Week 12: Righteousness exalts a nation

 

What is truth?

This question by Pilate recorded in John 18:38, indicates that in his view truth is relativistic. Having dealt with many forms of truth – in diverse shapes and colours – during his rule over Israel, he had lost the ability to recognize the absolute Truth – Jesus Christ – standing before him.

Had he but waited a moment for the answer, possibly Jesus would have reiterated the verse in John 14:6:

 I am the way, the truth, and the life.

That moment gone, it didn’t take long for Truth to be crucified, something that has been happening in nation after nation. In our own country, the ruling party had all but buried the truth and sung the Requiem; but the Supreme Court and the Association of Democratic Forum stepped up in time.

Not that other countries are doing better.

Take the U.S.A., the gold standard for most things.

Talking about Abraham Lincoln, Chat GPT tells me that his sense of righteousness played a significant role in shaping his leadership and decision-making during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history.

But look at America now.

The presumptive Republican candidate for presidency Donald Trump has been charged in four separate criminal cases related to his business and political activities, bringing his total criminal charges to date to 91. This includes his alleged attempts to overturn the 2024 presidential election result and efforts to conceal hush-money payments to a porn star!

But curiously Trump is still the darling of American evangelicals, a fact that amazes evangelicals in other countries. (But that’s another story)

And what about the alternative?

The Democratic opponent who we thought was pure as the driven snow, is now engulfed in troubles of his own over the shady shenanigans of his son Hunter.

So whoever wins, America stands to loose. A crying shame that in a nation of 300 + million people, you can’t find one good man to govern the country.

Psalm 14: 2-3 records that:

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, they have together become corrupt; there is none who does good, no, not one.

Righteousness exalts a nation,
But sin is a reproach to any people.

there doesn’t seem to be much hope for either nation. The story is the same from the prophet Isaiah’s times (Isaiah 1,5 & 10) and is widely applicable:
Your princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: everyone loves gifts, and follows after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come to them. Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!

Woe to them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed;

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;

Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,

And prudent in their own sight!

Look also at Micah 3 & 7:

the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.

The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean on the LORD, and say, is not the LORD among us? none evil can come on us.

But Jesus sounds a different drumbeat:

For I tell you, unless your righteousness (your uprightness and your right standing with God) is more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)

As always: Whoever has ears, let them hear. (Matthew 13:9)

Examine yourselves 2 Cor. 13:5. The video below might be helpful:

 

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