Shawn Snobelen - Be Not Ashamed - Class 4 - Is There Justice

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:01

   Hey I got the news watch on Lake Bible School 2024. This is our 4th class from our brother Sean Snowblind on the theme Be not ashamed and this class is titled Is there justice? Brother Sean, please.

2. 0:21

   Thank you, brother Jason. Snowblinds are blessed with incredibly small bladders. And is there justice? There is not. It was a furnace in the teen classroom and so I asked the lovely presider whether I could not wear my jacket and so bear with me on that. I’m also in trouble with this talk because as I found with the teens, I have 197,000% too much information.

3. 0:57

   And so Marty always says don’t race through stuff, just skip stuff. And I and it’s, it’s, it’s not because, oh, I have all this information. It’s because this topic is so huge. And it’s not the intent of this topic to deal with every element of the social justice movement. It’s not possible in 55 minutes, but it is to look at some of the undertones of the movement and how they can affect us. And so we’ll look at, God willing, three of those. The reason why it took so long in the in the team class is because we spent 20 minutes on the Free Palestine movement. And so we won’t do that in this class because it just takes up too much time.

4. 1:37

   The reason why I went over it with them is because when I asked them of any major social justice movement, this was the one that they were most aware of. And so you have to remember that they’re not only getting that if they are in university, they’re actually getting this information when they’re in high school and when they’re in Intermediate School. I would say 90% of the class knew about the Free Palestine movement in one way or another.

5. 2:07

   So I just wanted to put that proviso right, right at the start. So our theme verse from Micah Six and Eight, a sunny school memorization verse from way back, kind of sets the tone for this. Which is he has told you, O man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly before our God? And at issue here is that the modern social justice movement and the pre the the post modernism and humanism that that underpins it is railing against God and his righteous word to say that it is God’s fault that we have injustice in this world. And we don’t have time to deal with the issue of why does God allow suffering and evil in this world? That’s related to the subject, but we have no time for that either.

6. 2:57

   And so that’s one of the underlying issues that we have to get through. And so we’ll we’ll try very quickly because I know you understand all these things to. Say. That God created social justice and not only did he create social justice, He codified it in law. And so these were the areas that the young people were writing things down because when they run across people in the world to say, oh, God is your God is a God of injustice. In actual fact, it’s the opposite. And we need to remember this.

7. 3:26

   And of course we understand what God wrote into the law of Moses. It was to create a godly, fair and balanced social system. And God did all kinds of things. We don’t have time to to cover all the things that God codified into the law. There are hundreds of verses and subtext that tells us what God did and why he did it. For example, we know, of course, there was a broad system of social welfare, but God’s social welfare was different. Of course, it included the gleaning. And what was really neat about the gleaning, of course, was if you had a field or a vineyard, you, you were told, you were told not to take all of it up, but to leave the corners and to leave things in the vineyard.

8. 4:09

   So that those who are marginalized, those who were poor, the widow, the fatherless could come and take it. And I asked the question, the teens, what’s the difference between how we hand out social welfare today and how God instituted social welfare in the law? And this is fundamentally important to understand. And they got it right away. Today we give it for.

9. 4:30

   Free with no expectations. But what God did is He asked them to work for it. And that is fundamentally great for the human character. You don’t get something for free, you don’t appreciate it. But if you go out and work for it, they had to still go cut it. They had to take it home, they had to grind it, they had to sift it and had to make their own bread. Gave them a sense of self worth, help them understand how things actually happen.

10. 4:51

    In many cases, I’m sure, lifted them out of the state that they were in. There’s all kinds of beautiful remedy, spiritual remedy that God included in the law to create a fair and balanced society. There was the redistribution of wealth. This is a this is a huge thing in the social justice movement today. The rich have all the money.

11. 5:08

    It’s like 98% own 70% of the world’s wealth and correct me and I’m. I’ve been corrected many times this week. That’s numbers quite off, but but you know, wealth disparity is a huge is a huge thing. There’s all kinds of social justice movements that deal with that. God dealt with it wasn’t perfect because man wasn’t perfect. The year of release from debt, the care of the poor, blessings for good treatment in in Deuteronomy chapter 15 and verse 10, God actually implemented in the law of blessings for when they did these things, fair treatment of workers and servants, the redistribution of wealth in a broader sense, every 50 years.

12. 5:48

    All debt was all debts were forgiven, all all slaves were freed, the land was returned to its original owners. That’s in Leviticus 25. And so the system that God implemented was to prevent the over accumulation of wealth amongst the few, taking away from the many. Again, it wasn’t perfect and some people will always have more and some people will always have less.

13. 6:12

    And I think that’s that’s a reality. And in some ways that, you know, you can’t fix that. Some people are able to do more and some some people are not able to do much. But God tried to balance that and tried to implant with the nation in the national conscience that this was. Something they needed to watch out for. Every seven-year the the land was to lie fallow. All debts were cancelled, again allowing the land to rest and providing relief for the debtors. There was a just legal system in Deuteronomy 24 required fair wages.

14. 6:39

    And and timely payment to laborers, which is also a social justice movement. Protections for hired servants, Protections for slaves, Protections for foreigners, Protections in legal matters, emphasizing impartiality and fairness. Commanding judges not to take bribes. Ensuring justice for all, including the poor and the foreigner. There were there were protections specifically for marginalized groups. Israelites reminded to treat the foreigner, the widow, the orphan with justice and passion, recalling their own experience as foreigners.

15. 7:09

    One of the things we didn’t get into was, does God condone slavery? And that’s not something we have time to deal with because that was another 10 minutes. And if you want information on that, I’m happy to do it. To say this right now is that this issue is simpler to address, I think, than many of us may think biblically, right?

16. 7:29

    The laws concerning slavery in the Old Testament are radically different than the harsh, dehumanizing systems that we often think of today. And you know that unlike any other time in human history, there are more slaves in the world today than ever before. 30 to 40 million people are enslaved in inhumane conditions, including children.

17. 7:53

    That’s something we can talk about certainly later if needs be. We don’t have time to cover that the profits when when things went off the rails with the nation of Israel, the profits came in and a lot of the judgments that they brought on the mate on the nation was to try to correct the fact that they stopped doing things that brought equity and fairness and justice to society.

18. 8:16

    And and prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah spent a lot of their time trying to get the nation of Israel back on track. The other question is actually what the start. Of this is. Is that many people say that Christ was progressive and he preached the form of modern social justice. Well, that is just not true.

19. 8:35

    In essence, Christ preached the principles of God’s justice, but how we understood them in the way things worked out was in fairness and imbalance. The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. Chapters 5 to 7 where he teaches the values of the Kingdom of God to be implement implemented now. Mercy, humility, peacemaking, justice, He.

20. 8:55

    He taught his followers to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek, to care for the poor needs. So all of those things were embedded in the law as Christ preached the gospel message all throughout his ministry, right? Christ challenged the oppressive social, economic, and political structures of the day. And he criticized the leaders for their hypocrisy and saying that they did these things, but they actually neglected the poor.

21. 9:21

    And so the other, the other claim is that while Christ went out and he spent time with the marginalized, right, the prostitutes, the lepers, that the tax collectors, he hung out with all of these disadvantaged people, right? And that he condoned therefore their behavior. Well, that’s. Not true biblically. Christ did meet with him, He did speak with them, but it was to elevate them up with the gospel of Christ.

22. 9:47

    Luke chapter 4 of the Lord Jesus Christ declares this mission by saying, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives recovery, recovery of the sight to the blind to set at. Liberty, those who are oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And so the amazing thing about what we see in the Old Testament and what we see with the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ was a wonderful application of God’s justice on society.

23. 10:18

    That we might be better people, that we might be better humans, but with the intent to lead us to God. And as we know, even after the ascension of the Lord Jesus. Christ, his disciples, continued the same thing. They continued to do the same thing. In fact, they sold all things and they shared and they distributed amongst the needs of the Saints.

24. 10:37

    And that’s kind of a beautiful real world example of the way that they were able to take their understanding of a biblical truth and justice and apply it amongst their own community. So I keep looking at Marne, and she’s like, slow down. So with that as a backdrop, when we look at social justice today, why does it seem so divisive and disruptive and even counterintuitive?

25. 11:10

    Because because I would admit that a lot of the. Social justice movements of today probably launched with some noble cause. Maybe even a biblical ’cause maybe a righteous ’cause right to help the marginalized and the disadvantaged is biblical. And a lot of the reason why we kind of get drawn into these these movements or think we need to be part of them is because we conflate God’s justice with what’s happening today, that somehow we need to help them promote it today. But it’s very different today.

26. 11:43

    We don’t have a. Fairer, more balanced, more equitable, more just society. Today it is less just it is less equitable I I submit than at any other time, certainly in the last 100 or couple or 200. Years. So why do we have outcomes today that are that are at odds with the peace and unity and justice that God brought to bear through his Word? Well.

27. 12:12

    We changed. That’s what changed. How do we? Go from a western society based loosely on divine law to what we have today which is very very chaotic and violent. We think about the civil rights movement in the 50s when that started Martin Luther King was it was a was a Christian quoted the Bible all the time.

28. 12:30

    We move into the anti war protests in the 1960’s. The gay rights movement started in the 70s. The, the feminist movement started shortly after that. The environmental movement kicked in in the 80s after the oil crisis of the 70s. And so, so those all had noble causes in a sense, and they built on one another.

29. 12:48

    But now what we see today is this very radical group of movements that’s, that’s radically changed how social justice is actually applied in society. So this postmodern philosophy that we’ve already established over the last couple of classes questioning absolute biblical truth. And promoting this deconstructionist style of aggressive tactics, tearing down institutions that’s. Why we have what we have today.

30. 13:14

    I mean, it’s fair to say that modern social justice movements that that once operated in the fringes of society have now mainstreamed. These anti establishment, anti corporate, anti mainstream movements are now everywhere. They are backed by major global corporations. They have the money. The BLM movement has a couple of billion dollar budget every year.

31. 13:36

    Those are big dollars, most of political and corporate backing. When I say political backing, I mean they’ve been able to codify their own set of policies in law, in legislation. So there’s 11. States in the United States, and now I think Connecticut is just passing it through through in the next couple weeks where you could be sued for misgendering somebody. 11 states. Now, in Canada, that law will be federal and it’s already partially in place.

32. 14:04

    And when I say corporate backing, I mean huge global corporations like Microsoft and Coca-Cola are spending hundreds of millions of dollars supporting these campaigns. So it is mainstream. Not only that, but a lot of these organizations use fear to motivate social change. The pressure to conform or be labeled as intolerant is everywhere. You know, if you said even, you know, a couple of years ago when presented with Black Lives matter and many people did well, all lives matter.

33. 14:38

    I mean, you created huge problems for yourself. Even when when the stop Asian hate movement came in during COVID and people were saying Asian lives matter, they were ostracized from society like so these these movements. They don’t, really. Care about making things better. They just care about their movement. And so social justice is very different from biblical justice.

34. 15:03

    Here’s the first example. When we look at DEI, everybody knows what DEI means. And I asked the teens and they didn’t really know what diversity, equity and inclusion means. But let’s just kind of look at what these differences are. Now. I I spent 21 years in corporate business and I think I mentioned to some people the start of my tenure.

35. 15:20

    HR All they did was hire. People and fire people and create training programs but. Right at the end, in the last four or five years, HR was then tasked with cultural change within the organization. For anybody who’s in a large organization, you know that, that, that HR has changed dramatically to driving cultural change within an organization.

36. 15:38

    And so DEI, when I was in business a long time ago, I, I was in sales. I had 30 people and 28 of them were men and two of them were women. It’s because there wasn’t that many women who were in electronic sales. If I put an ad or to get, I get 100 responses and it would be 99 males and one female.

37. 15:55

    And when you whittle that down and get your top three, it was very difficult to hire when we were looking for specific competencies. Now that’s changed. Now when you hire, you have to tick boxes off. You have to get people to fill in to qualify for this issue of diversity. And so these kind of solutions are now being forced upon us, right?

38. 16:15

    Social justice has replaced God’s justice because we don’t want biblical truth to interfere with the application of humanism. So with so with social justice and DEI diversity. From the social justice movement is about promoting everybody’s differences, not putting everybody into the same. Bucket. But emphasizing external and other characteristics such as race and gender and sexual orientation.

39. 16:39

    And excluding other forms of diversity in the process which just create conflict in society, trying to apply equity is often implemented by disadvantaging one group in order to advantage the other. The other, and we probably see this quite often, just in normal social circles, right before you can bring one up, you have to because, because it’s all about the oppressor and the oppressed, right?

40. 17:00

    That’s fundamentally how it works. We got to pull down the oppressor in order to bring up the oppressed. That creates conflict, that creates problems, but biblical diversity Acts chapter 17 and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all of the face of the earth, having determined the allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should.

41. 17:21

    Seek God. God’s diversity is to look at all of humanity and give everyone the equal opportunity to approach Him now. The Bible also recognizes different gifts and roles, but all within the body of Christ. We are a. Diverse group of people from all kinds of different places and backgrounds. But we are called in to be 1 and one body in Christ, and equality is similar. Equality is not promoted by forcing equality on people, but by trying to force equality of outcome on people, giving some groups more and taking resources away from other groups. But that’s not how God works for just as. In the one body as one and as many members. All the members are of one body and many through the Lord Jesus Christ, right.

42. 18:07

    James two and one says, my brethren, show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. So while some of the founding tenants of social justice. Are right. We should never discriminate. We should treat others with love and with compassion. We should never. Exclude anyone based on any criteria that they have from seeking the grace of our Father in heaven. We should look at everything on the basis of divine truth. It’s the truth of God that will.

43. 18:37

    Define the difference. You know there’s a, there’s a logical. Reality that basic morality and basic laws that govern them can’t be subjective or relative. And if we wonder why there’s so much division and conflict in society, it’s because of the application of subjective truth and subjective morality that is causing all these problems.

44. 18:58

    God has one truth. He is the baseline. And so we need to remember that just when we think about that term, DEI. The other problem with the social justice movement is it justifies tolerance and acceptance. And I ask the teens, I said, is tolerance A biblical principle? And the answer I got was no.

45. 19:19

    And I ask you, is tolerance A biblical principle? Now, let me define tolerance just from the Webster’s dictionary. Actually, it’s up there, right? Tolerance is the willingness to accept and endure someone else’s beliefs, behaviors, or practices that differ from one’s own without interference and judgement. Is that form of tolerance biblical?

46. 19:46

    Because correct. 100 points because where that goes, when you have tolerance, what leads very quickly after is acceptance. And this is the problem with the social justice movement in general and in specific. Some movements specifically don’t say that five times fast. So there’s this misinterpretation of virtues that somehow tolerance and acceptance are biblical virtues.

47. 20:13

    And this is one of the problems that comes into our cliche that we need to tolerate, right? Starting to hear more and more that we can’t. You know, we shouldn’t judge. Christ said do not judge. That’s not what he said, he said. Judge righteously. Now, tolerance, there’s an aspect of that which I would call patience. And part of this definition is that we might endure for a time. And so, yeah, you know, years and years and years ago, we had a brother coming to the truth that smoked, and he wanted to kick the habit.

48. 20:39

    So we would endure for a time and have patience with that brother, help him along until he was able to get that through. We just wouldn’t tolerate it. And then eventually accept it because what happens after that, you start to justify it. If you’re tolerating everything and then you’re accepting everything. It’s like, wow, we’ll just, I guess it’s OK. Then you start adjusting.

49. 20:55

    Wow, This is why he does it. It’s he has the shakes if he doesn’t, right, it calms them down. Let’s just let them have it. That’s just one example. We could apply that to pretty much any other type of bad behavior. Romans 1 and 32 says though they know God’s righteous decree, those that practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but they give approval to those that practice them.

50. 21:17

    And that’s why Paul says that in the 1st chapter of Romans, right? We’re not, we’re not to give active approval, you know, tacit approval to something or, or, or to show tolerance that leads to acceptance. And this is what we’re taught through the social justice movement. One conservative writer said this and then this. This really resonated with me.

51. 21:39

    He says we cannot be accepted by God until we fundamentally try to abandon those parts of ourselves that are fundamentally unacceptable. And I think that is true in society. That is true. Living under God is God does call us while we’re under sin. But then he calls us to righteousness. He requires that we change, that we move from the state.

52. 22:04

    That we were in. To the state. That God needs us to be in. And when you think about this, this is a meme that’s been going around the Internet. It started, actually, apparently, around the Kennedy era. If you can’t accept me at my worst, you don’t deserve. Me at my best. And you know what? That sounds right.

53. 22:22

    It’s like, you know, because some people are going to have a bad day, right? Some people have some nasty habits. You know, if you can’t accept me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best. But but really think about that scripturally. Think about that. Just in a marriage relationship that I’m supposed to accept things that are fundamentally unacceptable about somebody’s character, otherwise I don’t deserve them when they’re at their.

54. 22:43

    Best. Aren’t we all trying to improve each other? It’s this form of non judgmental compassion and tolerance that is seeping in. This is postmodernist thought that’s seeping into our community. We need to call things out. You know, we need to stand people up in the things that we do. We need to do it with patients and we need to do it with love. We need to build relationships with them so they under, we understand, you know, what’s going on in their lives. It’s like giving morphine to a patient. There’s a mortal disease, so they can’t feel the pain and sometimes we need to feel the pain to seek treatment and be and be healed.

55. 23:19

    Tolerating sin and accepting evil behavior to make to make us more acceptable to God in our ecclesias is not right. And so we can’t shirk our responsibilities, our duties as shepherds to exhort and rebuke and to help others bring them to repentance. And So what the the gospel message is, is about calling people out of the world.

56. 23:41

    To bring them into the acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ through the transition to righteousness, through his his death and his resurrection. That is the message, not tolerance and not acceptance. We can’t change. God’s laws to reduce the weight of sin and to excuse our actions. Taking up the cross of Christ means defying the social order of the day, the power of darkness, and marching every day towards the Kingdom of God.

57. 24:14

    This really resonated with the teens. As well, I think everybody understands this. Social justice is about the victim, and at first blush. You think? Well. Yeah, everybody’s a victim of something, right? But they emphasize this dynamic, as I mentioned, between the oppressors and the oppressed. And the outcome is you have this victim. Right, that that this victim mentality, this mindset that that is consistently perceiving oneself as a victim of every circumstance.

58. 24:46

    It’s not my fault, it’s the society’s fault. My parents raised me this way, right? This happened to me at school, all these different things. And I’m not saying that that those aren’t real elements that can cause. Real problems for people. The issue is if we get. Stuck in the victim mentality, we will never get out. God.

59. 25:08

    Doesn’t preach the victim mentality. What social justice, what biblical justice preaches to us is that we bear our own burdens, that there is personal accountability and responsibility to the things that we do. Galatians 6 and five says for each one should carry our own load. Romans 14 and 12. Each of us will give account of ourselves to God. Yes, we’re a victim of sin.

60. 25:33

    We’re a victim of our nature, and often times we’re a victim of the circumstances of our own behavior and actions. But we should never have a victim mentality because we have forgiveness and when we have forgiveness, we can let go of that. Sin and we need to forgive others because the victim mentality is about retribution.

61. 26:00

    So if I was a victim, then therefore you need to pay to compensate me. For all the injustice you’ve perpetrated on me, I’m sure you’ve all heard about what’s happening in the California legislature about slave reparations in a state that never had or condone slavery, never had slave owners going to force people that never had slaves to pay for those people who were never slaves.

62. 26:29

    It’s going to be hundreds of billions of dollars. The math they’ve already done said it’s going to bankrupt the state if it ever comes to be. We have empowerment through the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians are called to overcome challenges through the strength that’s provided us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 4 and 13 says I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

63. 26:51

    And so it’s not about the victim mentality, it’s about reaching out to God for support, for help, for encouragement, for strength, and for forgiveness. Which is what the word of God is about, that if we’ve had issues in our lives, if we’ve been marginalized, if there has been problems, if we’ve been unjustly treated, that there is forgiveness and reconciliation.

64. 27:14

    So instead of the social justice movement focusing on grievance, we need to focus on reconciliation. Matthew 6 and 14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. And one of my daughter’s favorite verses, and I quote it all the time and I say it all the time, is that God then gives us the hope of a positive future.

65. 27:36

    Jeremiah 29 and 11 For I know the plans that I have for you. Plans. To prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope in the future. And unfortunately, the victim mentality focuses us to to to dwell on the past and the past heard and the the negative expectations contrary to the amazing hope that God has given us in the future. And so, while addressing injustices are important, as believers, we need to be very careful that we don’t adopt this particular mindset, certainly not within our ecclesia. God’s solutions are to have personal accountability and trust in his solution for the future, and to rely on God’s outcomes for our lives.

66. 28:19

    Now, social justice is also cultural and political, and we don’t need to spend a lot of time on this because I think we all understand it. Now when I say social justice is cultural, what I mean is that today’s social justice movement is not the individual going out and doing right by their neighbor. Social justice movement today has invaded our culture and they’re changing our culture.

67. 28:44

    And these movements, as I said, are backed by substantial resource advertising campaigns, support of high profile CE OS Global. Influencers off of YouTube or Instagram or TikTok. And so they become very, very powerful. Not only do they shut down highways or they storm schools or they take over campuses, but they’ve incited riots. They’ve wielded considerable influence, and they’ve shouted down the traditional conservative voice in order of this, this liberal progressive agenda can come to play. They’re trying to change culture, to be active their image.

68. 29:23

    And that’s a problem. We’re not supposed to be invested in the social culture of the day. We’re supposed to stand in opposition to it. And of course, these new movements have deep political engagement. We’ve already talked about some of these things that they’re codifying in law. Canada’s Bill C-16 is, is going to be very problematic for us with fundamental changes, not only in how we can or cannot interact in society, but then what will be taught about that in school. And these movements harbor violent political agendas because they are intent on tearing down the social structures of the day, the government’s institutions, laws, anything that stands in the way.

69. 30:05

    And we saw what happened in Seattle over a couple of years ago was, was unbelievable. It was dramatic. And in fact, pretty much every major city in the US and many major cities in Canada came under the same problem. And so from a biblical perspective. You know, when we look at our individual investment in these things, we can’t have any part of it because these are embedded into the cultural fabric of society that we’re not citizens of. It’s legally entrenched into the political movement that we can’t be part of.

70. 30:31

    And lastly, it’s a human ideology. It’s something that we cannot, we cannot be involved in because it is not. Directed by God, we are citizens of this world in the sense that we live here and we have to abide here, but we need to promote our values and our beliefs and show kindness and love and all those things are right and good. But ultimately we are citizens of, of God’s future. Philippians 3 and 20 but our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. And John says, the Lord Jesus Christ says in John 17, I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, for they’re not of the world any more. Than I am of the world.

71. 31:10

    My prayer is not that you will take them out of the world, but that you will protect them from the evil 1. And that’s the position that we are in. And so we have to address the core tenets of social justice within our immediate space by doing right and seeking justice with our fellow man. But it must be grounded in biblical principles, must be carried out with compassion and with humility. You know, sadly, a number of years ago there were there were ecclesial emails that were going around for official events that had hashtag Black lives Matter in the official e-mail tag like. And that’s just that’s just a tiny part of it. There are brethren and sisters that March in protest movements. They belong to these movements.

72. 31:56

    If if you are a member of Black Lives Matter, the movement, you’re also anti Israel because you support Palestine. Anyway, there’s so many things and so many places we could go.

73. 32:17

    We might have time just to talk about this for just a minute. The the Free Palestine movement, the Free Gaza movement is is right now probably the social justice event of the globe. Do you know how many? University campuses in the US and Canada that they took over this spring, just Canada and the US, over 250 campuses were taken over by violent mobs.

74. 32:51

    It happened in Canada as well, happened in the UK. It happened in Australia to a lesser degree. And the problem is with this, and I think we all understand, is that although we all agree. That. Horrifying things are happening within the nation of Israel. Violent conflict is never something that we should support or approve. And people dying and children dying is. It’s horrific.

75. 33:17

    And so there’s a there’s a sympathy that we have. Obviously it’s heartbreaking to see what’s happening, but Israel has a right to defend their borders. And what happened on October 7th was horrifying. It was a terrorist act and all those. Things are being whitewashed over for the sake of the victim in Palestine. I’m just going to read through this. I do have a slide on this, but it’s so small you can’t see it. Because the Palestinian movement is revising history in order to support their cause #1 supporters of the Palestinian cause, whether you like it or not. Or by extension, supporting Hamas, which is a terrorist organization.

76. 34:00

    I think that’s pretty easy. Now Hamas constitutionally wants to wipe Israel off the map. We can just set that aside. Whenever somebody says. From the river to the sea, if they know which river in which sea they’re talking about, which is sad reality of many of these people, including what was happening at U Victoria in Victoria.

77. 34:21

    In order to get space from the river to the sea, you have to push Israel out, as one of the students in the class today said, which means genocide for the Jews. So although they decry genocide being perpetrated on them, their response is wipe out Israel. Listen some of their songs, I just can’t remember them right now.

78. 34:47

    The protesters intentionally or unintentionally or ignorantly just revised historical facts. Number one, they deny the Jews historical right to the land. You. Don’t even need the. Bible to prove it. You can prove it through history, but they deny that number one. Even though their legal claim was codified in 1948 through the UN, they deny that.

79. 35:10

    They say that was false. They say that was done by, you know, white power or something. Their denials, as far as that goes, contradict reality. And there are many of those. I don’t have time to go through all of them. Another one of the claims, of course, is that Israel is a colonial power that is perpetrating injustice on a marginalized group. Now that is literally laughable when you think of the history of the nation of Israel that has been colonized by no less than 10 major countries in the last 2000 years. Oh let’s see, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece. The Romans kicked Israel out of the land. They deny that oppression, you know, governmental political oppression.

80. 35:55

    Israel’s the only liberal democracy in the entire Middle East. They allow rights and freedoms that most other Arab nations do not. I find that very hard to rationalize that they don’t understand that. Also Israel is the only country that’s really allowed them some form of self governance.

81. 36:18

    Egypt doesn’t open their borders. Maybe they talk about the oppressive borders. They never mentioned Egypt. Very interesting. Jordan doesn’t want them. Why isn’t, why isn’t Egypt just opening up their their gates at the wrath of border and just letting refugees in? They’re letting food trucks in. They’re not letting people in. You know why they’re not letting them in? Because they don’t want the same problems that the Jews have to deal with in their land.

82. 36:41

    Why isn’t Saudi Arabia, why isn’t Iran just taking in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees? They don’t want the problem. History proves that the Palestinians have declined statehood or partial statehood at least three times. I’ll probably be corrected. After that it’s more. And of course, we know that Gaza was given over to the Palestinians in 2005.

83. 37:05

    Israel said, OK, we’ll give you a sense of autonomy. We’ll give you the place. It’s a beautiful place. Yeah, I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen pictures. And as we know, they gave them industry, they gave them greenhouses, they gave them agriculture industry. They gave them a going concern, like a multi billion dollar industry. Within months it was all trashed. It was looted, it was burned, it was destroyed. And in 2007, the Palestinians voted in Hamas and the Rockets started coming over.

84. 37:31

    And, and, and if, and somebody has done this accounting and I just don’t have time to put it up on the screen. But of the, the, the billions and billions and billions of dollars that have been given to these organizations in in Gaza and in the West Bank. So much of it is been diverted into weapons and concrete and tunnels and enriched their leaders who are worth hundreds and some say billions of dollars. Now that’s the reality of the free Palestine movement of a people who are in the land of God’s people. And there’s there’s probably 100 other things that we could talk about.

85. 38:13

    So while we are sympathetic to the cause of the plight of suffering as we should be advocating for, this type of Palestinian cause goes against everything we know about biblical truth about the integrity of God’s word.

86. 38:34

    And one of the teens came up to me and said, you know, so how do we talk to somebody about this? I think the first problem is we can’t just start spouting facts and saying where they’re wrong. I think we have to ask them questions. You have to question them. When, when did the Palestinian people come to be? Weren’t Jews called Palestinians, you know, prior to to the Balfour Declaration?

87. 38:54

    What was the land like? Why did nobody want the land? You know, for hundreds of years it was a wasteland. Nobody wanted it. Right now somebody, now everybody wants it. Like I think we can ask these kind of questions. What are the Arab nations doing? Are they taking in refugees? And I think we can start to change the narrative. As the young Lords boy said the other day, you got to change. You got to change the narrative and bring it back to God. Anyway, I thought we had time to cover it. And now I’m, I realize I’m wrong. I think the important part to understand about social justice and, and comparing that to even traditional justice that, that we might even agree with at a social level, right? The kind of traditional justice that we would get involved in and just giving a hand up to our neighbor and and making sure that we do the right things within our society. That God’s justice is not only different fundamentally, but God’s justice.

88. 39:51

    Is his righteousness. In fact, in the Old Testament, those two words are really interchangeable, right? The word for mishpat and sadek can sometimes either be translated as righteous or justice. And I think this is important for us to understand because when God talks about justice, he’s talked about, he talks about being made right by him to be being made right by God.

89. 40:19

    And so. Bound up in this word for justice is actually our salvation. Proverbs 8 and 20 says the Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. Sorry, that was. Psalm One O 3, Proverbs 8 and 20 says I walk in the way of righteousness along the path of justice. God is not just trying to rectify a wrong, He’s trying to bring us to salvation. Justice is tied in with God’s righteousness. The New Testament is no different. In the Greek New Testament and I can’t pronounce these two terms. When we see justice, it often.

90. 41:03

    Is translated as righteousness, and the verb to be made righteous is to declare or to justify the righteous. And so when we see justice and righteous in the New Testament is also the same concept. First John three and seven, dear children, let not anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. Matthew 6 and 33 the Lord says, But seek ye first His Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you.

91. 41:38

    When we understand God’s justice, we also understand God’s righteousness, and it is calling us to be just. But He is calling us to be righteous, and that is not a fundamental component of the social justice movement. They want nothing to do with God. They want nothing to do with being made right and being corrected for their actions and being having their sinful nature resolve. It’s not part of their community or their ideology or their worldview.

92. 42:15

    So what I submit to you, of course, is that whether we’re looking at the Old Testament or the New Testament, justice and righteousness are are often presented as two sides of the same coin. This deeply intertwined concept that emphasizes living in accordance with God’s will, justice, which includes dealing with issues of moral integrity and righteousness and fair treatment of others as we walk along the path to salvation. And so it’s God’s righteousness that needs to form the baseline of justice in our community in this world. And so it’s divine justice that will save. It says in Deuteronomy 32 and 3.

93. 42:55

    For I will proclaim the name of the Lord, ascribe greatness to our God, the rock. His work is perfect and all of his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity. He’s just and he is upright. And so we’re not to stand idly by while society collapses under its own weight. We are to do our do our part.

94. 43:13

    We’re not to neglect the needs of our brethren and sisters in our community. We’re not to shut out those even in our society where where we can with our own personal endeavor, but to turn our ecclesias into mechanisms to promote social justice, to open them up for social justice movements to have meetings. Which is happening.

95. 43:34

    To spend inordinate amounts of our money to support local causes and movements, which is happening, these are untenable. Our mission, really our only mission, is to preach the divine justice and righteousness of our God.

96. 43:58

    And so pursuing biblical justice means following God’s way. To make right that which is wrong. And we look to the Scripture to know what that is, with the end goal of seeing lives reconciled to God and transformed eternally. Ephesians 2 and 10 says, For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do, and God’s justice will prevail. You know, the world is broken.

97. 44:38

    It’s, it’s literally broken. It’s fractured. It’s stratified. It’s divided politically, ideologically, socially, morally, humanly. It’s broken. And, well, our human sensitivities and our love and compassion can cause us and should cause us to do good things and righteous things within our community. And I believe we’re called on to do that. When it becomes corporate, when it becomes ecclesially driven, we’re off the mark because we start putting credence in our own solutions, solving mankind’s problems when that’s God’s domain.

98. 45:26

    And I think that’s the other underlying issue with us getting involved in social justice, that somehow we have the right to fix humanity’s problems on a corporate scale, on a global scale. It’s not our. Right. It’s God’s right.

99. 45:45

    God’s Kingdom is the place where there’ll be justice and righteousness, there’ll be equity for all, there’ll be love, there’ll be peace, there’ll be healing for those suffering and a divine wisdom that will fill the earth.

100. 46:00

     The message of God’s justice is repentance. It is following the path of righteousness. And not only will that. Help resolve the current issues of the day. At least in some ways. It will help us into the realm of God’s eternal salvation. Just to close, I just want to read from Isaiah 55. So let’s turn that up. I feel a little bit better that we are maybe a little bit ahead of time.

101. 46:35

     So I’ll read this section of verses very slowly. Like our brother Kitson last night. The prophet says in Isaiah 55 starting at verse 5. He says starting at verse 6, he says seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their. Ways and the unrighteous, their thoughts, let them turn to the Lord.

102. 47:06

     And He will have mercy on them and to our God, and He will. Freely pardon, for my thoughts are not your thoughts either. Are your ways my ways? Declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish.

103. 47:32

     So that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater. So is my word that goes out of my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish all that I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

104. 47:50

     You will go out and joy and be LED forth in peace. The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn Bush will grow the journeypour. Instead of the briars, the Myrtle will grow this. Will be the Lord’s renown, the prophet says, for an everlasting sign that will endure forever. Our current situation is, is dark, it’s it’s debilitating, but this is the vision of the future where all of man’s issues are resolved, not in protest, not in activism, not in anger, not in promoting individual rights, not in playing the victim, but by God’s hand of justice. So look, if you want to take up a cause, take up a cause of the Lord Jesus Christ.

105. 48:47

     And preach the gospel, preach that message. And if you want to protest, protest against the evils of this age, protest against the darkness of this world and contrast that to the light of God’s truth. And if you want to March, then let’s March along that narrow path that leads to the Kingdom of God.

106. 49:12

     Let’s be not ashamed. Of God’s justice, because when that great day arrives, and Brother Greg and I were talking about this last night, the unbelievable return of the Lord Jesus Christ. That when that day arrives, brethren and sisters, and the Almighty God turns to his Son

107. 49:43

     who’s seated at his right hand, and he says, the hour has come and Christ returns with 10,000 of his Saints to this earth. Brethren and sisters, the the only justice that will matter, it will be his. And it will be at that time that God’s righteousness will prevail.

108. 50:16

     Thus says the Lord, keep justice and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my righteous will be revealed.