Yesterday we had the honor of doing a baby dedication. We had six families participate. You can see their picture here. And it was a special moment, special day for those families for generations, for their circles or families to come together. It is an important day for us as a church to recognize them, to recognize the value of making commitments, to raise your children, leading them back towards God.
We've talked about that a few weeks ago, and it's still just such a. Such a big deal. It's such a big deal that it's not just something that needed to happen for them yesterday, but it's something that you need to be aware of today, because as a church, we have a connection to this as well. These are their families, but these are our families that we come alongside and we support and we encourage. And so today, I know that out in the lobby, you're going to see we've got the packets and different kinds of things for our annual meeting that's coming up, the open Forum this Wednesday.
But you're also going to find tables set up with the pictures of these children, and you're going to find a card that looks like this, and it's listing seven names on there. One of the families wasn't able to make it, but there's listing seven names of families here at the church who have decided to make that dedication with their child, to raise them in the instruction of the Lord. And that's something you need to know because you have the role to encourage and support and to pray over those families. And so I want to encourage you to grab one of those cards on your way out, stick it to your fridge every time you see it. Just say a prayer for all those kids.
One of those kids. Whatever you do, however you pray, I encourage you to grab one of those. And I want to start today by us just praying together for them. All right? Why don't you pray with me?
God, we are grateful for your family that you've given us as a church where we can come alongside one another and encourage and support. And, God, we are grateful for these new lives here in this church and what it means to this family. God, we lift these little children up to you. God, we pray for Ryder and Lucas and Asher, and we pray for Luca and Brooks, and we pray for Teddy. That, God, they would be raised with your instruction being led to you.
God, we pray that we as a church would be able to uplift them as well and to support them in their journey into adulthood. God, we pray for the parents, for each of these kids that they would be faithful to their calling. And God, we pray over the grandparents and the aunts and uncles, the friends, the support, the circles that exist around these kids. God, we pray that we would all catch a holy vision of this calling that you've given us to raise kids, leading them towards you. God help us to do so.
And it's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
Have you ever been called into jury duty? Usually there's a. I think I heard. I think there was like a groan. Is that the response? And I guess I get it because you have to miss work.
They. They pretend to pay you, which is kind of a joke. You miss work, so you're losing money. It's boring. It's frustrating, all this stuff.
Like, I get it, all right? I got called into jury duty only one time in my life. It's dangerous to say this because you know, it's coming now, all right? But I've been called in once, and I didn't, like. I didn't, like, get to do the call ahead thing where I didn't have to show up.
Like, I had to show up. And I went in the courtroom and sat there for a couple hours while they walked through all the instructions and what this was going to be. And they're doing all their legal stuff, and we're really just like a live studio audience more than anything, and going through it. And then at the end of it, they just dismissed us. Like, I didn't get interviewed, I didn't get selected, none of that stuff.
That was the end of my jury duty story. And I'll tell you that I was a little bit disappointed. Like, I. I kind of wanted it. I wanted to decide someone's fate that was appealing to me. I know that.
I know I couldn't be the judge, but I thought being the jury would be pretty cool and, like, getting to the side. Like, I was excited about, like, the room where we'd get together and have to talk and hash it out and all this stuff. Like, I kind of wanted it, right? And I bet you can relate to at least that piece. Maybe not jury duty, but I bet you get that.
Have you ever watched the news and wished for justice, for whatever was wrong to be made right? Have you ever fantasized about being the judge or being the juror who goes back in the room and who makes the judgment? Have you ever watched those true crime documentaries? And then at the end of it, you were, like, angry and depressed and disappointed because it didn't get resolved the way that it should have? And you Wished that you could have done something to change the course of that story.
Have you ever. You ever wished that someone would hold our politicians accountable? And then have you ever wished it was you? A little bit. Do you have a thirst for justice?
I bet you do. And maybe it's even caused you to join a march or protest on a corner. I bet most of us have probably at least made a Facebook post or something. Have you ever cried out against injustice? I bet you have.
What if I told you that justice isn't always what you think it is?
Justice isn't always what we think it is. And what if I told you that the opportunities for justice are way more plentiful than you would ever believe?
And what if I told you that we tend to ignore those opportunities? I think opportunities for justice present themselves all the time, and I think we tend to ignore those opportunities. And then we fantasize about justice in ways that we're never going to get the opportunity experience.
What if. What if justice has been misunderstood?
There's a verse in Proverbs. Proverbs is this just collection of these wise sayings. It's almost like wives tales, just singular individual ideas of wisdom that exist, right? And there's this one in Proverbs, chapter 21, just this simple little thing in the middle of all sorts of other stuff, says when justice is done, it brings joy to the righteous, but terror to. To the evildoers.
And I think that's what we typically think of when we think of justice. I think justice is when someone gets theirs right, when someone's done something egregious and they've done something significant really wrong, and then they get the consequences of it. And then like a deep terror comes on to them because they did wrong. And then celebration and joy comes to those who have been wronged. But now they're on the right side of justice.
And I think that's typically what we think of when we hear of justice. And I think it's what our culture views as justice.
We love it. It's kind of like the first cousin of revenge, right? We love to bring terror to those who do wrong. And we want to find joy in being on the morally right side of things. And it's in the Bible, it's right here in Proverbs.
There's this reckoning that happens that is associated with justice, where wrongs are made right and the wrong find celebration and the wrongdoers are being held accountable. It's a beautiful thing. One of the problems that we struggle with is this whole definition of right and wrong. We talk about justice in a culture that is constantly moving the target. How do we know what is right and wrong?
What moral values do we set? What are we working off of to base justice on those values? Where does it come from? And I think that's where our culture struggles because we tend to just follow emotion when it comes to justice. We tend to just kind of follow emotion.
We, I think we all think we know what justice is. We have this intuition and we think we kind of have it and figured out. But if we were to kind of boil it down and try to give definitions, I think we'd usually probably just kind of get to some point. We'd say, well, it's whatever I feel is just. It's emotional.
And I think it's a picture of much of what exists within our social justice movements. And I'm not pushing back on all the movements, but I think sometimes they get off track because we determine morality based on what feels right or we base it on what we like. And then that's dangerous because the question of what is ethical or what is just and what is loving, then it easily gets lost in the noise and the emotion of the moment and then out of the emotion that since like these witch hunt type situations where we're tracking down anyone or anything that can be blamed. And I get it and understand. And while there are many things in our culture that are wrong and need to be righted, I think many of our movements are going to pursue justice through their own injustice.
I think when people believe that they have the moral high ground, they're going to use unjust aggression to try to bring about their own justice. And then we turn into this situation where we're fighting injustice with our own injustice, and it looks like retaliation and it looks like revenge, and it kind of looks like there's this phrase in the Old Testament, the book of Judges. There's just this cycle of the nation of Israel trying to figure it out with God and, and it would finish the cycle off with. And everyone did what was right in their own eyes. I think that's a good picture of American culture when it comes to justice.
Like, we each have our own ideas of what it's supposed to be, and then we live accordingly. We. We live unjustly in other areas. So long as we're able to be just in this one area, as long as we can pursue justice to this. And it.
And it turns into almost like this vigilante style of. Of justice. Right. We love those stories too. The guys who break all the rules to make the wrong right.
Something about that appeals to us, as if we just have this blank check. As long as the justice we're pursuing is big enough and important enough, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Sounds like an American philosophy of justice. And it's true that our intuitions and our emotions, they can help us. It can help us make moral judgments.
But our emotions should follow truth. They should follow justice, not lead it. We need a firmer foundation to determine what justice is than whatever our emotions, our intuition is, our preferences, our emotions, whatever it may be. And so for that foundation, we've got to get back to God. And so let's start with some simple kind of belief statements, and we'll just kind of systematically work through this, right?
We believe that there is a God. And we believe that God has revealed himself through Scripture, and then he's most clearly revealed himself through Jesus. And we believe that Jesus is God, that he showed us how to live. And then we believe that Scripture reveals that man was made in the image of God, that there's something significant about us, there's something different about us, that each one of us intrinsically carries traits of humanity that make us different from any other part of creation. And we believe that the image of God that exists within every one of us is not something that can be lost or denied.
Each one of us is born with the image of God, and each one of us is going to die carrying the image of God. It's there. And yet we also believe that though we are designed to live for God's glory, we can deny that we cannot remove the image of God that's on us. But we can choose to live without God because God created us with free will, and so we can push him away. But for those who have placed their faith in Jesus and have decided to make him their Savior, then we live for God.
Which means if you live for God, then you are not your own. When you submit to Jesus as Savior, you're also submitting to him as Lord. And if he is your Lord, then it's his ways, it's his standards for living that become the rule by which we live by. It's now the ruler that we measure all things with. And so we believe in God, and we live for God, and we believe he is the one who sets the standard on how to live.
And we can see this in all sorts of different things throughout culture today. We're talking about justice. All right, we're going to now fall in line and recognize that God is the one who sets the standard on even things like justice. And it's important for us to align our values with God's values, even if it isn't comfortable or even if it costs us dearly. And so you should know that God says other things about justice.
It's not just this one verse out of Proverbs. There's more to it than just that. Proverbs, again, resonates with us. There's something within us that loves that Proverbs verse. But there's more to it than just that.
I think Micah 6, 8 is one of the most important passages on this. Says, he has shown you, O mortal. This is Micah, the prophet, Old Testament, writing to the nation of Israel, saying, he has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And then he asked the question, what does the Lord require of you? He's really asking, what is good?
He's shown you what's good. What is it? What is good? And the answer is to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
What does it look like to act justly while still loving mercy and maintaining humility?
You see the complexity of that. It's a challenge. In fact, it almost seems contradictory, seems kind of contradictory to the previous verse, the Proverbs 1 where we celebrate when bad people get theirs. And then you've got this other one that says we should love mercy. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
And that word humility really throws it off because it seems like justice and pride go together really, really well. Justice and humility maybe not so much. Right. Looks very different than the many self confident pursuits of justice that we see around us. Acting justly, loving, mercy walking humbly sounds very different from the emotional justice of our day.
So how do we take these two views of justice and get them to reconcile with one another?
Let's jump to a completely different story. It's not really about justice, but it's about justice. Okay, there's this passage in Matthew 22, Jesus is teaching and there are some Pharisees there listening to him. The Pharisees don't like Jesus and they've worked against him for a long time. They're not fans of his at all.
And mainly because he says bad things about the Pharisees. And so they're going to work against them and they come up with this idea, we're going to come up with these questions that trap Jesus to where he can't get out of it. And it ruins his momentum, it ruins his following. We'll be able to get to him in that kind of way. And so they pose this question, is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?
Basically, they asked, should we pay taxes? That's a great question. It's a great trap. Because if he says yes, well, the Jews are going to turn on him. They hate the Roman authorities.
They're occupied by these foreign leaders, and they hate everything about it. Everything within them says, we rebel against them. We don't want to pay taxes. And if Jesus says, yes, pay your taxes, well, then he's going to lose his Jewish following. But if he answers no, well, the Romans aren't going to like that.
They're not going to like that. He's leading people to not obey the law and to follow the rules. And then they're gonna hurt him or they're gonna kill him, or they're gonna imprison him, whatever it may be. And so this is a great question. It's a perfect question, right?
So Jesus asks to see a coin. Someone gives him a coin. He kind of looks at it. He sees the picture on the coin less like our coins, doesn't say that he did this, but I imagine he just kind of flips the coin back to whoever let him look at it. And he says, whose picture is that?
I say, well, that's Caesar's picture on the coin. He says, well, then give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. It's a great answer, Very clever answer, right? But it also pulls us into a great definition of justice. Justice is the notion that each man is to be given what is his do.
Justice is giving anyone what they deserve, what is deserved. And we like that definition. In the negative connotation, we love to give people the consequences of their actions, and we call that justice, and it is rightfully so. But sometimes people are owed something else. Sometimes people are owed something beyond just their consequences.
In fact, I would argue that most of the time, justice looks like the positive connotation of giving someone what you owe them, like paying taxes, which is frustrating because we don't think they actually deserve as much as we pay. And like, I get all that story, but, I mean, you get the bill and they're in charge and you pay them what you owe them, and that's justice.
How do we know what someone deserves?
We know with a tax man, but how do we know what we deserve? What do any of us actually deserve? And if you ask that question, our culture is going to come up with some answers. They're going to say that we deserve happiness or success, affirmation, fairness, maybe even justice. We can go Declaration of Independence and we could say life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Maybe those are good answers. Maybe. But I could also pick them apart. Not always. Not everyone deserves those things all the time.
The Bible says there's some things that we deserve. But you won't like that list, because the Bible says we deserve death. We deserve God's judgment that we deserve the pouring out of God's justice on us. So it says, says that we deserve to be separated from God.
Thank God. Literally, thank God. That we don't get what we deserve. That we don't get what we deserve. That when it comes to justice, God is also merciful and humble.
And so, in fact, the Bible reveals that we are on the wrong side of justice. You see, we think that we're the cheerleaders who are sitting back watching justice fold out on these people and they're getting their consequences. And we're the ones just cheering along, celebrating, because evil is getting what it deserves and we're all happy about ourselves. We're wrong. It turns out we're not the evil.
We're not the cheerleaders. We're the evildoers. We're the bad guy who doesn't get what he deserves. It's a crazy story, right?
I think all of us, there's something within us that wishes that we were like that kid on the playground. And you look over and you see, like, a bully picking on a kid. There's something within us that wants to be the kid that goes over and shoves the bully down and, like, puts the foot on the neck. Maybe. Maybe you don't have that.
I have that, right?
Maybe I tell myself that you have that so I sleep better at night. I don't know. I think we all want to be that kid, right? I think the story is actually that we're the bully. You see, it turns out we're the ones who are actually contributing to the evil of the world, which starts to change our perspective on this whole conversation.
Now we can go back to that question. What do any of us deserve? I've wrestled with this question all week. What do any of us deserve? What do you deserve from me?
What do I deserve from you? What does any person deserve from any one of us? What does that look like? And we could go back and forth. We could continue to debate this.
I could pick these answers apart, but this is kind of the list I've come up with. Okay, this is A Ben List. This is not scripture. All right? Gotta be clear.
But I think we deserve dignity. I think every person deserves love. I think every person deserves truth and grace, mercy, forgiveness. Again, we could pick them apart, but the reason I believe we deserve those things is because those are the things that God gives to me.
Those are the things God gives to me. Let me show you how I think this works. There's this story in Matthew 18, and if you find it in your Bible, it's titled the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, which doesn't seem very fair. There's a servant number one who is owed money by servant number two. And he goes to servant number two and demands that it be paid.
And that's fair. That's justice. There's a debt, there's something owed. The expectation that you're gonna pay it, and so pay up like it's time, and it's justice. It seems like the perfect definition of justice for so many of us.
The problem with the story. The problem is that I'm only telling you half of the story. The story actually starts in a different place with the master of these two servants. And the master forgives a ridiculously large debt to that first servant. And that doesn't feel like justice.
It feels like mercy, feels like humility, but doesn't feel like justice. But that's the servant who then leaves that room. He sees the second servant who owes him something, and instead of transferring that mercy on to the second servant, he demands to be paid. And essentially, Jesus tells a story where God's justice works in partnership with mercy and humility. And it looks like forgiving debts.
So other people deserve forgiveness because we've received forgiveness. Do you see it? People deserve from us what we have received from God. And here's the big twist I think we have to come to terms with today. Justice is more than just making wrong things right.
It's more than just making wrong things right. Because forgiveness doesn't make wrong things right. Does. Doesn't remove the hurt, it doesn't remove the pain, it doesn't remove the offense. Forgiveness doesn't make wrong things right and forever.
Or forgiveness doesn't feel like justice, and yet it's also the right thing to do. You see justice doing right in the first place. Justice isn't just making wrong things right. It's doing right the first time in the first place. Justice is giving someone what they deserve in that positive connotation.
It's giving someone something that you could argue they don't deserve. And yet God has graced you. And so then you pass it on to them. It's a verse in the New Testament, says whenever it is in our power to do good, we're required to do so. When you know the good you ought to do, but don't do it, you've sinned, justice looks like giving people what they deserve in that positive sense.
And it's going to feel reckless.
It all flows from the two greatest commandments. These are Old Testament commandments, but Jesus picks them up in the New Testament, says they're the most important thing. That you're supposed to love God and, and you're supposed to love others. And as those things begin to flow out, the way that we can love God is by how we love the people around us. The way we love God is by how we love others.
Which means then we owe each other forgiveness. Like we're saying, there's this time in Matthew 18 when Jesus is talking to his disciples and they ask Jesus the question, how many times should we forgive someone? And one of the disciples offers the number seven. I think that was a moment of like bragging. I think they were self impressed.
I think they thought they'd accomplished something by offering to forgive someone seven times. Jesus says, let's improve your math. How about 70 times 7? Which is also not a literal number. It doesn't mean that you should keep score at home of how many times you've forgiven someone.
And when you hit 490, it's over. All right. It's not that it's an exaggeration, it's just a big number. Whatever you think, however many times you think you're supposed to forgive, it's plus one. There's one more and another time and another time.
Justice, you see, looks like forgiving more than what seems safe. Because God has recklessly given us forgiveness. That's why it didn't seem safe, doesn't seem reasonable. You don't really deserve it. And you don't really deserve my forgiveness.
But God gives to me, so I give generously to you. We owe each other love. Not because you deserve it, not because I deserve it, but because God has recklessly loved me first. And so then I am to give love generously. It's the just thing to do.
It's justice when I do the right thing. We owe each other grace. Not because you deserve it, not because I've deserved it. But God has graced me and so he's recklessly graced me. And so I give generously the just thing to do, the right thing.
To do justice, played out practically is when I choose to grace you, we owe each other truth. Not because you deserve it, not because I deserve it, but because God has truthed us recklessly. He continues to give us truth and he gives generously. And because he has given me truth and is the just thing to do for me to truth you, to give you truth, these are all acts of justice. And so we give dignity and we give respect and we give what people deserve.
And they deserve these things because God has given those things to us. Do you see it? It's not inherent that you just deserve these things. It's the fact that God pours them out to us and we pass it on to the person next to us. And all of this means that it's an injustice when you don't give to others what God has given to you.
It's an injustice. It's an injustice when you are dishonest with someone or when you abuse someone. And we're going to say, yeah, that makes sense. Well, that's, that's Micah 6, 8. That's the context.
The prophets speak into a nation that is misusing information. They're dishonest, they're abusing all that kind of stuff. But it's bigger than that. It's also an injustice if you withhold kindness from someone in the simplest of ways. It's.
If you can't be nice, it's injustice because God has been nice to you. He's given you kindness. God loved you, you love others and that's justice. Kindness is what people deserve because God was first kind to you. It's an injustice when we do anything that is not generous.
And that's not just about money. But it's in time. It's an eye contact, it's in listening. It's in all these simple gestures of kindness and generosity. It's what people deserve, not because they deserve it, but because God was first generous to you.
Do you see it? This whole justice conversation has turned into that story that Jesus told about the speck of sawdust in someone else's eyes while they're ignoring the plank of wood that's sticking out of someone else's eye. Remember that story Jesus says sometimes we get so about the little problems that someone else has that we're forgetting about the problems that we have. And I think that's what justice looks like in our world. I think that's how we get it wrong.
Because we can become so focused on trying to make the world around us meet our own standard. And all the While we're ignoring the ways that we aren't meeting God's standard, we can work so hard to try to right all the wrongs in the world around us while we ignore all the wrongs we're bringing into the world.
I think Proverbs 21:15 is true. There are times when justice looks like punishment and there's times when justice is official and it's formal and the evil get theirs. And I believe that the righteous will celebrate when those moments happen. And the Bible even told us that there's some things that happen on this world that will never get resolved, that are never be fixed, and that we have to trust that he's going to make those things right when we can't make those things right. Because it turns out God is very serious about justice.
And sometimes there are some big injustices that we just can't take on by ourselves in this world. However, much more frequently, justice looks like simply doing the right thing. Justice isn't usually making up for the wrong thing. It's doing the right thing in the first place. Justice is giving people what they deserve, which is dictated by what God has decided to give to you.
It's about giving the dignity and respect and the love and so on to people. And so then it looks like repenting. When we repent, that's justice. We're doing the right thing. We're acknowledging that we've got to get in the same mind as God.
We've got to agree with God. And it looks like apologizing to your spouse or it looks like your kids apologizing to each other. It looks like caring in those kinds of way, that's justice. It's doing the right thing when those moments happen. And then justice is forgiving again and again and again.
Unforgiveness is injustice.
Justice isn't something you have to fantasize about. I guess that's what I want you to hear today. It's not just something that exists out there in these big moments and big ideas. Justice is all around you. There's opportunities for justice that are so plentiful in all sorts of ways that maybe, maybe even you would expect.
And yet I think we ignore those simple opportunities for justice while we fantasize about justice in these ways that we're likely never going to get an opportunity to ever impact. Don't pass off justice in the little things while you cross cross your fingers and you hold out hope for justice in the big things. I want you to know you've got more opportunities to act justly than you ever, ever imagined.
Now I don't know where you're at. I don't know where this all hits you. I know that this can go in tons of different places, depending on the unique story that you may have.
My prayer for you is that you would recognize that we have an opportunity to bring good into this, this world. And it's really hard. It's really hard for us to care about the evils while ignoring our own evils. And maybe that puts you in place where you're ready to just try to figure out what that looks like, to even just have a relationship with God, to begin pursuing what justice could be. Maybe you're in a place where you'd really like to accept some of that mercy and humility of God, to be forgiven by him, to be graced by him.
If you're in that position where you. Where you want to know what it's like to start a relationship with Jesus, I'd love to have that conversation with you. I'm sitting right up front. We've also got elders in a prayer room, the back of the room, who could pray with you or walk through any of that with you.
Don't wait for justice to happen someday. You can do it right now. You can make the right thing. Now, why don't you stand? Let's worship.