Nota bene: Sometimes one needs to just share what the Lord puts on one’s heart and share some of the fruit from the morning’s reading and let it drop where it may. This is one of those posts.
“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights, and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey, and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10:1,2)
Thoughts and notes from a devotion this morning: Moral laws exist, needing an absolute moral standard. If there is an absolute moral standard, there must be an Absolute Moral Lawgiver. If God is the Absolute Moral Lawgiver (an He is), then His laws do not change when it comes to the needy, the widow, the orphan, and might I add, the pre-born human being in the womb.
God’s moral laws do not change whether it was in the days that Isaiah proclaimed God’s message, or if it was in the First Century in the letters of Paul and James; or if it is in the here and the now in the Third Millennium. Needless to say, the Bible is totally centered on the intrinsic value of the human being and zeroes in on ministering to the “widows and orphans.”[1] There are many today who are also spiritual orphans that we need to reach.
What do we see today? Today we see evil statues and the push for more that have life and death ramifications. God is righteous and He requires those who have received His righteousness to be His ambassadors advocating for life, in our word, and in our actions. We are called to do this with gentleness and respect, and not that of the attitude of a Westboro Baptist radical.
The verdict is in and it has not changed: Unless our nation repents, the verdict still stands for those who “enact evil statutes,” that is pass bad laws that oppress the inalienable rights of the people.
The verdict still stands when those “who record (or make) unjust decisions so as to deprive the needy of justice and who rob [God’s] people of their rights.” How then shall we live in a culture guilty of the charge.
We need to understand that if one’s theology is faulty, that same person’s ethical standard, their moral actions, are faulty. It they are lawmakers with a “bad theological underpinning” then their ethics, morals, and politics are going to have the outcome of bad laws being legislated and sought for a new norm.
Here is the regress again. . .
Bad theology -> bad ethics -> bad morals -> bad politics -> bad laws.
Take away /How then shall we live? May we who have received His righteousness live with virtue, compassion, and act righteously so that if it should so happen that our accusers will be “put to shame for our good behavior” (1 Peter 3:16). Why? “For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil (1 Peter 3:17).
Note
[1] Do a Google search, and search out what the Bible has to say about God’s call to minister to the downtrodden and those who are beaten down by injustice of the government, be it religious, geopolitical, religio political or just plain political it does not matter.
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