Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does the Bible Advocate for Social Justice? | Questions You're Asking | Amos 5.24

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

What does the Bible say about politics and social issues? Should religious matters be kept separate? Hear how https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastor Keith Simon) approaches the subject in this episode as he continues our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/questions-youre-asking/ (Questions You're Asking). Interested in more content like this? Scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including the discussion on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/should-the-church-tolerate-diversity/ (Should the Church Tolerate Diversity? ) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're answering questions that you're asking. A lot of these are coming from our Facebook page. So if you follow 10-minute Bible Talks on Facebook, you can ask questions that you want us to answer or vote on questions that other people are asking. Today's question I think is really interesting. someone asked on our Facebook page, does the Bible advocate for social justice? And I think the answer is

absolutely. When God is king, he justly rules over all things and all people. God ruled over a just world in the Garden of Eden before sin entered. And one day soon he will return and fully establishes kingdom of love, justice, and mercy. Until then, we are to pray that his kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I think that every person, regardless of whether they are a Christian or an atheist or of a different religion or of no religion at all, I think every person is made in the image of God. And therefore, I think every person wants a just society or what we might call social justice. But in our pluralistic culture, people have really different ideas about what makes a just society. And sometimes people call something an issue of justice

as a way to shut the other side up, as a way of saying, look, no good respectable person could possibly disagree with me. It seems obvious to me that Christians can't just blindly be for whatever the culture is excited about and calling a social justice issue at the moment. Just because something is called the social justice issue doesn't mean that Christians can and should support it. But if social justice means working for a world that is shaped according to God's will, if social justice means working for a world that reflects God's character, that reflects God's justice, then of course Christians should be for that. It's almost like there are two questions here. The first one is, does the Bible advocate for a just society? Yes. Now, the second question is, what forms a just society? And of course,

there's plenty of debate about that. Christians should be working for a society that conforms to God's will. We're going to focus on the first question today. Does the Bible call Christians to work for a just society? Now, some Christians believe, and I think wrongly believe, that Christians shouldn't get involved in cultural issues, that Christians should stick to spiritual things, that Christians should just preach the gospel and focus on helping people find forgiveness in Jesus, that Christians get distracted when they think about social justice. Now, again, I don't think that's the biblical perspective, and I'll tell you why more in a second. But for just a moment, let's think about the world like those Christians who say that we should just focus on the gospel, think about it. And I think we'll see that even those Christians think that the church should speak about issues such as abortion. They are probably very pro-life, and rightly so. They probably think that Christians should think about sexual ethics and talk about that and take those issues into the voting booth with them.

and have those issues on their mind when they go into the voting booth. So it's interesting that even Christians who don't want the church to get caught up in social justice issues have some issues that they do think the church should speak on. Tim Keller said something really interesting. He said, look, there are four contemporary issues that everyone is talking about today that the Bible is really clear on. and they are racial justice, care for the poor, sexual ethics, and an ethic of life. And Keller pointed out that no major political party has a biblical perspective,

a really biblical perspective on all four of those issues. So Christians can't just identify with a particular political party thinking that somehow that is the biblical party or the Christian party. But let's get back to the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus is the saving king who will return to fully establish his kingdom of love, justice, and mercy, and that that gospel saves both individual sinners and the world we live in. What God has joined together, let no one separate.

Jesus doesn't. Jesus asked where the greatest commandment was, and he replied, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Now, both of those commandments are quotations from the Old Testament. What you might not know is that when Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself, he was quoting from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, a book that a lot of Christians are really unfamiliar with.

He was quoting from Leviticus 19. That's where the call to love our neighbor as ourselves is. And Leviticus 19 fleshes out some ways that we are to love our neighbor. Now remember that Jesus says that in a sense, everyone is our neighbor. And Leviticus 19 says, we love our neighbor when we care for the poor, when we're honest with each other, when we protect each other's property, fight oppression, pay fair wages, ensure fairness in the legal system, in the courts. We love our neighbor when we're careful to protect our neighbor's reputation and don't damage it through slander, when we care for strong.

strangers and immigrants. So if you just walk through Leviticus 19, what you find is that loving your neighbor is really practical. It's not so much touchy-feely as it is real actions that make a difference in people's lives. And it's not only in our personal life that we are to love our neighbor, but loving our neighbor spills out into public life, what some people might even consider politics. But all of this is motivated by the gospel. We care for others because in Jesus God cared for us. There are numerous biblical commands to care for the orphan and the widow. Now that doesn't mean that we should only try to save their soul.

It means that we should help them body and soul meeting physical and spiritual needs. And we pursue justice for all people, not just Christians, not just good people. We pursue justice for all people because all people are made in God's image. Imagine a person from a different country visiting the United States. They know nothing about United States history. And they're on a tour through the state of Virginia. And they come to the Mount Vernon Estate, which is preserved as a national monument and treated as an object of great worth.

And this person who's visiting, this foreign visitor, notices that they're a lot of lot of other Virginia plantation houses that are more beautiful. They have more architectural merit than the house that Mount Vernon does. And they're confused as to why the Mount Vernon house is a national monument and why it's treated with such respect when these other houses that are more beautiful aren't treated as well. Well, you might respond to your friend that this house in Mount Vernon was the house of George Washington, who is the founder of the country. In other words, the internal merits and quality of the house are irrelevant. We treasure the owner, and therefore we honor his house. Because that house was precious to him, and we revere him, the house is precious to us.

So we must treasure each and every human being as a way of showing due respect for the majesty of their owner and creator who is none other than God. That idea that everyone is equally valuable and worthy of dignity and respect is radically biblical. Aristotle believed some people are born to be slaves. The natural inclination of the human heart is to label some people as others, some people as barbarians, some people as unimportant, some people as unworthy of justice. In his fight against racial injustice, Dr. King famously cited that every human being is made in God's image. He quoted the prophet Amos calling for a day when justice would roll down like mighty rivers.

His argument was a Christian argument. Our neighbors who don't acknowledge the Bible as inspired by God still draw on it to make their argument that we should have a just society. on what other basis could they possibly call for justice for every person, if not that every person is made in God's image. Let's close with this. God had pretty harsh words for those who think they can attend worship service and prayer meetings and Bible studies and ignore the cries for justice from people in need. In Isaiah 58, God rebukes his people for going about their religious duties

while not caring about justice. Isaiah 58 says, No, this is the kind of fasting I want. Free those who are wrongly imprisoned. Lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them.

And do not hide from relatives who need your help. Justice issues can't be done. dismissed as only social issues. They are gospel issues, biblical issues. As Christians, we are called to work and pray for God's kingdom to come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritual. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.