So we'll begin tonight reading from Psalm chapter five, verses four through six. Find the passage on page 449 in the pew Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. So we're continuing tonight in our series on God. Introducing God to us in ways that we maybe have heard about, not heard about. And one of my favorite things to do is to take something that we think we know pretty good and then to really dig into it and realize we didn't know that really hardly at all. And so, and I think this is one of those topics tonight, because we're going to be talking about the justice of God, how God is just. And it's one of those things that we nod and assent to, but justice is universal to mankind. Justice is not just a Christian concept. It's something we think about, we deliberate over, we legislate, and we just feel intuitively, and I knew this by one factor, by the sheer amount of police procedurals on TV, right? There's CSI, Miami, Las Vegas, Barstow. I don't know. There's so many of them, right? There's all the law and orders is the regular one. And then there's the SVU and the criminal intent and trial by jury. And then, and we just, and all those, and then you don't even get into the British ones. There's a bunch of those. And then it doesn't even get into all of the, the movies that are all about these police procedural movies. And because the thing is, is we love justice. We love seeing bad guys get their due. But we have to ask ourselves, what is justice? How do we define it? What does it mean for something to be unjust? Because in order to talk about justice, we have to have some kind of moral standard by which we're defining it, that we're measuring justice. You know, if I was to have a knife and I wanted to see, well, is this a four inch blade or is it a six inch blade? I have to have a standard of measurement by which to determine that. Likewise, in order to determine whether something is just or not, we must seek whether or not it conforms to the moral measurement, to a moral standard. And that is essentially what justice is. The conformity to an authoritative moral law. But laws are never developed on their own. They don't just pop out. They come from somewhere, they come from a lawful authority. And the fact that mankind has this built-in sense of justice, and even if there's debate over how much is right, what exactly is right or wrong, things like that, the fact that there is even enough agreement that certain things are right, certain things are wrong, or even that things like right or wrong even exist, speaks to testifies to the fact that there is that there is this real thing of called objective moral truth that stands outside of you or me or our society. But it goes further than just simply the existence of divine truth or divine law, because if you have divine law, there must be a divine law giver. Herman Bovink wrote that all laws and rights, whatever they may be, have their ultimate ground, not in the social contract, not in self-existent natural law or in history, but in the will of God, viewed not as absolute dominion, but as a will of goodness and grace. God's grace is a fountainhead of all laws and rights. But the problem here isn't just theorizing about justice. When we really struggle with justice and we struggle with the idea of God being just, it's usually because of the presence of injustice. Because those who we see, those who who should be punished for their crimes get off the hook. We see their innocent victims suffer. We see we see the innocent get wrongly convicted of things they didn't do. But again, the fact that we even wrestle with these things, even with the presence of injustice, testifies to reality that there is such a thing as justice, that it does exist. Because why? Because I'm mad that it's not happening. And so what we can say is, is that we are concerned with justice as Christians because we know that God himself is just. And biblically speaking, God's justice is the revelation of His righteousness. God's justice is the revelation of His own personal righteousness. When we speak about God in this way, as God relates to himself, his personal qualities, not how he relates to creatures, to himself, you wouldn't probably technically say that he's just, because how is God going to be just towards himself? But rather, theologians like to say that God is righteous. He is holy. The Hebrew word here for, and it gets, I mean, it gets, you have to be careful about not trying to be over precise about it though, because the Hebrew word for justice and the Hebrew word for righteousness are the same word. So as they indicate that this one Hebrew word is the conformity to an ethical standard. That's what it means. Just like we talked about, that's the basic idea of justice. The root word, I mean, you have to understand even the Hebrew language, even down to its letters, was originally believed to be kind of a pictorial language. Even the Hebrew letters have a pictorial background and history. And so the idea here of this Hebrew word actually goes back to the idea of something being straight, in a straight line. The Bible talks a lot about being upright, right? It's bad to be crooked. That means immoral. And so injustice is something that deviates from the standard. It's something that is bent or crooked as opposed to straight and upright. But God, we have to say, is not righteous or just because he holds himself in conformity with a law that stands outside of himself, right? He doesn't look to the laws outside of himself and say, I'm going to obey those laws. Because God, as we've said before, is a simple being, so he can't be two things. He is infinite and all his perfections. And he is. So he is infinitely, perfectly, absolutely just and righteous in and of himself without respect to anything else. And so Deuteronomy 32, four says that the rock, his work is perfect for all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he. So also Psalm 129 for the Lord is righteous. He's cut the cords of the wicked. That is, God's being is definitional to justice and righteousness. This also means, of course, as we've already said, that God cannot be unjust. He cannot be unrighteous, because that would be contrary to his being. All morality flows from his will, and his will conforms to the holiness of his being. So it's from the righteousness of God that we derive the very idea of righteousness or justice. We get it from him and he gets it from nowhere else except himself. This is important for us to think about because other religions, especially pantheistic religion, not pantheistic, polytheistic religions that have many gods will feature these gods doing lots of just and unjust things. They're filled with all these passions. They're jealous. I mean, look at the Greek, the Greek myths and Zeus was all kinds of hijinks and shenanigans along with all the other gods. You look at the Egyptian gods, same deal there, fighting with each other, doing the wrong thing, doing the right thing. But that is not how God is. Because if God were unjust in any part, in any moment, at any turn, he would not be God. Because this would require God to be a mixture of things. And God cannot be by virtue of the fact that he is the creator and not the creation. And so therefore, the New Testament tells us, as we talked about last week in His holiness, or two weeks ago in His holiness, where it says God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all. It's not a shade, not a shadow, not a bit. So we need to establish this because we experience injustice in the world And as we experience that, as we see it in the world, then we may be tempted to question God, to question His actions or even His character because of what we've seen, because of what we've experienced. Why does God allow these things to continue? Interestingly enough, that's a question the Psalms like to ask. Why do you let it go on, Lord? How long, O Lord, will you let the wicked prosper? These are important and real questions to be sure, but the doctrine of the simplicity of God, his perfect justice, his righteousness, it can at least eliminate one option for us, which is that the reason injustice is in the world is because God is in any way unjust to himself. We can take that off the table as we try to wrestle with the injustice in this world. Now, again, I said some theologians like Charles Hodge like to prefer when he talks about God in relation to himself, as we've been talking about, to say that God's holy, that God is righteous. And then we can talk about justice as he relates to his creatures. And I think it's fine to do that. You just have to admit that the biblical data is not nearly so precise. And so God is just, but that seems to mean, biblically, that God being just is simply because God gives everyone their due. It seems to be behind the idea of God's justice. He gives everyone what He owes them, what they deserve. So, Isaiah 3, verses 10 through 11, "'Tell the righteous it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Woe to the wicked, for it shall be ill with them, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him." In Psalm 58 verses 10 and 11, the righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance of God. He will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked. Mankind will say, surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely there is a God who judges on earth. Over and over again, we see scriptures like this, and they highlight two key things that God rewards the righteous with life. There's a positive aspect to righteous. This is what's called remunerative righteousness. It's the idea of rewarding those who do well. That's justice too, giving people who do good what they deserve, rewarding them. And so that's what we see here, that God rewards the righteous with life. That's a biblical idea. Now, we also see this even in the writings of Paul in 2 Timothy 4, 8, where he says, Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. Though the innocent may suffer, the wicked may prosper in this life, The end will come, and the judgment of God will fall. The righteous will be in that time vindicated, and their enemies will finally receive what they are due. All that the righteous have suffered and sacrificed will be rewarded. Jesus said you cannot out-sacrifice God. Right? He'll reward anything that we sacrifice a hundredfold. You can't out-sacrifice the Lord. And we see in Revelation 6, the martyrs before the throne calling for judgment upon those who murdered them, saying, How long, O Lord? Because they know there is an expiration date on evil and injustice. How long assumes there's an endpoint? It's coming. Even if we don't know when it is. And so in the Proverbs and the Psalms, you'll see these sections where it'll address the prevalence of injustice and how the wicked will prosper. And it always ends with a section on, even though the wicked may seem to do well right now, don't envy them. Don't seek to be like them because you need to remember their end. They may enjoy the high life now, but it's going to be eternal ruin for them in the judgment to come. But the righteous, they remind us, will see life. And so God rewards the righteous with life. He also punishes the wicked with death. So going back to the beginning of the Bible, back to Genesis two, verse 17, we were reminded by God that the, the, the sentence for sin has always been death, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from the day that you eat of it. You shall surely die. This is confirmed as well, much later on in Ezekiel 18 verse four, behold, all souls are mine. The soul of the father, as well as the soul of the son is mine. The soul who sins shall die. Sin is cosmic treason against the Lord. And from the beginning, it's sentence was death. It's always been that way. That seems so harsh. Well, to sinners who make a thousand rationalizations and a hundred thousand gradations of sin, usually my sin is not as bad as the other guys. Yeah, it seems harsh because we can hardly go an hour or ten minutes without sinning. But sin has always been punishable by death. It's not anything new. It's not like he suddenly just ratcheted it up and said, now I'm increasing the penalty. No, it's always been death from the beginning. And the only reason that death was delayed to Adam and Eve, the only reason death is delayed to anyone here on earth is the sheer kindness of God. God has every right to just do Ananias and Sapphira on all of us, doesn't he? But he doesn't because of his kindness. There's a stay of execution on the whole of the earth, not because God has to do it, but because in his common grace he has decided to do it. But also because it accomplishes his purposes and his special grace of the gospel. But it's important for us, especially those of us who cry out with the psalmist and with the oppressed, how long, oh Lord, to remind ourselves that the way of life is righteousness and holiness, not the momentary prosperity of the wicked who do not know God. And to remember that the reward for wickedness and unbelief is death. And so because God is infinitely perfectly and absolutely just. And he rewards the righteous with life. He punishes the wicked with death. Scripture tells us that God is the perfect judge. He is the perfect judge. Psalm 96, 13 says, talking about how creation, the field and the trees are going to rejoice before the Lord. For he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness. The Lord is the perfect, righteous judge of all the earth. And part of this is because God cannot be bribed. The Bible does not like bribes. God doesn't like bribes because bribes blind judges and pervert justice. but that is not an issue with God. Deuteronomy 10, 17, the Lord, your God is a God of gods and Lord of Lords, the great, the mighty and awesome God who is not partial and takes no bribe. He's not a respecter of persons. He's not, he's not, Oh, you're rich. You can just, you can just come into court and turn yourself in, but you, you're poor. We're going to come and arrest you. All right. He's not a respecter of persons. Every human person is held to the same holy standard. And his judgments, therefore, are perfect. Revelation 16, 7, I heard from the altar saying, Yes, Lord God, the almighty, true and just are your judgments. And three chapters later in Revelation 19, for his judgments are true and just, for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. He's the perfect judge. He never condemns the innocent, nor does he pardon the guilty without cause. As the true judge, God will reward every right and right every wrong. He will give everyone their due. Therefore, since God is just and righteous, the perfect judge, the scriptures teach us that there is a judgment to come. This was John Calvin's primary motivation for missions. You know, I've highlighted before it wasn't, we got all these predestined people. We got to go find them. It was no judgments coming. We got to go share the gospel. There stands in the scriptures, a judgment to come. It's a judgment that we still await for that will come at the end time when Christ returns. So John 5 verses 25 to 29, truly, truly, Jesus says, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God and those who hear will live for as the father is life in himself. So he has granted the son also to have life in himself as he has also given him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man. Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. So it's not just the mean people who say there's a judgment coming, Jesus says there's a judgment coming and Jesus says, guess what? I'm going to do the judging. Revelation 20, we see it happen, verse 11. Then I saw the great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence, earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the people who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. And so there is this great future judgment that awaits mankind. And that there is this great judgment does raise up several important observations for us. First of all, we already mentioned it, is that Jesus is the son of man who will judge the world. People often miss that part about Jesus. But according to Jesus and John, that time for judgment is already at hand. It is already near. It is already starting to come out as the kingdom of God has also begun to enter the world. And I think this really helps us to add some context and to understand Paul a bit more when he writes in Romans chapter 1 verse 18, saying for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Well, Paul, how is that wrath being Revealed in the world, well, go down to verse 24 and 25. God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts into impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. What Paul's describing here is not the final judgment, obviously. But he is talking about the beginning of the revelation of God's wrath against sin. That in the present time, until the final judgment, one of the primary ways that God reveals his righteousness in his wrath is by giving sinners who suppress the truth over to their own desires. That today, God shows his wrath towards unbelief by giving people what they want. Just go for it. Now, all of this presents us with an immense problem. Because if God's going to judge the world and sin is worthy of death, then where does that place you and me? You know, as we'd like to have a conversation with God and be like, whoo, God, I'm glad you're glad you're on my side, right? We're good. You're good, right? Yeah. And then, and then we find out, well, no, actually you're, you're in with you're in with the sinners. I mean, that's what the first two and a half chapters of Romans is about. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Doesn't matter if you're a Jew, doesn't matter if you're a Gentile, everyone stands guilty before God. In God's justice, his righteousness is revealed as he pours out his wrath on sinful humanity. And that picture at the end is terrifying. It says all land and sea fled. from the wrath and judgment of God in Revelation 20. There's no place to hide. And if that were it, then we would certainly despair and we might be tempted again to say, well, thankfully, you know, God looks on us and he says, oh, you're so special. I'm going to take a break from my wrath and let you into the club. But he did. That's not what he did. It's not what he does. He can't do that. If he does that, then he's clearing the guilty who deserve punishment. It would be unjust. Rather, we find the scriptures that as God reveals his righteousness and his wrath for sin, he also reveals his righteousness in his grace. Paul writes in Romans chapter three, Verses 21 through 26 about the righteousness of God. This is a righteousness that captivated Martin Luther. Says God, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith and Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there's no distinction, all of sin and fall short of the glory of God. And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness. Not to show His mercy, it's to show His righteousness. Because in His divine forbearance, He has passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. And so what he's saying here is that Christ saves us from judgment by becoming our righteousness. We can't manifest the righteousness that we need in order to withstand the judgment of God. If you're going to get the gospel, that's the first thing that you got to get. Other than I'm a sinner and I'm in and there's big trouble here. God's justice apart from His grace would rightly and gloriously condemn you and I to eternal punishment. But what Paul makes clear and what human history testifies about and our consciences know is that we are sinners who stand condemned before God and we cannot save ourselves. But this is why Christ came. He came as a doctor to heal the sick, right? So he said, I didn't come for the well. I came for the ill. I came for the sick. He came to reveal the righteousness of God apart from the law, a righteousness which which can be ours, not by works, but by faith in Jesus. And we need a righteousness outside of us, what Luther called that alien righteousness. that will clothe us and put us in right standing with God. But before we can be considered righteous, the justice of God has to be satisfied for our sins. And thus we have the cross. As there upon the cross, we behold our Savior. He who knew no sin, who bore the penalty for your sin and mine, and who took the full brunt of the wrath of God upon himself in order that we would be declared righteous in the sight of the Father. That's what Paul means by that word propitiation in that passage. This sacrifice which satisfies the wrath of God. In doing so, God showed his righteousness as he punishes our sins in Jesus. Till on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied. Another hymn, tell me ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like his? Friends through fear, his cause disowning, foes insulting his distress, many hands were raised to wound him, none would intervene to save, but the deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave. Now, I don't know about you, but there's a part when I think about this that gets deeply personal. And I think about Jesus, and I think about Him, and I think about Him dying on the cross for my sins and receiving my punishment. And there is a part of me that goes, don't do that. Because I think of my vile, thoughtless, sinful stupidity. And the beautiful, glorious, wonderful Son of God, I'm like, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't do that for me. I'm not worth that. We aren't worth that. And I think the father's response is, I know. No one is worth my son. and yet I sacrifice him to deliver you. And Jesus says, and I do so willingly for the joy set before me to be your redeemer. Every bit of the Lord's judgment that he poured out on us and that he would have poured out on us, he poured out on him. There's not an ounce of the wrath of God that is yet to be poured out for your sin that was not poured out on Jesus. That's the beauty and the wonder of the cross. And the love and affection that the father gives to his own, he gives to us because of Jesus, because of his death. That is the gospel of grace. That is the gospel of the justice of God. The cross that satisfied divine justice, the resurrection, which defeated death, the life of perfect righteousness that is now applied to us by the power of the Holy Spirit through faith, which pardons and revives and recreates us and makes us new. And even now, as we live in this life, so so weak and often sinning and so frail, yet we have this promise of forgiveness, both both now and for and even until the day that we come into the throne, as the apostle tells us, if even now, if you confess your sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Why? Not because you meant and you really meant to say you're sorry. Because Jesus accomplished it on the cross for you. In the end. God's justice will make it so that every right will be rewarded and every wrong will be made right. So God's justice means he will wipe away every tear, he will vindicate the innocent, give relief to the suffering and the oppressed. God will give each what he is due. In the gospel, God has given to Jesus what we were due, and doing so, he satisfied divine justice and secured for us the righteousness that we need in order to see the Lord. And so we pray that the holy God, who is just and perfect in every way, would move in us by its spirit's power to live lives of hatred towards sin, and love towards him, his church and his Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you. That. We have such mercy in Jesus. We. Certainly fulfill the very meaning of mercy for we receive that which we are not worthy of. Lord, we thank you for your justice that will right all the broken and crooked things in our world. There will be so many tears to be wiped away. Tears that have been shed. Tears that have yet to be shed. Father, we pray that we would consider. The cost that it took. For us to be redeemed. And Lord, may we not take upon ourselves some kind of second wave of of guilt for sin. But may we feel the heaviness and the weight of it. But may we feel the relief of that burden as we see the resurrected Savior who doesn't wag his finger at us, shame us, but calls us to freedom as his brothers and sisters in faith. Lord, may we embrace joyfully our heritage as children of God made so afforded that right by the son of God, the true son of God. And Lord, may we go forward with joy, knowing that divine justice for our sin has been satisfied. And may that motivate us. Not to therefore go and sin because we've been forgiven. but to go and seek to be faithful to the God who is just and righteous and holy in himself. That we may delight in you and that you would continue to delight in us. Father, we pray that we would act in conformity with not only your law, but with your character in our in our in our deeds and in our ways that we ourselves would be just and righteous in our interactions with one another. and that we would, above all, glory in the God who is both just and justifier of those who believe in His Son. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.