A House Divided

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Short Summary
The discourse explores the biblical reasons behind the destruction of Israel, emphasizing that God’s greatest anger was toward societal injustice—specifically the exploitation of the poor, widows, orphans, and sojourners by the wealthy elite. It connects these ancient warnings to modern issues such as economic inequality, immigration, systemic racism, and the moral failings of contemporary society, urging listeners to recognize and reject messages that align with worldly greed and division, and instead to embrace justice, love, and unity as commanded in Scripture.

Long Summary
Detailed Bullet-Point Summary of the Discourse on “A House Divided” (Approx. 500 words)

Opening and Context
– The discourse opens with greetings and expressions of love from various brethren and the Columbus class.
– The speaker thanks Brother Jeff for prayer and Brother John Assife for sending special love.
– Emphasis on absorbing the theme rather than memorizing individual scriptures.
– Key scriptures referenced: Jeremiah chapter 7, Hebrews 5:14, and related prophetic texts.

Theme Introduction: “A House Divided”
– Central question posed: What was the most destructive event to God’s people after the Flood? Answer: The destruction of the temple.
– Jeremiah 19 depicts God’s severe judgment (Babylonian siege) with vivid imagery of famine, slaughter, and desolation.
– The discourse aims to understand why such harsh punishment came upon Israel.

Six Sins Leading to Destruction (Jeremiah 7)
– God gave Israel six specific commandments as a test to prevent destruction:
1. Execute true justice among each other.
2. Do not oppress the sojourner (immigrant/foreign resident).
3. Do not oppress the fatherless.
4. Do not oppress the widow.
5. Do not shed innocent blood.
6. Do not go after other gods (idolatry).
– The people failed to obey these, leading to their downfall.
– The sins primarily involved social injustice and exploitation for personal gain—a “house divided” against itself.

The Importance of Justice and Social Responsibility
– Scriptural reiteration from Isaiah 1:17-18, Zechariah 7:8-9, Ezekiel 22:7, Jeremiah 22, and Psalms highlighting repeated calls to justice and care for vulnerable groups.
– Wealth and unjust gain were central issues; the rich exploited the poor and vulnerable.
– Psalm 73 expresses envy of the wicked’s prosperity despite their injustice.
– God hates financial oppression and exploitation more than many other sins.

Modern Applications and Examples
– The discourse applies these ancient lessons to modern society, especially America.
– Observation of extreme wealth disparity and exploitation reminiscent of biblical Israel’s sins.
– Examples of historical American industrialists (Rockefeller, Carnegie):
– Rockefeller’s monopolistic practices (“Cleveland Massacre”) involved crushing competitors through unfair railroad rebates.
– Carnegie’s steel factories with unsafe conditions and violent suppression of labor strikes (“Homestead Strike”).
– These men attended church yet engaged in exploitative behaviors, showing hypocrisy.
– Quotation from Brother Russell (Fourth Volume) condemns extravagant spending amid widespread poverty, emphasizing that wealth often costs lives.
– The rise of the “prosperity gospel” is critiqued as a church message defending the wealthy rather than the poor.

Economic Injustice Today
– Consumer debt dominates the U.S. economy (~62% of GDP), excluding medical debt.
– Wealth inequality is stark; billionaires pay a lower tax rate than average Americans.
– Nearly half of Americans live on $25,000 or less annually.
– CEO pay has increased over 1100%, while minimum wage barely doubled.
– James 5:1-4 condemns rich oppressors who withhold wages from laborers.
– America described as a “house divided” where greed and exploitation are normalized.

Treatment of the Sojourner (Immigrant)
– Biblical commands to love and not oppress the sojourner (Deuteronomy 10:19; Exodus 23:9).
– Sympathy and empathy are to be shown because Israel was once sojourners in Egypt.
– The U.S. has a history of welcoming immigrants but recent rhetoric is hostile and often false.
– Statistics show most detained immigrants have no criminal record; immigrants have lower incarceration rates than natives.
– Harsh policies like family separations and detentions are condemned.
– Historical immigration laws were minimal and reasonable; current hostility is seen as targeted and unjust.
– The discourse challenges racial and ethnic biases in immigration attitudes.

Addressing Racism and Historical Injustices in the U.S.
– Overview of systemic racism post-slavery: Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, segregation, voter suppression.
– Examples of racial violence: lynching postcards, Emmett Till, Tulsa Massacre.
– Modern racial injustices: police brutality cases (George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery).
– Research shows racial disparities in wrongful convictions.
– Calls for justice and equality in line with Jeremiah’s admonitions.

Critique of Contemporary Christian Messaging
– Mainstream Christianity often focuses on issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, homelessness, rather than economic injustice and exploitation.
– Russell Moore’s observation that many reject Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as “too liberal.”
– Warning against Christian messages that align with worldly powers or Babylon’s influence (Jeremiah 51:7).
– Rise of extremist and white nationalist rhetoric disguised in mainstream media (e.g., David Duke, Tucker Carlson and “replacement theory”).
– Importance of renewing the mind through scripture to resist conformity to evil.

Closing Exhortations
– Call to avoid division and instead preach peace, love, and comfort.
– Urging the audience to recognize and reject worldly injustices and embrace biblical justice.
– Final blessing and thanks.

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Key Bible Verses Referenced:

– Hebrews 5:14 – “Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, … who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
– Jeremiah 7 & 19 – Destruction of Jerusalem for sins including injustice, oppression, and idolatry.
– 1 Corinthians 10:6 – “These things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition…”
– Deuteronomy 6:5 – “Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”
– Leviticus 19:18 – “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”
– Isaiah 1:17-18 – “Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed…”
– Zechariah 7:9 – “Execute true judgment, show mercy and compassion every man to his brother.”
– Ezekiel 22:7 – “Extortion, robbery, and oppression have been committed among you.”
– Psalm 73:26 – “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
– 1 Timothy 6:9-10 – “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare… For the love of money is the root of all evil.”
– James 5:1-4 – “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl… The wages of the labourers who have reaped down your fields… cry.”
– Deuteronomy 10:19 – “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
– Exodus 23:9 – “Thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger…”
– Jeremiah 51:7 – Warning about Babylon’s deceptive influence.

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This discourse challenges believers to deeply examine the biblical reasons for Israel’s destruction related to social injustice, apply those lessons critically to modern society, and reject worldly messages that contradict God’s commands for justice, mercy, and love for the vulnerable, including immigrants and the poor. It calls for spiritual maturity, moral clarity, and active opposition to systemic oppression and division.

Transcript

Thank you, Brother Mike. Good afternoon, everyone. I hope everyone is ready for another discourse and then of course, ready for dinner. Although normally it’s not too hard to get people ready for dinner. I want to bring the love of the Columbus class, of which many are here and.

But those who aren’t here even want to really make sure that their love is shared with you, and thank you, Brother Jeff, for that wonderful prayer. Also want to bring a love of Brother John. Assife reached out to me a few hours ago and wanted his special love sent. Today is going to move really fast.

We’ve got a lot of slides, we’ve got a lot of information, and if you’re taking notes, you might want to come to me afterwards and ask for the PowerPoint because the important thing here is not to take notes on the individual Scriptures as much as absorb the theme of the thoughts. Okay? And we’re talking about a house divided. Really what we want to understand is Jeremiah chapter seven going to touch on Hebrews 5:14 and the fourth volume, and so if we look at Hebrews 5:14, this is the scripture that you already know.

You may not know it’s verse 14, but it says strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, or in the edsb says mature, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to be able to tell the difference between good and evil. There were some great talks on this given about 10 years ago here at the General Convention by both Peter Mora and, and David Stein as to are we talking about character or are we talking about doctrine? And I’m going to suggest it’s both, and I think that we would agree with that. The purpose of this discourse is to be able to stand, understand what we read on paper, what we absorb in our minds intellectually, what we’ve studied for years.

Can we see it in real time, in life? Can we see it in the world? Can we see it amongst ourselves? And so we’re going to talk about a subject that most of us have not spent a lot of time on. So here’s my first question, just to get the ball rolling mentally.

What was the most destructive event in the Bible to happen to God’s people?

What was the most destructive event? Now I’m saying to God’s people, not to all people, because if you’re going with the flood, that’s a great answer. But besides the flood, a punishment to God’s people, what was the greatest one? Does anyone know?

Destroying the temple. So what we have here in Jeremiah 19, I’m going to read some Scriptures, and, you know, again, if you have kids in here, keep in mind these are serious subjects, and so they might need some explaining later on. So I apologize for anyone that hears the messages that are harsh. It’s just.

It’s in the scripture. So. Jeremiah 19, Thus says the Lord, behold, I’m bringing such disaster upon you that the ears of everyone who hears it will tingle, and it’s the Babylonian siege. In Lamentations, Jeremiah goes on to discuss what already happened.

And he says, happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children.

He goes on to say, this place will be called the Valley of Slaughter. I will cause them to fall by the sword. I will give their bodies as food for animals and birds. I will make this city desolate, and anyone who walks by and sees it will be astonished.

This is a severe experience. So as we set the stage for how it happens, the question is, why? Why does it happen this way? Why such a harsh punishment for this nation? Jeremiah is told to give them six examples of sin.

And he says, if you can comply with just these six, we’re not even talking about the whole law. If you can get these six right, I’ll prevent it from happening, and so my question to you, this is the most destructive event for the history of Israel written in the Bible. What are the six things?

No idols. Thank you. Anyone have another one?

And so let’s pause for just a second and think about that. Do you think it’s important to understand the life lessons of the things that God made, that made God the angriest? Like, don’t you think that maybe we should know that First Corinthians 10. It’s not talking about this particular subject, but it does say, these things that happen in Israel, they’re for our admonition. They were examples for us to learn from.

And so here’s the stage. God tells Jeremiah to go to the east gate near the temple in Jeremiah chapter 7, and he says, preach these words, amend your ways and your deeds, and then he gives the six things. The first one is, truly execute justice, one with another, okay?

And then there’s the five more that are. Stop doing this. If you do not oppress the sojourner, oppress the fatherless, oppress the widow, shed innocent blood, go after other gods. That’s the list of the six things. I don’t let you stay here.

Now, obviously, we know that they didn’t do it, but that’s the list of the six things, and so the question comes up, at least. As I’m reading this subject and trying to digest and visualize what was happening in Israel, I’m asking myself, how are they oppressing the sojourners? How were they oppressing the fatherless? How were they oppressing the widows?

What were they doing? And the impression that I get is when Jeremiah stands up there and says these things to the nation of Israel, they might not have understood either. They might have been so wound up in their own system, in their own ways, that they were looking at him saying, what is this guy talking about? But what they were doing that made God angry is they were exploiting each other for personal gain. They were a house divided against itself.

And so we’re going to find that today in our world, specifically in our country, it’s the same, and this discourse is about questioning and challenging some of the social norms and our applied knowledge of the Scriptures. In observing the world today, do we know what makes God the most angry? When we listen to the rhetoric of the public or mainstream Christianity, do we know the difference between a message that God put his stamp on and a message that he doesn’t? So starting with what God wanted from Israel, very simple.

He wanted them to love God and to love each other, and Deuteronomy 6:5 says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. In Leviticus 19:18, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. We’re very familiar with those. God wanted his chosen people.

I think we heard brother Homer use the same word. He wanted to be a community.

He wanted them to love each other and to look out for each other. Now, we all know this scripture also. Come now and let us reason together. In Isaiah 1:18. Did you realize, because I didn’t, that if you go back one scripture to verse 17, it says, Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.

I didn’t realize. This phrasing is over and over and over again, and so now I’m on a hunt. What does this mean? What was happening?

I need to look up every single usage of this that I can, and so we read in Isaiah 1:23, we just read verses 17 and 18. But he says that your princes are rebels of companions and thieves. So we know that thieving was in the conversation. Everyone loves the bribe and runs after gifts.

And of course, no one’s taking care of the fatherless or the widows. We go to zechariah and in 7:9 and 7:8, render true judgments and show kindness to one another. Don’t oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, and then it adds one more, the poor, and so now we get another piece of the puzzle.

Now there’s poor involved. Ezekiel 22:7, again, it talks about the fatherless and the widow. It says, the sojourner is experiencing extortion. That’s another piece of it, and so in Jeremiah 22, it says, the hand of the oppressor and him who has been robbed.

So again, it’s the theft, the resident alien, the fatherless, the widow, and don’t shed innocent blood, and so now let’s tie that other piece also into this. Notice that this message is from three the made, the three major prophets, and from Zechariah. This is used over and over and over again. This is an important message, and God has embedded it into every major prophet and some of the minor prophecies because he really wants us to understand the message.

When we go to Jeremiah chapter 5, again, there’s more hints. These wicked people that he’s discussing, they lurk like fowlers lying in wait. They set a trap, they catch men. Therefore they become great and rich. They’ve grown fat and sleek.

They judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless. But here we know it’s wealth that’s the key. That’s what they’re doing. When we read Psalm 73, the end of the chapter has a wonderful verse. In verse 26, God is the rock of my salvation.

He’s my strength, and he is my portion forever, and it’s a beautiful scripture. But the beginning of the chapter talks about something wildly different, and he says, this is a psalm from Aesop. He says, I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

I was envious of of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They don’t have pains until death like other people. Their bodies are fat and sleek, and so there is a direct tie to Jeremiah chapter five. They’ve become rich.

Their bodies are fat and sleek. Wealth is involved, stealing is involved. They’re not in trouble like other people are. Violence covers them as a garment. That word violence there doesn’t necessarily mean physical.

It could, but it also means wrong, cruelty or injustice. They scoff and they speak with malice, and loftily they threaten oppression, and that oppression there could be unjust gain, extortion, and then verse 10, and this is in the Tanakh. It’s only in the talk.

It is it described this way, and I think it’s a Powerful translation. They pound his people again and again until they are drained of their very last tear. Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease. They increase in riches.

And so this is what God was most upset with. They had a system that favored the wealthy. They were exploiting people who were poor. Maybe they were in bad situations, maybe they didn’t know any better, but they were taking advantage of them for personal gain. Shedding innocent blood absolutely was literal in some respects.

And in other respects, things happened that probably weren’t literal. They were the intentionally deceitful and harmful methods that other people used and going after other gods. We know that one, hopefully we know that one. But when we look at what God hates the most, it’s people who take advantage of other people for personal gain, and it’s been right in front of us the whole time.

And it never stood out to me this powerfully before. In Zechariah 8:17, he tells us, don’t devise evil against each other in your hearts, and love no false oath for these things I hate.

Is this the answer that you were expecting when we asked, what does God hate the most? It’s not the one I was expecting. Is this the message of mainstream Christianity that we hear today? We’ll talk more about that in detail later. But this oppression, this was financial.

This was literally financial oppression. The wealthy didn’t understand because all they were concerned with was going after what they wanted, and Israel essentially is cast off as a nation for two main reasons. They’re worshiping false idols, and the upper class is taking advantage of the lower class, of the poor class, and when you read in Psalms, it says it very Interestingly in chapter 10, in verse 2, it says, the wicked hotly pursue the poor.

And in verse three, they boast about the cravings of their hearts. They bless the greedy and they revile the Lord.

That’s powerful. So. So just a brief moment as a cause of concern, how has this never been a topic of discussion? I’m so curious. I’ve had this talk with many of you leading up to this, and I’m just curious, how have we never talked about this before?

Of all the studies that we’ve had, thousands and thousands of studies, how are we not familiar with the most pointed and glaring message that God gave to the Israelites before their destruction? That’s what’s standing out to me, and, and again, we know the answer. We studied a lot of the same things over and over again.

It’s not that we’re doing anything wrong, but there is more meat on the bone that we don’t normally look into. So the actions that made God the angriest should be a commonly understood lesson, and when it comes to being mature and being able to tell the difference between right and wrong, I think this subject should be well known. So I wanted to give it its place today, and so the theme of the first portion is, it is a moral to build wealth on the backs of others who don’t have enough.

And as a society, God expects us to help each other, not taking advantage of each other. That’s pretty fair, and so that’s part one of the talk that’s understanding Jeremiah chapter seven. What upset God the most that caused this terrible siege and invasion. Next, we’re gonna.

What we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take this Message from Jeremiah 7 and we’re gonna apply it to ourselves today, to our country, to our financial system, to our treatment of the sojourner, and we’re gonna ask ourselves the question, do we really live in a Christian society? There’s a message out there in the public that we live in a Christian society. We’re gonna test it, and does this have the potential, or has it already, at some point, crept into our fellowship?

Because that’s something that we need to be aware of. So a few years ago, I’m at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas for work. Trust me.

And I’m walking into this hotel, and it is beautiful. I mean, it’s amazing, and I’m thinking to myself, you know, when we look at the Roman structures of the Greek structures that are still there, you know, 500 years ago, maybe this is demolished, but some of it’s still up, and we’re going to look at that and say, wow, how did they do these great and wonderful things? The problem is you walk 100 yards, which that’s the length of their driveway.

You walk 100 yards there to go take a walk down the street, and immediately I was surrounded by homeless people who could not take care of themselves. They were babbling, they were jumping, they were making strange noises. It’s not their fault. They were mentally incapacitated.

And I thought to myself, here is this amazing hotel, this gigantic, profitable structure that makes $12.7 million a day, and they can’t walk a hundred yards outside their building, see that people need help and just take care of it, and so it occurs to me how easily people can lose sight of their moral compass if money is the goal, and this is where Jesus tells us, you can’t serve God and man. They’re Two opposing things. To serve God is to not serve money, and to serve money is to not serve God.

You can’t do it first. Timothy 6, 9. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

So we’re going to look at the fourth volume for a minute because Brother Russell tells us about this and what’s coming in the fourth volume. It’s impossible for a man with a good heart to be satisfied with the world as it now is. No man can truly enjoy even what he earns, what he knows to be his own. Knowing that millions of his fellow man are in misery and want to meet the ragged and the shivering makes one almost ashamed to be well dressed and warm. One feels as though his heart were as cold as their bodies.

And he talks about the heaping of treasures. It’s evident, it’s obvious that we’re at a time preeminent above all others for the accumulation of wealth and for the wanton or extravagant living on the part of the rich, and so he goes through these different portions of the chapter of the Preparation of the Elements, which is the longest chapter of any chapter in any of the volumes. It’s about 120 pages long. He talks about some millionaires and how they got their millions.

He talks about the increase of poverty, and he talks about the fact that the wealthy and comfortable often find it difficult to realize the destitution of the poorest class, which is growing, and so the question becomes, can we be susceptible to the same thing? Can we also, if we’re financially well off, can we just kind of forget about what the poor are going through and just be totally numb to that experience of the human family? A few years ago on the History Channel, they did this great special.

It was called the Men who Built America, and they talked about Rockefeller and Carnegie and Vanderbilt and JP Morgan and Edison and what they did to build this country, and I thought to myself, this is the perfect title, because they did build America, but not just in the way that they think they did. These men had ruthless and selfish tactics, and those tactics, although ungodly, are revered by businessmen ever since wishing that they could come to the same levels of success.

But it’s a sin to become wealthy while taking advantage of others, and we’re going to take just two quick examples here. Rockefeller, one of the richest man that has ever lived, and so what we see here around 1870, 1871, he is handling 40% of all the cargo for all the railroads in the United States, and so the three largest railroads that come to him and they say, let’s make a deal.

You only use us, okay? And we’ll give you a heavy discount on your railroad costs. He says that sounds great, and he, they said, not only are we going to give you a discount, we’re going to raise the prices for everybody else. Everybody else who’s what?

Smaller, less successful. We’re going to make it harder for them, we’re going to make it easier for you, and if you want a little bit more, here you go. We’re going to give you a portion of the additional money we charge them, okay? And so there’s this incident called the Cleveland Massacre.

He was in Cleveland, Ohio, and there were 26 oil refineries and he bought 22 of them in six weeks, and so how do you think he did that? And he bought them at a discount. How does somebody walk in to 22 out of 26 businesses and convince them to sell to him? And a six week period, easy.

If you don’t sell to me, good luck. We’re going to raise your rates. We’re going to raise your shipping rates so high, nobody’s going to want to buy your oil. You’re going to go out of business. So you can sell it to me today for something or I’ll take it off you tomorrow for nothing.

Sound godly to you? This man went to church every Sunday. How about that? The New York Times reported in 1937, he was accused of crushing out the competition. Getting rich on rebates and railroads, bribing men to spy on the competition, making secret agreements.

I mean, all these different unscrupulous things that he did, and it worked, and it’s scary to think that not only was his example not called out by Christianity, but it was revered and complimented. When we go to Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Carnegie was worth $475 million by today’s standards. From what I hear, that’s pretty good.

This is 1890. Now it gets even better. 20% of all male deaths in the city of Philadelphia. 20%. That means for every man who died in Philadelphia, one of them happened inside the steel factory.

That’s how unsafe the conditions were, and so even though he was worth almost a half a billion dollars, it wasn’t enough. In 1890, he lowered their pay by 30%. People started dying even More often because he had him work longer hours for less pay, and the result was this incident called the homestead strike.

So the workers went on strike. Did he pay him more? Did he correct his mistakes? No. He hired a company called the Pinkertons to come in, and they killed 16 of the workers and said, get back to work.

And so these are not examples of people we should revere. These are examples of things that God is angry with, that it’s more important for one man to become so wealthy than help struggling families, and so this is an example of what we read in Jeremiah. Their pride is their necklace. Violence covers them as a garment.

There’s that wrong, that cruelty, that injustice, that unjust gain. They set up a trap. They catch men. These are literal examples of that happening in real time, and if this seems normal to anyone, if anyone here hears about their practices and says, oh, yeah, that’s fairly standard, that’s pretty normal, that tells us how easy it is for our hearts to separate from God, God’s ways, because of the example of the world.

On page 297 of the fourth volume, Brother Russell talks about this stable that somebody built for $700,000. Now, again, $700,000 today for a stable that’s a good stable in 1890. I mean, you could house a country in there. $700,000. He says, it’s fine to do that, to spend the money on that, if money is as free as air and water.

But you see, every dollar represents an average day’s labor. Hence, $700,000 for a stable represents 700 lives. 1,000 would meet the cost of the first 10 years of a child, and so the fancy stable affirms that the owner values the stable more highly or is willing that 700 should die so that his vanity might be gratified.

It talks about workers stop going to church. Simply put, the church and the ministry, they’ve been defenders of the possessors of wealth. What happened is the workers didn’t have much money anymore to donate to church. Well, if you run a church, what do you want? You want the donations?

Who’s going to give you the donations? The people with the money, and so they started changing their message to satisfy the business owners, and eventually it transforms over the next few decades into what we call today the prosperity gospel. He who fails to sympathize with the movement of labor, he who complacently or indifferently contemplates the awful results of the present economic and social conditions, is the opponent of the best interests of the human family.

Exodus 22, 25. If one of you is poor and you lend that money to, to that poor person, you will not be like a money lender. You will not lend it at interest. When you ask Google, hey, how much of our gross domestic product gdp? That’s the money, all of the money that’s made here on US Soil.

Of our gdp, how much is involved in consumer debt? And the answer is almost 62%. This is just for one quarter. They normally hover anywhere from 60 to 70%, and so that doesn’t include medical debt, which adds another 17%.

So the number one source, the number one source of wealth in our nation today is tied directly to consumer debt, which is tied directly to interest payments, and so what does that mean? It means this. If our citizens were both healthy and financially stable, our economy would collapse. There’s no money in the people being financially okay and healthy.

According to a 2021 White House study, the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% tax, while the average American family paid 13%.

Is $25,000 a year a lot to live on? Can anybody get by on $2,000 a month again before taxes? Because in the year 2020, 42.8% of our population across the US made $25,000 or less.

When the problem is that widespread, can we really blame all of the individuals or do we just recognize a faulty system that needs to collapse? The average pay increases from 1990 to 2000. Minimum wage in 1990 was $3.80, and as of 2020, it was 7.25. So it went up 190%. But the CEO pay starts off at 2.2 million and goes up to 24 million.

It’s an 1100% increase. In the same period of time, companies are quick to increase pay at the top and neglect the people who need the most. The rich get richer, and so when you look at James Chapter five, if you’ve ever wondered, what does that mean and how does that apply to our day where he says, come now, you rich and weep and howl for the misery is going to come upon you. The wages of the laborers who mojo feels their wages that you kept back by fraud are crying out against you.

What does that mean for us today? Because most people are getting paid. What I think it means is this, while you’ve been getting wealthy, the laborers who are doing the work to give you your wealth are going paycheck to paycheck. They’re barely getting by, and you act like it’s not your responsibility whatsoever.

So the Us is financially a house divided. We become a safe haven and a promoter for greed. The rich are celebrated and revered for their immoral practices who take advantage of lower classes. It’s a house divided against itself in the pursuit of personal gain.

So as we come to part three, the sojourner. What’s a sojourner? Travelers, sojourners, resident aliens, those who look different, those who are from somewhere else. Brown Driver Briggs calls it a temporary inhabitant or a newcomer that’s lacking inherited rights. Another definition said that fear is associated with strangers as seen as an enemy, also known as immigrants.

How should Israel treat immigrants? Deuteronomy 10:19. Love the sojourner. Therefore, because you were sojourners, I love how Exodus 23:9 puts it, you shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner.

But for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt, you know what it’s like to be in a distant land. Therefore, when you see others in a new land, love them. Give them a different experience than you had. The big idea here is that when you’ve experienced something, you should be sympathetic and empathetic to others that go through the same thing, and so we should have that sympathy and empathy in our country.

And the United States has done a great job with immigrants at large. 50 million immigrants today in our country. I think that’s outstanding. We’re way ahead of everybody else. But right now in our country, the rhetoric towards immigrants is so different than we’ve seen before, and it’s so concerning.

And so when we look at it currently, you know, we’re told that they’re going to send out the worst, the worst of the worst, the most dangerous criminals, and you know what? If that were true, I think we’d all be okay with that. But the fact is that the companies that keep track of these statistics say that of the 58,000 people that have been detained, 71% of them have no criminal record.

This message isn’t true at all. We’re not sending back the worst of the worst. The other thing is this. We’ve been told that immigrants are causing all these crimes, but the studies show that immigrants for the past 150 years have a lower incarceration rate than those who are born here. Isn’t that interesting?

The language and the tone that’s being used today to describe these families is hateful and it’s derogatory, and you have to ask yourself, is this pleasing to God? Locking people up in cages between 2017 and 2021, we separated 4600 children from their families of over 1300 of them have never been reunited.

And if that disgusts you, it should.

There’s a conversation around legally, people should come in the right way, and again, I’m not going to say that I disagree. But most of the time, we’re talking about, like, our grandparents or great grandparents, and until 1875, there was no legally, there was no law. You just showed up.

There was nothing stopping you, and then when they realized that more and more people were coming in and they had to put some rules in place, they put in three simple rules. Don’t have multiple wives or husbands. I think that’s fair. Don’t have terrible crimes committed in your past.

That’s fair, and don’t have any loathsome or contagious diseases. So if you show up with leprosy, we got to turn you away. But as long as you’ve only got one spouse or zero and you’re not a criminal and you’re not deathly sick, come on in, and so the point is to say, we shouldn’t.

Say you should do it like they did it when they didn’t have to do very much.

And so what we see today feels like targeted hatred. We see families that look like this being criminalized. We see families that look like this being criminalized. But would we be discussing immigration the same way, with the same tone? If the families looked like this?

If they were here illegally, would anyone be in a hurry to send them off? And so we need to recognize that it’s a problem, and we need to gauge our hearts. You know, I grew up watching the Sound of Music, and it got really tense when Nazi Germany wants the father of the family to serve their army, and he says no, and they climb every mountain, and we’re so relieved when they get across to the other side. We’re so happy to see that they made it.

But if we can be happy for them because we see that they were in a tough scenario with death around them or looming, then we also need to be happy for them in this country. Do we treat them the same?

You know, Brother Russell writes this great reprint in 1692, and he talks about Christ’s kingdom and that when it comes, it’s going to lay bare and cut and scrape the evils of society today down to the very bone, exposing the depths of corruption never before realized by the patient. That means it’s going to be difficult. Looking at these things is difficult. Understanding our sins is difficult. Dealing with them you know, in the kingdom, we’re going to be the ones.

That’s the job that we’re applying for. We’re applying for the job of Lord, I want to be with you and help everybody reconcile to you and reconcile with each other.

So I want you to tell me what country this is from our new government, its foundations laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery and subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.

Amen. Well, not amen, but yes, you’re right.

That’s from Alexander Stevens, the Vice President of the Confederacy. So if you have any curiosity as to what they were standing for, that’s it. I want to talk about racism in our country. I know it’s a sensitive topic, but I also know we’re big boys and girls and we’re applying for the church class, and I think that we can handle it.

And I want to talk about it since it ended, supposedly since the 13th Amendment was passed, hopefully we know that slavery was bad. Hopefully I don’t need to make that point, but I want to talk about the racism that’s happened since then. 1865, the law passes. By late 1865, they had a law just for black people. You have to have written evidence of employment, not for white people.

We had Jim crow laws for 95 years.

Separate railway cars, separate schools, separate buses, separate restaurants, separate drinking fountains, separate bathrooms. We had sundown towns where if you were black, you were not allowed to be outside if the sun went down, and if you were, you could be taken to jail. We see on the left hand side, the 15th Amendment was the right to vote for African Americans. 95 years later, they had to pass another law that says states you need to stop blocking their ability to vote by giving them different tests that you don’t give to white people.

They were trying to get them to not be able to vote by giving them tests that were too hard to pass. In Selma, if anybody’s familiar with Selma, there was a peaceful protest. They were taking a walk down the highway themselves, hand in hand, and it wasn’t just black people, there were white people there too. They were saying the African Americans need their right to vote and it needs to be uninhibited.

And so the police beat them because they wouldn’t turn around or disband. It was a perfectly legal protest. Have we ever seen that? To a group of white people that are protesting?

This is really sensitive, and I don’t know how many are familiar with This I wasn’t until a couple of years ago. But we all know that lynch sheets occurred. But lynching and postcards is a different story.

There’s a collection of approximately 10, 18 real photo postcards of people lynching black people, and they put it on a postcard and they sent it off. Over a thousand.

We see things like Emmett Till, who’s. He’s, you know, maybe he whistled at a girl, or maybe he spoke to a white girl and he was abducted that night and killed. The Tulsa Massacre, where they burned a thousand homes and businesses to the ground on a moment’s notice because a black man stepped on the shoe of a white woman. School integration. Just as a quick reminder, they had to send in the National Guard because a black girl wanted to go to school with a bunch of whites.

Think about that. They lost their absolute minds. FHA loans. You may have heard about systemic racism. FHA loans came about in between 1934 and 1962.

The US government spent $100 billion investing into a program to give discounted loans so that families could get a good start. Of that 120 billion, 98% went to white people and 2% went to non whites.

You might have heard about George Floyd. George Floyd was accused of using a $20 counterfeit bill. A $20 counterfeit bill, and the police took him around to their car, put him on the ground, had their knee on his neck until he suffocated. Would never happen to a white person.

Ahmaud Arbery. Taking a jog through a Georgian neighborhood, and there have been a couple of crimes in that neighborhood, and so they assumed the crimes must have been committed by a black guy, and he was taking a job, so they assumed it must be him.

So three white guys in a car went to address him, confront him, and they shot him.

How would it feel to have this person as your best friend? How would it feel to have him as your son? These are real things that have happened in our country, according to research, that if you’re black, you’re seven times more likely than whites to be falsely convicted of a serious crime. You’re seven and a half times more likely to be falsely convicted of murder. You’re 19 times more likely to be wrongly committed of a drug crime.

And so as we’re winding down and we’re concluding our thoughts, and he tells us, don’t execute justice with one another. Treat everybody the same, and we’re violating. Stop oppressing the sojourners and the fatherless and the winnows. Stop shedding innocent Blood, stop going after other gods.

We’re a house divided and we don’t even realize it, and so to separate our thinking from world thinking is really important, and we’ve got just a couple more slides to go through. The Christian message today, we know that from the scriptures is not the right message because they would have us think that if you’re gay or if you’re having an abortion or if you’re poor, you’re homeless, or if you’re an immigrant, these are the real problems that we have in our country. It’s not the rich, it’s not taking advantage of the poor.

These are the things, and a Baptist minister, this man, Russell Moore, who’s the editor in chief for Christianity Today, he’s telling us that Christians are now rejecting the teachings of Jesus because they’re too liberal. He says that he will talk about the Sermon on the Mount and they will come up to him afterwards and say, where did you get those liberal talking points? And he’ll say it’s from Jesus, and they’ll say, yeah, but that doesn’t work anymore.

That’s weak. Beware of the messaging that agrees with both Babylon and the leaders of this world. Jeremiah 51:7, that’s the Babylon chapter in the Old Testament, and it talks about how Babylon is giving a message that the leaders of this world have drunk, and we see now an extreme movement where they’re preaching a message that’s gaining steam.

And it has to do with the Evangelical Alliance, and that message will temporarily start to grow down to the last two slides. This is a nice looking guy, isn’t it? I mean he’s in a suit, he must be nice. This is David Duke, this is the ex grand wizard of the kkk.

And so what he did is he ran for governor in Louisiana and he said he ran his campaigns primarily on the immigration issue.

And this is the ex leader of the KKK. In 1991, he got 40% of the vote in Louisiana. Anybody concerned with that? Now here’s another thing. The messaging, like if you go to somebody and say I’m a member of the KKK and start to deliver a message, you, you’ve probably lost the majority of your audience by saying you’re from the kkk.

But if they don’t know who you are, your message might be really attractive to others, and here is a very interesting way that we know that. He says Tucker Carlson, who is the most watched political news anchor as of a few years ago, for years he was the number one watched news personality. He says Tucker Carlson’s talking about the replacement theory. I knew that was going on way back in 1991.

How could I be an evil guy if he says all the same things and they love him for it?

This is a big deal. I didn’t know this until a few months ago, but white nationalist people who are tied to neo Nazis are saying, well we watched Tucker Carlson’s show twice. Once to, you know, see it and then a second time to make sure we understand his technique because he’s delivering the message better than we are.

So don’t be conformed to this world. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Stay close to the scriptures because if you don’t, your mind can be deceived. Challenge the thinking of the world, and so let’s not be a house divided, let’s be a house that preaches peace and love and comfort.

And let’s not be tied to any of the messaging of the world. That’s evil, and may the Lord add his blessing.

Thank you brother Matt for that thought provoking discourse. The points that you brought up further drive home.

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