Who’s to Blame for the Riots?
Who’s to Blame for the Riots?
Our trust in God is unwavering because He is faithful—faithful to His nature, His word, and His promises. His faithfulness never changes, and it is in this faithfulness that we find our peace and security. Today, I address all of you who are listening, especially considering the current issues that are impacting all of us. As I mentioned earlier this week, I’d like to pose an important question: Who is to blame for the riots?
To answer this question, we turn to the scripture, the Word of God. We are living in strange and uncertain times, filled with fear and confusion. On top of that, society is drowning in a sea of lies—lies about nearly everything. When lies are layered on top of fear and confusion, it creates a deeply unsettling sense of insecurity and chaos. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to trust what politicians, health officials, social activists, university professors, media outlets, and even religious leaders tell us. We have been deceived so frequently that it’s hard to know who to believe.
But there is one source of truth we can always trust—the Living God, revealed through the scriptures. The Bible says, “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” God is the God of truth. Jesus, the Son of God, is the way, the truth, and the life. On the other hand, Satan, the prince of this world, as described in John 8:44, is a murderer and a liar. The world, under the influence of the evil one, is filled with lies and is bent on destruction.
In these chaotic times, we need to turn to the one place we can always rely on—God and His Word. As Jesus said in John 17, “Your Word is truth.” So, let’s seek the truth of the Word of God to understand who is truly to blame for the riots.
Let’s begin by looking at a passage in Isaiah, written over 700 years before Christ, when God was confronting Israel for their sin. In Isaiah 1:2, the Lord speaks: “Listen, O heavens, and hear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken: ‘I have reared and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me.'” God continues to describe Israel as a sinful nation, weighed down by iniquity, corrupt, and rebellious. They had abandoned the Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned away from Him. The whole nation was sick, spiritually and morally, with nothing but bruises, welts, and raw wounds.
In Isaiah 5:20, God condemns those who “call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” This perversion of truth and morality signals the coming of judgment. Israel’s rebellion was evident in their reversal of virtue—calling wrong right and right wrong. Similarly, in Isaiah 28:17, we read that they had “found refuge in lies.” In Isaiah 59:3-4, the prophet warns, “Your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue mutters wickedness. No one sues righteously, and no one pleads honestly. They trust in confusion and speak lies.”
These same patterns of deception and moral inversion were present in ancient Israel, and they are still present in every nation and generation. Humanity has a tendency to believe lies, to follow the “father of lies,” and to overturn the truth of right and wrong. In the current situation we face, this is another example of humanity’s perversion of truth—confusing and distorting the very essence of what is good and true.