid out. We need to exchange goods or goods are the only things that we can exchange. We need a clearly defined set of property rights. We need to know what goods we own in order to trade with somebody else and we need to know what good somebody else owns that we know that we can obtain from them to increase our happiness. So some system of property rights and hopefully a pretty well-defined one will allow us to actually make exchanges. And then finally and most importantly, we need what are called reverse preferences. In other words, the things that you have, you have to value less than the things that somebody else has and vice versa. In other words, all exchanges rely on a disagreement of value. Example with my morning breakfast, which I wish I wasn't dwelling on so much. But when I exchanged my $5.61 to McDonald's for coffee and a couple of egg McMuffins, the reason that exchange took place was because McDonald's places a higher value on my money than they value their own goods and I value their goods more than I value my own money. And because we have a disagreement about these valuations, we can go into an exchange. And if you flip the example around a little bit, if nobody ever disagreed about value, like if we all thought that value that a good had was the exact same as everybody else, we would never exchange them with somebody else. If McDonald's thought that their egg McMuffins were worth the exact same as I did, why would they trade them to me? Or if they valued them the exact same as the money that I gave them, they would never get rid of the egg McMuffins, they'd be happy just staying with the money. So we need this disagreement of values. We need these reverse preferences to actually enable trades to take place. Now I wanna give you maybe a more deep example of how this process takes place. So imagine that you have three buyers or potential buyers of a good. We know they're gonna be buyers or they're potential buyers of coffee. Oh my little, oh there it is. We know they're potential buyers of coffee because the coffee is in parenthesis. So that's something that they don't have but they do have money. And these three people, buyers A, B and C, have the value scales as follows. So A would rather have $5 than one coffee but he'd rather have a coffee than $4. And so now you can see what he would be willing to pay to get a coffee. I mean he would never pay $5 for coffee because he values that more than the coffee. But if he could find a coffee for $4 he'd buy that. Or if he could find a coffee for less than $4 rather he would buy that because the coffee is more valuable than the $4. So for example if he went out and McDonald's was selling coffee, no McDonald's is cheaper than this. If he went to, who's got expensive coffee? Starbucks I guess. What's a Starbucks worth now? 550. 550. Ooh, yeah. Listening. The rest of you lot on the other hand. Let's say you go out and you find a coffee for $3.50 for this person, fantastic because they valued the coffee more than $4 so if they find one for $3.50, great. Scoop it up and buy it. And we have our three buyers and they have their value scales as follows. You can see that each of them is a little bit different. They're hard to compare but some things we do know and what we do know is what they'd be willing to pay for a coffee at a maximum. And at the same time these people are met by three sellers, X, Y, and Z. And the three sellers have coffee because coffee is not in parenthesis but they have reverse preferences to the buyers. At least some of them have reverse preferences to the buyers.  He'd rather have a coffee than $2. So if he could find somebody out there who would pay him more than $2 for a coffee, fantastic. He'd scoop it up $2.50, we've got a sale. And these three sellers in the marketplace can meet with these three buyers and see if there are mutually advantageous exchanges. In other words, see if there are exchanges where they have reverse preferences where one of these sellers can get rid of a coffee and give it to a buyer in exchange for money that the buyer has that they can pay the seller with. And maybe the easiest way to do this is to construct supply and demand schedules. Actually, just out of curiosity, who's taken an economics class? About two thirds, let's say. So this is pretty standard in economics classes but I'll note some differences later on in the lecture. So our quantity demanded is of course how many units of a good the buyers are going to demand at any given price. So notably, nobody is willing to buy a coffee for $5 since $5, the person who comes closest is buyer A but even he would rather have five bucks than a coffee so nobody wants to pay $5 for this. And as we go down the price scale over here we see more and more units of coffee are demanded. So when we get to $3 buyer A he prefers a coffee more than $3. Buyer B, she prefers a coffee more than $3. Buyer C does not since $3 is higher on the value scale so we're left with two buyers or two quantities demanded of coffee at that price of $3. And if we go down the sellers X, Y and Z we get the exact opposite relationship. So at a price of $5, how many sellers are willing to sell a coffee? All of them because all of them place that coffee that they have above a monetary value of $5 and the person who comes closest would be seller Z here but even he values, he would be willing to get rid of his coffee for $4 so he's in there. So all three of them are willing to sell their coffees for $5. And then as the price drops we see that more and more of these sellers remove units from offer or they remove some of the quantity that they have from being supplied. And when we get down to let's see $2 well only one of them wants to sell or is willing to exchange away their coffee if somebody offers them $2 and it's seller X since X is the only one who places that coffee above $2 on his value scale. And then if somebody came and offered $1 for coffee of course nobody values a coffee below $1 so we have zero quantity supplied here. And the nice thing about these two schedules the quantities demanded and supplied is that taken together they allow us to see the process of price formation. Now of all these prices only one can really exist on the market. If coffees were selling for $5 we'd have an economic problem and the economic problem is that many people all three want to be selling their coffees but nobody's willing to pay $5 nobody values coffee enough to actually go out there and buy it so all of these sales are not actually going to have buyers to go along with them. And of course if sellers don't have a buyer to go along with them no sale takes place so what do the sellers do in response? If you're smart you start lowering your price a little bit. So I wanna sell my coffee for $5 but I have no taker so I'll drop my price from $5 down to $4 and all of a sudden when I drop it from $5 down to $4 one of these buyers enters the market buyer A as the case may be but the price is still not right because there's too many quantities being supplied in this market still for the available amount of demanders so we have an excess of supply and the suppliers are going to keep dropping their price until the amount supplied on the market or the amount offered on the market is exactly equal to the amount demanded and at that price everybody's happy. At $3 here everybody who valued a coffee more than $3 traded their $3 to get a coffee that's buyers A and B incidentally since those are the two who value coffee above $3 on their value scale buyer C here does not and he's okay with it he's okay with the fact that he didn't buy coffee for $3 because he's happier with the $3 than he would have been with the coffee so that's fine and at the same time at the price of $3 all the sellers are happy as well because for example seller let's see seller X would rather have a coffee than no sorry here seller Y for example would rather get rid of it would rather get rid of his coffee than $3 and the same with X and so taken together we can see that the quantity of two is set equal to each other at that one market price of $3 and so we have the prices of price formation that stems directly from the value scales of all of the individual buyers and sellers interacting with one another in the market. Now this only raises the question of what the cost is that people actually had to pay when they exchange these goods and oftentimes it's simple to think about costs and strictly monetary terms like accountants if you ever took an accounting class costs are the historical monetary value incurred to buy something or to exchange for something but the Austrian economist has a much broader view of cost we consider it as the best foregone alternative that you couldn't pursue if you took, if you decided on one course of action and we call this the opportunity cost so for example it could have been money in nature when I bought my Egg McMuffins this morning and I paid $3 for them the $3 could have done something else like for what do you get for $3 almost a whole Starbucks coffee I guess you get a small one which is like what do they call it at all a small and for that $3 I could have went and got a coffee so the cost for me to go and get my two Egg McMuffins was I did not go and get a Starbucks coffee it's the money but it's really what that money could have done for me or how about things that don't have a monetary cost associated with them like you guys are all sitting here right now you didn't pay for it or you didn't pay to walk in this door anyway so what is the cost for you to sit here well it's whatever you could not have done and if we go back to that value scale at the beginning of the lecture that I showed you attending this lecture for 45 minutes that was your most highly valued alternative and then right under there was sleeping for an hour I guess so for you to attend this lecture the opportunity cost the thing that you could not do was sleeping for an hour and now all of a sudden we're able to value goods and determine costs much more comprehensively than if we just narrowly focused on money now we can value and assign costs to a whole slew of non-monetary transactions or exchanges the exchange taking place right now of me speaking and offering a lecture and you all listening and enjoying a lecture hopefully as the case may be now Professor Salerno commented briefly at the end about different orders of goods and one of Menger's great contributions was to assign an ordering system where we can refer to goods and where they exist relative to a final want satisfaction so for example Rothbard gives an example in man economy and state where he says imagine that you're hungry and you want a hand sandwich and the ham sandwich is the final good or what Menger would have called the lowest order good it's a consumer good that's going to alleviate your hunger but there's all sorts of input factors or higher order goods that are necessary in order to create this ham sandwich you need bread, you need lettuce, you need ham and butter if you're one of those people and things like that and you combine all of these higher order goods together in order to produce the lowest order good but the question becomes well how do we assign value to these higher order goods and Professor Salerno talked about this a little bit but I want to give you a different spin on it the value of a higher order good is a cost associated with it like if you're going out to buy a ham sandwich and you go to the grocery store the higher order goods are the bread, the butter and the ham and lettuce let's just say and those are costs that you're going to have to incur in order to produce the final good the lowest order good of the ham sandwich so how is it that we assign a cost or a value if you will to the input factors the higher order goods that actually produce the ham sandwich well through what we call value imputation so you value a ham sandwich according to where it falls on your value scale and according to that value you place on the final good you will have to impute back to all of the higher order goods that will allow you to realize that ham sandwich value to them and it's really a nice and very unique way of looking at the price process that the Austrian economists have it's drastically different than mainstream economists have and I wanna give you just to illustrate the point since quite a few of you have taken an economics class in economics if you've taken the class there's always this tension because economists mainstream economists they think they're subjective about value because every economics class if you take it starts with creating a demand curve very similar to the way that I derived our demand schedule here and it's subjective they say you value a good according to your wants that you have and you're willing to pay so much for a certain good and we were going to create a demand curve and that's your demand side of the model and then economists say well the supply side of the model is also important because suppliers have to meet demanders but what determines the supply side of a model in economics or is the supply of a good in economics cost it's the cost of production it's the marginal cost of production in particular and so we've got costs interacting with preferences in mainstream economics to determine prices and quantities bought and sold in the market and mainstream economists at least at the principles level would adhere to the fact that no I mean the price formation processes is subjective because your preferences are subjective but then they bring in these costs through the supply side and muddy the waters a little bit and then when you get to your intermediate microclass your intermediate economics classes if anybody's taken that level yet it becomes a thoroughly cost based theory of prices because preferences get thrown out they throw the baby out with the bathwater and they say well in the long run costs the price of a good the value that you place on it has to fall down to whatever the cost of production is for various reasons that I'm not going to get into but I'll give you an example of vignette maybe to illustrate it I live in Madrid Spain and Madrid is a city of six or seven million people I'm not going to build it up all that I'm on is a pretty great place six or seven million people financial one of the financial capitals of Europe definitely of the Iberian Peninsula people have pretty good salaries and the downside of all of these things is that goods are relatively expensive you go out for a meal in the restaurant it costs a little bit more than it would in other places and I come actually from I was born in a farm a small town in Ontario Canada and when I go home to visit my folks it's great because we go out to we'll go to a restaurant you know there's one restaurant in the town it's like a restaurant, a diner and the prices are really good and prices are expensive in Madrid and they're much cheaper where I come from why is that? the mainstream economists would look at this and they would say well of course prices are more expensive in Madrid in a restaurant because the restaurant owner has to cover higher rents and higher wages for employees and higher input price factors and things like this so of course it's more expensive to have a restaurant in a big city than it is in a small town so the output price the final price that they sell for has to be higher to compensate them for all of these higher costs but of course this doesn't make too much sense in fact it only pushes the problem back one level because what determines those costs? right they're not just given to us something had to actually determine the price of rent to make it expensive in Madrid and something had to determine the wages in Madrid to make them more expensive than the wages in the small town where I come from and so on and so forth there's a story that I like to use often in economics I don't know if anybody read Steven Hawking's a brief history of time is 1988 book and Hawking in there he gives a story of a lecture that was happening in the turn of the century attributed to Bertrand Russell where he's talking about gravity and planets moving and things like that and he says you know planets are suspended in space because of gravitational forces working on each other and at the end of a lecture Hawking says a little old lady put up her hand and she says that's a nice theory but of course it's all wrong because everybody knows because it's all wrong and Russell replies well what do you think suspends planets in space and the little lady says well everybody knows that the earth for example sits on the back of a giant turtle and then Russell says well what does that giant turtle what holds it in space and she says that's very clever young man but everybody knows it's turtles all the way down so it's turtles from here into infinity and it's a nice way to think about problems because okay we've solved the first problem what keeps the earth where it is well there's a turtle under it what keeps that turtle there turtles all the way down wipe your hands and go home for the night and mainstream economists do the exact same thing because they say well what determines the price oh it's the input cost it's rent plus labor and all those types of things and well what determines those prices well of course things that go into it rent is expensive in Madrid because land is very expensive well why is land expensive it's turtles all the way down while the Austrian economists have a much very unique and much more realistic and correct way of looking at the pricing process why is a trip to the restaurant more expensive in Madrid than it would be in the small town where I'm from well because people value a meal at the restaurant higher on their value scale than they do money why would that be well it could be that salaries are higher in Madrid than they are in my small town for various reasons and due to the law of diminishing marginal utility if you earn more money money will be further down on your value scale than other goods and services so they value a restaurant at higher price points than somebody in a small town would so people are willing to pay more why are wages for people who work in a restaurant higher in a city than they are in a small town well because people are willing to pay more for the restaurant meal why are rents higher for stores that could be used as restaurants in small towns again because people are willing to pay more they value more highly the final good produced by the restaurant so the rents are correspondingly higher and so we have value imputed all the way back from the final valuation on the good which will directly satisfy your want the good being the lowest order good in Karl Manger's typology back to the higher order goods which are the input factors necessary to produce those goods and I'll end my lecture here with a couple suggestions for further reading because it's a very complex comprehensive topic but if you ever wanted to read more Murray Rothbard and Man economy and state his first two chapters deal with the first one is wants and preferences in the basic economic problem and the second is this problem of exchange in the price formation process and Karl Manger about half of his whole principles is dedicated to this and of course Eugen von Bomberk has a very nice explanation of the pricing process and where value comes from in his positive theory of value they're all available in the bookstore or online at Mises org thank you


Subunit 3.9, Unit Summary. So let's recap the information covered in this unit. A project is divided into distinct lifecycle phases separated by programmatic key decision points where you're going to have some stakeholders come in and assess whether the project should be allowed to move forward. It's mature enough to the next part of the lifecycle. We also learned that the system baseline isn't agreed to set of requirements in the beginning. Later there'll be designs and drawings, and all of these things are configuration controlled and established so that along the way the team has a common understanding of all the products and all the requirements, designs that they need to be working from. Lastly, we learned that there are a series of technical reviews that are spread out throughout the lifecycle and they're used to monitor the development and the progress you're making along the way. And they're chaired by an independent review team of technical experts that will do an assessment and provide that assessment to the stakeholders regarding the progress that's been made. Congratulations! You made it to the end of Unit 3. Answer the last discussion question in the forums, after which you can move on to the Unit 3 quiz. Remember that this will count for 10% of your final grades, so study hard and good luck. Once you've completed the quiz, you can continue your research for the Mars Sample Return Mission Project.


Let's open up our Bibles to Mark chapter 10. Mark chapter 10, we're gonna look at verse 17. Why don't we stand together so we can read as we give reverence to the word of God? Let's all stand. In Mark chapter 10 verse 17, this is what we read. Now, as he was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before him and asked him, good teacher, what should I do that I may inherit eternal life? So Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good, but one that is God.  And he answered and he said to him, teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, one thing you lack, go your way, so whatever you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven and come, take up the cross and follow me. But he was sad at this word and went away sorrowful for he had great possessions. And father, we come before you and we ask that you will just speak to our hearts right now, Lord. Even as we look at this young, rich ruler, Lord, we see Lord what a foolish decision he made. He had a choice and he made the wrong one. Can I ask, Lord God, that you will help us make the right one today? As you examine our hearts, may you help us to see who we really are so that we can know without a shadow of doubt that we are your people or we're not. But we know that a lot depends on it, our eternal destiny depends on it. Speak to us now, Lord, we ask in Jesus' name we say, amen, you may have a seat. A lot of us make, all of us have a lot to decide on in life, don't we? We need to make decisions for everything. I know when I was younger, man, I had to make a decision whether I was gonna go to school or not and well, it was kind of like a trade school type of thing. It was called UEI. And my wife would tell me, why you wanna go there? And I'm like, well, because man, you know, I think I need this and I had to make a decision and I made the decision. Looking back now, I realized it was the bad decision because the reality is I went to school for something that I'm not even doing today. I picked up a few things here and there, but I'll tell you this, the reason why it was a bad decision is because it let me in debt for a long time. So I've learned to pray about the choices that I'm gonna make in life. And I want you to understand that there is one decision that you have to make sure it's the right decision, that you make the right decision. Because like I said in my prayer, it can cost us our eternal destiny. So as we look at this young man's life, I want you to note that he comes across the Lord Jesus Christ. And keep in mind that as the Lord is doing ministry, his reputation is being spread. This young, rich, young ruler hears about him. He knows something, that something's different about this man, so he approaches him in a way to get him to respond. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. But can I say something though, that is very important? There's a problem in the church today. And that problem is that there's a lot of people that attend church, they hear a lot of sermons, they like to hang out with a lot of Christians, right? They like to be part of a religious group. But what's sad is that a lot of people think that because they attend church, listen to sermons, hang out with Christians, that they're probably, are Christians themselves. They go through the emotions, they go through all these things, but the reality is that they might not be Christians at all. Now why do I say that? I say that because when you have been touched by God, listen to me, your life is gonna change dramatically. You hear me? And I will tell you this, there's gonna be a radical, dramatical change in your life. In fact, in 1 John chapter three, verse nine, when John explains how there's certain things that a true believer is gonna manifest in his life. There's gonna be love for the brethren, there's gonna be love for God. I mean, there's gonna be love to doing things that is right. And I like John because John then says, listen, but the reality is that if you're living in sin and you're practicing sin, then you can't be a true believer. And I'm just paraphrasing him, but you should read that letter, man. I really love John because he's straightforward. But I like it because, and then he says, if you're living in sin, and says you're practicing it, he says then you're not of God, you're of the devil. Now I say that because in the church, like I said, people are religious, there's religious people in the church, hear me? But these people don't really have a relationship with God. They still live life in sin, doing the things that their flesh desires. They're giving into the flesh, but ignoring these important truths that they have to listen to and make the choice to change as we're gonna see in our story. But I want you to know that this rich young ruler is now confronted with the creator of the world. Now notice the first thing I want you to know in verse 17, because there's a few things that we can kind of learn from this rich young ruler. This is now as he was going out on the road, one came running and knelt before him and asked, good teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? I don't know about you, man, but I like learning. I really do. I'm those kind of visual learners and listening to those guys that listen and learn things. But I like learning from Christians, but also from non-Christians. And we can learn a few things from non-Christians, can we? Let me give you an example. A while back, there was a man who came here and gave a message. His name is Hank Canagrave. And he quoted a man by the name of Walter Martin and he said something like this, are you willing to do for the truth what the code is willing to do for the lie? And that kind of trigger a thought in my mind. And I began to say, hmm, okay, let's look at a cult. And when you study a cult, someone who's of another religion, of course, do you see how a lot of them are faithful? Man, I remember when I first got saved, I invest a lot of time in witnessing to Jehovah's Witnesses. And one thing I can assure you about them is that they were committed to their cause. At five o'clock in the morning, you will find them at a donut shop. So when we went hunting for them, that's where we found them. And what was crazy is that while you're driving to the donut shop, you will see them walking with breed cases and all that holding their little watchtower tablets. And I would say, man, these people are down for theirs. And it was inspiring, but convicting. Because when I saw that, I realized, man, they do, sometimes they do more for the light than we Christians do for the truth. And I remember God used it to kind of convict me. So you can learn a few things from people that are not Christians. So I wanna see, I wanna highlight a few things in this non-believer who thought he was right, but we're gonna see that he wasn't, because the Lord's gonna speak to him directly. I want you to know first of all here that this rich young ruler was pretty proud of all the success that he had.  You can admire, I mean, think about it. First thing I want you to know that he was very eager. He was an eager young man. How do I know that? Because we read there that he came running to Jesus. So he was enthusiastic. He was filled with strength and vigor of youth. In fact, he will put some of us in shame today. In fact, I know many who come to church with long faces, complaining, you know, with no kind of energy, no enthusiasm. Many today, in fact, are not enthusiastic about the things of God. You see, it will be a blessing if Christians can have the same enthusiasm than those people that are not of the body. Like for example, you go to a football game, right? Just like today, many of these coliseums or these sports events are gonna be filled with fans. And what do they do? Their hands are always up. Yay, yay, right? Shouting and screaming, you know, and doing all that. They're so enthusiastic, so energetic. And yet we, who have something to cheer about, won't even raised our hands in worship. We won't even say praise the Lord or amen. We just come in like, okay, we're going to church and we're going back out, oh well. It will be such a blessing if we can just get energized for God, right? The number two, I want you to notice that he was a humble young man. He came and he knelt before him, we read, as Jesus. Keep in mind that Jesus at this time was seen as a peasant prophet from Galilee. And this rich young ruler gave Jesus a knee. He gave some respect. It's interesting how sometimes the world has more respect to religious things than God's own people to him. You know, I'll be honest with you. I mean, I'll talk more about that later on. But one of the things I want to show you that he was filled, he was dressed in humility. He was humble. Keep in mind that the rich young ruler had an honorable position. He had great possessions, lots of power, prestige, and he was young. And yet we see how he was respectful, humble and respectful, came to the Lord and he knelt before him. Some of us don't even show that respect to God.  Check in the score. No respect, no reverence to the Lord.  We sometimes we just give him our shoulder. But he was a humble man and he showed it as he came and he gave a knee to the Lord. The third thing I want you to notice that he was discerning. He was a discerning young man. Notice that he called Jesus, good teacher. What shall I do to inherit eternal life? It shows us that he knew that there was something about Jesus that was different from everyone else. That's why he asked about eternal life. He recognized worth and goodness when it was present before him. And yet today, there are a lot of people who can discern good and worth in the person of Jesus Christ. Is that you? Do you know about the Lord? Or do you know the Lord and everything that he has done and it's going to do for us? Do you understand the value that we have in Christ? Do you understand the person who saved us and is working in us and is using us? Do you understand who he is? I mean, this rich young ruler, he's just a non-believer. He wants a part of Christ of what Christ has to offer and he came to him discerning that something was good about him. Listen guys, you can know about him and discern about Christ. When you get into this book, you study it, you read it, meditate on it so that God can show you who he is. But he had a good discernment about who Jesus was. He saw that there was worth, there was good. So he went to him. Number four, he had his mind on spiritual things. Notice again, he asked, what shall I do that I may have eternal life? He didn't come to the Lord and ask about some points about being more success or what he needs to do to get things that can satisfy the pleasures of his flesh or maybe to obtain happiness. He came asking for something that he knew at one time, he's gonna be there, eternal life. His mind was on spiritual things. How about you today? Can I ask you, what are your interests today? If you're a non-believer, are you interested in heaven? Are you interested in not going to hell?  Like rewards in heaven, right? What about hearing Jesus say, well done, my good and faithful servant. Are those things, do those things interest you? Because if they do, guess what? You're gonna be doing exactly what God has called us to do and that is to preach the gospel to every creature. That is to make disciples out of men. That is to serve the poor, the widow, the orphans and so forth. You're gonna be active and involved because those things interest you. So this individual had his mind on spiritual things. Number five, in verses 9 through 20 we see that he was also morally clean. Again, we read how he comes to the Lord and I'm gonna kind of go back and forth in these verses here, but he kind of comes to the Lord and he asks about eternal life and then Jesus in verse 18 says to him, why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is God and we'll talk more about that in a few seconds. You know the commandments do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and your mother and he answered and he said to him teacher all these things I have kept from my youth. So he's saying, listen, he's saying I haven't stole, I haven't killed anyone, I haven't committed adultery, I don't lie, I don't take God's name in vain, I've kept the Sabbath, I've been good to my neighbor, I've honored my parents, I mean, I've done everything that is asked of me. I mean, he was a good moral young man.    So he was one who had, who was morally clean. Yet some today, believers can't say that of themselves. They're not more in cleaning. Some of you guys probably broke nine commandments coming to church. Some of us are doing it willingly. Some of us got drunk last night. Not me, but hopefully you guys didn't either.  And then you hear today's hoping that if you convince and repent, God will forgive you. And then you go right back to the same thing tomorrow. This young man is impressive. And you're someone you can admire because at least he's saying, look, I've done it all. I've kept the commandments. He's telling Jesus, now this is what's crazy to me. He's talking to the author of the commandments. And he doesn't realize that now, but we're gonna see how God begins to show him. Listen, when I wrote the commandments, it was to show you your heart. And we'll see that again in a few moments. But he was morally clean. Number six, he was very successful. Well, we're told that he was young. He was, Matthew 19, 20 tells us that. That he was a ruler, Luke 18, 18 tells us that. You know, we know that he had great possession. So he was filthy rich. He had, in fact, he had everything that we wish we had. Riches, position, power, prestige. This guy was hooked up in life. But he had one thing, but he didn't have one thing. And that is eternal life. So he comes to the Lord and he asks him some, an important question. What must I do to have eternal life? In verse 18, notice Jesus said to him, first of all, he says, why do you call me good? And no one is good, but one that is God. Now, the first thing I want you to know is that Jesus didn't praise him, didn't flatter him. He went directly to his heart to minister to him. I say that because sometimes we can be caught up in showing favoritism on people, right? Who have more than we do.  He can treat you to a Ram's game or something. You know what I'm saying? So you won't minister to the person. And in doing that, you want to hold back some truths. Cause you want to keep that friendship. You want to keep that line of credit. If you want to know what I'm talking about, you know, whatever it is, you want to keep that there so you minister have heartily. You hear what I'm saying? Do you see them doing something wrong? And you'll be like, oh, is this wrong, bro? They'll tell you. You'll be like, ah, it's cool. God is gracious, man. You compromise, right? Jesus didn't flatter him. He wasn't moved by who he was. He wanted to reach him. He wanted to speak to his heart. Why? Because the Lord loved him. How do I know? Because in verse 21, it says then Jesus looking at him loved him. So we need to make sure, listen, that whenever we minister, that our focus is on the Lord and on their soul. Not on what they have, but what they could have in Christ. You hear me? Now, here's another thing I want you to know. I want you to know now how the Lord is gonna teach these young rulers some important lessons. He's gonna teach them some things that I want you to know. Number one, I want you to know that Jesus here is teaching this rich young ruler in one sentence, two things. Number one, he's teaching him that he himself is not good, even though he was a pretty good boy. He himself is not good. You hear me? He's telling him, only God is good. No one else, neither you are good. In other words, yeah, okay. You say you kept all those commandments, but can I tell you, you're not good. You're still not good. You see, because the commandments were never intended for you to save you or to justify you. They were intended to show you how wretched you are, how wretched I am. So number one, he's telling the young man, listen, you're not good. Number two, Jesus is teaching him that he is God. He's saying, listen, there's only one who's good. Remember, the guy came and says, good teacher. And he says, hey, you're not good, but I'm good. And if I'm good, therefore I'm God. He's teaching him that he's not good and that Jesus is God because he is good. So if Jesus isn't God, he isn't good. But because he is good, he is God, he is good. Try to say that fast, two and two. Jesus said there's none good but one and it's God. I'm God. So church, Jesus is God, right? We didn't know that. So if he's God, shouldn't he be honored, revered, feared and revered as the king of kings and lords of lords?  The creator, the one who created you, the good God. And he's conversing with him, notice that. And then he's gonna start picking at his heart as we're gonna see right now. But the reality is that there's only one who's good. No one is good. In Romans chapter three, verses 10 through 12, Paul writes that there's no one that is good, no one that does good, no not one he tells us. The only one who is good is God.  You're not good, I am good. I am God, you need me so that you can be good with me. Hope that makes sense. So here's the thing, listen closely. God's word tells us that God is merciful, doesn't it? That he is forgiving, that he is love, and that he is good. Listen to me closely. But don't ever forget that scripture also teaches that God will never overlook sin. In Exodus chapter 34, verse seven, we are told that God will by no means clear the guilty. So don't think that somehow when someone stands before God that he is going to look at our sin and say, you're okay, don't worry about it, go ahead. No, because if he does, then he becomes a sinner. You see, God is holy, and he has to judge sin. He's not gonna overlook sin. You hear me? He will not overlook sin. So listen, if God were to clear guilty, then he would become guilty. If he overlooks sin, he becomes a sinner. In fact, it's been said, when a guilty man is acquitted, the judge is condemned. So the Lord will not overlook sin. He is love, he is merciful, he is forgiving, but he's also just, and he's also holy. And he's going to deal with sin, and he has dealt with sin at the cross through his son. Hear me? And everyone who receives him as Lord and Savior receives redemption. They're redeemed by God's blood. But I want you to note here that Jesus has been teaching this young, rich, young ruler that prideful men are sinners, even after worse. I mean, they're the worst sinners, even after best. I'm sorry. But again, so he looks at him and he says, you're a sinner. I'm not. No one's good, only God. I am God. The second thing I want you to note here is in verses 19 to 21. He begins to share about keeping the commands to help the young man to see that he's a sinner in need of a Savior. Again, he begins to share about keeping the commandments to help the young man see that he's a sinner in need of a Savior. First thing I want you to make sure is this, that he's not teaching this rich, young ruler. You hear me? He is not teaching this young ruler that salvation is obtained by keeping the law. But in fact, he's teaching the opposite. Keeping the commandments will not save anyone. That's important for us to understand. And I'm gonna highlight that a few times throughout the message. In fact, I want you to know that you can't be saved by keeping the law. In Galatians chapter two, verse 16, we are told that through the law, no flesh will be justified. So if you're someone trying to get to heaven, trying to have a relationship with God, based on keeping the law, just like this individual was, it can happen. There is no way that it can do it. You can do it. You hear me? The law can save anyone, but it is an important element in evangelism as well as in salvation. We do know that the law is to let us know that we are sinners. That's why Paul will write in Romans chapter three, verse 20. He says, therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is a knowledge of sin. You don't know you're breaking the speed limit until you see it posted, right? 65, you go, that's knowledge. You see it, you kind of break it. You go past the speed limit and you're breaking the law, but you don't know about it unless it's there. So same with you saying the law was intended to show you that we're sinners. In fact, the law was written to show us how wretched we are. I mean, haven't you read the Bible? And when you start reading it, you realize, oh my goodness, I don't deserve him. I'm filthy. I'm unworthy. He is so holy.   But the law, no one will be able to be saved. It's not there to save but to show us that we're sinners in need of him. So I want you to notice another thing. The law doesn't save, but it does prepare us to be saved. As I mentioned, the law doesn't save us, but it prepares us in order for us to be saved. So God is holy and anyone must see themselves as sinners before the holy God. It's then that they're ready for the free gift of salvation in his son Jesus Christ. So here's the thing, the law shows you that you are a sinner. At that point, you realize, oh man, I need the Savior. And that's where God comes in and says, and I'm here to save you. So the law doesn't save, the law shows us and prepares us for salvation. Now I want you to note that this young man had a superficial or a shallow knowledge of the law. Notice in verse 20 that he said that he had kept the law from his youth. He says, and he answered and he said to him, teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth. I like that. Could you imagine talking to the author of the law? Oh, you don't get it, man. The one who knows every thought, he knows everything about us, right? He's trying to convince God that he's done it all. So, you know, and I'm glad that Jesus didn't look at him and said, he didn't do nothing like that, right? He didn't look down at him. He didn't degrade him. He didn't put him down. You know, he understands that this guy is deceived by his own lies. He wasn't disgusted with him. He wasn't mad at him. He wasn't. He wanted to reach him. That's what he says before he answers in verse 21, he says, Jesus looking at him, he loved him. Guys, can I tell you something? When we're ministering, may God give us the heart of Christ because some of us are ministering but we're doing it for the wrong reasons. Some of us are ministering to show off our knowledge of the word of God, right? Oh, I know, I did it at one time. When I used to minister to the Jehovah's Witnesses, I wanted them to know that they were wrong and I knew a little bit of Greek, a little bit of Hebrew, a little bit about their history. I wanted to win the battle. I didn't care much about the soul. Until the Lord told me, David, there's sinners there in need of me too. You have taken what I placed in your heart that desire to reach them and abused it. When we minister to people, our goal is to try to reach them. That means we're gonna have to suffer long, be patient. We have to endure the mockery. We have to endure the persecution. We need to endure those sarcastic questions and those mad dogs and those, he took his eyes, all that stuff. You have to endure it because you love them and you wanna reach them, amen? You wanna reach them. So as Jesus is ministering to them and he's saying, I can picture him saying, I've kept them all in my life. And Jesus says, okay, round two, let's get to this. But I want you to know something. As he's ministering to him, I want you to note how he uses wisdom, the Lord, and with great gentleness, he asks them one thing. He tells his youngster, okay, one more thing. Notice verse 21. One thing you lack, go your way. So whatever you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven and come and take up the cross and follow me. He's saying, okay, here we go. This is pretty cool, I like this. He's saying, okay, you kept all the commandments, right? Yes, sir, okay, go sell everything. Give it to the poor, be my follower. Jesus is not teaching that you can do good things, like sell your stuff to the poor and you're gonna go to heaven. Good behavior doesn't take you to heaven. That's not what he's teaching. Keep in mind that he's going right at the heart. And what this witch young man has is a covetedness heart. Because in Exodus chapter 20 verse 13, the Bible says, thou shalt not covet. This young man had a, he was covetous. In other words, he had an idol. He had an idol. What was his idol? Gold. He had love for gold, not for God, as we're gonna see. So it's been said about this young man that his creed was greed and his gold was God. He said that he kept the whole law, but in reality, have you noticed, he broke the entire law. In Matthew chapter 22 verses 35 through 40, there was a rich, there was a lawyer who came to the Lord and asked him a very simple question. I'm just gonna paraphrase the story. You can write it down. You can go check out the story later. But he goes up to the Lord and says, hey, Lord, tell me out of the commandment, which one's the best commandment? And Jesus said this, listen. I'm gonna give you two commandments. The first one is love God with all your being, right?  He says, love him with all your being. The second commandment is what? Love your neighbor as yourself.  And when you break down the 10 commandments, you're gonna realize that the first few commandments is directed to God and the other one is to mankind. So Jesus saying, keep these two commandments and you keep them all. This guy doesn't even realize that by turning down Jesus' offer, he broke the two commandments. Therefore, he broke them all, disqualifies him. Because if you're trying to save yourself by doing good or by keeping the law, you fall under the curse of the law, which is what? Now you have to keep the entire law. Yet James chapter two, we're told that if you stumble in one area of the law, what happens? You're guilty of breaking them all. So now the law can't save you. Now you need a savior. So this young man did not realizing that he had broken to all the commandments by just saying no to the Lord. You see, this rich young man wasn't willing to sell his goods for the poor and follow Jesus. Therefore, without realizing it, he broke the commandments. He loved his money more than he loved God. He loved his money more than he loved the people. You see, or his neighbor. So Jesus wasn't teaching that one can buy their way to heaven by selling everything or giving to the poor. He's showing this man's heart. He's revealing this man's heart. He's showing him that he is guilty of the sin of covenants and that he's trying to behave himself to heaven and all he had was a superficial knowledge of his own goodness. That's another thing I want you to know that what Jesus is teaching. He's teaching this young man that you can't have two masters. You can only have one. Notice again in verse 20. And he answered and said to him, teach you all these things I have cared for my youth. Then you know, then Jesus looking at him, he loved him. And he said to him, one thing you lack. Go, go your way. So whatever you have, give it to the poor and you will have treasures in heaven and come and take up the cross and follow me. He tells him, right? So he's teaching them, listen, you can't have two masters, only one. Only one. Now I want you to know quickly that he's not teaching that a rich man cannot get saved. Okay? And the reason why I say that because in verse 27, we read that with God, all things are possible. There's rich people can't get saved. You hear me? Harder, because you have to give up so much. But they could get saved. That's not what he's teaching here. But he is teaching that you can't serve two masters. The rich man had a false God whom he served, which kept them from serving Jesus Christ, who is the true God. What he needed to do, listen, to obtain eternal life was simple. He needed to repent from his idolatry, from his idolatry. His idol. These were the things that held him back from obtaining eternal life. Idolatry. And some of them might be like, oh, that's messed up. But let me tell you something. There's a lot of people, even in this building, that have idols that is keeping them from God. Because religion can be an idol. You can just be here, not because you have a relationship with God, but because it's Sunday, you gotta come to church. So you know what? I gotta honor God, so I'll just go.  This is what, this is who you serve. And these are the things that are keeping you from truly obtaining salvation. I said earlier that we have a problem, that there's a lot of people in the church that think they're right, but they're not right. They're here for other reasons, rather than the main reason, which is Christ. So this individual needed to repent from his idolatrous ways. And as I mentioned, some need to do that today too. That they may finally obtain eternal life. Idolatry can be a means that keeps people from God. How about this? Some of us worship. Some of us, we're our own idols. Trust me, I follow some of you guys on social media. You have more selfies, and oh my goodness, it's all about you. You live for you. So you might be keeping yourself from God. That's why the Bible says, humble yourselves before God. Because they know that there's too much of us, some of us will have become our own idols. We serve us, not God. And listen, you can only have one master. We can only have one master, either the Lord or the rest of things. This guy, he was being mastered by his possessions. We can't serve two masters, only one.  I mean, some hear messages and want heaven. They want their sins forgiven. They get all emotionally stirred. They think they can hold on to their gods, but they won't let go of the world. They think they can hold on to their gods, and they just want to add Jesus to their collection of goods. So is that you? See, this risk man had everything. I mean, he had everything. But he had something, he didn't have what Jesus had. And he wanted it. He wanted to add Jesus to his collection of what he already had. So there needs to be repentance. There needs to be a turning from the gods and turning to the Lord. So the question is this, are you, have you truly repented?  Because if you're not truly repented, then you're really not saved. Because you confess Jesus as Lord, and then after the confession is repentance. Listen, the word repentance simply means to have a change of mind. The change of mind then changes the way of life. You hear me? When you hear the gospel and you respond, the Lord opens up your heart to respond to it, right? You confess them as Lord, right? You confess that first John, first Corinthians 15 verses one through five talks about the gospel which saves. You believe the gospel. But following that, there has to be repentance. There has to be a change of life dramatically, dramatically. I mean, there has to be why? Because God comes and resides within you. You guys, you need to understand that. That's why I believe it's very dangerous when we make alter calls. And I'll be honest with you, I've been guilty of that. I still do it, but I do it now with a little bit more warning. Because I tell people, listen, if you wanna get right with God, we're gonna say a prayer. And if you wanna get right, repeat after me, make it your own, and then welcome to the family of God. Now I say something a little bit different.  And if you walk out the door, I'll tell the church this, you need to examine your life, make sure that you're right with God. You need to see the fruits of the spirit in your life. There needs to be a conviction. There needs to be something happening because if not, the reality is you were only, your feelings were stirred.   And maybe your wife or your kids, but other than that, you're the one that should know whether you're really saved or not. I know I'm saved because even when I'm alone and I get those temptations, guess what? Here comes the convictions. Hear me? And so, but if you're not convicted, if there's no this crazy change in your life, something is not right. There has to be repentance. Listen, it's been said, no repentance, no redemption. No repentance, no redemption. So he's teaching, he's not teaching Jesus here, salvation by keeping commandments, right? He's telling them you can't have two masters. You can't have a relationship with God of grace while you're dating the God of greed. You have to turn from the eye to serve the living God. And today we have a lot of people that fills our churches with people that do not have a changed mind or a changed life. Who is your master? Who is your Lord? And did you know that when you read the scripture like in Romans 10, it says that it talks about confessing him as Lord, not savior, Lord. He's Lord, you're the servant. You hear me? And a servant obeys. That's why Jesus says, everything you got, come and follow me. In other words, you're gonna enter into a life of obedience, into a life of service. You're gonna enter into a life of something. You're not just gonna say, I'm a Christian, I'm going to heaven. No, you're gonna follow.  You're gonna do what I do.   You're gonna follow me. You're gonna follow my example.  I tell you that right now. So Jesus is speaking to this young man's heart and I gotta go quicker here. He said, come and follow me. Fourthly, no, I want you to know. Jesus also teaching this young ruler, whatever masters you choose to serve, also mean that master will master you. Jesus tells him to forsake his old master and to follow him. Jesus talked about repentance. Now he's talking about faith here. Repentance and faith go together. See, when you turn from sin, you turn to Jesus. This man's sin was greed. He had to turn from it and turn to Jesus as a follower. He needed a new master and Jesus said, I'll be your master, follow me. So with that I say, is Jesus enthroning your life? Your destiny depends on it. Your destiny depends on it. Now I wanna close by focusing on verse 22. This is heartbreaking. Because I'm sure that Jesus is ministering with purpose. Their eyes are engaged. I wonder if Peter's on the side praying, oh God, please open the rich man's eyes open, Lord, please. I wonder if the rest of the apostles were like, yes, God, yes, God, quiet, Jesus talking to him. He's gonna reach him right now. He's gonna just bring him. I mean, just picture the scene. But Jesus is engaged. Will you follow me? It's a personal, it's a one-on-one. It's a decision. This decision, everything banks on it, right? On it right now. I want you to think about this for a moment. What Jesus told them struck a nerve.  Think about it with me. In one ear, you have the demons.   Why will you give it up?  Look what you got. Look at the jewelry you got.  You got Nikes. No. Look what you got, man. You're filthy. Are you gonna give it up to follow this peasant? Prophet from Galilee. On the other side, the spirit saying, hey, you're not gonna lose everything. You're gonna gain everything if you follow Jesus. Now think about it. Now he said with the decision, the most important decision in his life. He couldn't do it. But he was sad at this word and he went away sorrowful. Why? Because he had great possessions.  Those possessions mastered him. They controlled him. He couldn't let go to get to God. And Jesus is standing there and all he can do is turn away, feel sorry for himself and walk away. Walking away from everything that God had for him. Salvation, forgiveness, eternal life. He turned it all down. He turned eternity down for the temporal. As he bowed his head and he walked away, no doubt the demons glee while the angels weaved. We will never know what could have been. Could you imagine if he were to say you Lord and Jesus said, hey, you know what? I tell you about giving everything up. You can keep a man. In fact, let's do this. In fact, could you imagine what could have been? He could have probably been, I don't know, another apostle? Maybe another Peter? I mean, I don't know. An Elijah type of guy? We would probably be reading about something about him that we'll be like, oh man, this is cool. I'm gonna take that from his life and I'm gonna apply it to my life and that's crazy right there. But instead, he's in hell right now wishing he can have that opportunity once again. He lost everything because he didn't receive the gift that Jesus was offering him.  You see? It was the fullest choice. But yet, so many here in this room are making the same choice. There's some here that are close to coming to the Lord, but they're holding back because those possessions that you have are holding you too tight. You don't wanna lose your popularity. You don't wanna lose your coolness. You don't wanna lose that you're hip. You don't wanna lose your reputation. You don't wanna lose your money. You don't wanna lose... Can I tell you that's all coming to an end?  And the only thing that you took within those 10 years is a heart in heart that got harder and harder through the years. So here's the thing, what will you do? Because Jesus is speaking to you through me telling you, come and follow me and you will gain all the riches. So, are you someone who is immorally cool, right? Are you in a religious person? Or do you really know Jesus? Do you really know Jesus? Because if you don't, all the times that you came to church and heard messages and all that stuff, all the altar calls that you responded to, all that, means nothing. Because you can have all that knowledge of God is still end up in hell. Bible says even demons believe when they tremble and they're hellbound. So I wanna give you the opportunity today to examine your hearts and to ask yourself, do I really know God? Have I forsaken all for the one who gave his all? And if that's not you, I'm here today as a messenger from God to tell you, you need to give your all to him. Let's pray.


Coming to you from RGIS Studios, I am Anicia Antoine and this is your Midday News Brief. The Prime Minister of St. Lucia, Hon. Alan Shastney, recently met with a newly drafted NBA player, Terence Mann, and representatives from the St Lucia Basketball Federation. Terence Mann, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, to St Lucia's parents, travelled to St Lucia often as a child. The athlete, who is now 22 years old, has expressed his love for St Lucia and would like to set up a foundation to promote and develop basketball locally. Terence Mann is currently an American professional basketball player for the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association, NBA, and played for the Clippers during the 2019 NBA Summer League season. The Prime Minister expressed his gratitude to Terence for taking the time to share his journey for not forgetting his St Lucia roots and for his desire to help develop the sport of basketball here on the island. His efforts and that of others combined with our National Sports Development Strategy will help provide the support and opportunities which our local athletes so richly deserve. The St Lucia Parliament has authorised the Minister for Finance to guarantee the loan for the financing of the Uranora International Airport Re-development Project by the St Lucia Air and Seaport Authority from a syndicate of banks led by the Bank of St Lucia Ltd. This was just one of the parliamentary approvals that paved the way for national development initiatives to progress. A bill to incorporate the CariCom arrest warrant treaty in the laws of St Lucia has been passed. The treaty, which has been in existence since 2008, seeks to combat cross-border crime and enhance cooperation among law enforcement, agencies and security in the CariCom region. The treaty was developed in response to the deficiencies of the ex-tradition laws in CariCom member states. Prime Minister Nobel Allen Chastney says it is meant to provide a more efficient system of surrender of persons among CariCom member states. A central authority of the issuing state party must make a request for the surrender of a person. When the request is received, St Lucia as an executing state party is expected to take necessary measures against the requested person in compliance with the laws of St Lucia. Honourable Chastney says provisions must be made in the law to empower a competent authority to arrest and detain someone under the warrant. St Lucia signed onto the CariCom arrest warrant treaty on July 6th, 2017. This has been your media news brief. Thank you for watching.