The Compassion And Justice Of God Series

As we have been looking at the attributes of God, we have considered how unique God is, for there is nothing like Him

Isaiah 44:6b ‘I am the first and I am the last, And there is no God besides Me.

God’s qualities include being all powerful (omnipotence), God possess all the power in the universe, He is the source of all Power.

God is all knowing (omniscience), God knows everything, including the thoughts of our minds. he knows the words in our mouth even before we speak it.

God is everywhere (omnipresent), this does not mean that God is in everything are part of everything, But there is nowhere in all creation we can hide from God.

Then we considered His holiness. His Chief quality. Only God is “holy, holy, holy. Only God is completely and totally holy. When we consider his holiness, we must consider his command for those who belong to Him:

Leviticus 19:2 “Speak to all the congregation of the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.

this command is repeated in the New Testament in 1 Peter 1:16. Herein lies the problem. How many of us measure up to the holiness of God? The Bible is real clear about this.

Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

And what is the penalty for sin, for offending a most holy God?

Romans 6:23a For the wages of sin is death ...

And this has been the penalty since the Garden of Eden. This is where the compassion of God comes in. But we cannot appreciate the compassion of God unless we first have a grasp on the justice of God. This is where today’s focal verses comes in: The people had sinned and they knew it. What were they do to?

Ezekiel 33:10–11  “Therefore you, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: ‘Thus you say, “If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how can we then live?” ’ 11 Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’

With the heart beating an average of 100,000 times a day it’s surprising that the heart doesn’t give out more often than it does. After all, have you ever heard of a car engine that ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 70 plus years without the need of a tune-up or an oil change or some sort of servicing? Still, there are times when the human heart goes bad from lack of exercise, failure to eat right, or bad genetics. In some cases the heart may be so damaged that a new one is needed.

How is your heart feeling this morning? Is it beating with strong regular intervals, delivering an adequate supply of oxygen throughout your body? Even if you haven’t had so much as a heart flutter, God tells us this morning that we all need a new heart. Of course he’s not talking about this thing beating inside of us, he’s talking about an attitude. God wants us each to have a heart, an attitude, that recognizes its own sinfulness and treasures God’s forgiveness. If we don’t have such a heart, then we are to get one because it’s a matter of eternal life or death. And we cannot do it ourselves. Although they didn’t know it, the people of Ezekiel’s day were badly in need of such a heart transplant.

Ezekiel 18:31 Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel?

God wants to change our hearts, but He will not come where He is not wanted and un welcomed. This morning, before we look at God’s compassion, we must first look at his Righteousness, His justice. What is justice, biblical justice?

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible tells us: “In a philosophical sense, justice is understood as fairness, correct treatment, or equitable distribution of resources, but biblical justice is more than a mathematical distribution of goods. The Bible speaks of justice as a chief attribute of God, with biblical justice inextricably tied to God’s mercy and grounded in the relationship between God and humankind.” [1]

God’s justice is not about what is fair, but what is right. Even in the Garden of Eden, God defined what was right and the penalty for not doing what was right to Adam.

Genesis 2:16–17 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”