HE IS GOD

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.”

“Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.”

“Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.”

Exodus 23:2-3, 6-8

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As we continue to study from Exodus, chapter 23, we see where today’s verses deal with the matter of judgment with one absolute certainty becoming very evident.

God commands and demands fairness when justice is administered. Look again at those verses here:

“Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.”

“Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits. Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.”

“Do not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.”  Vv. 2-3, 6-8

Within these directives from God, we can find three main points, points that remain valid today.

First, there is the matter of fairness.

Notice in the verses that there is equal attention given to the poor as there is to the rich for we read where God tells the Israelite people that "favoritism" should not be shown "to a poor man in his lawsuit" nor should “poor people” be denied justice in lawsuits. In other words, a person should not be judged by their socioeconomic status but rather on the crime they had committed. It’s clear that our Lord wanted the judges and courts to be focused on the crime more than the criminal.

This made me think about our current day legal system.

Do people receive preferential treatment based on who they are or what they do or don’t have instead of what they’ve done?

And I’m not talking about a judge taking into consideration whether a person has a prior record of offenses. This is completely appropriate when it comes to making sure the proper level of consequence is applied to a wrongdoing.

What I am talking about is someone with celebrity or status that gets treated differently than the common man or woman just because they’re famous. We see and hear about it happening all the time. The powerful, the rich, and the famous, ones who can afford the highest power legal representation, too often walk while the ordinary get punished for the same offenses. This is just what God was warning against over 2,000 years ago.

And before I get too focused on the rich and famous, this applies equally to the poor who might be given lighter sentencing because they don’t have much. Don’t read this as saying we shouldn’t be merciful because the scriptures are clear that we should. But why would God, the King of mercy, say to not show favoritism to a poor man? Why would He also say, "Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits?"

Because regardless of our financial standing and status, sometimes punishment is just what we need to get us on the right track toward righteousness and holiness. Sometimes we need to be corrected and understand that there are negative consequences for our sinful behavior.

The second point we find within these verses surrounds the matter of false testimony. I’ve written about this at length in prior messages, in particular when I covered each of God’s Ten Commandments, but here we find God reinforcing what He has already demanded, saying:

"I will not acquit the guilty."

In other words, the ones who bear a false witness which leads to an innocent person dying will not receive a pardon from the Lord God Almighty.

These are strong words and rightfully so for no innocent person should be put to death for something they didn’t do. It happened to Jesus and cost God the loss of His one and only Son so don’t think that it isn’t personal for Him. A proclaimed falsehood that led to the death of someone who had not done what they were accused of was the ultimate act of injustice in God’s sight and so it deserved the ultimate penalty, namely the loss of God’s forgiveness.

Finally, there was the issuer of bribery.

We can see in these verses that Old Testament judges were just as vulnerable to bribery as judges are today. And so we find God strictly forbidding justice based on money paid from the accused for the purpose of impacting the verdict because He didn’t want anyone to buy their way out of judgment but rather receive the punishment that was warranted for their actions. Look again at what God said about bribery:

“...a bribe blinds those who see and twists the words of the innocent.”  

In other words, any judge who was supposed to see that justice was administered properly would be blinded by the bribe and bound to deliver a decision that was inappropriate and unjust. In the end, money would trump any evidence or testimony that might convict, funding an improper finding of innocence for the guilty.

Today, we still hear about incidents of bribery in the news. A quick search on the internet will show you that legal corruption is alive and well and this means one thing is certain.

God can’t be very pleased with what is happening and we know that He is everywhere and sees everything.

As we see over and over again in our study of the scriptures, people in our world continue to violate the life principles the Lord has set forth in His Word and this includes Christian believers as well. In regard to the injustices we learn of, it leaves us frustrated, wondering whether we’ll ever live in a society that is truly just and fair. What makes this all the more maddening is that we’re really not as far away from being where we need to be. For if every single person would simply choose to dedicate themselves to the Lord and His ways, we could see a miraculous turnaround as people willingly turn their hearts and minds over to God Himself.

Think about what a game changer this would be for everything we see wrong about the world we live in would go away.

Friends, we can’t allow ourselves to give up hope that God can enact real, widespread change in the world we live in and I would ask you to join be in prayer over the matter, asking for the Lord to bring about a global change of heart toward Him while choosing to believe in and follow His Son, Jesus.

God made all of creation in six days. Don’t think He can’t make anything happen at any time.

He is able because He is God.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.