Well, good evening, and I'm happy to fill in this evening for pastor. I think that probably everyone here recognizes what a valuable service it is that he and his wife can minister to the missionaries. And I'm thankful that he's willing to take the time to take a trip like that. And I'm sure that it's been well worth it. And so it opens the door for me once again to be in the pulpit, which I'm thankful for the opportunity. And tonight, I'll give you a couple clues as to what the subject's going to be. And it is a single word we're going to look at tonight, a subject. And It is a word that is found in our Pledge of Allegiance. So if you think about the Pledge of Allegiance, you'll come across this word. And the reason I'm actually was thinking about this was because my wife and I recently had been going through the Book of Esther. And as we went through that book, this particular theme kept popping up over and over again. And so it was on my mind and I was thinking about it. And then as you begin to think about it, I'll give you another clue, you can actually think of this word as an attribute of God or certainly a part of his character. And then, I'll give you one last clue, and I'm sure you probably all got it by now, but it's something that we expect, but increasingly a lack in our current judicial system. So you probably have nailed it by now. Yes, I am going to just touch on the subject tonight of justice. Justice. I'm quite sure that in my entire ministry, I've never once given a sermon to the subject of justice. And I'd like to do that tonight, although this is not technically a sermon and it won't be long. I do think that it is of increasing importance. I think it's more and more on the minds of Christian people today, perhaps more so than in the past. So there's really two questions that pop up, in my mind at least, as I want to launch out into this subject with you. One would be, how should a Christian understand the concept of justice? That's almost driving toward an idea of a definition of justice. And then secondly, how should a Christian respond to injustice? in society, but also experientially as an individual person? How do I respond biblically as a Christian to the injustice that I may encounter in my own life? And that's the practical side of the discussion. Of course, if you think about it, even for a very short time, you'll realize you can't talk about justice without talking about injustice. The one kind of defines the other. And so that's what we're looking at tonight. I remember very well maybe the first time in my young life when I really had a very strong sense of injustice being perpetrated against me. And I remember the lingering festering sore it left in my soul for quite some time. I did finally get over it. But I was in high school, and I was privileged to go to a Christian school. And our cross-country team really, really wanted to have matching workout sweatsuit outfits. And the school could not provide that for us. And so we decided that we were going to do a fundraiser. And everyone on the cross-country team went out and got people to make pledges, I will pay X amount of money for every mile that you run. Now, of course, this run was to be done at one time, at one stretch of time, but in one evening. But it was a pledge to pay by the mile. And most of us are accustomed to getting paid by the hour. But in this case, we were getting paid by the mile, so we were really earning our money. And I remember I got all my pledges together and I figured out how many miles I'd have to run to make a certain amount of money. And on that particular evening, I remember all of us on the cross-country team, we got out of school about an hour or two early that day, which was a real perk. And we went off and we ran, and we raised a lot of money. I ran from Indianapolis to Greenfield, and I know that Brother Pat knows where that is because he's very familiar with that area. But, you know, I really put an effort in, and we raised a lot of money. We raised enough money, and so we put all of our money together, and it was deposited there in the treasury of the Christian school. And lo and behold, before we could get around to buying our sweatsuits for our cross-country team, the school embarked on a much-needed renovation. which put them in tremendous financial straits. And the headmaster of the school made a declaration that all funds under the control of the school were to be used for this one single purpose, and that was to pay for these renovations. And I couldn't believe it when I heard that they stole our money. We never got the money, we never got our sweatsuits, all of our Sweat and effort went toward building the Christian school, which I guess is a good thing. I still to this day feel like I was treated unjustly, and pray for me if you think I have a root of bitterness, I got to get over that. But anyway, we all know the feeling, don't we? And that's what we're looking at tonight, justice versus injustice. And I think that we give more thought to the subject of justice than we used to because we're experiencing in our day the pain and the consequences of injustice in our society. Unabated, widespread injustice in society breeds anger. It breeds anarchy. Injustice destabilizes the fabric of society. Just, I think it was less than two weeks ago, Bill O'Reilly made a statement, and I'm going to quote him. He was commenting on the murder of a police officer. You may remember Detective Jonathan Diller. And here's the statement that Bill O'Reilly made. You cannot have a just society without confronting injustice. Well, it's a very simple but profound statement. And perhaps there is no simpler definition of injustice than what we find in Isaiah 5 and verse 20. It's so simply stated, I think it's powerful. Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, and that put darkness for light and light for darkness. I do feel that that more and more does describe the state and the direction and the trend of our society, our country, if you put it in those terms, our judicial system. are societal behavior and norms and morality. So justice is really a huge topic. You've probably already been surprised by the direction I've taken, because the moment I mentioned the topic justice, you can think of four or five or six major directions you could go with that. and all of them would be very worthy topics or developments for that topic. We could go in any of those directions. We could focus on justice as a reflection of the nature of God. And that would be a fundamental foundational approach to the subject of justice. We could deal tonight with justice as it relates to God's law. By the law, we know what is right and what is wrong, and we are judged by that law. And justice is the application of that law to lawbreakers. We could discuss justice as it relates to our personal culpability for sin and the judgment that we deserve because of that. We could spend the whole evening on that. That gets back to that beautiful hymn that we sang at the opening of the service tonight. Really, I think it's become one of my favorites. I love that hymn, His Robes for Mine. Where would we be? if it weren't for that work of Christ that satisfies the just arm of a righteous God. We could deal with the subject in a more practical way, talk about how it impacts our lives as Christians, how we respond, how we influence. And that really is more the direction that I want to go with the few minutes that we have here tonight, and the way that it affects society. So many today are asking, just as Abraham did, way back in the book of Genesis, Genesis 18 in fact, And Genesis made this statement. Actually, it was a question. It was not a rhetorical question. It was a legitimate question. He was speaking to the Lord himself, and he says in verse 25, shall not the judge of all the earth do right? If you look at the context there, in Abraham's heart and mind, He felt that God was proposing to do something unjust. God was proposing an action that would violate Abraham's sense of what is equitable, what is right, what is fair. And he's saying, Lord, are you really going to judge the righteous with the wicked? Are you going to take the innocent people and have them suffer the same judgment as the wicked people? Shall not the judge of all the earth, shall not you do right here, implying that you are proposing to do wrong? Now maybe you interpret that a little different than I. But I can't help but believe that Abraham legitimately was questioning the Lord. And almost as if he viewed him on a human level, like, do you not realize that what you're proposing is unjust? Before we get too hard on Abraham, I would dare say we've probably all done the same thing with something that we've experienced in our own lives that seemed just outside of the nature and character of God. Surely God was sleeping in this moment. God must not care for me like he cares for other people. There's something going on here because this is not what God would have allowed. This violates my concept of who God is. Therefore, God's not behind this. A just God would not allow this. When you look at Abraham here and how he negotiated with God over the fate of Sodom, we get a real insight into the challenge that we have in comprehending our great God. And in our limited capacity, we are unable sometimes to reconcile what our theology says about the nature of God and our high view of God and all of his glorious attributes and yet the realities of what God does and allows and the events that take place on this fallen globe of ours. I would say this before we move on from Abraham. If you are tempted to question God, I would advise you to do it the way Abraham did. Rather than complain about God to other people, just take your complaint directly to him and deal with it directly with him. I think God takes that a little better and that's probably the advisable way to go when we're not understanding what God's doing in our lives. Now, from a more academic perspective, I should just briefly mention that justice is often viewed as either the idea of equality of distribution, relative to a transaction. Both parties got an equitable exchange in a transaction. It's also the idea of equality of rewards or punishment, equal treatment under the law is how we say it. In other words, it's not that if you're of one political party, you get away with murder, If you're another political party, you go to jail for not including your middle initial on a legal document. So equal treatment under the law, right? That's what we're looking for, justice. So that's often what it's referring to in a more academic setting. And it's symbolized, as I'm sure you know, by this Lady Justice. And she's holding a scale, right? And she has a blindfold, many times a blindfold, symbolic of, the equity, the blindness to bias, just treating everyone equally. And that's the idea of justice in the judicial system. And that really dates back all the way to Roman, even pre-Roman times. In fact, there was a Roman goddess by the name of Justitia. And you can, of course, see where the word justice comes from there. All right, then, theologically, and again, I don't want to deal, we could spend a whole series looking at this theologically. I would just say that theologically, justice is a scary subject. Yeah, I mean it puts fear in my bones when I look at justice from a theological point of view, because suddenly I find myself standing in front of a wholly just God who, and I'm inexcusable, and I'm guilty, and I'm just waiting for that bolt of lightning and that that dropping of the gavel on me as a condemned person because of my sinfulness. And so from a theological point of view, it's not a real attractive subject until we get to the grace part of it. But you know, it made me think we like to demand justice in the way others treat us, especially government and the legal system. But we don't so much want ourselves to have to be dealt in a just way. I don't want God to give me what I deserve. I don't want that. You don't want that. I'm thankful for grace. Let me quote Ryrie in his basic theology. He explains why God's mercy does not violate his justice. and I'm just going to give a quote and move on because of time, but Ryrie says this, only the substitutionary death of Christ can provide that which God's justice demands and thereby become the basis for the gift of eternal life to those who believe. And we also have this statement in the Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, which I believe is identifying the root of objective justice, which really gets at what I'm talking about tonight, more of a practical societal aspect. Listen to this quote. Justice is rooted in the very nature of God. Just one short, simple statement. But the moment we accept that statement as true, justice becomes objective. It's not the whim of someone wearing a robe. It is an objective truth based in law, or in this case, in a person from whom law emanates and represents his character. So if God is just and we are made in his image, then the application of laws which govern human society ought to reflect that moral foundation of blind equality, which is justice, equal treatment under the law. Now, as we look at the Old and New Testament, justice really has a very different emphasis. And I'll just very briefly say that as a theme, justice is much more prevalent in the Old Testament, but it also has a different focus. And the Old Testament prophets especially emphasize Jehovah as a just God. And the distinction is the Old Testament connection of justice with law. And in the New Testament, it's the connection of justice with mercy. So you have justice as coming from law in the Old Testament, you have justice being satisfied by the propitiatory work of Christ in the New Testament, and you have then, if you look at just two words, To contrast the Old Testament justice and New Testament justice, I think what you're looking at is condemnation and justification. And who can tell me what is perhaps the premier New Testament verse that is going to contrast condemnation and justification? There's more than one, but there's one that just pops out at me. I'm sure some of you have it in your minds. Romans 8.1, Romans 8.1, There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Now, when a believer, when a Christian suffers through no fault of his own and as a direct consequence of injustice, it absolutely can shake his faith. It can shake more specifically his confidence in a just God. And it can leave a believer asking questions, maybe different questions, but like Abraham, shall not the God of all the earth do right? It could be any number of things that leaves the head spinning. And again, I'm saying in all of these, if it's an unjust action, getting fired from a job, for example, loss of property, imprisonment, maybe a frivolous lawsuit, In our modern day, ransomware, identity theft, violent harm. Imagine for a moment, and I hope this isn't true of anyone here because it's a very sensitive thing to bring up, but imagine if a loved one is killed by a drunk driver. And after the fact, you find out that that person actually had numerous DUIs and was never held accountable and now you have a loved one whose life has been snuffed out. So these are the types of things that can really play havoc in the faith of a believer when you try to reconcile it with your view of God, and specifically your view of God's justice. And especially when the perpetrators of injustice, suffer no retribution, and they only seem to prosper from their deeds. It can really injure our sense of God's justice because the scriptures, and especially books like Proverbs, they repeatedly contrast God's just dealings with the righteous and the unrighteous. And over and over again in the book of Proverbs, do right and this will happen, do wrong and this will happen, beware. It's often talking about the principle of sowing and reaping in this life, not just all things made right in eternity. And yet, in a specific instance, in a particular circumstance, in the will of God for your life or mine, we may experience something that doesn't fit the law of sowing and reaping. We may sow all the good and reap bad, and we may look at others who live a life of crime and benefit from it tremendously, at our expense. And you could find many examples in scripture of that, couldn't you? But we expect that a man's going to reap what he sows in this life. So when the norm runs contrary to our expectation, it really can shake our confidence in God. We ask questions like, does God play favorites? Does he really care? How can a truly just God allow this? And honestly, it may very well be. I think it's probably true that there are numbers of folks here this evening and listening online. And that's not a problem for you. You can honestly say, you know, I'm not struggling with that. Well, thank God. Thank God if that's the measure of your faith and strength today. But be aware that there are others who are struggling with that. that you need to be aware of and may be able to reach out to and help. And your day may be coming as well when these types of temptations will come your way. So, Peter told us to expect mistreatment. And whether you look in 1 Peter 4.12, or you look in John 15.20, both of those passages, and I intended to go there, but for sake of time I want to keep this moving, You look in those passages and Peter says, don't be surprised if you suffer. And the passage in John says, hey, do you expect to be treated better than your Savior? If they despise the Lord, if He was treated unjustly, if the criminal was let go and He was crucified, do you expect better treatment when you identify with His name? So we see that it's important, and this is one of my purposes tonight, and one of the ways I want to couch this whole discussion, it's important as a believer that I don't expect to be treated fairly in this life. I need to understand that it is normal for a believer to be mistreated by a fallen, ungodly, God-hating society. We have lived in a cocoon for 200 and some years. And the cocoon is starting to shred and the fabric of that cocoon is rotting and falling apart. And we as believers might start living a more normal Christian experience going forward. And part of that has to do with this subject of justice. You know, we look in the Bible, even Joseph, even though it was a long time coming, he finally did see justice in his lifetime. Even as Tamara and I read through the book of Esther, Haman finally saw his luck run out, and he got the judgment that he was trying to unjustly put on Mordecai. David did eventually reign as king. He didn't run forever from Saul. And so, we need to Realize, though, that even despite those, and those are some examples of long-delayed justice, there are many times in this life that injustices are never righted, and we need to accept that that is the case. So I want to be balanced as I close this up this evening and say that even Paul, The Apostle Paul sought justice under Roman law. When able to, he used the law to his advantage, and he exercised his rights under the law to appeal to Caesar and to be treated fairly. So absolutely and certainly, to the degree that we can, we should seek justice. We should expose injustice in our society. I'm not saying that we shouldn't care, and you're always going to feel it, but we shouldn't be fatalistic about injustice. You know, Christianity is not a fatalistic faith like Islam. We're not going to take that approach. We do care. We do want to have an influence. We want to believe that we can make a difference. But combating injustice has been, throughout all of human history, largely a losing battle. And it is not the Christian's expectation to win that war. Now, the reality is that God's justice is not restrained by our sense of fairness and equality. The truth is we do not deserve his mercy. We are naive to expect justice from our society or government. And perhaps nowhere in Scripture is the proper attitude more succinctly stated than in 1 Peter 2, I'm going to quote it for you here, verses 20 and 21. For what glory is it if when ye be buffeted for our faults, ye take it patiently? But if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps." I really struggled with how to conclude this A lot of times in a sermon, you want to just bring it all together and put a bowl on top at the end. That's not going to happen with this subject. And I don't know how you would finish this message, but I'm real happy with how I'm going to finish it. And that is, first of all, I'm going to share with you a verse. You can't go wrong by saying what Scripture says. So I'm going to share with you from Isaiah 42. You might want to turn there. And I'm going to break from what I normally would do. I would normally always prefer to read from the King James Version, but because the NIV in these verses has translated the Hebrew word justice, I'm going to actually read from the NIV on these verses. Isaiah 42, verses 1 to 4, and I'm going to read it slow enough so that you can just take in all of what we've said tonight into what we're reading here, okay? And let me also preface this by saying I hope you're familiar with the suffering servant of Isaiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoltering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness, he will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law, the islands will put their hope." And then, I'm just going to share a quote from the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery because it is stated so well. This description of justice and the one who will administer justice is compelling. The reader is drawn to the strength and mercy of the servant and longs to see the day of his coming. Justice here is personal. filled with mercy and love and deliverance. It is associated with what is right and good and holy. Integrity and truthfulness and faithfulness are implicit in the passage, revealing the nature of God's justice. All right, let's do closing a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed this evening. Our just God, we look to you tonight thanking you for who you are, the very nature from which we derive our laws, our morality, our guide for conduct, our love for one another, and the functioning of our various societies and human governments. We thank you, Lord, for your leadership in this area, for your perfection. And Lord, we ask that as we go forth tonight that we would revel in the reality that we don't face justice for what we deserve, but that we can try to reflect God in practicing justice among ourselves. For we pray it in Christ's name. Amen. You are dismissed. Yeah.