The Vanity of Justice

Call to Worship: Psalm 100:1-3 // Prayer

Adoration: Father, we have come into your presence with singing. We worship you with joy. You have made us, and we are yours; you have redeemed us, and we are your people. You are the one WHO IS—you are eternally blessed in the infinite fulness of your own being: perfect in your essence, and perfect in all your ways as you govern and give life to the universe you’ve made.

Confession: And we have been taught about your perfections: your infinite glory, which our sin violates; your infinite mercy, that receives our confession. And so we acknowledge that we have broken your law and denied your love this past week, in our thoughts, our words, and our actions. Forgive us, Father, for we have sinned against you.

Thanksgiving: But you are the God who has loved the world in this way: you gave your only begotten Son for us, so that whoever believes in him will not be destroyed, but instead will be lifted up to the glory of eternal life. We are astounded to see this: that in your Son, by his blood shed for us, you have forgiven sinners like us!

Supp: And so here we are: Your people, forgiven. You have made us a people through the gospel. But we are still weak, and prone to sin. And so we ask for your power and help as we attempt to use our gifts to serve one another. Father, fill us with wisdom and love, and give us endurance as we serve; may we do everything for your glory // and we ask for this same grace for Laural Community Church: as they work together for your glory and to spread your gospel, give them love, unity, and holiness, that your name might be magnified through them // and we ask for Uganda: as Jeff, Fay, and Brian prepare to travel there, that you might use them to bless the saints of that country; and that you would strengthen the hand of your people there, as they battle against especially the false prosperity gospel—that you would dismantle that false gospel in Uganda, that you might be truly know by many there who are now in darkness // and in our own community, we bring before you the matter of countless children and youth, being raised in darkness and confusion—we ask that you would have mercy on them, and make us faithful to take your gospel to our community, that many might hear and believe and be transfered to the kingdom of your beloved Son // and now, as we turn to your Word, we ask that you would open our ears and grow our wisdom, for your glory...

Family Matters

Next week: back to our 1st Sunday potluck; refrigerator restored!

Next week’s adult Sunday School: missionaries from France will be here, and will give us a presentation on the church in France and the work they do there.

Benediction

2 Corinthians 13:11 ESV

Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

Sermon

Read: Ecclesiastes 8:1-13

Intro

This chapter is about the vanity of justice… yet, Solomon opens it with a verse about wisdom:

Ecclesiastes 8:1 ESV

Who is like the wise? And who knows the interpretation of a thing? A man’s wisdom makes his face shine, and the hardness of his face is changed.

It’s an image of a face that was stumped, perplexed, frustrated… and then suddenly melts into joy, because now he understands whatever it is that was frustrating him before. Now, he has found wisdom.

And what Solomon is about to teach us is that a foolish pursuit of justice can cause that “hardness of face” — that frustration, and even despair. But a wise understanding of justice can change that—can give us a way to live with real joy, even in the midst of an unjust world.

Now, here we are, talking about justice during an election year. So I want to address the elephant in the room up front:

We will be talking about politics, and we will be connecting the Bible to politics this morning. That’s just not something we can avoid, if we want to faithfully apply this chapter to our lives.

I think that there are a couple of mistakes Christians can make when it comes to politics and faith: first, we can go beyond what Scripture says, turning the pulpit into a political action platform, but second, we can react against that first problem by refusing to ever connect our faith with our practice of politics.

If you are a Christian, Christ is Lord over everything in your life—including your politics. But the foundation for biblical politics isn’t the kind of talking points that get slung back and forth on twitter and on the news. Instead, it’s the wisdom of how God made the world, and the wisdom of what it means to live in a world which has been twisted by sin and by the curse.

There are many believers out there—genuine, serious Christians—who make culture change and the pursuit of justice a primary mission for the church. And my experience has been that, when someone does that, the next thing they do is load all of their particular political goals into the mission of the church.

Sometimes these goals are actually anti-biblical; sometimes they line up pretty well with Christian ethics, and sometimes they’re somewhere in the middle.

But whatever the case is, this way of connecting faith and politics has a tendency to pressurize the church—to make us more emotionally invested in election outcomes and political policy decisions than in the health of the church and the spread of the gospel. And it tends to make us discouraged, honestly, because we’ve set out to straighten a crooked world that only God can straighten—as we’ve seen so far in Ecclesiastes. Or in the words of chapter 8, it tends to frustrate us and make our faces hard. It tends to remove joy from our lives.

In contrast to this, this morning, Solomon will point us to the wisdom that comes from understanding the Vanity of Justice in this world. Now, I just want to remind us, again, that “vanity” in Ecclesiastes doesn’t mean bad or worthless. Rather, it means something you can’t control, direct, or hold on to. Something that comes and then is gone. So justice is good, and worth pursuing—Solomon will not tell you that you need to disengage from politics, or stop caring about who wins all of the elections coming up in November. But he will teach us that anything close to perfect justice will always escape us in this age.

But then he’s going to show us how good it is to recognize this truth: It will change the way you approach politics… and a lot of other things in life. It will change your heart in at least two ways: First, it will keep you from setting your hope on earthly justice. And so you’ll keep your hope on God, and his day of perfect justice, which is to come—and this will prevent you from burnout or despair over politics. Second, it will transform how you live in this world: you’ll be able to take full joy in what God has given you, in spite of the injustice around you. In short, Solomon will teach us that Human justice is vain, but we can trust eternal justice and live joyfully.

The Vanity of Human Justice: Don’t Demand Perfect Justice

Keep the king’s command… it’s about injustice (vs. 2 and 9)

God’s oath to the King (or our oath)—government established by God

Don’t take your stand in a bad cause: absolutism and justice

But the wise heart will know the wise time to pursue justice/ will not be absolutist

App: Christ lived under injustice!

App: Injustice at work: immediately quit? Or patience + wisdom?

app: different expectation in church, but still…

App: what this says to the anarchist/revolutionary impulse;

App: to non-Christians: do you see how this creates space for wisdom in politics and relationships with those you don’t agree with at the same time?

Don’t believe Solomon? A reminder of your powerlessness.

But that’s a difficult tension to live with...

The Hope of Eternal Justice: Comfort Amid Imperfect Justice

The fog of injustice/delayed justice

The clarity of coming justice

app: the hope of coming justice

app: which side of that justice will you be on?

Earthly Joy Amid Imperfect Justice

Again: the vanity of Justice… how to respond in this life?

The vanity of control vs. the goodness of joy

app: modeling joy in the face of injustice to family + fellow believers

app: recognizing the role of media in stealing your joy

app: the Bible will actually make you more earthly good!

app: take joy in your country, work, family, church… even when the justice isn’t perfect

not a rejection of the world because it is a place of injustice, but an embrace of the world in spite of it…

Conclusion