Today we begin Exodus chapter 23
For the Complete Jewish Bible, click here.
For the King James version, click here.
“You are not to repeat false rumors; do not join hands with the wicked by offering perjured testimony. Do not follow the crowd when it does what is wrong; and don’t allow the popular view to sway you into offering testimony for any cause if the effect will be to pervert justice. On the other hand, don’t favor a person’s lawsuit simply because he is poor.”-Exodus 23:1-3
We’re not necessarily going to examine every Torah ruling and stipulation in detail.
Some of the laws are pretty straightforward and would require no further explanation individually.
I want to focus more on the underlying principles and patterns.
Chapter 23 begins with a set of laws intended to enforce the concept of fairness before BOTH the law and in social behavior, regardless of one’s social standing.
The prohibition on bearing false rumor reminds us of the 3rd of the 10 Words of God which is to “not take the Lord’s Name in vain”.
However, rather than pertaining to solemn oaths, it addresses the capacity of ordinary speech to do harm.
Now if there is any one injunction most pertinent to our day and age, it has got to be “Do not follow the crowd when it does what is wrong”.
As we live in a world hellbent on the perversion of justice and the doing away of God’s Laws, it is now more important than ever to cling to God’s Word despite the many pressures and temptations to do otherwise.
To put it in modern terms, these list of rules stand firmly opposed again political correctness, relativism, favoritism, tolerance, and the end-justifies-the-means mentality.
And do you know what all these terms represent?
They represent a political and social philosophy that is now the pride of Europe and that many want to see adopted in the USA.
I am talking about SECULAR HUMANISM.
Make no bones about it folks, God’s Torah is diametrically opposed to secular humanism.
The dictionary definition of secular humanism is “any set of beliefs that promotes human values without specific allusion to religious doctrines”.
The “without specific allusion to religious doctrines” part basically means MINUS God.
I’m gonna make another bold statement.
Secular humanism is at the root of ALL our declining societies around the world.
Any society or belief system that attempts to carry on in arrogant defiance of God’s Laws is bound to fail and of course the opposite is true.
Let’s be honest with ourselves.
Isn’t it true that it is our human nature to want to follow the crowd?
If it wasn’t so, God wouldn’t have found it necessary to give us these commands, would He?
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