Transforming Social Justice Into God’s Justice
Please stand with me as we go over our current memory Scripture:
Matthew 5:9-12
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
“Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets who were before you in the same way.”
And our memory Scripture “refresher” verse(s) is(are):
Galatians 5:22-23
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Today we will be reading from Leviticus 19:1-19
Last Sunday we took a look at Micah 6 where we saw that the people of Israel were mistreating each other by acting unjustly and being unmerciful. This of course was accompanied by arrogance and self pride.
In the end, Yahweh admonished them to, “… act justly … love mercy and walk humbly with (their) God.”
This prescription was used as we compared the world’s version of justice which is found in the modern social justice movement and the Biblical version of justice which, oddly enough, is found in the Bible.
The reason we looked at that comparison is because the world’s non-Biblical vision for social justice is making its way into the church, even into individual Churches of The Nazarene and that vision flows toward Bible believing churches from Bible rejecting churches.
We have an old VHS tape of the Petra Christian band and on this tape they interview members of the group about the song they have just sung or are about to sing. At the end of the video the guitarist makes a statement that goes something like this, “We need to watch and see how much the world is affecting the church when it is the church that should be affecting the world.”
So, who is affecting who? Is the world affecting us as the body of Christ or are we affecting the world for the cause of Christ?
When the world’s concept of social justice comes into the church what comes with it?
When the Bible’s concept of social justice comes into the world what comes with it?
Please join me in your Bibles as we read: Leviticus 19:1-19
(Prayer for help)
As I was researching the movement of the world’s ideas of social justice I came across a definition of an older form of the same thing; it was called the “social gospel”.
Listen to this definition of the social gospel.
“The phrase “social gospel” is usually used to describe a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that came to prominence in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Those who adhered to a social gospel sought to apply Christian ethics to social problems such as poverty, slums, poor nutrition and education, alcoholism, crime, and war.”
(sounds good so far, right?)
“These things were emphasized while the doctrines of sin, salvation, heaven and hell, and the future kingdom of God were downplayed. Theologically, the social gospel leaders … (asserted) that Christ’s Second Coming could not happen until (humanity) had rid itself of social evils BY HUMAN EFFORT.” (emphasis mine)
The social justice movement that is now creeping into the church places an emphasis on humanitarian efforts while sidelining or rejecting the authority of the Bible and what it has to say about sin, salvation through Christ alone and each person’s eternal destiny.
Here is the greatest difference between worldly social justice and Biblical social justice. Worldly social justice is driven by the government and is funded by taking the earnings of those who have been able to work and using those funds that others have earned to attempt to solve injustice and poverty.
While the Biblical idea of social justice is God working in and through the hearts of believers to meet the needs of those who are oppressed and impoverished on an individual basis. In other words, we are to be the hands and feet of Jesus with two overarching goals.
And these goals are:
1) Leading the lost to salvation through Jesus Christ. This is always the primary goal of the born again believer.
2) And, the second is like it, helping to bear the burdens of those who are our brothers and sisters in Christ in order to strengthen them in the faith.
Now, let’s look at a couple of verses from the Scripture we read earlier to see what we can see …
Leviticus 19:9-10 says,
“When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I Am Yahweh your God.”
“Do not reap to the very edges of the field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.”
You need to remember that this was an agrarian or agricultural based society. What if you didn’t have any land on which to grow a crop? What if your crop in the lowlands had been wiped out in a flood? What if you worked in a skilled trade like metal work or working with wood but no one was buying? What if you had become injured and couldn’t work?
In those cases and others where it was impossible to provide for yourself God had made a way for your provision but it relied on the obedience of His chosen people.
When Yahweh said, “Do not reap to the very edges of your field” what exactly did that mean?
Think about a person who loved Yahweh the Lord and loved to obey His commandments. What would the very edges of his field look like? Would he leave a wide strip of grain around his field or the narrowest strip possible?
Now, think about a person who had no fondness for Yahweh the Lord but only tried to keep the law enough so that he would not fall under condemnation by his fellow Israelites. What would the very edges of his field look like? Would he leave a wide strip of grain around his field or the narrowest strip possible?
Now, wide strip or narrow strip around the field; what would it depend on? It would depend on the condition of his heart and his relationship with the God of Israel!
Just imagine walking along the roads of Israel during the harvest time and seeing how much was left around the fields by different farmers.
I know you will find it hard to believe but the Jewish Rabbis actually came up with how much should be left. Does that surprise you? Does it surprise you that it could not be left to the individuals but it would have to be specified? So … how much did the Rabbis say should be left? 1/60th or 1.7 percent of the field.
Where on earth did they come up with that number????
How was a farmer supposed to calculate that? And what if the farmer had a part of the field that produced better than another area? What part would he leave for the poor and the foreigners?
And then, the Lord said, “Don’t go back over the fields and pick up the gleanings.” The gleanings are the part of the harvest that may have been accidentally dropped or simply missed by the harvesters. God said, “Leave them for the poor and the foreigners!”
And, the same went for those who owned vineyards. Leviticus 19:10 says, “Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I Am Yahweh your God.”
Isaiah 58:1-12 says,
“Shout it aloud, do not hold back. Raise your voice like a trumpet. Declare to My people their rebellion and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
“For day after day they seek Me out; they seem eager to know My ways, as if they were a nation that does what is right and has not forsaken the commands of its God. They ask Me for just decisions and seem eager for God to come near them.
“‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves, and You have not noticed?’ Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.
“Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife, and in striking each other with wicked fists. You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high.
“Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for people to humble themselves? Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed and for lying in sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to Yahweh, the LORD?
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
“Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
“Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteous One will go before you, and the glory of Yahweh, the LORD will be your rear guard.
“Then you will call, and Yahweh, the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
“and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.
“Yahweh, the LORD will guide you always; He will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
“Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age-old foundations; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”
Jesus spoke often about possessions and how easy it is to be consumed by those possessions.
And it is because of the failure of many of us who call ourselves Christians to care for the needy and the oppressed that the world has taken notice and has and has come up with a godless attempt to solve a problem that can only be solved with the help of God.
The world is lost and has no idea of how to win this battle. Why? They don’t know the Lord and we are failing in that mission, too.
Over my years in serving the Lord as a layman and now as a pastor I have had the joy and the burden of knowing the giving of different people in various churches.
The joy comes when we see those who are poor, those who are well off and those in between who give generously, and even sacrificially, beyond their means.
And, the sadness comes when we see those who give meagerly while indulging themselves with whatever they desire.
Billy Graham used to say, “Give me five minutes with a person's checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.”
Another person said it this way, “Two things can determine what a person really cares about: their calendar and their spending habits.”
What if we were to go back to the way it was in Israel.
What if we didn’t have to pay any taxes?
What if instead of taxes we had tithes and offerings. Of course, they had different tithes which would probably amount to around 30 percent of the yearly harvest.
OK. Not taxes but tithes and offerings instead.
And, what if there were no social programs like welfare, food stamps, social security, social security disability, Medicare and Medicaid? What if there were none of those? What would you do?
And, what if the town where you lived was small enough that you could tell if a person was genuinely poor or not?
What would you do when you saw a truly hungry person? Would you feed them?
What would you do if you saw a person with inadequate clothing for the weather? Would you clothe them?
What would you do if knew a person whose employer was withholding their wages just because he could do so? Would you help them get what they needed?
You see, we live in a place where the government has tried to do the work of the church and Christian individuals and they can’t do it very well. But, there is still genuine need.
Will you meet it with the help of God or will you let the worldly social justice people try to do it with only human efforts and disastrous results?
Final thoughts and prayer.
