[This is part 8 of a series on God and justice. See part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, nine, ten]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

God made men to live in liberty, and all we have to show Him is that we wound up living in captivity for our idolatry for the human rulers of this world. He gave us His green earth to take dominion over and dress and keep, and all we have to show Him in return is that we squandered it and handed it over to men who made our people and land into their property to be taxed and controlled. He gave us basic responsibilities to our families and neighbors, and we forsook these duties and allowed Pharaohs and princes to carry them out for us, which has brought us into the bondage of Egypt. He showed us the way to live freely and provided us with the freedom manual that is His word, and we chased after socialist schemes instead. “God made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions” (Ecclesiastes 7:29).

It is clear to any discerning man who knows the liberty that God intended us to live under that God is very disappointed in what we have to show Him today: that we have turned our inheritance into a political plunder society where men are enslaved, property is under the control of statists, and man-made “law” systems have been erected to pervert everything that is true about liberty and justice. What God sees of us today is the opposite of what satisfies Him. He sees that “justice is turned away, and righteousness stands at a distance. For truth has stumbled in the public square, and honesty cannot enter. Truth is missing, and whoever turns from evil becomes prey. The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice” (Isaiah 59:14-15). 

For failing to listen to God and seek His kingdom, and turning instead to the evils of man’s political systems, our people have made themselves into slaves. We have become human property to States for our sin of turning our backs on God, who in turn guarantees that all these evils will come down on us for our own wicked moral-approval of these systems.

“And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by the sword” (Ezekiel 39:23).

God has guided us in the way and provided us a savior, but we have given up our God-given inheritance to the plunderers who have made us into their tax-cattle. 

“Listen, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the LORD has spoken: ‘I have raised children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against Me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know; My people do not understand.’ Alas, O sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children of depravity! They have forsaken the LORD; they have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on Him. Why do you want more beatings? Why do you keep rebelling? Your head has a massive wound, and your whole heart is afflicted. From the sole of your foot to the top of your head, there is no soundness— only wounds and welts and festering sores neither cleansed nor bandaged nor soothed with oil. Your land is desolate; your cities are burned with fire. Foreigners devour your fields before you—a desolation demolished by strangers” (Isaiah 1:2-7). 

God’s warning

God warned us of the extortion and injustices that would happen if we trusted in men, rather than God, to rule over us. But our people have been hardheaded fools who refuse to listen and refuse to repent. 

“They will devour your harvest and food; they will consume your sons and daughters; they will eat up your flocks and herds; they will feed on your vines and fig trees. With the sword they will destroy the fortified cities in which you trust” (Jeremiah 5:17).

God knows full-well that if you trust in men to protect you, ie., if you believe that you need “county sheriffs” to provide “public safety” or “county courthouses” to administer your justice or “defense departments” for protection from foreign enemies, that these men will tax your property and evict you from your home if you don’t give them money, seize your family’s land or impound your vehicle if you don’t satisfy their demands for a cut of your income, or conscript you into their military or force you to fund it with your labor. These are the things that always happen when men set up state rulers above them in their idolatry and sin.

“Their wealth will be plundered and their houses laid waste. They will build houses but not inhabit them, and plant vineyards but never drink their wine” (Zephaniah 1:13). 

Again, men didn’t want to listen. They chose to continue in the same rebellious ways as always, believing that human rulers would save them or that the only issue was the current regime in power and not the political apparatus in general. They begged to have more beatings, more head wounds, and more slavery. Therefore, we have become “a possession” to other men (Ezek 36:3), a “spoil and mockery” (Ezek 36:4). In our refusal to be ruled by God, follow His ways, and uphold our responsibilities to our families and neighbors and be good stewards of God’s creation, we are handed over to our enemies who take us for a plunder.

“So here we are today as slaves in the land You gave our fathers to enjoy its fruit and goodness— here we are as slaves! Its abundant harvest goes to the kings You have set over us because of our sins. And they rule over our bodies and our livestock as they please. We are in great distress” (Nehemiah 9:36-37).

Repenting for the sin of statism 

Though many people still believe they are living in the “land of the free” today and that everything we have is owing to the trillion-dollar-a-year military they are forced to fund, God’s people know that we have sold out our liberty for a few scraps and have found a yoke around our necks for doing so. Whereas some are still celebrating what they believe to be “the greatest country in the history of the world,” as I’m sure the Babylonians also thought in their time, God’s children are seeing that our people have become slaves to one of the greatest plunder systems of all time that is accompanied by some of the most impressive propaganda of all time.

Whereas some are still trusting in the alleged greatness and seemingly genuine prosperity of the American empire, God’s people realize the great trouble we have gotten ourselves into. They are seeing that far from having something to be excited about, we should be weeping and repenting that our people have found themselves living as slaves to human government when God has given us so much more. Whereas the ungodly fools of the world cheer on the police state as having attained “law and order” for us, the demeanor of God’s children should be one of sorrow that men have chased after the bogus “law” systems of man and perverted everything that is true of law and justice and social order. We should we weeping that the systems of men, which most everyone worships and praises, have destroyed the natural order and freedom that God has intended us to live in. Rather than chant “back the blue” and believe that Pharaoh’s officers are upholding “law” in society, we should be see the tyrannies of these agents of Satan and say that “my eyes shed streams of tears because Your law is not obeyed” (Psalm 119:136). Rather than believe we’re living in the “free world” and should just shut our mouths and appreciate it, we should be sobbing that our brothers are living in captivity to strangers. “Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people” (Jeremiah 9:1). 

The injustices of the kingdoms of men

God hates to see the evils of statism that men have created in their rebellion against His ways. The injustices of our world, caused by the political systems that men have erected in their sin, are no small part of the problems with our world as God sees it. The injustices of statism, where men use violence against the innocent, have always been one of God’s central disappointments with man’s political rebellion against God their King. These things, which are still going on today in our modern police states, have been with us since creation. “The earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and full of violence. And God looked upon the earth and saw that it was corrupt; for all living creatures on the earth had corrupted their ways” (Genesis 6:11-12).

When God looks down and sees that men have set up evil systems of political plunder, assisted by hundreds of police agencies—from federal, state, county, city, and town level—to carry out the physical violence as ordered by the false lawmakers from above, He sees the same thing as in the early days of His creation. God sees the statism is great upon the earth and that the state worshiping and “back the blue” idiocy shows just how evil men’s hearts still are. The Egyptian police state society we have today, ie., the system of political rule that is carried out by the enforcers of the State’s legislative law, displays the same scenes that were always described by the prophets. 

“For your hands are stained with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters injustice. No one calls for justice; no one pleads his case honestly. They rely on empty pleas; they tell lies; they conceive mischief and give birth to iniquity” (Isaiah 59:3-4). 

Few people in our world today even care about the slavery we’re living under. Most people think this is freedom or this is how God intended His people to live, and we ought to just shut up and pledge allegiance to Pharaoh, who these reprobates tell us God gave us as His means of administering social order rather than as judgment against a people who were wicked enough to set them up and support them. Few people in our world today are considering repentance for the great evils of statism and calling upon God to restore us as the days of old — to free us from the hands of men. To the contrary, they are praying to the false gods themselves—the presidents and their allies—to deliver them, assuming they even see they are in trouble. 

God hates that men have gone the statist route and set up human rulers as their “lords” and “saviors,” which has meant the institutionalization, legalization, and regularization of violence and crime in society. The injustices that are central to a statist society, which men have erected in their sin, are central to the general rebellion against God’s natural order. God doesn’t merely hate that men are lost in general debaucheries, but is precisely concerned with such things as justice, which Jesus referred to as the “weightier matters” for a reason (Matt 23:23). Man’s rebellion from God cannot be detached from the perversion of justice that occurs in statist systems. Rather, such injustices that are always part of these systems are a very crucial part of God’s dismay when He looks down and sees what men have done with their God-given liberty. “Our inheritance is turned to the strangers, our houses to the aliens” (Lamentations 5:2).

We can hardly be surprised that things have come to this point today, as are many older generations who didn’t see the writing on the wall when they cheered for these systems decades ago. The perversion of justice under political systems is both sin and judgment for the sin. It is what men get when they seek to obtain law, justice, and protection through the kingdoms of men, rather than the Kingdom of God. 

God gave us freedom and the instruction to take dominion and seek the Kingdom of God, and all we have to show for it is Egyptian plunder systems that enslave men who are too foolish to break their bands and follow the Lord. God said He would deliver our enemies into our hands, and we foolishly put them in power believing they were the “protectors.”

If we ever hope to get out of Egypt, we must repent from these sins which have led to bondage and begin to seek another way: the way of the Lord, where men serve their families and their neighbors in voluntary systems of charity based in love and free will offerings. The socialism of the statist systems of this world, where rulers dangled benefits over the people that were paid for by coveting their neighbor’s property to see who would feed at the hand of the civil fathers to become merchandise under their authoritarian systems, has been a snare to men. 

Prayer

Lord, our God, I pray sincerely that You will open some people’s hearts and eyes and ears and let them hear Your word that You have given us so long ago, which they still reject to this day, and that You will exalt Your word before them and show them their evils, that we all might repent and turn away from the systems of men that have brought us into bondage for our sin of trusting in men. Show more men that You’re our King, O Lord, and teach them Your ways that we may begin to leave the captivity that has come upon us. Restore and heal our world and carry us out of bondage. Protect us against our enemies in the meantime and drive them away for us as we begin to do right and seek Your kingdom. Amen.