Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

There are nearly endless ways we can point out that the State is a false god that attempts to substitute itself for the Lord God. Everything that God promises to those who trust in Him instead of men, eg., freedom, protection, prosperity, health, the State attempts to provide in its place. This is the essence of why state militaries, police, welfare programs, national healthcare services, etc., are false gods and why anyone who trusts in them is essentially abandoning their trust in God: they are what men set up when they have left behind God for a faith in political power to serve them.

By monopolizing these goods and services, the State is able to be regarded by men as truly a god, as the indispensable provider of numerous, necessary things to social life. This is how we get the common reaction, “But how would we have X without the government?” Men cannot imagine life without their political gods. 

But the unceasing idolatry among statists always provides us with some new insight into just how much the State is a false god to anyone who buys into its lies. Remarks come forth that are so absurd that only an idolater could come up with them.

While someone has probably said something along these lines before, it’s always a little more significant when it comes from the mouth of one the false idols themselves or is used as a slogan by those in power who tell men how they ought to think.

Days before the idolaters’ big day, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, has just posted that “we will vote with joy.” Of course, the “response” comments are not any better: “Well we will joyfully vote for Donald Trump!” This post shows just how idolatrous all voters are, and that it doesn’t make a difference if you’re not a “Democrat.”

Biblical joy

What struck me though was just how often the word joy is used in regard to the Lord, perhaps especially in the Psalms, where it appears over 60 times in this version (Berean Standard Bible) and probably a few hundred times in the Bible as a whole if one is counting “joyous,” “rejoice,” “praise,” “glad,” and other related words.

Our joy is supposed to be in the Lord, who provides for us in all areas of life. We are joyful toward the Lord and praise Him because He watches over His people.

When men are joyful for men, however, they show where their true allegiance lies: with the false gods of the State. They “vote with joy” because they expect X or Y to provide for them or make things better than the other guy.

This is no innocent claim then to add the concept of joy to voting, especially when we consider that our lives are spiritual. For Biblical “joy” is much more than how we might understand it on a basic level of feelings of happiness; it is a profound sense of peace and contentment that men have for trusting in the Lord for all things and believing that He will provide them (or in the case of the joyful voter, trusting in their man-gods for all things and believing they will).

One definition given for joy is “the happy state that results from knowing and serving God.” The joy that men have in God is trusting in Him for everything — protection from armies no less than sustenance. We are comfortable, or joyous, knowing that things are in His hands.

Likewise, the joy that men have when they vote for men shows their faith in, and allegiance to, the systems of men. They “vote with joy” that they are about to be rescued from trouble. Their outlook, as we see everywhere, is that “if X doesn’t win we’re screwed!”

It is thus no mystery why voters display such an utter lack of contentment (though claiming they vote joyously) where the future of the world hangs on getting X in office: they do not bear the joy of the Lord, which does not leave a man troubled and worried. They bear the “joy” of the world, which drives everyone into the fear of men, which causes them to vote.

Joy in the Psalms

Allow me to try and show how something so simple and easy to gloss over as where one places their joy is a rather significant way of showing where your faith and trust lies. Is it (1) in the Lord, as the joyful Biblical writers make it? Or is it (2) in men, as the “joyful voters” make it? Is (1) the Lord your king? Or (2) are you a blasphemous voter?

In the first instance, the psalmist says,

“Shine the light of Your face upon us, O LORD. You have filled my heart with more joy than when grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for You alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:6-8). 

Men who know the joy of the Lord are not sitting on the edges of their seat or anxiously watching the news as the votes are tallied-up on Election Day (or rather, as they put on a show for the slaves). They may shake their head in disbelief that such schemes work on people, weep that they do, or maybe even laugh about it. But we are not anxious or depressed; our joy is in the Lord and we expect nothing from the systems of men.

But the voter, who seeks his joy in men, has different expectations and beliefs as to what the kingdoms of men will bring them. They are essentially saying, after making their vow to a given candidate, that they believe they can lie down and sleep in peace now, because “their” guy will make them dwell in safety, eg., avert the disaster that the other candidate is said to surely bring. Their joy is truly in men; a feeling of safety arrives with casting a ballot. 

Our joy, whether in the Lord or men, shows who it is that we depend on for protection, security, and salvation. 

“Let all who take refuge in You rejoice; let them ever shout for joy. May You shelter them, that those who love Your name may rejoice in You. For surely You, O LORD, bless the righteous; You surround them with the shield of Your favor” (Psalm 5:11-12). 

Voters “joyfully vote” for X, Y, or Z, because they are asking for shelter from their enemies in a man. They are, against the warnings from God, seeking security in the political system. As one prophet puts it,

“For without consulting me, you have gone down to Egypt for help. You have put your trust in Pharaoh’s protection. You have tried to hide in his shade” (Isaiah 30:2). 

Men “joyfully vote” because they expect to find protection in Egypt’s shade, under Pharaoh’s wing. Rather than the Lord answering them in their day of trouble (Psa 20:1), they believe that “their” guy will deliver them from their political enemies.

But our joy is in the Lord because we believe in Him, and not men, to secure us.

“For in the day of trouble He will hide me in His shelter; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent; He will set me high upon a rock. Then my head will be held high above my enemies around me. At His tabernacle I will offer sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make music to the LORD” (Psalm 27:5-6). 

The shouts of joy that will inevitably come on Election Day will be ungodly ones, to be sure. The sighs of relief we will hear will signify that men believe they have found salvation in men, or at least that they must try again next time. The joyous voter believes that men are going to save them and their society. 

The joy for the Lord is different. We have joy for the Lord because our fear is in the Lord, ie., we trust fully in the Lord to save us from our enemies. God’s people rejoice knowing that the Lord delivers us from our enemies.

When men vote, they show themselves to be man-fearers who have not yet been purged of all their worldly fears by the Lord. Those who fear the Lord do not have the worry that they need to get “their” guy into office on Election Day.

“I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul boasts in the LORD; let the oppressed hear and rejoice. Magnify the LORD with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man called out, and the LORD heard him; He saved him from all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and he delivers them” (Psalm 34:1-7)

Other reasons for joy

Another reason for Biblical joy is knowing that the ways of the Lord are right (Psa 19:8). When men “joyfully vote,” they are arguably expressing that they believe the ways of the man or woman they are voting for are right. Their “joy” is that the plan of candidate X is going to “fix” the system that they acknowledge on the other hand isn’t working for them. 

Whereas God is the “greatest joy” for His people (Psa 43:4), joyful voters show that men are their greatest joy. They are sitting on the edges of their seats, with great anticipation, waiting for the next man to come and rescue them from the other bad guys. Again, “If we don’t get X in there we’re doomed.”

True joy—resting content in the Lord—is knowing that our salvation is in the Lord (Psa 51:12). The “joyful voter” expresses that they believe their salvation is in men — that presidents, politicians, police and soldiers, are going to “save” them from their enemies. 

Where is your faith?

As we see, joy and faith are bound up with one another, which strongly ties voting into one’s faith. The psalmists can tell the Lord, “You are my help; I will sing for joy in the shadow of Your wings. My soul clings to You; Your right hand upholds me” (63:7-8). The voter, however, tells men, with his vow at the ballot box, that politicians are his help, that he is rejoicing under the wings of men, that he believes that government agents uphold him. 

We praise the Lord, and make a joyful shout, because He, and not men, saves us from our enemies. 

“Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of His name; make His praise glorious. Say to God, ‘How awesome are Your deeds! So great is Your power that Your enemies cower before You. All the earth bows down to You; they sing praise to You; they sing praise to Your name.’ Come and see the works of God; how awesome are His deeds toward mankind. He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the waters on foot; there we rejoiced in Him. He rules forever by His power; His eyes watch the nations. Do not let the rebellious exalt themselves” (Psalm 66:1-7). 

The joyful noise that we get among voters (Trump 2024! Make America Great Again!) shows that they don’t believe that God is in control, but that they need a man-god to come “save” them. For God will part seas (Psa 66:6) and drown Pharaohs and their armies for those who trust in Him! But men refuse to repent and turn back to the Lord. They say, “give us a king to lead us and go out before us and fight our battles for us” (Samuel 8:20). They say they need X candidate to fight against Y, and anyone who doesn’t vote for X supports Y, who is presumed to be the objectively bad one. They commit the very sins that led us to here in the first place. They adopt all sorts of different fallacies to justify their involvement in the kingdoms of men. They keeping sowing seeds of the kingdoms of the world rather than the kingdom of God.

Who are we to praise?

Men must choose where their allegiance, faith, trust, fear, joy, and praise lies. That men have come to believe, against Jesus Christ, that they can have two masters, has allowed them to think that voting for men or trusting and praising such systems doesn’t really conflict with their devotion to the Lord, when it does. 

When men vote for other men to rule over them, they are no longer praising God but are giving their praises to men. Voters, who are making vows to the kingdoms of men and joyfully voting for them, cannot say with the psalmists, “Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is King of all the earth; sing profound praises to Him” (Psalm 47:6-7). They are expressing that they have another king: Pharaoh.

Whereas we shout in joy before the Lord because He is the King (Psa 98:6), joyful voters are shouting before the Lord that their politician-god is their king. Whereas our “joyful noise” is the acknowledgment of the Lord as our God (Psa 100), their joyful vote is an expression that men are their gods. Whereas we sing praises to the Most High God and rejoice in Him (Psa 9:2), statists are singing the praises of men — “he’s going to fix this country!”

Voters are not holding God up as their protector, but are vowing that men are going to save them. They cannot say with the psalmist, 

“The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped. Therefore my heart rejoices, and I give thanks to Him with my song” (Psalm 28:7). 

They say otherwise, that men are coming to save them. This is the position of both of the major voting camps, Republican and Democrat. They both believe “their” candidate is going to save them from the other guy. They are rejoicing in men rather than taking refuge in the Lord (Psa 64:10). They are glorying in a name other than the Lord (Psa 105:3).

Voters are not crying out as the psalmists did, “O LORD, save us, we pray. We beseech You, O LORD, cause us to prosper!” (Psalm 118:25). They are doing precisely the opposite. They are pledging to the false, civil fathers of the world to save them and cause them to prosper. 

Turning our joy back to the Lord

If we were singing for joy for God, we would have no reason to “joyfully vote” for men to save us; we would already be protected from them. And yet most men tell us that trusting in God is insufficient, even though failing to do so has gotten us where we are. They tell us we must keep singing the praises of men as a way to fight the evils, despite this being the cause of them and despite them being proof that God is judging us.

It doesn’t make sense that we ought to be “joyfully voting” for men to save us from our enemies. The psalmists’ joy was precisely that God does this. 

“When I sing praise to You my lips will shout for joy, along with my soul, which You have redeemed. My tongue will indeed proclaim Your righteousness all day long, for those who seek my harm are disgraced and confounded” (Psalm 71:23-24). 

We sing for joy to God because He is our strength (Psa 81:1), which voters sing to men when they excitedly cast a ballot for them. But when men lack faith in the Lord and deny His lordship over them, they come to believe that human rulers are necessary. The State-worship around the world, featured prominently in the United States with all its love of military, police, and the veterans of these systems, is all the evidence one needs that men have turned from God. For a godly people do not set up “defense departments” to protect them, but trust in the Lord here too. 

We joyfully praise the Lord because He is our Rock and our King, who saves us from our enemies.

“Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout to the Rock of our salvation! Let us enter His presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to Him in song. For the LORD is a great God, a great King above all gods. In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the LORD our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the sheep under His care” (Psalm 95:1-7). 

Trusting in God alone

When men joyfully vote for man-gods to rule over them, they confess that men are the great god-kings who save them. Voters are just like the rebels who God removed from Egypt in the exodus who turned away from Him despite seeing His works upon their captors, ie., despite seeing God crush their enemies that they say must be dealt with through voting. As God would probably say of them too, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known My ways” (Psalm 95:10). 

Voters show that they do not know the ways of the Lord, which are not advanced through political machinery. They show that they don’t know how much the kingdom of God differs from the kingdoms of this world. They show that they only know the lies and snares of the kingdoms of men, which trick them into abandoning the Lord’s precepts and principles and into adopting “pragmatic” approaches to the kingdom of God. When men vote they demonstrate a lack of fear of the Lord. They say, effectively, that God cannot be trusted to provide for us. 

The godly man, however, should have no trouble believing that he would be provided for if he had faith in the Lord alone. He should have no trouble believing that trusting in God is sufficient for his every need. He should have no trouble, in other words, with being an anarchist who sees no earthly need for a State to protect him from bad guys. He should see no need to stand behind the kingdoms of men as his means of defense and aid, which only demonstrates a lack of faith in the Lord to be with those who abide in Him. The godly man should have no trouble believing that if he forsook the world entirely, and all the institutions within it that are said by the heathen-statist masses to be essential to civilization, society, prosperity, peace, and liberty, that he would find it in God. He should have no trouble seeing, if his eyes and ears were open, that the kingdoms of men are not providing it whatever and are barely hanging on to these claims today.

But as a major excuse for voting says, “the system is going to be here no matter what” and we “may as well” participate in it. This is not only compromising on God, but it simply isn’t true. The system is here because we haven’t walked away from it. It is the staying behind in Egypt, which voters tell us we must do, that keeps it going. If they stopped doing this and refused to partake in the evils, it wouldn’t “be here anyway.” The assumption that statism is inevitable and permanent—an old trick to keep everyone buying into it—keeps men trapped in the system and keeps the system itself going. It assumes moreover that repentance won’t actually change the world, but that we must keep going on as always.

But what about the evils?

We thus have this rationale among many joyful voters, who indeed joyfully sing the praises of the Salvation State, is that the prevalence of evil, which was originally brought about by the same actions they refuse to repent from, necessitate that we become involved in political action. 

But the evil state of the world, where God’s children and His earthly inheritance are plundered by political rulers, is no cause to transfer one’s “joy” to men, as voters do when they shift their hope to men to save them from other men. The Biblical writers maintained their faith and joy in God no matter what the circumstances; the existence of “democrats” was not a case for abandoning the Lord and seeking human rulers that one could rejoice in. Being under judgment, as we are today, is no cause for engaging in evils to try and mitigate other evils. As one prophet said,

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).

It is nonsensical that we would need to abandon God and trust in men because evil prevails, not only because doing so is already the thing that led us here, but because we were always to trust in God to take care of evil men for us. The psalmists sing for joy because God destroys our enemies for us. 

“For You, O LORD, have made me glad by Your deeds; I sing for joy at the works of Your hands. How great are Your works, O LORD, how deep are Your thoughts! A senseless man does not know, and a fool does not understand, that though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed. But You, O LORD, are exalted forever! For surely Your enemies, O LORD, surely Your enemies will perish; all evildoers will be scattered” (Psalm 92:4-9). 

The existence of evil provides us no justification for deviating from God’s instruction and trusting in man-gods to save us and to “Make America Great Again.” God’s people are not reformers of evil, but abolitionists of it. No matter how evil such a system has become, which is the very result of such reformist-minded efforts and statist compromises, we are not given a pass to stray from God and make a joyful vow to men.

“The wicked have set a snare for me, but I have not strayed from Your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes, even to the very end” (Psalm 119:110-112).

Conclusion

When men rejoice about men getting into office, they show where their heart truly is, and it is not with the Lord. When men celebrate the arrival of a new ruler on Election Day, they show that their heart—their joy—is far from the Lord. 

While the lost sheep of the world are “joyfully voting” right now in the belief that salvation rests within the State, the godly man can maintain his faith and joy in the Lord. We have no need for rulers or militaries to save us. 

“Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God” (Psalm 20:7).