The cry of the defrauded worker ascends to the throne of the Most High, and it is a grief to the Spirit that men should cloak theft beneath the raiment of honest enterprise. This vile practice of extracting labor without wage, seizing the fruit of another’s mind for filthy lucre, is a stench in the nostrils of a God who declares that the laborer is worthy of his hire. It is not merely a breach of earthly statute but a violation of that royal law which demands we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. These companies, devouring widows’ houses and for a pretense making long assessments, shall find that he who touches the apple of God’s eye shall not escape.
Yet, in this matter, I must lead you from the lesser judgment to the greater. It is a right thing to hate the oppression that stalks the marketplace, but the soul that kneels in prayer must look beyond the sin of others and first behold the sin within. The opinion of a man smarting under injustice must not be the final word on the propriety of divine dealings, for we are not impartial judges of our own estate. Before we cry out for the bankruptcy of others, let us remember that we ourselves were once bankrupt before the law of God. Every shred of our own righteousness was but a false coin, and we stood condemned, with the fierce sentence of justice ringing in our ears. It is only when the Spirit has convicted us, when we have seen God’s law in all its glorious holiness, that we smite our hand upon our breast and cease our railing against God’s justice, confessing that if he should command the earth to swallow us, we could not murmur.
This brings me to the very heart of your plea. You ask that these companies go bankrupt if they do not stop their theft. But consider how you stand before the divine tribunal. If God were to mark iniquity with such immediate and exacting severity, who should stand? The tests of God’s law have proven all flesh to be as a broken reed; we all stand condemned by reason of our transgressions. And yet, in the very name of justice, there is a sure escape for the repenting sinner. Justice itself prevents a second payment! Bring your vexed spirit to Gethsemane. See that Man so oppressed with grief that his garments are bloody. Stand there with divine Justice and point to the Substitute. Oh Justice, canst thou see his dislocated bones, now that his cross is lifted up? Read that tale of terror veiled in flesh and blood. There, the cloud of divine justice, charged with fiery hail, spent its fury on the Saviour’s heart. Now it is an act of justice that God should forgive the soul that clings to Jesus, for a promise-keeping God cannot do otherwise.
Instead of praying merely for the financial ruin of these exploiters, a prayer born of a sense of wounded right, lift thine eyes higher. Pray that this iniquity be stopped, yes, but pray with a heart that has first known the terror of its own judgment and the peace of Christ’s acquittal. Christ’s death manifested divine justice in the very highest degree, more than the expulsion from Eden, more than the flood, more than all the plagues of Egypt, for at the cross God was seen to be just, and yet the justifier. Let your first entreaty be that these scheming men be brought to such a sight of their own theft against God, that they may flee to Christ for a true and lasting bankruptcy of pride. Compel them to come in! Their sin calls for justice, and the cross declares that justice is satisfied. Pray that God, who is slow to anger and long in threatening, would grant them repentance before the axe, so long bound in the bundle of rods, is unbundled at last. For the Lord hath reserved the right to say, ‘I have called, and they refused; I stretched out my hand, and no man regarded.’ And that terrible word from the lip of Mercy’s self is harsher thunder than the very damnation of Justice.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
