God Loves Justice
I would like to talk to you a bit about the Bible. Not about a specific passage right this minute, but about the Bible in general.
The Bible is broken into several sections or categories.
Probably most of you know the biggest of the divisions, the OT and the NT.
The OT concerns God’s relationship with the people of Israel and (from a Christian perspective) prophesies and prepares the way for Jesus, whom we meet in the NT.
The Old Testament is broken into a couple of main sections, too.
The first five books are called The Pentateuch, or by Jewish readers, “The Law.”
There are a lot of well-known Characters in there: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses to name a few.
There are a number of books of history, there’s several books of poetry, like Psalms and Proverbs and a few others.
Then there’s the Prophets – the ones with the long books are called Major prophets and the ones with the short books are called Minor prophets.
Out of those 4 categories: Law, History, Poetry and Prophets, I feel very confident that I know which one you almost never read (except for a couple of favorite verses)
The Prophets
The Prophets are hard for most of us to read for a few reasons:
The first is because they assume you know a TON about all the other parts of the OT, especially the history – and most of us know very little about it.
The other reason is that these books can be, quite frankly, really depressing!
That’s because the Prophets were usually trying to get the people of Israel to turn away from their sinful ways and turn back to God.
So there are a LOT of pages with long lists of things they’ve done, with lots of references to all the history that we don’t know, and lots of threats about how God will judge (or has judged) them.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s also many passages of hope and many promises of God’s faithfulness in spite of how UNFAITHFUL His people have been.
There is ALWAYS hope for a better day.
But you have to read through a lot of tough stuff to get there.
You have to read through a lot of convicting stuff to get there, too – and hardly anybody enjoys that.
For the same reasons they’re hard to read, they’re also hard to preach.
It’s understandable that in private reading as well as public teaching, we shy away from the prophets.
But here’s the problem.
Here’s one of my Bibles:
I’ve clipped where all the notes are in the back and front and these pages are all the text of the Bible. (Showing number of pages in each section)
Here’s the OT, Here’s the NT
Obviously, there’s a lot more of the OT than the NT – about twice as much.
These pages are the Books of the Prophets.
There are a lot of pages there!
NT = 387 pages; Prophets = 310 pages
If you like numbers, that means JUST the books of the Prophets are 80% the size of the NT
I looked through my records and I’ve probably preached from the prophets less than 20 times over the last 20 years of pastoral ministry – so, less than once a year.
And quite a few of those times were based on some of the “favorite” passages, especially Christmas passages.
That means, I have to confess, that I have mostly ignored a pretty big chunk of God’s Word.
Imagine if, in 20 years, I had only preached the New Testament once a year!
I don’t think I would’ve been a preacher for 20 years!!
The books of the prophets give us some different perspectives about what it means to be God’s people, and I think our skimpy knowledge of this section of the Scriptures (mine included), has been detrimental to the church and to the world.
By avoiding the prophets, we are minimizing or avoiding altogether some things that are really important to God.
I’m not saying we should decide how important a section of the Bible is based solely on the page count!
But I do believe that the American church has developed some holes in our faith in places that might be greatly improved by paying more attention to the prophets.
One of the issues that is frequently addressed in the Prophets is the practice of JUSTICE.
I searched for the word “Justice” in my Bible software program and came up with 139 references.
Even after reading through each one and taking out verses that seemed less relevant for this message, I had 8 full pages of Bible verses, most of them in the Prophets.
They command justice; they proclaim God is just.
They assert that the FOUNDATION of God’s throne is JUSTICE.
And they make clear that an Unjust society is an affront to God.
I briefly considered simply reading all eight pages of Bible verses for today’s sermon, just to give you a sense of how pervasive this topic is in the Scriptures.
I decided instead to look at one passage that is representative of much of those 8 pages.
Before I do, I want to make it clear that I have no desire or intention to be talking about POLITICS.
I am choosing my words very carefully to avoid that.
I am speaking as a pastor about something which is expressed very clearly in the Bible and something I think we all need to hear and consider and pray about for our own hearts and for our nation.
As I said earlier, I really should have been preaching more often about justice; I shouldn’t have waited until today, but I felt compelled to speak about it this week, in the light of what we have been seeing.
Justice is neither a liberal nor a conservative cause – it is a moral and ethical need if a society is to keep from devolving into chaos, and it is the most basic of requirements to live in a God-honoring way.
Intro to Scripture: Zechariah 7:8-14
The prophet Zechariah ministered very late in Israel’s history.
After years of disobedience, the Lord had allowed the people to become captives in a foreign land, then after 70 years were able to go back to their homeland.
One of their first priorities had been to rebuild the temple, which had been destroyed when the Babylonians had torn apart the city of Jerusalem.
As happened over and over throughout Israel’s history, when times were good, they tended to forget the Lord, but when things got tough, they remembered where their help came from.
After twenty years back in Jerusalem, they had drifted away from the work of rebuilding the Temple.
And their apathy towards that task was a symbol of a deeper issue – that they were not putting God first in their hearts and lives.
And while building a temple is nice, God wanted more than that – He wanted their hearts and their lives.
He wanted them to love what he loved.
He didn’t just want their individual faithfulness, but to see a society where God’s values reigned.
Let’s take a look at Zechariah 7:8-10. (We will be reading further so keep your thumb in there.)
I’d encourage you to follow along in your Bible.
Zechariah is the next to the last book of the OT.
8 And the word of the LORD came again to Zechariah:
9 "This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'
A society that reflects the values of God will be a just society.
The dictionary definition of “just” is “Based on or behaving according to what is morally right and fair.”
Fairness is something that is woven so deeply into our beings – I don’t know how old a child is the first time they howl that something ISN’T FAIR – but it’s not that old!
We seem to know instinctively that people should be treated equally.
Or maybe, we just know that we don’t want anyone being treated better than we are!
The root of our word justice means simply “the administration of the law.”
A just society enforces the law – and does so without impartiality.
We often refer to our country as “a nation of laws” – as opposed to “a nation of men.”
Centuries ago, whoever was in charge was a law unto themselves.
Their whim was law.
And they weren’t subject to any laws.
It is nearly impossible to have a JUST society under such conditions.
Instead, our nation was founded on the idea that the laws apply to everyone – that’s what justice is, “the administration of the law,” not just for some but for all.
But notice – and this so reveals the heart of God – don’t concern yourself only with justice, but
(V 9) … show mercy and compassion to one another.
Have you ever noticed that people who are big on justice are often lacking in mercy and compassion?
And it is something that we have to guard against in our own hearts.
We live in an often-merciless society.
If you get caught doing something, you might find it splashed all over the internet, followed by a group of self-appointed vigilantes who are self-righteous enough to feel they have the right to throw stones at others.
Our outrage is overworked, while our capacity for mercy and compassion doesn’t get nearly enough exercise.
I once read that everyone has one fact in their favor that we don’t know about.
The person who cut you off may very well be having a horribly stressful day, or is late to pickup their kids or just wasn’t paying attention.
Not every offense needs to be punished by our rage.
Justice does not require cruelty – it can be administered with mercy and compassion.
And no one knows how to mix Justice with Mercy like the Lord Himself.
Look at the cross – the price of Justice was paid; but in the mind-boggling mercy and compassion of God, He paid it Himself.
Yes, we want to live in a just society, but if we are to please God, it must be tempered with mercy and compassion.
Then in verse 10, four specific groups of people are mentioned.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor…
To oppress is pretty much what it sounds like.
The Hebrew word:
"is concerned with acts of abuse of power or authority, the burdening, trampling, and crushing of those lower in station."(TWOT)
In every society, there are those who can be trampled on with very little likelihood of suffering the consequences
In Israel, it was these four groups:
Widows – women had no legal protections. If they were fortunate enough to have a husband or other male relative looking out for them, that was the best they could hope for.
The fatherless – or orphans. Just as women were vulnerable to violence, oppression and abuse without a man's protection, their children were, too. Even if their mom was living, they were much more vulnerable than children with fathers.
Aliens, meaning foreigners. People who don’t look like us or talk like us.
People who have a different skin color or speak a different language.
And the universally oppressed and exploited: the poor.
Widows and orphans are safer and more likely to be taken care of in our society than in the ancient world, but I don’t know that we’re doing any better in how we treat “the alien” and “the poor.”
Why did the Lord choose those four types of people and say, “DO NOT OPPRESS THEM!”
Was it because he thought it was ok to oppress other people?
Was it because he wanted likes them better than other people?
No, he said it because these were the people who were the most vulnerable in that society.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'
And “don’t think evil of one another,”
Don’t be so darned quick to suspect other people of being evil.
I have to tell you a secret, at least I think it’s a secret because no one seems to be aware of this:
Just because someone belongs to a different political party than you do NOT mean they are sub-human,
it does NOT mean they are evil,
it does NOT mean they don’t love their country,
it does NOT mean you have the right to hate them.
If your news source is telling you those things, you need to make a decision about whether you are going to follow God or follow your news source.
Because God commands you NOT to think evil of each other.
So Zechariah spells out these very simple rules for a just society.
9 … 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.'
So, of course, God’s people embraced that, right?
Let’s read on, verses 11-14
11 "But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears.
12 They made their hearts as hard as flint
Lord help us!! Those who resist justice for those at the bottom of society develop hearts as hard as flint!!
12 They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry.
So here it comes people, listen up, this is the cost of injustice
13 " 'When I called, they did not listen; so when they called, I would not listen,' says the LORD Almighty.
14 'I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations, where they were strangers. The land was left so desolate behind them that no one could come or go. This is how they made the pleasant land desolate.' "
God is deadly serious about justice – with mercy.
He expects His people to fight for it.
One of my FB friends posted a rather startling statement that went something like this:
What if instead of saying “Yes it’s terrible that that African American man was killed, but we can’t let this destruction of property continue,” we said, “Yes, it’s terrible the destruction of property that has happened, but we can’t let the killing of African American men continue.
I’m not pro-rioting, and I believe that many of the people who were out on the streets were not protesters at all – they were people on both sides of the political spectrum who came out for the chance to steal and destroy.
And we can’t allow that ugly truth to keep us from addressing the recurrence of terrible injustice.
Our society has looked the other way for far too long.
I don’t know about you, but I want to live in a God-honoring society.
I think we would also discover that the world would be less hostile toward the church if we were faithfully seeking a JUST and MERCIFUL society, if we would look out for the people on the bottom rungs of society.
Cornel West on Justice : Justice is what love looks like in public. —Cornel West, U.S. professor and scholar
We cannot obey Jesus’ command to love if we will not seek justice for the people who have been denied justice.
I have put some videos in a playlist on our church's YouTube channel titled “Racial & Justice Issues.”
They are mostly stories of people who have experienced some terrible prejudice.
I have been trying as much as I can to listen to such stories.
And I realize that, while I was aware of racism in America, I was absolutely clueless about what a constant struggle it is.
We’re not talking about a few nasty words here and there, but an all-day, every-day stream of indignities and threats that happen to moms and teens and even little children.
If we are going to take a stand against racism, we have to get some idea of what that even means.
We need to listen to the stories.
There are a million more ways to hear the stories of others.
If you have African American friends, they may have never shared them with you.
Ask. Listen.
Learn to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with our God.
Pray for our nation to truly become a place "with liberty and JUSTICE for all."
