What happens when the law makers themselves become law breakers? Or what happens when those who are charged with enforcing the law also become law breakers themselves? In an police incident in our State’s Capital this past Christmas, a man was arrested by the police and $1500 cash was taken from him by the police but never returned. Just last month it appears that because a lawsuit was looming that city finally cut him a check for that amount but the incident is another very troubling example of civil asset forfeiture. That “involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime. To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity.”[1] In other words you are not charged with a crime, you money is and it is guilty until proven innocent – a costly and statistically losing battle for the person who has been civil asset forfeitured by the police. I am glad Annapolis finally did the right thing, but that is rare in the civil asset forfeiture world. By the way the city still can’t account for what happened to the $1500. Was it get pocketed? The officer said he put it in his hat, but after that no one knows what became of it. And by the way he has since retired, and faced no repercussions for his actions.
Video of the sermon
What about lawlessness on the Federal level? We know that for more than a decade the immigration laws which clearly spell out the enforcement the executive branch is charged to conduct – have not only been ignored, with little enforcement taking place, but in fact the previous administration made active moves to encourage more illegal immigration into our country. The effect has been to tell the world we have open boarders, anyone who wants to can walk right in. Our immigration laws mean nothing. And now when we have the Executive branch trying to enforce the immigration laws on the books, Federal courts have repeatedly blocked the enforcement from going into effect.
We also know “There is a federal law that forbids the Internal Revenue Service from unfairly targeting private groups or individuals on the basis of their politics. Lois Lerner, an IRS director, did just that but faced no legal consequences.
Perhaps Ms. Lerner’s exemption emboldened New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof to invite IRS employees via social media to unlawfully leak Donald Trump’s tax returns. Later, someone leaked Mr. Trump’s 2005 tax return to MSNBC.
There are statutes that prevent federal intelligence and investigatory agencies from leaking classified documents. No matter.… The leakers apparently feel that prosecutors and the courts do not mind if someone’s privacy is illegally violated, as long as it is the privacy of someone they all loathe, like Mr. Trump.
The logic seems also to be that we need only follow the laws that we like — and assume that law enforcement must make the necessary adjustments.”[2]
What is the cumulative effect of these trends?
With selective enforcement and government officials who are clearly above the law, what does that lead people to conclude? That law in America is arbitrary, politically protected individuals and groups are exempt, you never know when you will be robbed by the police or falsely imprisoned. Does not this begin to sound very much like a description of the communist USSR, where the civil government rather than protecting and defending your God given rights became the primary violator of your God given rights?
Are we as a nation descending into lawlessness or has lawlessness already been enthroned as the ruler of these united States?
Consider that our Founders clearly stated their understanding of what law is which they styled, “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” And we have previously shown from this pulpit that this phrase clearly referred to the Bible. So they believed God’s Law given to us in the Bible is the Supreme Law of the Universe and any human statute must comply with that Supreme Law to be valid law.
Then think what has happened since that time, at first slow steady descent, but in the past fifty years a precipitous free fall in rejecting God’s Law as supreme has taken place. So what has become of that Supreme Law in the eyes of the legal scribblers of our land? It has been rejected entirely.
For me the most telling scene was in 2003 on a hot August morning in Montgomery Alabama where I saw the workers inside the Judicial building moving the Ten Commandments, a monument to lawful government from the center of the rotunda. In the crowd there was a rumor circulating that they were going to put it on a trailer and haul it away. Some of us went around to the loading dock to see if this is was so. It was not, instead they parked the Ten Commandments in a closet and locked the door. What a fitting image of what has happened to the rule of law in our land. The Law of the Creator taken out of a public building devoted supposedly to the rule of law, and locked away in a closet. That reminds us of the very first of the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20:3 “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The god whom a society chooses to worship will be the god that determines its “laws.” So having dethroned the rightful ruler, the Creator God Himself, what has been put up instead? Lawlessness. We see government lawlessness where the ruling class has a different set of standards and laws for them than for the rest of the peons. And we see where those so called rules are selective enforced against the politically unfavored. Where a police man can steal $1500 from a motorist and face no consequences for it. Where we have seen leftist mobs viciously assault citizens while the police stand by and let the violence go on. By dethroning the Supreme Law of the Universe what has replaced it? Lawlessness. Lawlessness in the corridors of Congress, lawlessness in the camber of the Supreme Court, lawlessness throughout civil government on all levels. But it isn’t confined there, were to God that it was, we have lawlessness breaking the peace of our society, from gangs not only in the cities but now frequently in the suburbs, to leftist mobs violently attacking anyone who disagrees with them. What will it take to restore this land of liberty?
Turn to Titus 3:9 Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit gives instructions to his disciple Titus.
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Footnotes:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States
[2] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/22/us-heading-toward-lawlessness/
