[This is part 25 in an article series on Sin, Repentance, Salvation, and Revival. See part one. two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four, twenty six, twenty seven, twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty, thirty one, thirty two, thirty three, thirty four, thirty five]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

In our continued study of various words used to express the general idea of men living contrary to God’s ways or commands, we come upon the Hebrew word עָזַב (Strong’s H5800), which gets transliterated as `azab (pronounced ah-ZAHV). This is the word that often gets translated into “forsake” and “abandon.” With over 200 occurrences, a couple which appear in critical points of mankind’s statist rebellion against God, it is a significant word that should be covered in any attempt to make the case for statism—both the belief in human rulers and the practice of setting them up and supporting them—as one of the primary acts of sin and rebellion against God and His anarchist Kingdom order. It is defined as “to leave, forsake, abandon, let go, permit.” 

Men leave behind God when they raise up human rulers into political office to be their gods instead. Men forsake God’s rule when they make men their rulers. Men abandon God’s Kingdom order and turn away from His instruction when they go under the governments of men and seek to organize their society via the political means of centralized violence. Men depart from the true faith in the Lord God as their King and Savior when they raise up and support human civil governments to be their kings and saviors instead. The primary apostasy of mankind has always been a political one, where instead of living as a free people in an anarchist society where the Lord alone was King, men sought to be ruled by false gods under the systems of human government that brought everyone into bondage for this sin. 

The statist abandonment of God 

Though a word that gets translated into “forsake,” “leave,” and “abandon” is probably used in a wider and varying context than other words like sin, wickedness, evil, rebellion, or iniquity which are often more specific to certain political acts of men, it is still not difficult to find that the statist acts of men—that is, man’s prostitution with the kingdoms of the world for his protection and bread—are among these descriptions. Probably the best, most undeniable example of statists are the very type of men who forsake God is Israel’s request for a human king to rule over them, which Samuel said was evil and God said was a rejection of His rule, where men were forsaking God to serve other gods. 

“But when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us,’ their demand was evil in the sight of Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected Me as their king. Just as they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking Me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you’” (1 Samuel 8:6-8). 

It is through raising up human rulers into the worldly political offices of authoritarian governments that men clearly reject and abandon God to be ruled by other gods instead. Men forsake the Lord and His protection when they do not trust in God to provide for them in the divine anarchist society, which naturally leads them to seek it from human kings, presidents, legislators, and law officers instead. 

The Biblical context in which we may say that a people “have abandoned [azab] the Lord” (Hosea 4:10) is clearly a statist one, where men have prostituted themselves out to human rulers for their protection and bread and forgotten the Lord as their provider. As God charges against the people, 

“Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a case against the people of the land: ‘There is no truth, no loving devotion, and no knowledge of God in the land! Cursing and lying, murder and stealing, and adultery are rampant; one act of bloodshed follows another’” (Hosea 4:1-2). 

A land that is devoid of truth is one that is populated by a statist people who tell us that their systems of political slavery are “necessary” for society, but that God’s anarchist society is “chaos” and “disorder,” when precisely the reverse is the truth: law and justice can only ever be found in an anarchist society under God’s sole kingship, and man’s law-systems can only ever pervert justice and cause disorder. Every statist society is one where the knowledge of God is lacking. For if men knew the Lord as their God, they would never chase after men as their gods and seek salvation through human government; they would know this can be found only in the Lord. All States, therefore, are erected by sinners who do not know what God would do for them if only they would walk in His ways. They are raised up and furthered by men who have no fear of the Lord and who have only lying, stealing, and murder in their hearts. All of the promotion, defense, and apologia for human civil government is made by adulterers who are cheating on God with the State, both in their hearts, minds, and deeds. All systems of human government are advanced by men who have no faith in the Lord and have forgotten the works He did in Egypt against Pharaoh and His army. This is why they trust in Egypts instead to save them: they never knew the Lord who breaks the arms of Egyptians and drowns their officers in seas and sends their chariots sinking to the seafloor.

Statism born in a lack of faith in God

To walk in the ways of the Lord requires that men have faith to walk with an unseen God in a free society without human rulers, who are always raised up and supported precisely by men who do not trust in God to provide for them. Statism is born out of a lack of faith in God, which leads men to forsake the natural, divine anarchist order for the statist systems of men, which they sinfully believe to be necessary to save them from all the dangers statists begin to list as soon as they hear that you don’t believe in human government or have an adulterous heart like them. “So you would have just let the Nazis conquer America in the 1940s? What about the education of our children? Who would provide the roads?” This is the sin in men talking, failing to believe that God would provide for them if only they would seek His Kingdom. The ideas and fears behind the statist ideology, which posits all sorts of enemies and evils that would arise without human rulers to quell, come from the rebellious hearts of ungodly men who do not have faith that God would not forsake His people in wilderness if only they were willing to walk out of Egypt (Nehemiah 9:19), which then leads them to forsake their walk with the Lord and forfeit all the things He would add unto us if only we would stop acting like Babylonian whores.

God-forsaking statism

To forsake God was never just to shun His existence in some vague sense of being an unbeliever, but was always to turn away from God precisely by turning to the political systems of the world. It is never as if men abandon God and then live like righteous anarchists. The abandonment of God is always characterized by a pursuit of the statist practices of the world. It was no coincidence that the great expansion of statism in the twentieth century, which saw worldwide socialist experiments that were unprecedented in size and scope, was also characterized by men turning away from the Lord and toward “secular” notions of philosophy, politics, science, and law. Statism is what men do when they abandon God. It was always upon a statist scene that God saw a people to be living in rebellion to Him. All those men of the world who believe in human government and who support them ideologically or physically are men who are in an active revolt against God and His anarchist Kingdom.

It is always through the statist practices of men—whether believing in human rulers, voting them into office, or joining them as jackbooted order-takers—that God saw a society of men who had forsaken Him and His rule. In another case of God saying that men had abandoned Him, we see in the same verse that one of the charges against such people was that “they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent” (Jeremiah 19:4). When scripture speaks of men who do violence, shed blood, and commit evils, it was never just the people among the population themselves, as if mere private criminals were always stoking God’s anger. Such references refer to the type of violence, murder, injustice, and corruption that is institutionalized in a State. God’s gripe with men was never just that they were immoral men or criminals, but that they had legalized their crimes in systems of human government that carried it out on a grand and colossal scale that no private criminals could match, and that their immorality and wickedness had manifested in raising up a gang of thieves who call themselves a “government.” God was never just speaking of some private bandit gangs when He looked down and saw men living in revolt against His Law and Kingdom, but people who controlled man-made systems of law and would “enact unjust statutes and issue oppressive decrees” (Isaiah 10:1). As much as the idolaters in the population are also guilty for supporting such systems, it was never just individual criminals who God saw as rebels against Him and His Kingdom, but always the type of rebellion that took place on a political level in society. It was state rulers, not just private bad guys, who were the men who “turn justice into wormwood and cast righteousness to the ground” (Amos 5:7). It was the princes who were called “roaring lions” and judges who were called “evening wolves” (Zephaniah 3:3-4). 

God-forsaken statist societies 

Just as men forsake God by turning toward systems of human government, so God will forsake these wicked statists and leave them to be destroyed at the hands of the very men who they sinfully believed were needed to “protect and serve” them. This theme, where men abandon God and God abandons men, runs throughout all of Scripture. Though the feel-good, nursery-rhyme Christianity of today that doesn’t preach obedience to God’s Law will emphasize verses like God promising that He will “never leave you nor forsake you” (Joshua 1:5) or “the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9), these were always made in the context of a people who remained with God and kept His Law in their minds, lips, and actions (Joshua 1:7-8). Statists do not do this. They abandon God’s Law which commands them to have no other gods before Him and turn away from the instruction of the Lord. In response, God turns from them and allows them to destroy themselves in their own adultery with man-made systems of law and human law enforcers. 

Though Christians today do not like the idea of God abandoning a people who turn from Him, which men accomplish namely by making human kings their protectors instead of the Lord their King, scripture shows that God will have it either way: men can make the Lord their God, in which case He will save them from all their troubles, or they can make men their gods, in which case He will allow them to come under the curse of bondage that these systems of human government will mean for them. 

“The LORD is with you when you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you” (2 Chronicles 15:2). 

Statists are men who forsake God and who God has forsaken. They are idolaters for human governments who turned away from the Lord, who in turn has abandoned them and left them to be destroyed for their own wicked works. A God-forsaking people will always be God-forsaken, too. Thus the prophets speak of whole cities being left desolate. 

“This is the burden against Damascus: ‘Behold, Damascus is no longer a city; it has become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they will be left to the flocks, which will lie down with no one to fear’” (Isaiah 17:1-2). 

Though men today do not like the idea of God forsaking them upon their abandonment of Him and His Kingdom and like to believe they can continue living like Romans and Egyptians and still have God on their side, scripture does not shy away from the idea of God leaving behind those who leave Him behind through their pursuit of worldly human saviors. Though millions of statist idolaters today like to imagine that they have the Lord on their side merely because they professed His name in vain, God is only willing to walk with those who are willing to walk with Him, and statists show that they are walking in the ways of the world and do not care one bit for God’s salvation. Therefore, God will lead them down another path. 

“I will lead the blind by a way they did not know; I will guide them on unfamiliar paths. I will turn darkness into light before them and rough places into level ground. These things I will do for them, and I will not forsake them. But those who trust in idols and say to molten images, ‘You are our gods!’ will be turned back in utter shame” (Isaiah 42:16-17). 

God will have either way: Men can make the Lord their God, which necessarily means they must turn away from the political systems of the world; or they can abandon God by turning towards these human rulers, in which case God will abandon them. As Joshua told the people before him, who needed to decide where they stand, 

“He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your rebellion or your sins. If you forsake the LORD and serve foreign gods, He will turn and bring disaster on you and consume you, even after He has been good to you” (Joshua 24:19-20). 

The chief way that men forsake the Lord is by seeking false gods to rule over them from the offices of human governments. The chief sin that men need to repent from, therefore, is to turn away from this statist idolatry and back to the Lord as their only King. The statists of the world need to get rid of their foreign gods among them and incline their hearts to the Lord (Joshua 24:23). For the principal way that men forsake God is to forget that He is a God that saves men from the Egyptian-statist systems of the world, which then leads them to trust in the pagan-statist kingdoms of the world for their salvation. As scripture recounts such a rebellion, 

“Thus they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed after various gods of the peoples around them. They bowed down to them and provoked the LORD to anger, for they forsook Him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.  Then the anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of those who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Wherever Israel marched out, the hand of the LORD was against them to bring calamity, just as He had sworn to them. So they were greatly distressed” (Judges 2:12-15). 

As punishment for the sin of statism, where men forsake God for the false protection of false gods, the Lord leads men into political captivity to reap all the very evils they have sown. That we see plunderous and violent men as the form of judgment coming against people in the scriptures only serves to reinforce the case that it was political works such as these which were the very evil deeds being judged — that the people were acting like Egyptian-statists themselves and were, therefore, getting a taste of their own medicine at the hands of Babylonians, Assyrians, or some other evil regime that God has used as His war hammer.

If men want to abandon God by going after the kingdoms of the world, then God will abandon them into the hands of other statists of the world, who will serve to judge them for their wicked political ways. This is always the back and forth theme of scripture: God offers to save men from the Egypts, Romes, and United States’ of the world and give them everything they would ever need if only they would walk in His ways, but they choose to prostitute themselves out to these systems of men for their alleged security and welfare in defiance of God’s Law, which then leads to divine justice coming against them. They could have had liberty under God, but they chose slavery under men. God will give men everything they would ever need if only they would seek the anarchistic Kingdom of God and trust that all other things would be added unto them, but they rejected the offer to become statist whores instead, who wind up in Egyptian bondage for having forsook the Lord as their King.

“But they were disobedient and rebelled against You; they flung Your law behind their backs. They killed Your prophets, who had admonished them to return to You. They committed terrible blasphemies. So You delivered them into the hands of enemies who oppressed them, and in their time of distress they cried out to You. From heaven You heard them, and in Your great compassion You gave them deliverers who saved them from the hands of their enemies. But as soon as they had rest, they again did evil in Your sight. So You abandoned them to the hands of their enemies, who had dominion over them. When they cried out to You again, You heard from heaven, and You delivered them many times in Your compassion” (Nehemiah 9:26-28). 

This constant theme that plays out in scripture is particularly prominent in Nehemiah 9, which goes between these concepts from one verse to the next. Indeed, this is the cyclical course of all of mankind’s history, which they still fail to learn from: God warns men of the consequences of disobedience, they reject His warning and become Egyptians anyway, find themselves under judgment for their sins in the form of having to live under human rulers, cry out to Him in repentance once things get bad enough, get divinely delivered from their bondage, only to forget His ways and fall back into the same sins and slavery once again. God tries to rebuke men by sending Babylonians to drag them off into exile or oppress them otherwise, they somewhat learn their lesson and feign belief and faith in God again, only to revert back to statist idolatry. 

“You admonished them to turn back to Your law, but they were arrogant and disobeyed Your commandments. They sinned against Your ordinances, by which a man will live if he practices them. They turned a stubborn shoulder; they stiffened their necks and would not obey. You were patient with them for many years, and Your Spirit admonished them through Your prophets. Yet they would not listen, so You gave them into the hands of the neighboring peoples. But in Your great compassion, You did not put an end to them; nor did You forsake them, for You are a gracious and compassionate God” (Nehemiah 9:29-31). 

God has shown us the path of life and liberty that is found by walking in the ways of His anarchistic Kingdom and obeying His Law and statutes, but men have always rebelled against His voice, rejected His offer of salvation under His sole and exclusive kingship, and refused to repent for their statist idolatry and turn from the wicked path. 

“On that day I swore to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands. And I said to them: ‘Each of you must throw away the abominations before his eyes, and you must not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’  But they rebelled against Me and refused to listen. None of them cast away the abominations before their eyes, and they did not forsake the idols of Egypt. So I resolved to pour out My wrath upon them and vent My anger against them in the land of Egypt” (Ezekiel 20:6-8). 

Those men who raise up and support systems of human civil government for their protection, law, justice, and welfare, are sinners who have abandoned the Lord to seek salvation in men. All statists are the type of people who God says “have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge” (Isaiah 17:10). For this political rebellion of men, God turns His eyes and ears away from people and abandons them to be destroyed in their own lusts and adultery with human kingdoms, so that they might learn how to repent and turn back to the Lord. 

Forsaking the statist ideology in repentance

Another sense that we see the word “forsake” used is for men to abandon and repent of their own wicked ways, namely the evil thoughts and deeds associated with believing in human government, voting human rulers into office, taking employment in their agencies, or having any affiliation with these systems as a recipient of their benefits. Though the false Christians of today do not like the idea that they must first repent of their idolatry for human government for God to turn back to them, and again think they should be able to go on living like Romans and still find favor with the Lord, scripture generally has it that God is waiting on men to come back to Him before acting. 

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

What men need to do today to repent is to stop believing they may have a “dual allegiance” between God and Caesar, that they may share their faith, trust, and works between the Lord’s Kingdom and the statist kingdoms of the world. These two kings and kingdom models are enemies of one another. There can be no fence-walking when it comes to Godarchism and human archism. Though the statist rebels of the world see “God and country” as compatible ideas, men of God know that there can be no harmony between serving the kingdoms of the world and seeking the Kingdom of God. They know that these are mutually exclusive decisions that men must make right away. 

“Now, therefore, fear the LORD and serve Him in sincerity and truth; cast aside the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. But if it is unpleasing in your sight to serve the LORD, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!” (Joshua 24:14-15) 

In a return of the word ‘azab, we see that the very way that men abandon the Lord is by trusting in human rulers to save them, rather than to see that God is a savior in the same sense that men mistakenly treat human rulers: as a God who keeps away our enemies and smashes Egyptians for those who repent and follow His ways. It is either the salvation of God, or the alleged salvation of the State, that men must choose between, and which men did choose between in this specific instance: 

“Far be it from us to forsake the LORD to serve other gods! For the LORD our God brought us and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and performed these great signs before our eyes. He also protected us throughout our journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. 18And the LORD drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites who lived in the land. We too will serve the LORD, because He is our God!” (Joshua 24:16-18). 

The cost of forsaking God 

The price men pay for abandoning the Lord, which they do every time they set up or support systems of human government, is to come under judgment for their sins. 

“The LORD will send curses upon you, confusion and reproof in all to which you put your hand, until you are destroyed and quickly perish because of the wickedness you have committed in forsaking Him” (Deuteronomy 28:20). 

For all the evils and idolatry practiced among people who seek salvation from human rulers and their authoritarian governments, which men do every time they argue that soldiers are needed for peace and freedom or police are needed for law and order, God plans divine justice. 

“I will pronounce My judgments against them for all their wickedness, because they have forsaken Me, and they have burned incense to other gods and worshiped the works of their own hands” (Jeremiah 1:16). 

If men want to rebel against God by seeking protection and bread from the false gods of the pagan kingdoms of the world, then God will hand them over to be plundered by statists, made into slaves, or even carried off into exile.

“Just as you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so will you serve foreigners in a land that is not your own” (Jeremiah 5:19). 

Though statists tell us they’re “saved” in their diluted and heavenly-minded conception of salvation, and believe that God should save them all while their whole political philosophy is precisely one that seeks salvation through human rulers, Scripture has it that God sees no need to save idolaters who are actively seeking it from the kings and kingdoms of the world. Of course, He is always willing to save people (i.e., deliver them from the bondage of Egypt they have found themselves living under) should they repent for their sins. “But you have forsaken Me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you” (Judges 10:13). 

Statists are men who believe that presidents, soldiers, and police officers are the source of their alleged peace, freedom, justice, or law and order, which tells God that they are rebels who are decidedly not seeking His salvation. For the main way that men forsake the Lord as their God is by making men into their gods and saviors—that is, by raising up systems of human government to “protect and serve” them and “fight for our freedom” when God himself wants to do all these things which sinners outsource to men. 

We see how far gone men are today from the truth of the Lord in that what God means for their judgment and correction, men regard as the source of their law, order, and freedom. Though God sends the State against men as a curse for their sin, these reprobate idolaters regard it as a blessing for their obedience—as God’s great gift to mankind to keep them safe from criminals. What we need today is not only for men to recognize that statism is sin, which they currently believe to be the political system that provides the very basis of their society and civilization as a whole, but to see that it is but the consequences of their own sin. As God asks rhetorically, “Have you not brought this on yourself by forsaking the LORD your God when He led you in the way?” (Jeremiah 2:17). As much as we may say that God, as the Sovereign of the universe, sees to it that the evils of statism become a terror to the wicked works that set it human governments, we may also say that men have only brought it on themselves. God never wanted men to be dominated by other men; they sought this arrangement in their rebellion against His rule; He only guaranteed it would be an evil to them.

Statists have forgotten their Maker 

Similar to the word forsaken in English, we also have the word “forgotten” in the Bible. The Hebrew word behind it is שָׁכַח (Strong’s H7911), which gets transliterated as shackach (pronounced shah-KAHKH). This word has around 100 occurrences in the Old Testament.

As with forsaken, we see that the main people who God says have forgotten Him (Ezekiel 22:12) are the statists of the world. Such a word is used precisely in the context of “shedding blood” and “making idols” (Ezekiel 22:3), princes who have used their power to shed blood (Ezekiel 22:6), princes who “devour the people” and “multiply the widows” (Ezekiel 22:25), “extorting your neighbors” (Ezekiel 22:12), and men who earn “unjust gains” (Ezekiel 22:13). These are charges against a statist people (both the rulers and their supporters), not just some generic “rebels” or sinners who forgot about God in some innocent sense that didn’t involve any specific political revolt of theirs. The charges were this: “The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy and have exploited the foreign resident without justice” (Ezekiel 22:29). The primary wicked works of men who have forgotten God is that they make other men into their gods and trust in their violence systems of human government for their salvation.  

Another instance of God telling people that they have “have forgotten Me and have cast Me behind [their] back” (Ezekiel 23:35) comes in the context of one of the main prooftexts for the people’s statism as whoredom, prostitution, and adultery with God. Using two harlot women to symbolize the type of idolatry we see among men who praise presidents, military, and police as their saviors and chant slogans like “support our troops” and “back the blue,” we read that “she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all desirable young men, horsemen mounted on steeds” (Ezekiel 23:5-6). The prophet Hosea expresses the idea of forgetting God in the same context of statist adultery (Hosea 2:13). The men who forget God are the statist whores of the world who think that the provisions of life—their bread and protection—come from the kingdoms of the world (Hosea 2:5), rather than the Lord their God (Hosea 2:8). Finally, the sense in which God says that “Israel has forgotten his Maker” (Hosea 8:14) is also an unmistakably statist one. The charges against the people were that they had been pursuing human rulers and governors against God’s will. “They set up kings, but not by Me. They make princes, but without My approval” (Hosea 8:4). The Lord has always wanted to be the sole King of a people in an anarchist society, but they have always forsaken the Lord to be ruled by men in a statist society instead, as the characteristic mark of mankind’s revolt against God. 

Will you turn from your God-forsaking ideology and works of statism today and seek the Kingdom of God? Will you stop abandoning God by seeking presidents and lawmakers as your gods? Will you stop forgetting the Lord and raising up men as your princes and kings? Or will you continue to be an idolatrous man whose God-forsaken society will continue to be abandoned by the Lord to be destroyed for all its wicked works?