…having myself, a sister right now, although we get along much better than when we were younger. What do the Roman Catholic, what does the Roman Catholic church abuse of a thousand children, recently reported, in Pennsylvania, abortion on demand, and Kavanaugh’s lynching, and Harvard’s exposed racial quotas have in common? You know, they’re unjust. They are unjust.
But what is justice? What should we do about injustice? Can anyone actually be just? Isn’t God, isn’t he the only one who’s just? Are we not rather sinners instead? What does justice look like in society, in politics, in business, in the church? But should the means to justice be the same everywhere? Or is the goal of justice enough? What does this mean for Christians today who hear all sorts of demands about justice in America? What about economic justice or racial justice? What should the church do about them, if anything? What should you do about it yourself, if anything? These are a few of the questions I’m sure that swirl around your mind when you hear the word justice or injustice. And I cannot answer all of them. But I hope to answer some of them and perhaps give a suggestion to other questions.
And by the spirit of illumination and truth, I pray that that will help us and encourage us to continue on and take seriously God’s law, God’s definition of justice. So let us look at the famous passage here in Micah 6.8. From a twofold perspective, the commonplace of injustice and the uncommonplace or acts of justice themselves. Because it is quite common to have injustice.
Injustice is Common
It began with Adam and Eve, and it worked its way down from there. Today, of course, I think if we just pay attention to the news, even if we don’t pay attention to the news, you’re just going to hear a scream at you, perhaps from your alarm clock like we do once in a while, and the news comes on, and the news is telling you these bad things are happening. These unfair events are transpiring.
Individual unfairness, collective unfairness in society, in politics, in the courts, in the neighborhoods, in the families. There is lying, there is stealing, there is cheating, there are half-truths, there is torture, there is murder, there is abuse, there is oppression, and they get away with it. And that’s not fair.
That’s unjust. And they cover it up. And as I mentioned last Sunday night, they prosper.
And so we are tempted to fret, because of the prosperity of the wicked, in their wickedness. I don’t think I need a lot of examples. We see them, we’re very sensitive to them.
The Bible itself is full of injustices, or that is, pictures and examples of injustices. The backstabbing, the politicking, the revenge-filled soap operas of the kings, of David, right? Of the Pharisees framing Christ. That was unjust.
And Adam’s great injustice against God Almighty. But if Adam sinned and became unjust, does that not mean that he was just at one time? Yes! Maybe you never thought of that, but Adam was just and upright and holy before he fell. But can we be just? That’s the question.
How can humans be just, as God is just? And it’s improper to make a distinction, a two-fold manner with respect to justice. This is an important background to this question of application of Micah 6.8. There are two types of justice, absolute and relative. If you think about it, that makes sense.
Only God is absolute. The justice He gives is perfect, each and every time. At all times, in all situations.
A divine justice, divine exercise of what is right, have given the due deserts, the due consequences to the wicked and to the righteous. Only He is absolute and holy. His characteristic of justice arises from His nature.
He is just. We act just. He is upright.
He is fair and equitable in all that He does. We are not. We are fallen.
Creation to Providence. Calling all things into existence and maintaining all things in their existence now. They don’t exist of themselves.
You don’t exist of yourself. This earth does not exist of itself. God upholds and maintains all things.
This is for the purpose of His glory and justice. He’s not unjust in maintaining this present creation, although it may feel that way. It may look that way to us with our human eyes.
Because people are getting away with things in His Providence. He does punish people. He does reward people.
Psalm 94.2. Rise up, O judge of the earth. Render punishment to the proud. This is an expectation of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament.
This is our God. He will bring punishment. He will bring reward.
He will come with judgments, not just here and now, but in the future. In Psalm 96. For He is coming to judge the earth.
He shall judge the world with righteousness and all the peoples with His truth. Justice is a major theme in the Old Testament. It is what makes the Gospel make sense.
God is a just God. And we all deserve that justice which is hell. The Gospel comes along and gives us heaven.
While still giving God justice. That’s what’s amazing. Justice is an important theme in the Christian religion.
Adam was just, but not as just as God in the sense that he was finite. He was not absolute. His justice was without sin.
He even obeyed the naming of the animals, remember? He was called and he did it. But it wasn’t an infinite and absolute justice. He was finite.
You can imagine he’d be ignorant in some things. A lot of things. You have to make a judgment call on ignorance.
That can mess with justice, can’t it? That’s why I talk about relative justice. Or perhaps you can use the word human justice in that sense. Post fall or after the fall, we are fully unjust.
As of Adam. In thought, word, and deed, sinners think evil thoughts, say evil things, and do evil things. We see it.
We’ve done it ourselves. And we struggle with it as Christians. Justice will often not be accomplished in this life, here and now.
We can’t always get the right thing, the fairness, the equity. My wife likes those mystery crime shows like 48 hours. That’s not a disparaging remark about her character.
A number of those are not solved. It just ends the episode like we haven’t figured anything out here. That’s unjust, isn’t it? We don’t maybe use that word, but that’s what it is.
It’s unfair to the person who was murdered. To their family. To the one who lost everything he had.
Because of the scumbag who cheated him. Ponzi schemes. Now, some of that injustice I mentioned the case theoretically of Adam before the fall.
But let’s not deal with theoretical before the fall. That’s a dangerous place. Let’s deal with reality here and now.
We have injustice in this world. We have people who get away with crimes. Not because of sin, but because of ignorance.
The judge, the police, the prosecutor didn’t have all the facts before them. And again, you see that in these 48 hour shows and the like. Several years later they come up with a new fact.
Oh, okay. And so we know intuitively that the justice we have here as humans is incomplete, isn’t it? Just by being finite. At least this side of the fall.
We don’t know everything. We can’t get all the information. And sometimes the person who committed the crime or the one who was criminalized themselves don’t know everything because they were drunk or something.
They got knocked cold. Who knows? It’s an interesting conundrum. We don’t really have full justice.
We can’t get it. And that’s important, again, from a social perspective. And to get ahead of myself, Micah is about the social perspective.
I think I’ve proven that by chapter 6, haven’t I? He’s dealing with social issues in a sense of common issues among the society known as Israel. And there’s another reason why mystery crimes are not fully solved, and that’s why there’s still mysteries, is by dint of sin. I mean, just there are wicked prosecutors who don’t care, judges who get bought off.
That’s mentioned in Micah. We should have just judges, just rulers who are equitable. So it’s by dint of ignorance and by dint of sin.
These are the reasons why before Christ comes we will not have full justice. And if we expect full justice as Christians and we go out there whining and complaining because things aren’t just enough, if we go above and beyond what is reasonably expected, given the situation and the circumstances of whatever that injustice is, that’s a problem, and that could hamper your Christian life as you become down in the mouth and angry about these issues. You will not get full justice, brothers and sisters.
Even if there wasn’t sin, there’s lots of ignorance. Lots of things we don’t know. People can’t find out, and they’re going to get away with it.
Sorry. Now, another example of full injustice that won’t likely be rectified this side of a turnip heap is broad-sweeping social and group sins. And they exist, it’s just in the sense that you have a lot of people in one group either actively or by permission, if we think of the old Nazi scenario of those living next door to the extermination camps, and they smell something funny, but they like to stay ignorant.
So a passive participation in the sin of others. And material, remember I made those distinctions. No visitors here, so I’ve covered this before.
Material cooperation versus formal. They don’t really want to kill people, but they’re not really interested in pulling back and pulling the curtain across. These things happen.
Here’s an example. I have a fascinating book about white slavery. Just to be contrary, I guess.
I heard of it. I mean, you hear lots of things, but you want to find a book and go a little deeper. About half, if not more, of the male whites in early America, we’re talking the 1600s, early 1700s, were slaves.
They use the word servant today, but they were slaves. A lot of them. I didn’t know that.
That’s quite fascinating. So there’s an injustice against a large group of people. The Irish was another example.
A lot of the Irish were sold as slaves as well. What then? Where’s their restitution? Where’s their justice? They were stolen as a kid or an adult, sold into slavery. Perhaps their master lied about them.
You don’t think that ever happened. Perhaps their master lied about them and stole their money and claimed that he owed me money and he didn’t, so he just let them off to slavery, etc., etc. Where’s their justice? It’s not.
It’s never going to happen. It’s just not going to happen. When wicked countries win a war, where’s justice? The Eastern Bloc, where’s justice? The wall fell in the 89.
They’re like, yay, but what about all the injustice, the people dying and the people starving and they’re thrown into concentration camps and they had them. It was called Siberia. Where’s their justice? Brezhnev and those leaders, why aren’t they brought before a tribunal and judged? Because we don’t have full justice inside of eternity, brothers and sisters, whether individually or with masses of people, like in the case of war.
Should we go back and fight them again? They’re all dead. The whole generation’s gone. Now they’re before the great judge, God above.
Many of these things simply cannot be rectified. We live in an unjust world. South Africa, some of you know the scenario going on there.
Africa, Middle East, they have wars. Terrorism, you’re not going to catch them. You can fight an eternal war against terrorism.
If you believe you’ve got to have justice here and now and we’re going to take all our resources to go after that justice. We’ve got to have justice. That sounds so noble, doesn’t it? Be wary, brothers and sisters.
Politicians could use that against you. I’m not making a decision either way how you should vote. But just to be aware.
You can’t always get it. You just have to say, look, we have to draw a line and say, we just can’t do anything with it. We have more important things to deal with either as a nation or as a family or a community and we just must go on forward with our life.
I’m sorry, that’s just all there is to it. We know these things and it can be very hard. I wanted to remind you, injustice is common.
You can’t fight that. It’s also relative and I’ve covered a little bit about that. It’s relative in so far as how it’s enacted.
Some people or nations are more just than others. That’s what I mean by relative. Not that the standard of justice is relative but the execution is inconsistent.
It’s not like God. God is absolute. He does it perfect in all situations and all circumstances.
He can balance and weigh everything. We’re kind of stumbling here trying to juggle as judges as parents because we want to exercise justice in our home. In the case of a child who lies, oops, now what are you going to do? Because you can’t get behind the lies.
It’s just one word against another. You’ve got to kind of balance out something you hope at the end of the day. Entire nations do that, states and judges.
It’s just where we are. We have to be careful not to become perfectionist, essentially. We live in an unjust world and there’s a relative justice in that sense that we all fall short, of course, of God’s perfect justice.
And I’m reminded of this, for example, here. In Christian circles, here we have one person who was either a current member or a graduate of Fuller Seminary. So they’re kind of a general evangelical lady.
She had a tweet out and she tweeted this affirmation. Here’s the affirmation. We affirm that some cultures operate on assumptions that are inherently better than those of other cultures because of the biblical truths that inform those assumptions.
Some cultures are, on the whole, more Christian or more biblical than other cultures. And you’re all kind of like, yeah, of course, because there’s a relative justice even among them. Some Christian nations, quote-unquote, historically, have been more faithful than others.
And her response was, this ideology has justified ethnocide, genocide, and slavery. Saints, let’s join in fasting and prayer against this, against that concept that judgment and justice is what? Relative in the way I defined it, right? And it’s execution and it’s inconsistency. And that some people are more just than others, relatively speaking.
That’s what I mean by that. She thinks that’s terrible! We’ve got to have it now, apparently. It’s all or nothing.
She’s not Christ. She’s not God. It’s in the Church, brothers and sisters.
There’s a confusion, a fundamental confusion of moral categories of that which is God’s and that which is man. And ours is an unfaithful, inconsistent execution. It’s faithful if we are Christians, because the blood of Christ covers us.
And our little effort at drawing justice and our crown like a little three-year-old, Christ will accept it and put it on his fridge, as it were, because he died for his people. And that’s our sanctification, our first steps of holiness and of justice. That’s part of holiness, isn’t it? It’s important because it’s there.
I want to go to a church. You’ve all heard this before. It’s relevant.
Well, there’s some relevance right here. We hear it. It’s there.
It’s even in our denomination. So, justice is enacted differently in different nations. Really? Most nations over time, most of the time, do not have a distinct legal and political categories.
For example, of legislative, judicial, and executive branches, right? That’s a somewhat historically unique thing, although they had it in, I think, Switzerland. Families run a little differently. Of course, they run differently than a business, which runs differently than a nation.
But they’re all called to what? Exercise justice. So again, in that sense, in terms of the goal, it should be the same. The standard is the same, but the means towards justice is a little different in the family.
It’s not a vote among all the members like it would be in a democracy, for example. You see what I’m getting at? So in that sense, how you execute and go after justice looks a little different in different domains. That’s important, again, because some people like to bash you over the head and say it has to be, like I mentioned in the Sunday school class, it has to be a constitutional republic.
Anything else is a sin. Monarchies are a sin. Democracies are a sin.
They are not. They’re neither commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God nor in His moral code anywhere. And I’ve not found any reasoning that goes either way.
It’s what works best to execute justice among a people and their traditions and their histories. And as I study, as I mentioned before, the history of America, that’s our argument. You’ve got a republic if you can keep it.
So that’s to remind you, as many of you had a lot of training in the Bible and the like, that that’s what I mean by relative, that is relative execution, the means that you execute the goal and the definition of justice. So we have this problem of uncommon justice, that is, common injustice. And yet justice is real.
God’s law is not a phantom. We are called holy and saints. We are called to justice and righteousness like Abraham was called to justice and righteousness.
Perhaps you forgot about that in Genesis. We’ll cover that in the other sermon. That’s what he’s called to.
It’s part of the covenant. The antithesis after the fall. Justice is exercised by humans among humans whether they are saved or not.
Many saved are weak and unjust in many ways and many unsaved are strong and just in many ways. Again, that’s how it is before Christ comes. You’re going to have unbelievers that can be more just than Christians sometimes.
Our good example of justice, of executing and being a judge or being a leader in society or a president or whatever the case may be. But in general, of course, there is large patterns among large groups of people so that we have a proverb, Proverb 29.27 as one example. An unjust man is an abomination to the righteous and he who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked.
That’s the antithesis. It’s there in principle for all Christians whether we execute it right or wrong. We’re inconsistent with our justice.
But it’s there in principle and it’s there, I think, as a general pattern anyways. I mean, Western civilization began as a civilization from barbarism because of Christianity. All tribes, as I mentioned, were converted, right? At least they followed their conversion of their leader and that was a good thing.
Society has changed because God came along. We have entire political parties today who stated a public platform is unjust, the murder of unborns, the forced redistribution of wealth, the mutilation of children. It’s right there.
It’s unjust. That’s the unjust man is an abomination to the righteous or at least it rather ought to be. We have social justice redefining justice itself.
Some social justice warriors are called. You’re successful only because of your class and oppression to others by definition. That’s how they define justice.
It’s not how God defines justice. It’s unjust how they define justice. The next point, the next sermon will be about justice.
We have Gosnell, the butcher of Pittsburgh. Remember him? They have a movie that just came out. He’s just the one that got caught.
We have the fleecing of the middle class as injustice. The unjust man is an abomination to the righteous and he who is upright in his way is an abomination to the wicked and we ought to understand and feel these injustices and not be satisfied with them in the sense that, oh, it’s okay to be unjust, right? Sure. That’s not what I’m saying when I’m saying injustice is common but that we ought to tamper our expectations of perfectionism but at the same time, these are real problems.
The fleecing of the middle class, for example, directly relevant to Micah 3 and Micah 2. They’ve stolen their pleasant homes. Poor people don’t have pleasant homes. They stole their robes, their nice outer garments.
Poor people don’t have nice outer garments. The Bible is concerned about the poor. Micah in particular is also concerned about the middle class, as strange as it may sound.
And I’m not preached a sermon on the 8th commandment but it’s there in our larger catechism, actually. It says you’re supposed to maintain and preserve your prosperity and even expand it for yourself, for the kingdom of God and for your children and your children’s children. If that’s true for individuals and families, it’s also true for collections of individuals and families.
The productivity for the average worker went up 74-fold since 1973 but hourly compensation only went up 74%. But hourly compensation only went up 12%. There’s something a little fishy there.
In 1973, the inflation adjusted median income of men working full-time was $54,000 about. In 2017, it was $51,000. People ask, why is there a big epidemic of opioid crisis in the working middle class? Well, if you have no hope, you have not Christ and all you have is your earthly possessions and they’re being stripped from you because of, I don’t know, I’m not going to go into that.
Something happened. Talk about prosperity. This is my lifetime.
I was born in 1972. Their buying power is weaker and weaker. And they’re like, I’m not progressing.
In fact, there was an article in the New York Times, I think it was, this is the first generation, the first time this year, when it was 2016, 2017, in which the children are now able to be as rich as their parents. It’s decreasing. I know I’m richer than my parents and they’re richer than their parents.
It’s a general trend in America for a long time. So, Micah, as I said, mentions this. These are forms of injustice.
Protecting yourselves from forms of injustice to end this first point of the sermon. Protecting yourself from injustice because it’s there. We understand it’s there.
We ought to tamper our expectations of perfectionism and always being able to survive and getting away with things. I’m going to go to the nth degree to the courts and get my gun out and take you out or whatever it is that you’re tempted to do. If you feel undue worry and you have been cheated, you must cling to the promises of Christ and salvation.
You must always go back to Christ in these difficult times. If you’ve enacted injustice yourself, if you’ve been unfair, you must offer restitution, repent, and cling to the promises of salvation. Clean your own act up first.
That’s what we’re called as Christians to do. And you can by His Spirit. Repent.
Bring proper restitution, whatever that may be, and then carry on. Pick yourself up. The righteous man falls six times.
You’re going to sin? Yes. But you have Christ. You have the Spirit.
You can repent and move forward. Don’t be living in despair that way. Resist manipulation.
I have the quote, and I didn’t put his name down. What is his name? Okay, ask me afterwards. When someone tries to lay a guilt trip on you for being successful, remember that your guilt is some politician’s license to take what you work for and give it to someone else who is more likely to vote for their politician who plays Santa Claus with your money.
That’s true. Don’t forget that. If you have guilt, if it’s real, deal with it.
Repent. Restitution. Go back to Christ.
Believe in Him. If it’s not real, drop it. Don’t have other people’s burdens and guilt.
You shouldn’t feel guilty for being prosperous. Abraham wasn’t. King David wasn’t guilty for being prosperous.
Pray fast if need be. Remember that God’s in control. This is a struggle with you.
You’re dealing with injustice. And we have, to one degree or another, someone’s lied about you. That’s unjust.
It’s not fair. It ruins your reputation. How do you get your reputation back? Especially if someone lies about you behind your back on the Internet to a bunch of strangers.
You probably don’t even know about it. When you find out, you’re like, now what? No, you can’t always deal with it. Pray fast if it’s bad enough.
Your household is being unduly affected, of course. Remember that God’s in control. He knows what He’s doing.
He knows this world is full of injustice. He knows you can’t have perfection. Turn the other cheek.
That’s one way to deal with injustice. Did you know that? I’ve mentioned a few times in passing in the sermons, in preparation to remind you and prepare you, we’re not supposed to be doormats. I agree with that.
But that depends on the circumstances, doesn’t it? It depends on the circumstances and the goal of why you wish to push back and to maintain justice. You know, your family gets attacked by a murderer. I expect you to go to the police.
I expect you to defend yourself. That’s a requirement of the commandment, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt preserve life. Yes.
But often we can turn the other cheek, especially for small things that we think are huge, of course, because it happened to me. Individuals and circumstances that require it. Turn the other cheek.
Walk the extra mile. Just say, fine. Keep it.
I don’t have to have it. Keep the computer. I lost a few hundred bucks.
That’s fine. I’d rather maintain either friendship in the case of a friend or peace with your neighbor because you’re going to live with the guy another 10 years. Say, fine.
Just keep it. But you know from then on, you don’t sell things to him because he’s going to rip you off or whatever the case is. You have a greater goal and a greater purpose beyond that.
But you turn the other cheek. You just say, well, okay, that’s how it is. Of course, we don’t want magistrates.
If you’re a Christian magistrate or a Christian police officer, you better not turn the other cheek or you’re in the wrong job. But we are called to do these things, brothers and sisters, when the circumstances require it. And I think it happens a lot more than we realize.
Just swallow your pride and say, bad things are going to happen. This place is unjust. Lord, give me strength.
Give me mercy, perhaps, to forgive them if they ask for forgiveness and the like. Look to the future when Christ returns, brothers and sisters, because that’s when we’ll have absolute justice. Wonderful justice.
And even now we have justice. Do you realize that? We have perfect justice. In Jesus Christ, He is your justice, brothers and sisters.
He has covered your unjust actions in your life, your injustice that you’ve been exercising before you were saved and even after you were saved. We have it in Him. And He will bring it, as it were, with Him when He returns.
Pray for that day that He will establish absolute and perpetual justice, such justice as described in Amos 5.24, as a matter of fact. Some of these prophecies can be your prayers. Jesus returns, justice will run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Amen? Let’s pray. Lord above, we are thankful for this encouraging word. We do live in a world fallen of relative justice that’s inconsistent and incomplete.
Our God and Savior, but we long for that day. We know it will come when justice will run down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream, God. Come quickly, Lord Jesus, we pray.
Amen.