Social Justice Pharisees - Watch Out For Them

All right, today I wanted to do a video that was inspired by a

Twitter conversation that I saw. I actually don't think I was involved in this conversation, but I saw it, and it was between a guy that was responding to Jamar Tisby, but the conversation wasn't between Jamar Tisby.

He doesn't really tend to respond too much to tweets, but one of Jamar's disciples was responding.

What was so interesting about it is that Jamar says a lot of things that are very socialistic.

I don't know if Jamar would call himself a socialist. I think he would, actually, if you asked him directly. I bet you he's open about the fact that he's a socialist, but maybe he isn't, so I don't know that for a fact.

He says a lot of things that are very socialistic. He talks about public funds, as if that's a real biblical category.

It isn't. Public funds being used to help the poor and things like that, and there's no such thing as public funds.

They only become public because they're stolen, and that's a biblical idea, so we can talk about that. Anyway, the point is, though, that he says a lot of these things, and he gets challenged a lot.

Again, he doesn't really respond to it. Somebody had challenged him on something he said that was very socialistic, and one of his disciples responded and said that the

Bible ... Basically, something like ... I don't have the exact tweet. I didn't really want to put too much effort into showing you this tweet.

Besides, he wasn't a blue checkmark, so I don't want to put him on blast on my video. Anyway, the disciple of Jamar said that the

Bible does not prescribe a form of government, and so because the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of government, then socialism might be okay.

If you want to help the poor and use socialist policies to do it, that might be okay. Tim Keller said something similar.

Tim Keller also says that the Bible ... Well, God's not a Democrat or a Republican. Ooh, he really went out on a limb there, but yeah, he likes to make it seem like the realm of politics is almost neutral.

You could be a Democrat or a Socialist, which is basically the same thing, or you can be a Republican or a

Socialist, and God's way is kind of in between, or maybe a mix of both, or something like that.

Look, I'm not a Republican myself, and I know a lot of you guys are, but the reality is that the

Bible is not neutral on these topics. The Bible actually does give you specific commands on how to help the poor, and one of the ways it does not say is okay is to steal from the rich.

In other words, if your tax system takes more money from the rich than it does from the poor, that's showing partiality, and that's actually against the scripture.

The scripture specifically calls that kind of taxation out. Marcus Pitman on his show

Law and Profits, you've got to watch that show. It's a fantastic podcast. He talks about this all the time, how there was a head tax in the

Bible, but the Bible specifically says the poor doesn't pay less, and the rich doesn't pay more, and so therefore, if you have a tax system where it's not that way, where it's a progressive tax system, where I end up paying more than the poor person, or a bigger percentage, or whatever it is, that's actually evil in God's eyes, so Socialism is evil in God's eyes, very specifically evil in God's eyes.

If you're watching this, and you're saying, well, you know, the Bible's kind of ambiguous. Why would God be ambiguous about that?

Honestly, God is very concerned with who we have sex with, and how we have sex with them, and what genders, because that's very important.

I'm not saying it's not important. I'm not trying to be flipping about it, because that is very important. Adultery is a serious sin.

It destroys societies, right? God's very careful about giving us all the do's and don'ts there, but he just decided that politics, which is one of the primary ways that people engage in the world, yeah, just leave it up to them.

Come on, man. Come on. We have this big book of law in the Bible, a big, gigantic book of law, and you're saying, well, you know,

God's ambiguous. I always find that so ridiculous. In the psalm singing debate as well, there's a lot of churches that don't sing any psalms.

I'm not a psalmody -only guy, right? I know a lot of people that I respect that are psalmody -only, and I love them, and I think they have a lot of good points.

I'm not a psalmody -only guy, but to neglect the psalm, there's a big book of songs in your

Bible, and you're just like, eh, I want to sing Oceans. I just don't get that. I don't get this.

We've got this big book of law, and you're telling me that God doesn't prescribe a form of government. Yes, he does.

Yes, he does. Now, he doesn't give you every detail, obviously. What the

Bible does is it gives you the 10 commandments, and then it gives you case laws. It gives you how do you apply the law, the commandments in this instance or in that instance, and it's not exhaustive.

God's people would say, okay, well, the death penalty is required in cases of murder, right, and so therefore,

God's people can't just go, okay, well, if somebody murders, you know what? Let's give them some candy. That'll be the good punishment.

We can't do that. We actually have to look at the law and say, okay, how do we apply the general equity of the law? Execution for people who murder.

Do we have to stone them to death? I don't think we have to stone them to death, but they have to be executed. That's justice, right?

That's justice. That's a specific form of justice, and so to say that the Bible doesn't prescribe these things is just another words of saying what the

Bible says, I don't like it, and that's the Old Testament. The church doesn't have to do that kind of stuff.

That's ridiculous. The New Testament talks about the equity of the law of God all the time. Paul applied the equity of the law of God all the time, and so that's ridiculous, but even more so, this is something that I thought is just so amazing.

This guy who was in this Twitter debate who said that the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of justice, so socialism might be okay.

He's a social justice warrior, just like Jim Artisby, a social justice warrior, just like Tim Keller, a social justice warrior, and all these guys are telling us that the

Bible doesn't prescribe a form of justice, and here's the reality. If you're going to tell me in one breath that the

Bible doesn't give you the form of government that we ought to apply, and at the same time, try to accuse ...

Sometimes they do it indirectly, but sometimes they do it directly. Try to accuse Christians of sin for voting for a certain politician or certain policies.

You are admitting you are a Pharisee. You're saying the Bible doesn't tell us what to do, but then you're saying you're in sin if you don't do what

I say. If the Bible's not commanding it, but you're calling it a sin, that is Phariseeism.

That is Phariseeism. To say that the Bible, like Tim Keller said, the Bible doesn't prescribe a form of government, if you do that and then you start to put any kind of moral obligations, any kind of moral yokes on my neck, repent from your sin.

That is wicked to do that. I don't do that. I say the Bible does put obligations on Christians in terms of politics.

It does, and so when I say you need to be in more conformity with the Bible, you might disagree with me, but at least

I'm not being a Pharisee. At least I'm not making up my own law and saying that you're held accountable for it. All of you never

Trumpers, if you don't think that the Bible has a specific form of justice in mind, a specific command when it comes to politics that we can apply today, how dare you be a never

Trumper? How dare you? See, the law of God is central to this debate, and so until you social justice warriors find out about the law of God and start applying it specifically, we're never gonna get anywhere because you're just making up your own stuff just like the

Pharisees and calling it holy. That's not what we should do as Christians. The reality is that if you use the argument that the

Bible doesn't prescribe a form of government and then you try to hold other people accountable with how they engage in politics, you're in sin, you're a

Pharisee, and it's time to repent. It's time to repent. Hope this was helpful. God bless. I remember when

I was first converted to Christ, I went to Tim Keller's church for a while.

I lived in New York City at the time, and then I went to a smaller church, which was more of a

Baptist -y type church. Not to say that Tim Keller's isn't a Baptist -y type church, it very much is, even though it is a

Presbyterian church, but anyway, so I remember it was kind of one of these hipster churches, and I wasn't a hipster, but for some reason

I was attracted to this church, and I remember that it was one of those churches that really dimmed the lights and things like that when they were doing songs, and look, some of you probably go to churches like that.

I'm not saying that that's necessarily wrong, but personally, I always dreaded our worship time in some ways, and the reason

I did is because some of the songs that we would sing were super girly, and I don't mean just like the music,

I mean the music was girly, there's no question about it, but the lyrics themselves were very feminine, you know, put your heart on Jesus' chest and listen to his heartbeat and stuff like that, and some of it was very pseudo -sexualized,

I dreaded those songs. That's not to say all of our songs are like that, we sang some good songs too, but I remember

I would dread, oh my goodness, I hope we're not gonna sing one of those songs this week, and look, look, men don't like that stuff, but that's not why you shouldn't do it, but you shouldn't do it because it's not godly to do that kind of stuff, let's not feminize and sexualize the scripture in areas where it's not supposed to be.

That's one reason why I love singing psalms, because the psalms are real, man, there's emotion there, and there's all kinds, a full range of emotions, you know, you get anger, you get sadness, you get grief, you get passion, or all these things, the psalms are so good for that, so every day when

I go to church now, in some ways it's because I pick the songs, but I don't always pick the songs, but we sing some hymns that are very theologically deep and beautiful, but we also sing psalms every

Sunday, and those are God's battle hymns, and it's amazing, and the reality is, guys, men get more out of that, but so do women, so I would urge you to consider singing psalms, and I'm not saying you shouldn't even sing only psalms, but please include psalms in your worship, it is awesome, men like it, and you'll learn some scripture at the same time.