Justice Met Series

Opening: The Longing for Justice

Good morning, friends. Before we open our Bibles, let me start with a little story.

Author Gary Haugen once described how he would teach math to a room full of six-year-olds. He said he would begin each day by handing out a snack—but unevenly. A few kids would get a generous pile of cookies, some would get only a crumb or two, and others none at all. Then he’d quietly sit down at his desk and wait.

He wouldn’t have to wait long. Before anyone could spell “Pythagoras,” the math would begin.

Those who received less would immediately calculate the injustice: “That’s not fair! They got more!”

Those who received more would rush to defend their windfall: “But I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Before long, the entire class would have produced a very loud, very passionate mathematical proof that something unjust had happened.

Why does that happen? Because the longing for justice is hard-wired into us.

It’s not just about cookies. From the moment we’re old enough to know the difference between right and wrong, we want wrongs made right. We want scales balanced.

Pause with me on that thought. We love justice—until we are the ones on trial.

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God’s Holiness: The Ultimate Courtroom

That instinct brings us straight to Isaiah 6. Listen to the prophet’s words:

> “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple… And one called to another and said: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!’ And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’” (Isaiah 6:1, 3, 5)

Isaiah is not seeing a gentle glow or a soft mood of reverence. He is seeing the blazing reality of God’s holiness.

Holiness is not a decorative word for Sabbath School posters.

Holiness means utter purity, absolute moral perfection, a reality so radiant that nothing unclean can survive in its presence.

Notice Isaiah’s immediate reaction: “Woe is me! I am undone.”

He doesn’t compare himself to the nation around him. He doesn’t say, “I’m better than the idolaters next door.”

He knows instinctively that in the light of that throne, comparison games collapse.

Pause and feel that with Isaiah. If you or I were suddenly placed in that throne room, what words would break out of us first?

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Sin: More Than a List of Deeds

This is why the Bible speaks of sin not only as the bad things we do but as a condition of the heart.

Paul writes in Romans 3:

> “None is righteous, no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God…

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:10-11, 23)

Sin is not a few wrong turns on an otherwise decent road.

It is the posture of a heart that has turned from God—like a compass needle frozen away from true north.

The angry outburst, the hidden selfishness, the quiet pride are symptoms of a deeper disease.

Let me paint a picture. Imagine the Grand Canyon stretching a mile wide.

Some of us might manage a running leap of fifteen feet. Olympic long-jumpers might sail twenty-nine feet.

But none of us can cross the canyon. That’s the gap between our best goodness and God’s glory.

Relative differences don’t matter when the distance is infinite.

So when Isaiah cries, “Woe is me,” he’s speaking for every one of us.

Before a holy God, we are not mistakers who need a little more effort. We are sinners who need a rescue.

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Why God Must Judge

Friends, if you and I were writing the rules of the universe, we might be tempted to skip this next part. We like the idea of a loving God who simply forgives, no questions asked. But a God who must judge? That sounds harsh—until we stop and think about it.

Imagine a human courtroom. A man is guilty of a violent crime. All the evidence is clear. The victims’ families wait for the verdict. The judge listens to the case, then smiles kindly and says, “You seem sorry. Case dismissed. No sentence today.”

Would you call that loving? Or would you call it corrupt?

Every fiber of us would cry out: That’s not justice! That’s wrong!

If a human judge must uphold justice, how much more the Judge of all the earth.

Justice isn’t a mood God turns on and off. It’s part of His nature. To be perfectly loving, He must also be perfectly just.