Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

In a past article, I attempted to keep out the deeper evils of such things as “national anthems” or other “patriotic songs” of praise to the State by making the appeal that we shouldn’t sing these secular hymns if for no other reason than that God commands our song and praise and not others. I tried to avoid the general sinful idolatry associated with it all, though I couldn’t fail to make mention.  

But why do we sing unto the Lord? Purely for the reason that He is God? This would be good enough for me. But even God seems to suggest that He wants to be remembered for more than just His divine status. We are told rather frequently in the scriptures to remember God as a deliverer from the chains and prisons of Egyptian societies. 

Why God is worthy of Song and Praise

We can quickly see why, then, that singing a song of praise to Pharaoh is to acknowledge human rulers as gods and saviors. We sing to the Lord because we recognize Him as the Lord, Savior, and Deliverer from the very systems that want us to sing their song (e.g., “national anthems” that assume the State to be the source of freedom and prosperity). 

“O sing unto the LORD a new song; for he hath done marvelous things: his right hand, and his holy arm, hath gotten him the victory” (Psalm 98:1).

God is worthy of praise because He smashes Egyptian systems that oppress His people. God works signs and wonders on Egyptian systems that keep people in captivity. Amen.

Far from being a Deliverer (and thus worthy of praise), Egypt—the various statist regimes of the scriptures and of our day—is the very false god that leads men into slavery. To sing a song for the State is to act as if Pharaoh has done marvelous things, that it is kings and political rulers who work “signs” and “wonders” upon enemies as the Lord God does, when they are, in fact, the very enslavers that we need deliverance from. And it is to act like smashing Egyptian societies and deliverance of His people isn’t what God is all about (See, the Scriptures). 

The forbidden politics of God

Many in our time, however, have reduced God to a spiritual affair (if they even pray at all) and have forgotten all about God as the one who will help those ready to follow Him out of Egypt. To talk about ethics, economics, the social laws of God, and a way out of captivity, is usually dismissed as being “politics” that is irrelevant to what the scriptures are all about. Some might even call it “heresy.”

Whole books have been written to refute the idea that there was no politics of Jesus, in response to those who want us to picture “a Savior who stands aloof from governmental concerns and who calls his disciples to an apolitical life.”

But this notion of confining God to the “spiritual realm” is rather popular for most professed Christians today. We often hear, as Kevin Craig gives their view, that “all this talk about politics is missing the point…The real point of the Bible is our salvation, and you’re distracting us from that central issue.”

But as others have seen, 

“Almost the entire Bible is written by people living in the shadow of one political Empire or another. The first readers of our scriptures were slaves and fugitives, fishermen and fools. They were the oppressed of Egypt, the exiled in Babylon, and the peasants under Roman occupation.”

It would not make sense for the Christian to act as if God has not provided instruction for right living and social order but gave us nothing more than a prayer manual to satisfy the soul’s thirst for spirituality. This would be to treat God as if He covered the narrow realm of spiritual hunger but left the other parts (e.g., how to organize society and live as a Christian) to secular statist theorists (e.g., Marx).

But there is not the God-of-our-spiritual-salvation and the god-of-our social-order (Pharaoh), or even a distinction between the “spiritual” realm (where God is confined to spirituality) and the “social” realm (where God supposedly becomes irrelevant and false gods are needed to dictate “law” from above). There is one God, and He delivers His faithful servants—those who obey His commandments and avoid erecting ruling elites as their alleged protectors and saviors—out of Egyptian societies. 

The nature of God as a deliverer, as a savior, from statism is abundant in the scriptures. This is very often how we’re told to remember God. That this deliverance-from-statism understanding of God has been kept out of religious discussion for the most part is astonishing given the number of references to “I am the God who brought you out of Egypt” and just the general narrative of the scriptures. 

In fact, right after the deliverance from Egypt in the scriptures, Moses breaks out into song to the Lord for helping them to escape the statist slave society and smashing their military as it chased them. 

“Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15:1). 

Such things as “national anthems” are reversals of the nature of why we would sing a song unto the Lord. We are to praise God in song for freeing us from our statist enemies, i.e., for smashing Egypt. 

“Make a song to the Lord, for he is lifted up in glory; the horse and the horseman he has sent into the sea” (Exodus 15:21).

And yet “national anthems” (as well as the patriotism that goes along with it) say that it’s Pharaoh who keeps us safe and free and to look to his chariots and horsemen as their salvation. 

God against Egypt

Despite God as a deliverer from evil archists (i.e., state rulers) being a central theme of the Old Testament Scriptures, it has amazingly been left out of most discussions of Scripture. The Christian anarchist Kevin Craig, seeing this too, goes as far as to say “our bible studies should be predominantly political.” 

We’re even told in the word that this somehow-evaded nature of God—He smashes Pharaohs and rescues His people of their bondage—is to be taught even to children. Men were to teach their kids that God, not Pharaohs who want you to sing their “national anthems,” is the one who brings people out of statist captivity. When the men in the scriptures were to finally escape and reach the promised land and their sons asked how they got there, they were to say that “by the strength of His hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the place of slavery” (Exodus 13:14). 

This is why raising people on the word is needed. If we don’t remember God-the-deliverer, we find ourselves singing “national anthems” and marching right back into Egypt. 

Indeed, the whole reason God smashes all the statist systems of the world and brings judgment upon them is so that men will stop trusting in Egypt and, from the evidence of Pharaoh’s army broken on the ground before them and their socialist societies gone up in flames, “shall know that I am the LORD their God who brought them out of Egypt so that I may live among them. I am the LORD your God” (Exodus 29:46). 

Though men are hard-headed and typically love Egyptian societies more than God (if they haven’t turned from Him outright), God means for the destruction that results from Egyptian systems—which I think can be conceived of as both divine judgment and the “economic” or “social” effects that are bound to result from such systems—to be a wakeup call to the evils they were participating in. 

Men, of course, usually never learn. Even when there’s a boot on their neck and they’re being loaded into a boxcar. But they should have seen it as a sign from God that they have already messed up by turning their society into a land of idolatrous state-worshipers who only pretend to protect but, in fact, bring men into bondage. 

Pharaoh doesn’t deliver

Once we regard God as a deliverer from archism (i.e., human rule), we see that the problem with worshiping earthly rulers is not only that they don’t deliver, i.e., free people from the captivity of their enemies, but that they’re the very people who we need deliverance from! For men to trust in Egypt for their “protection” and “shade” is the ultimate social error; God says it’s our very enemy and that we are in need of mass repentance and a turning to the Lord and His ways to be saved from this disaster. But men have found a “savior” in the enemy of their liberty: Pharaoh and his gang of footmen who kidnap, beat, kill, and cage those who resist his plunderous “kingdom.”

So not only are men idolatrous fools when they salute state flags and sing their songs, but they are also greatly in error to have believed that this system actually provides liberty and prosperity and that it will keep the tyrants and would-be conquerors away. The State, as a false god, is also a false deliverer. Or we may even say (at risk of acting like worshiping something other than God isn’t the central problem) that the fact that the State is a false deliverer is (partly) why it’s a false god. God doesn’t just want us to worship Him because He is a jealous Lord who commands all the praise; He knows that the false gods of the world—the Pharaohs, the Caesars, presidents, police, politicians, economic regulators, public health officials, etc—do not save and that our salvation is with the Lord. And He gave us His word to warn us. 

But by getting men to sing its praises in song, word, and deed, the statists reverse this and make men abandon God for the false salvation promised by Pharaohs as a way of tricking men into their bondage (e.g., robbing them of trillions of dollars worth of property to fund an evil and murderous military caste system that only strengthens the empire against the people). 

The state rulers are the devil-on-the-shoulder who tells you, “Come over here, away from the Lord, and sing our song…We’ll protect you.” These systems develop these songs so that men will regard them as the deliverer. No wonder men widely think, “Without the United States Military, we’d all be speaking Arabic. You better thank a Veteran today for your freedom.” This is how deeply lost our people are in Egypt. 

We see why we’re taught to “be careful not to forget the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, that place of slavery” (Deuteronomy 6:12). Millions of professing Christians gave up on our ‘God of salvation’ and never saw the contradiction and evils in singing the “national anthem” of Egypt to Pharaoh, their false god. 

But as we have said above, God always wants to be remembered precisely as our Lord who delivers us from statist oppressors. 

“I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” (Exodus 20:2). 

When men go down to Egypt for their protection, which is reaffirmed in singing its song or verbally pledging allegiance, they have forgotten the Lord and asked for salvation at the feet of Pharaoh.

“…They are gone far from me, and have walked in vanity, and are become vain. Neither they said, ‘Where is the Lord that brought us up out of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, through a land of drought and of the shadow of death, through the land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt'” (Jeremiah 2:5-6).

It is God who provides for all our needs: shelter, protection, food, water, and safe land. But men always trust in men to do it for them, and that’s when their societies get turned upside down. They give up their godly inheritance to the plunderers who call themselves “governments.”

“I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination” (Jeremiah 2:7). 

Turning from evil

The Bible is all about turning from the ways of the world and getting back to God, repenting from the old ways of thinking and the old paths that one walked in, and following Christ the Lord. Any man that’s been transformed and made new by the Lord will “turn from their wicked ways” (2 Chronicles 7:14). And that means in all paths of life. He could not legitimately find himself singing national anthems anymore — or displaying state flags on his home, pledging allegiance to these systems, or (even worse) strapping on boots for them and killing children or preying on traffic for a paycheck. We are to “depart from evil” (Proverbs 3:7). 

As the psalmists say, we shouldn’t just be singing any old song but should “sing to the LORD a new song” (Psalm 96:1). The “old” songs of the man before he came to know God should be expelled from the Christian man — that is, the “national anthems” sung to the State should be excluded from coming out of his heart and vocal cords. 

To follow the Lord means to “repent” and “turn back” (Acts 3:19). We are not to keep chasing after the old evils and the bogus, fraudulent “law” systems of men. 

“Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets” (2 Kings 17:13). 

As the prophets cried, “turn back, turn back from your evil ways” (Ezekiel 33:11). 

God calls his people back home, away from Pharaohs. 

“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:7).

God is a merciful God. Better to quit singing “the anthem” and admit you were fooled than to keep singing and remain in your state of ignorance and contempt in the eyes of God. 

What angers God is not that men have pledged allegiance or sang songs to Pharaoh before; He knows that men are sinners who lust for these whorish schemes, false gods have come to deceive us, and that they coerced us and tricked us since day one in Pharaoh’s school system. What angers God is to see men continue worshiping their false gods, especially after another brother has shown him. The scriptures speak of the problem as being one of when men “go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth” (Hebrews 10:26). 

We should stop singing songs to Egypt once we realize that these are anthems to false gods that enslave, rather than save. These idolatrous things—state songs, state pledges of allegiance, state flags, soldier and police worship, etc—are all exactly what is required to get men’s hearts to buy into Egypt and are no insignificant part of the evils. We ought to sing to the Lord knowing that it is the one true God who can save us from such great tyrannies that men sinfully raise up around themselves. 

Praise the Lord, our Savior. “For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us” (Isaiah 33:22).