Peter Barnes | Exodus 23:1-9
SERMON NOTES
JUSTICE FOR ALL
Exodus 23:1-9
– the whole approach to anti-discrimination is wrong.
1. No partiality versus no discrimination.
– Ex.23:3, 6, 9; Lev.19:15; Deut.1:17. The NKJV has ‘no partiality’; the NIV has ‘no favouritism’.
– even the king had to obey the law of God – 1 Kings 21:1-3, 17-19. God is impartial.
– 1 Peter 1:17; James 2:8-9; Rom.2:10-11.
2. God’s commandments versus society’s relativism.
– in September 2016 the Victorian Tertiary Admission Centre announced that it would give special consideration for any homosexual or transgender students who had been discriminated against. God’s ban on showing partiality exists side-by-side with His moral commandments.
3. The rule of law versus the rule of lawyers.
– in 1973 the US Supreme Court found the right to abortion in the US Constitution’s implied ‘right to privacy’. It is not there in the first place. C. S. Lewis: ‘It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
(a) God gives clarity; the anti-discrimination approach promotes arbitrariness;
(b) God gives freedom; the anti-discrimination approach makes for the possibility of tyranny;
(c) God gives order; the anti-discrimination approach makes for moral chaos;
(d) God provides for forgiveness; the anti-discrimination approach makes for self-justification.
All in all, apart from God’s law, we arrive at Isaiah 5:20.