God Stories
The God of Justice May 18, 2003
Holly – our desire for justice in this crime
This past week we have had a terrible crime committed in our city – I know that you have all heard how little Holly Jones went missing on Monday and how they found her body on Tuesday and began the search for her killer.
There may have been many emotions going through your heart and head this week.
- compassion for the family – we know that they are aching and will continue to ache for a long time. While we might want to turn away from this horrendous scene, I believe that we need to feel their pain with them for some time
- fear for our own children – this happened outside our neighbourhood, but not that far, and we worry about the safety of our children
- shock that this could happen in our city
- desire for justice – we want to see the perpetrator arrested and punished
Let’s turn to God with all of these emotions knowing that he is with us and with the family.
Pray
While praying about this event this week, I realized that although the real victims of this crime are Holly and her parents, family and friends, that we are all victims because it has impacted us all. I also have a sense that the land itself has been defiled.
All through scripture there are stories of crimes that cry out to heaven for justice, and as on Palm Sunday the stones would have cried out in praise if the people did not, here the land cries out for justice.
The story of Cain & Able – Genesis 4
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD . 4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let’s go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"
"I don’t know," he replied. "Am I my brother’s keeper?"
10 The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."
10 The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.
There are other stories in the scripture that are actually closer to Holly’s and I tried to tell them, but as I did I found I could not go there – it was too close and painful, but in these stories too, the very land cries out for justice.
The reason that the land cries out for justice is that the God who made it is the God of Justice.
Psalm 94
O LORD, the God to whom vengeance belongs,
O God of vengeance, let your glorious justice be seen!
Arise, O judge of the earth.
Sentence the proud to the penalties they deserve.
How long, O LORD?
How long will the wicked be allowed to gloat?
Hear their arrogance!
How these evildoers boast!
They oppress your people, LORD,
hurting those you love.
They kill widows and foreigners
and murder orphans.
"The LORD isn’t looking," they say,
"and besides, the God of Israel[1] doesn’t care."
Think again, you fools!
When will you finally catch on?
Is the one who made your ears deaf?
Is the one who formed your eyes blind?
He punishes the nations--won’t he also punish you?
He knows everything--doesn’t he also know what you are doing?
The LORD knows people’s thoughts,
that they are worthless!
Happy are those whom you discipline, LORD,
and those whom you teach from your law.
You give them relief from troubled times
until a pit is dug for the wicked.
The LORD will not reject his people;
he will not abandon his own special possession.
Judgment will come again for the righteous,
and those who are upright will have a reward.
Who will protect me from the wicked?
Who will stand up for me against evildoers?
Unless the LORD had helped me,
I would soon have died.
I cried out, "I’m slipping!"
and your unfailing love, O LORD, supported me.
When doubts filled my mind,
your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer.
Can unjust leaders claim that God is on their side--
leaders who permit injustice by their laws?
They attack the righteous
and condemn the innocent to death.
But the LORD is my fortress;
my God is a mighty rock where I can hide.
God will make the sins of evil people fall back upon them.
He will destroy them for their sins.
The LORD our God will destroy them.
God’s desire for Justice over sin
Last week I talked about how as a young man, I never called God “father” in my prayers, not on purpose, but because my main image of God was of Judge, and so I called him “Lord” most of all.
My image of God was not wrong – it was just incomplete – God is the Judge of the universe.
Nahum 1
3 The LORD is slow to anger and great in power;
the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished.
His way is in the whirlwind and the storm,
and clouds are the dust of his feet.
What the Psalm and Nahum say is that God sits as judge over our lives, and that his justice will not be thwarted – it will come. So while Holly’s murderer may evade our justice system, he will not evade God’s, while Ossama BinLaden and Saddam Hussein might evade the justice of the USA or the world, they will not evade God’s justice for the evil that they have done.
It is great to say that these obviously evil people will not get away from God, it is also true and a bit disconcerting to realize that we too can not escape his justice. It is a bit too easy to concentrate on the extreme evil in others, and shake our heads at them because then we do not have to face the evil in our own hearts: We do not have to face the things that we do that hurt others, hurt ourselves and hurt God.
It is easy for us to be like David who was able to live with himself after committing adultery, murdering the husband and taking his wife, and yet was quite happy to declare that the wealthy man who killed his poor neighbour’s only sheep deserved to die.
We are horrified by these crimes we read about in the paper, but we are not at all bothered by the sins that we commit every day of our lives. But God is bothered by them, and his just character demands justice for them just as we demand justice against crimes.
God satisfies his own Justice in Christ
God is just, but he is also loving, compassionate and merciful. His character requires justice, but his character also demonstrates love. Because he loves us so much, he came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ in order that he could both forgive us and satisfy his justice. He did this by going to the cross that we deserved.
Nicky Gumball gives this great illustration that I have used before of two men who grew up as best friends, except that their lives took divergent paths. One became a judge, and the other a criminal. At one point the criminal ends up in the Judge’s court. He is obviously guilty, but he was the judge’s friend. If the judge let him off, he would not be fulfilling his role of dispensing justice. So what he does is he sentences his friend to the appropriate fine for his crime, he then steps down from the bench, takes off his robe, and writes his friend a check for the amount of the fine in full. This is what God does in Jesus. He sentences us to death for our sins, but then steps down from heaven and pays for our sins in full with his death.
God’s Larger View
God’s heart for justice is not all about retribution for crime or immorality; He has a much larger view. All through the Scriptures we see God’s desire for a just society as well. In fact, God’s desire for Justice impacts every sphere of society.
The place in the scripture where the image of God as Judge is most evident is in Matthew 25 where the judge of the universe sits in his court and the nations are brought before him. The nations are judged not on their morality, or their spirituality (although these things are important) The nations are judged on whether they fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the homeless, visited the sick and the imprisoned.
Much of these things we call “ministries of mercy” but even God’s desire for mercy is enveloped by his desire for justice.
God’s desire for Justice envelopes every sphere. The Bible does not make a distinction between what we would call personal morality and social justice. Malachi gives us this picture of God as judge when He says this:
3:5 At that time I will put you on trial. I will be a ready witness against all sorcerers and adulterers and liars. I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice, for these people do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty.
God’s heart for Justice
In the Courts
Exodus 23:6-9
6"Do not twist justice against people simply because they are poor.
7"Keep far away from falsely charging anyone with evil. Never put an innocent or honest person to death. I will not allow anyone guilty of this to go free.
8"Take no bribes, for a bribe makes you ignore something that you clearly see. A bribe always hurts the cause of the person who is in the right.
9"Do not oppress the foreigners living among you. You know what it is like to be a foreigner. Remember your own experience in the land of Egypt.
My experience of sitting with black men in court – I’ve watched white business men get bail in a blink of an eye for extremely violent crimes, and then the next case a young black man not getting bail for a non-violent crime where the evidence obviously contradicts itself. The God of Justice is against this type of injustice in our courts.
In the Economic System
Deuteronomy 24:12-15
12If your neighbor is poor and has only a cloak to give as security, do not keep the cloak overnight. 13Return the cloak to its owner by sunset so your neighbor can sleep in it and bless you. And the LORD your God will count it as a righteous act.
14"Never take advantage of poor laborers, whether fellow Israelites or foreigners living in your towns. 15Pay them their wages each day before sunset because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they might cry out to the LORD against you, and it would be counted against you as sin.
Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-17) – every 50 years, return the means of production back to the family applied to our time – the access to capital is a justice issue – a faith issue
El Salvador –90% of the land owned by 7 families
Jubilee 2000 – move to forgive 3rd World debt in the new millennium – why should the sins of the fathers be visited upon the children?
Right now the amount of foreign aid that is given to Africa is just a fraction of the cost of servicing the debt – the debt that was built up by banks making bad loans to bad rulers.
By protecting drug patents we are refusing life to thousands who will die of AIDS in Africa this year. I realize that the issue is much larger and complex that I might think, but we have to ask the question, “Is it more important to protect life, to give children parents, or to protect patents.”
“I don’t believe it when they tell me there ain’t no cure:
The rich stay healthy and the sick stay poor.” -U2, God part II
Christian response to Jubilee today – micro loans – small loans given to groups of women who use the relationships as equity – Calmeadow, Opportunity International
In the Social System
James 2
1My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism. 2Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. 3If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here’s a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," 4have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
Galatians 3: 28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
When we talk of Justice it sounds like a good thing if it protects us and our children and punishes those who harm us, but when we are on the winning side of injustice, it looks like it is going to cost if we start applying the justice of God to every sphere of life. But the cost will be much greater if we do not apply his justice.
To quote a few Proverbs:
28:3 “A ruler who oppresses the poor
is like a driving rain that leaves no crops.”
29:4 “When the king is concerned with justice, the nation will be strong, but when he is only concerned with money, he will ruin his country.” (TEV)
We must remember that just as God’s Holiness is high and above ours, and his creative ability is high and above ours, even his intimacy is high and above ours, so to his justice is high and above ours. Unlike our justice which is fairly self serving, God’s justice is not spelt “Just Us.” His Justice is always good and right and self sacrificing.
What to do
Worship him – his justice is perfect
Get informed – his justice is not ours – learn about his in the scripture, through the resources on the back of the bulletin
Think broadly about justice – morality issues and justice for the unborn are important, but God’s justice goes far beyond that.
Act for justice – speak out, write to politicians and pray for justice.
