God Is Right, God Is Just Series

INTRO.- ILL.- The divinity student talked to a boy on the street. The little boy was holding his Sunday School papers. The student said, "Did you go to Sunday School ?" "Yes," he replied.

Thinking he would have some fun with the little boy, he said, "Tell me where God is, and I’ll give you an apple."

The boy looked at the student and said, "I will give you a whole barrel of apples if you tell me where God isn’t." Smart kid.

True. God is everywhere. He is not "in" everything, that is, trees, grass, rocks, etc., etc. like the pantheist believes, but God is everywhere. How do we know this? We take it by faith but we believe the message of scripture that God is omni-present, meaning He is everywhere present. HE IS GOD! He can do anything and everything good. If not, He is not God.

ILL.- Astronaut James A. McDivitt, who orbited the earth 62 times with Edward H. White II aboard Gemini 4, said in a talk at the Foreign Press Club in Rome: “I did not see God looking into my space-cabin window, as I do not see God looking into my car’s windshield on earth. But I could recognize His work in the stars as well as when walking among flowers in a garden. If you can be with God on earth, you can be with God in space as well.”

ILL.- Dwight D. Eisenhower said: It takes no brains to be an atheist. Any stupid person can deny the existence of a supernatural power because man’s physical senses cannot detect it. But there cannot be ignored the influence of conscience, the respect we feel for moral law, the mystery of first life...or the marvelous order in which the universe moves about us on this earth. All these are evidences of the handiwork of the beneficent Deity. For my part that Deity is the God of the Bible and of Jesus Christ, His Son.

ILL.- Many years ago I saw a picture of a common sewing needle and a small fish bone the size of a needle magnified many times over. DO YOU KNOW WHAT IT SHOWED? It showed many flaws, many pits in the sewing needle and a perfectly smooth fish bone. THE CONCLUSION? One was the creation of man and the other was the creation of God.

Brothers and sisters, there should be NO question in our minds as to the existence of God! God is! He always has been and always shall be! And there is plenty of evidence to prove His existence and beyond that, we must walk by faith!

Everyone on God’s green earth lives by faith, but we live by faith IN HIM! And that’s the big difference and that makes a difference!

Now, what about God being right and just? Well, I believe it. I believe He is both right about everything and He is a just God.

Even though I think God is right about everything that doesn’t mean that I always do everything right. We humans are fallible and subject to failure, mistakes and sin. God is in infallible and incapable of doing wrong or of making a wrong decision.

God is also just. This is something, of course, that at times we must take by faith, because we may think, "Why did God do that? Or why did God allow that?" We must assume and trust that He did what was just and right.

PROP.- Let’s consider what our text says about God’s judgment and God’s vengeance.

1- God’s judgment is right

2- God’s vengeance is just

I. GOD’S JUDGMENT IS RIGHT

5All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.

ILL.- Headline: College student swindler sentenced to 5 years. By AP writer Maryclaire Dale – Fri Oct 17, 2008. PHILADELPHIA – A college student who with her boyfriend stole the identities of friends and neighbors was sentenced Friday to five years in prison and ordered to pay more than $100,000 in restitution.

Jocelyn Kirsch, a former Drexel University student, and then-boyfriend Edward Anderton used the money for expensive salon visits, exotic vacations and fancy dinners.

Federal guidelines called for a prison sentence of 70 months, but U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno credited Kirsch for her apparent remorse and for her July 14 guilty plea to aggravated identity theft and other counts.

Kirsch, 23, and Anderton acknowledged stealing the identities of friends and neighbors in the Philadelphia area in 2006 and 2007 to net more than $116,000 in goods and services.

The scheme unraveled when an employee at an upscale salon told police that a check for Kirsch’s $2,250 hair extension job had bounced. About the same time, a neighbor of the couple told police a package she did not order had been sent to her.