Now, justice is the watchword of the hour in our society. It is everywhere in every domain of life, at least the word is. Whether it’s actually executed or not.
Families, communities, businesses, entertainment, politics from the Me Too movement. You read some of that? I know it was on Twitter, but I’m sure the mainstream media picked it up. I don’t usually read the mainstream media, so I take that for granted.
Marching in the streets to investigations of everything under the sun. They’re fighting oppression. They’re against oppression.
And by implication what? They’re fighting for justice. We want the right thing done. People are zealous in fighting this oppression and embracing and executing justice.
So where are the Christians? Do Christians care about oppression? Well, they do. But many make oppression and wonder if oppression is even a Christian concept. Maybe the word is filled with so much socialist ideas that we should simply throw the word out and find something else.
And I would argue, no. It’s here in this translation, because this is the word, and we have other words, in fact, in Hebrew for oppression. It’s our word, not theirs.
And we ought to embrace it and understand it, and I hope we can help. I can help you in that regard this evening, because it is here in the Prophets. It’s in the New Testament.
And so we ought to embrace it as part of God’s law. When we understand a right, we should not cower from unbelievers who use the word oppression or justice and beat us with it like a stick. Rather, we should grab that stick, shatter it in two, and have one for fighting oppression and one for executing justice.
Those are my two points. Fighting oppression. Fighting oppression had these two verses.
There were other verses I could have used. Micah, of course, has this word, this one time here, Micah 2.2. But Zechariah had a nice summary there in 7.10, chapter 7, verse 10, that covered the main objects or groups that you’re used to reading about in the Old Testament. They talk a lot about the widows and the fatherless and the like, right? And so we’re going to dig into understanding what that means not to oppress them, and by implication, therefore, to give them their just due or justice.
Oppression, as I said, is a Christian concept. Oppression is a Christian concept. It’s used in the Bible, this translation at least.
There’s two Hebrew words used often in the Old Testament with respect to this word. I’m going to focus on one of them in particular. The first word can be translated oppress or afflict.
It’s more subjective or metaphorical. We speak of the afflicted, that is, people who are perhaps poor in income. You’re an afflicted person.
You’re poor. You’re financially poor. They’re not afflicted in the sense of someone’s necessarily beating them, someone’s chasing them down.
That’s how you typically use that word, afflicted. But it’s where they are in life, perhaps, and it varies by their circumstances. They have a difficult time.
The other word is oppress or defraud. Oppress or defraud. This is the abuse of power or authority upon another.
The abuse of power or authority upon another, usually by burdening, trampling, exploiting, and crushing those lower in their station in life. That’s how I’m going to use the word. The other word can be just difficulties of life.
By God’s providence, you’re poor. It’s not because you’re an idiot with your money or you’re sinful with your money. You’re just poor.
You’re afflicted. That’s your lot in life for a while. That’s fine.
That’s something you usually can’t do much about other than take care of them. Here, I’m going to talk about oppression as the abuse of power or authority. Or advantage, if you have an advantage, which is usually a power position, typically.
So, I know power is a little looser. I prefer authority, typically. So, this is more objective, this idea.
And, of course, before I continue on here, I have to point out a few things about what it’s not, right? In the case of Zechariah 7.10, where he says not to oppress the poor, not to oppress the widow. I’ll talk about the widows a little more later. I’ll pick on the poor here.
That’s a big common theme, especially amongst the socialists for the last hundred years. Not all poor are the same. There’s deserving poor, and there are undeserving poor.
That’s all there is to it. It used to be a common belief, taught in America, practiced in the churches. It’s hard to execute socialism if you believe there’s actually people who don’t deserve money, isn’t it? Isn’t that interesting? It’s almost a stopgap measure against it, isn’t it? We believe, because the Bible teaches, some people don’t deserve to get help.
They have to learn the hard way or suffer the consequences, however you want to describe it. Those who waste their money on drugs, fast cars and fast women or something like that, you’re not going to keep throwing money at them. You shouldn’t.
Even unbelievers don’t do that. They’re like, you’re the crazy old uncle. You’re just a hole of my money.
I’m stopping it right here. We’re done. No more.
You’re undeserving of my mercy, of my money. These are people who are not afflicted by anything other than their sin, essentially. They’re not oppressed by anybody but their sin.
Although today, they like to use the word oppression because it’s a club to beat people over the head with, to give them money. Now, don’t confuse all poor people, as my example here, it’s actually the word here in the Bible, the poor, that is, don’t confuse poor choices with sinful choices. See that? A poor choice could come about by lack of instruction, lack of knowing the whole story, because sometimes you just don’t know everything.
Lack of knowing the future? Many of us, perhaps, may have had good investments until 2008 hit us. Who was planning on 2008 and the financial crash? Exactly. So it was maybe a poor choice if you went to college and knew better.
I don’t know. That is an affliction, as it were, not your own sin. You become poor because of, well, a poor choice, not because of sin.
Sin is different. Don’t confuse and don’t look at somebody who made a bad decision or a poor decision, however word you use, and translate that to a sinful decision. That’s my point.
It’s not the same thing. We must make that distinction when helping the poor and the fatherless and the like. So, and the other thing to remind us is that not all sin is oppression.
People cry out, oh, I’m being oppressed. You’re like, okay, what’s going on? And you dig in and you find out, oh, well, that’s not really the right word you want to use. You’re not being oppressed, necessarily, in that case.
Not all sin is oppression. And also that we’re not supposed to fight every perceived slight or problem or difficulty. Injustice is a part of life, and we have to choose our battles.
I preached on that when I had the two-part series on justice, Justice for Today. We have to understand we can’t deal with it all the time, and there will be injustices. We are limited in time, wisdom, and ability and resources.
And there is a rule of thumb with respect to difficulties and sins of correcting the wrong, fighting oppression, that’s what I mean, correcting the wrong. Deal with your own life first, your family, your community, and your friends. Because that’s where most of your resources will be.
I think one of the dangers we see, because it’s easy to do on the media, on the Internet, social media, and the like, is all of a sudden make all these foreign places, California’s foreign to us, frankly, very far away, different politics and everything else, our own personal cause all of a sudden. We have our own problems in our own backyard. We have a lot of that, unfortunately.
People seem to be causeless. They want to grab a cause. Take care of your family.
Take care of your life. Take care of your church. Take care of your community first.
Always. So, and I want to disabuse us here before I get into repeating the definition and applying it to our lives, because the Bible here is applying it to our lives. And I will speak of Christ.
There is a stick people like to use. There’s different ways in which they describe and use the stick to beat us with. And one phrase I think captures it well.
Oppression ceases when equality increases. A lot of little phrases they like to throw out there. Memes, perhaps.
Oppression ceases when equality increases. That’s a stick they beat Christians with. What they’re saying is the lack of equality is oppression, by definition.
Catch that? That’s what they’re saying. Got to listen. Of course, you don’t always know what they’re saying, because I’ve talked to some, or read about some of their stuff, and they don’t even know what they’re talking about sometimes.
It just becomes something, a mantra, they hear in the colleges, or in high school and the like, right? So this is one of them. Now, the first thing to remind ourselves is inequality, or equality, is a mathematical term. And we’re not numbers.
It’s a mathematical term. There are unequal outcomes, and unequal outcomes do not mean oppression. That’s often what they’re saying.
Oh, look. You’re an American, and you’re an American. You grew up in America.
You grew up middle class. You grew up middle class. You lost all your inheritance, because you were poor decisions.
You spent it on loose women, fast cars, drugs, alcohol, whatever. And you over here, you squirreled your money away. You worked hard.
You worked two jobs, etc., etc. You have two different outcomes. And, of course, you get enough of that, you’re going to have a collective group, and you’re going to have a collective day that you should think in terms of groups today.
You get enough people, you’re going to see these effects. One person is not like the other when it comes to outcome, when it comes to, quote, unquote, equality and justice and oppression. Oh, he’s oppressed.
He didn’t keep his middle class inheritance. He lost it all. It wasn’t his fault.
They over there, they have, he over here, he has an advantage. He was raised a certain way, and so it’s his fault. Whatever the case may be, these are wrong ways of looking at things.
That’s not oppression. That’s not about justice. It’s poor choices, sinful choices, or a mixture of both.
Or sometimes it’s simply providence. You made great choices. It wasn’t a sinful choice.
But your house caught on fire. The neighbor threw a fire brick at it. I don’t know.
That’s not how oppression works. In other words, we must remember, it’s a verbal ploy for individual greed often. As Dr. Sowell reminds us, envy was once known as one of the seven deadly sins.
Today it goes by the new name, social justice. See, if equality is the definition of justice, and if being unequal is oppression, then we of the Christian faith are very oppressive because we believe that women must submit and men must lead. That’s not equal, they say.
You are by definition, and some of them see this and say it, oppressive. Christianity is oppressive. We want to get rid of oppression, so we should get rid of what? Christianity.
Yes. This is where we are, unfortunately. Children.
We have unequal treatment for children and women. Oh, that’s right. How’d that phrase go? Women and children first? That’s an unequal outcome, isn’t it? When the Titanic went down, that was an unequal outcome.
Heaven forbid! Was that oppressive? No. It was oppressive to the guys. No, you wouldn’t even use the word oppression.
It’s the wrong word. So let’s be careful, and I hope that stick doesn’t stick to you. So again, the definition I have of oppression, that having authority or advantage or power and violating God’s law against those under them who don’t have the advantage, the power, or the authority.
That’s how it’s used often, this particular word. So we have Genesis 16.6. Genesis 16.6. Sarah oppresses Hagar. Remember that? I mean, I wouldn’t want to live in that household.
More than one wife going on here, and the kids and everything else. She oppresses him. And when Sarah dealt harshly, oppressed her, she fled from her presence.
And you can imagine how a master could do that with the handmaid, making her do extra work, staying up longer, and the like. So taking advantage of her by her position over her. Sarah was doing that.
Genesis 31.39. We have another instance of a man who has an advantage. Not authority as such, and he’s another household laban. Wasn’t his father.
Yeah, he worked for him all those years. Jacob did. And Laban strung him along, right? Okay, again, a little more, keep working a little longer.
He’s taking advantage of him. And that word there is oppressed. So oppression, I think, is just a very broad term at times.
But when it comes down to it, you can find the specific sins that are going on, can’t you? Not just a vague idea here. In both these cases, you can see the specific sins of a person in authority, or advantage or power of another, and using it against them. And contrary to God’s law.
Remember, I used God’s law as a definition. That’s how you define oppression and the specifics. Exodus 1.11 and following.
The Egyptians oppress Israel. It wasn’t just the slave labor. Israel had slaves, okay? And they had certain rules to protect the slaves, as you recall.
Here, they’re told to build bricks. Make their own bricks, eventually. They just made it worse, and they kept piling it on, making it harder and harder for them to actually do their job.
That was oppression. It was done intentionally. It was a person, in this case Pharaoh and his minions, taking a position of authority and violating God’s law against those beneath them.
It’s not the difference of position of authority. It’s not the inequality that’s oppression. It’s what you do with the inequality.
And violating God’s law. We have to remember that. So, James 2.6. I mentioned the New Testament, which is concerned about the widows, and it’s concerned about the poor.
But James 2.6 is quite interesting. It has a word that can be translated oppress. But you have dishonored the poor man.
Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts. See that? Do not the rich oppress you. Not just oppress you vaguely.
Oh, he’s rich. He’s oppressing me just by being rich. Oh, no.
But by dragging them into the courts. So, again, it’s a specific violation of God’s law. Either dragging them into the courts because, as he said elsewhere, you’re not supposed to go to the secular courts.
Corinthians, right? Or maybe they’re a pagan rich in general just violating God’s law and going after them. And as another reminder, poor people can oppress poor people. Some poor people have an advantage.
It may not be a monetary advantage. It may be a possession advantage, not just money. You’re in a poor neighborhood, but you have a little better education, you have a little better connections, and you use it to abuse people in your neighborhood.
Poor people oppress poor people. Let us not forget. So, fighting oppression in society, which is what we have in Zechariah 7.10 and in Micah, as I pointed out, because God is concerned about us being obedient to his law.
When unjust laws affect large segments of society or there’s a lack of enforcement of just laws in society, we have, by that definition, a social justice problem. There I’m defining it more carefully. It’s just a large-scale problem of specific sins.
Briberies, as we read in Micah and the like, or the lack of enforcing godly laws. There’s a big social justice issue. Abortion.
It’s out-and-out murder. And the worst thing about it is it’s done with a smile and professional business suit. Sterile buildings far away that no one sees, although it’s in the midst of us in the cities of a holocaust.
That’s a justice issue. It’s a specific violation of God’s law of murdering people. And the church should preach against that, as we do, and the like.
You have it on a local scale, like in Chicago, where you have gang-controlled areas. That’s a justice issue as well. And if we had churches over there, we would pray for them, and hopefully they could preach the gospel to these people.
And if these people are asking questions about justice and about God’s law, they could tie it into the gospel, and they could tie it into the fact that, yes, the church believes in justice as defined by God’s law. And then we have dangerous precedents that can bring about harm in society, because equality is such a golden word, such a beautiful concept by the pagans. It’s been abused, of course.
They believe equality is the best thing ever. In the 80s and 90s, when some of the women went after the New York Fire Department, I mentioned this before in Sunday school classes, I recall, and they won. They said, we want to be firemen, even though we can’t, you know, bust down a door, because men have 99.9% of the time three times more muscle mass in the upper body part than a woman, just even a skinny guy like I was when I was a teenager.
Period. Oh, no, that’s not fair. It’s an unequal outcome.
Woe is me. Woe is me. And they won, and they got in.
If you have more and more laws like that, what’s going to happen? I don’t want a fireman rescuing me, thank you very much. They couldn’t carry me, they couldn’t bust down the door, they couldn’t carry me down the stairs. All in the name of so-called social justice and the like, it’s dangerous.
It’s a dangerous thing. And later on, of course, they went back to New York City and sued them, or tried to, for hiring them in the first place, because they found out this is a really hard job, a strenuous exercise and efforts. In fact, Canada, in 2000, as I was researching that, in 2000 or 2001, the Supreme Court said, you have to change some of the tests so the women can pass them for the fire department.
Don’t go to Canada. Final oppression in the church. Now, in society, of course, you vote.
Hopefully you’re informed. You can inform other people and teach them. And, in fact, when it gets bad enough, you must resist abuses of authority, as that faithful Christian man did when he would not call a person something they weren’t.
The teacher who lost his job. Final oppression in the church life. Sin oppresses you.
Fight it in your life. It’s described. The devil is described as an oppressor of God’s people.
He uses his advantage, his wily craftiness, in the world around you, in your weaknesses. He exploits them against you. See, that’s oppression.
Exploitation. You know, when they call up an old person at home, knowing that they’re not paying attention, they don’t understand what’s going on, they get scared very easily, and they take advantage of them. That’s oppression.
That’s what we’re talking. These are, again, specific ideas and words, aren’t they? Not just this vague idea you throw out there and say, I’m oppressed. It’s terrible.
Stop. So, in the church, in your own life, you have sins that oppress you. Fight them, brothers and sisters.
Recognize them. Identify them. And fight it.
We know. I’ve preached on that before, where you have two parts of sanctification. The put off, the put on.
Put off the sin, put off the evil thoughts, put off the evil emotions, and put on the righteousness. That is, the right thoughts to replace it, to crowd it out. That’s why we have meditation, reading of the Bible, for instance.
And that should motivate you as well and to change your emotions from sinful emotions to godly emotions. Jesus freed us, brothers and sisters, from the oppressive power of sin. Both in a justification, in an objective sense, and also in a subjective sense that we’re going through right now and experiencing the ebbs and flows in our fight and sanctification.
So, we’re called to do that not only individually in the church, but collectively. We should help one another in the church, take seriously God’s justice, and resist oppression, that is, exploitation of positions of power and violations of God’s law. Whether you’re a church officer or not, you may have advantages just by being rich in the church, as he mentions there in James.
They take you to court when they, by implication, shouldn’t be taking you to court. They’re exploiting you because they have the money to hire the best lawyers, perhaps. So, secondly, we have executing justice, is the call of the Christian.
Again, defined by God’s law, justice in the Bible, a broad idea. Many of the words are sometimes even defined as law, but it means giving someone their due, either morally or legally, either for acts of sin or acts of righteousness. It’s justice.
And as you recall, when I preached on justice, the second sermon, that it’s achieved, the goal is the same, but it’s achieved differently in the home, isn’t it? In the home, it’s a dictatorship. Benevolent dictatorship, but it’s a dictatorship. Right? The man’s the head of the household.
Parents do it a little differently with their kids. They’re not going to sit there and have a formal trial with all the evidence and have a lawyer going back and forth. You do that in society, partly because we don’t know each other.
We want to make it as objective as possible, right? So the means may differ, is my point, but the end goal is the same. Don’t forget that. People, again, in America, confuse those issues and the like.
So, how does this relate to the gospel? I said I was going to mention Christ. I did at the end of the other part. Here, it’s related insofar as big leaders in evangelical circles are saying things like this.
Here, this person has almost a million followers on Twitter, which means she probably has a lot more on Facebook and elsewhere, because Twitter always has lower numbers. This is what they wrote. When the gospel has become bad news to the poor, to the oppressed, to the broken-hearted and imprisoned, and good news to the proud, the self-righteous and privileged, instead, it is no longer the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It’s bizarre. She’s saying if it’s bad news to the poor. It may be bad news to the poor because the gospel says what? Repent! And if you’re poor and you don’t want to repent, you’re not going to call it good news, are you? It doesn’t make sense.
What she’s saying sounds kind of pious and good. It’s just gibbly-gook. But what she’s getting at, however, is this talk of the poor, the oppressed, the imprisoned.
See the language there? The language of justice and society. And then turns around and tries to say, apparently, that if it’s good news to me, I must be proud. I don’t know.
Self-righteous and privileged, instead. It is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s just not.
The worst understanding of that is just wrong. That’s not how you define gospel. The gospel is not the social justice.
I am not a social justice preacher. I am not a justice preacher in the sense of which these people define these things. I’m the preacher of the good news of Jesus Christ, who has freed us from the oppression of Satan and is freeing us from the oppression of sin and our sanctification.
And, yes, it makes an effect. The effect of the gospel does go across as 11 in society when there’s enough Christians following him and obeying him. That’s why we have Christian nations.
We used to have Christian nations. Yes, that’s true, but that’s not the gospel. And it may or may not happen.
I mean, it depends on God’s providence. Things are falling apart. The economy tanks.
You lose all your money. What’s the church going to do then? No, the gospel is the gospel. It’s not to be confused with the law.
That’s what I’m getting at. The church is, I’m a gospel preacher. I preach the word of God and it includes the law because the gospel uses the law, both to bring you conviction, bad news, right, and also give you direction in your life.
That’s good news. That’s your sanctification. It teaches you how to be holy and what that is.
And so it is related in that sense here to this whole sermon about justice and injustice, fighting oppression, and the like. And so that’s important to recognize today and not fall for that guilt trip or that confusion. I’m not sure what her point was.
So, justice for the widows and the fatherless, 1 Timothy 5.16, if any woman that believes has widows, has, if any woman that believes has a widow, let her relieve them and let not the church be burdened that it may relieve those who are widows indeed. And so in the first place, who wish to execute justice is defined by God’s law. He tells you the church to execute justice, to do the right thing.
There’s nothing in any widow that says, I’m a widow. She must have done good works, as you recall, and be, was it 60 or older. There’s restrictions by God’s law.
And we follow the restrictions. That’s justice. That is not oppression.
In the courts, widows should be treated differently than those who have a family as though they are subpar. That’s justice. If she goes to the court, she should be treated like anyone else who goes to the court with a just cause.
And not singled out because, hey, she doesn’t have all the money. Remember back then, the widows, the fatherless, the orphans, and even the stranger, didn’t have the network connections and often the money. They didn’t have the influence and the power.
Today, it’s not so much, right? A widow can make more money than a married family sometimes in today’s society. So that is not an absolute prohibition. In other words, when God says in Zechariah 7.10 about the widows, it’s in the context of them being disadvantaged and easy to exploit.
Like I mentioned, call up the old person and take advantage of them. It’s not so much today. So it’s not just a class, oh, it’s always the widows.
But we should also still be considered in caring for the widows because still, relative to many things, it is hard for them. So, the poor, as I mentioned as well, we must not oppress them, take advantage of them. Which poor are we talking about in Micah 2.2 and in Zechariah 7.10? Which poor? The poor in Egypt? The Russian poor.
We should be concerned, as I see this advertisement on TV once in a while, the Christians and the Jews together to take care of the Russian Jews that are poor. No, I’ll take care of the Christians first, thank you very much. And the Americans, the American Christians in particular.
Here, localism again. And we know, in Micah and Zechariah, what is he talking about? Again, the nation state, which is also a church. They overlap at the same time.
So he talks to them, he’s talking to them as church members and as citizens of Israel. And we are also citizens, we are also church members, although it’s, again, not overlapping here in America. So my point being, as I mentioned before in priesthood, that’s what he’s talking about.
And of course, it’s the deserving poor. With respect to them, pay the poor person on time. Deuteronomy 24, 14.
You want to execute justice for the widow? You want to execute justice for the poor? Pay them their money on time. Don’t play fast and loose with them, because you can. You can get away with it.
You can exploit them. You can take advantage of them, and they do. Here’s another way they took advantage of the poor.
Shea Holmes. I remember this very clearly. It was quite amazing.
It was one of the top owners. He said, yeah, I guess we gave out a little too many loans to people we shouldn’t have. Yeah, think back in 2008, pre-2008.
You see that? They’re taking advantage of the poor, but the poor person’s like, oh, this is great. It’s low interest or whatever, and I think I can get away with it. And the other person, usually the banks are going to say, you know, I don’t really think this is good for you, because you’re poor.
I see your past, your pattern. Do they really think that way? Some do, but I think many don’t. That’s not been my experience.
He even said it. We shouldn’t have given it to them. Well, if you shouldn’t, what are you doing? You’re exploiting them.
That’s oppression. You’re bringing them under the bondage of more debt that they can’t get out from under as readily. So you should give fair loans.
Consider their circumstances in the case of the loans there in Deuteronomy and Exodus, that they get their cloak back by the end of the evening. He’s not saying, what’s interesting there is what? God is not saying, they’re poor. Give it to them free.
No, they still have to give something to prove that they’re going to pay it back, right? But at the end of the day, they give them back to their cloak so they have something to keep them warm at night and they give you their cloak by implication the next day as they work off their debt. and then the strangers. I’ve talked about that as well.
Those who live among people who are not blood relatives in particular. And again, it’s the same kind of thing. They were a disadvantage in a foreign land.
They had a status and they had certain laws for them. And then, who is your brother? I skipped ahead and talked about that essentially. We know who our brothers are.
My family. My friends. My community.
My church. Those are your brothers. And so, when you have this man who worked 29 years at McDonnell Douglas jettisoned one year before he can get his pension.
One year before. Oh, we’re going to close that factory. You get nothing, buddy.
So he made a good choice. Back then, everyone did pensions in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. He’s expecting to still be there and it’s all gone in the mid-90s.
Was it right or wrong? I don’t know, but I think those kind of companies should be thinking if they’re a Christian, is this what I should do to a poor person? What I like? What does Christ say? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Would you like this to happen? What about setting aside that pension money for those 30 years because you said you’re going to do it and pay it to them at the end of the day even though you lost your job? That is the whole company folder, for instance. No, what usually happens is no one gets the money and the guy gets off scot-free or whoever, the CEO, etc., etc.
The whole system is messed up in many ways that way. I’m not saying I have the answer, but I’m saying we ought to be thinking that way for Christians and owners of businesses. So at the end of the day, brothers and sisters, in seeking justice, we must remember that we will not have it fully until Christ returns.
But we do have it fully in our justification sufficient enough that we stand before God’s law courts cleansed of all the oppression of sin and wickedness and continue to fight oppression in our own lives to be sure, to execute justice as we are able in our families, in our churches, in our neighborhoods, and pray for Christ’s return, brothers and sisters. Amen. Let’s pray.
Our God above, we are thankful for these words to remind us that we are not to oppress those who are at a disadvantage. It doesn’t have to be that specific group of people anymore, nor was it ever. That’s what it was typically for thousands of years, however, God.
And to execute justice for them, when they cry out for help and mercy, that we give it to them as we can or as they deserve in the case of the law courts, God above. But to begin and to do these things among each other, God, to think of each other in these biblical terms of the law of God and to pray for this nation that has a lot of confusion in this regard and is bringing damage and even harm upon the churches. Protect us, God, we pray.
May we long for the great day when Christ Jesus returns and we shall have perfect justice. Give us patience to that end, we pray. Amen.