Justice

Introduction

There is no surprise to anyone in this room that we live in a world filled with injustice. Give numbers (in massive amounts), 1 billion people living in poverty starving for food with no clean water, 153 million orphans in the world, 42 million babies murdered, 27 million people living in slavery being sold and exploited many in sex trafficking ring…becoming one of the largest industries on earth. So how do we understand this world and live in this world as worshippers of the just God that is over this world? This is the question that we have to wrestle with. (Ex. Seeing the poverty that I saw in Nicaragua) It’s easy to compartmentalize the injustice that happens in our world, go on with our comfortable lives here in the Woodlands, TX and move on with our lives like these uncomfortable realities don’t exist. Surely that’s not the answer. Surely there is something we ought to do as image bearers of the Lord God and the distributors of His grace, mercy, and justice.

God’s Character: Holy, Righteous, and JUST. God is just (Deuteronomy 32:4). The justice of God can be defined as “that essential and infinite attribute which makes his nature and his ways the perfect embodiment of equity, and constitutes him the model and the guardian of equity throughout the universe.” God’s rule over the universe is grounded in justice and righteousness (Psalm 89:14). There is never a time when God has been unjust; it’s against His unchanging nature to be anything but perfectly just. Psalm 19:9 says “The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.”

Definition of Justice- The Hebrew word for justice is “Mishpat”. This refers to the actions we take to create a community of justice so that all people are treated fairly. For Micah, existing as a human before God means to do what is right and just and to love mercy. Which means to do the right things for the right reasons on behalf of others.

Why is justice needed?

-court system

-law

-politics (Healthy…)

The fall- Genesis 3

God is holy, righteous, and perfectly just. That means that an abandonment of God’s leadership in the role and enactment of justice in our society is going to be incomplete, fractured, and flawed at best. The ways in which we conduct justice without the Holy God is broken (Look at Psalm 82). We are constantly redefining good and evil to our own advantage at the expense of other people. In our fallen and sinful state, it comes down to self-preservation. (Example of the broken mirror) We see justice through a broken lens. (Give some examples like slavery, holocaust, poverty stricken areas, systemic oppression of particular people groups, etc.) The weaker and more vulnerable someone or a group of people are, the easier it is to take advantage of them. We see this played out between individuals, in families, in communities, and eventually whole civilizations that create injustice…ESPECIALLY to the vulnerable.

Context of the prophets/rest of the OT leading up to Micah: The consistent core message of the minor prophets is that Jews and Gentiles alike need to repent of sin and live for God, who is loving and just. According to the law, a person’s behavior reveals the condition of his heart towards God. Which is where the judgment and justice come into play…because Israel (God’s chosen people) continually failed to keep the law.

Context of Micah: God’s courtroom for Israel. Micah 6 is a conversation between the Lord and Israel. God has them in a courtroom as they stand on trial as they stand guilty before an almighty God.

STAND AND READ: Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

The answer to Israel’s (and ours today) sin problem wasn’t more numerous or painful sacrifices. The answer was something much deeper than any religious observance: they needed a change of heart and so do we. Let’s dive in this morning.

PRAY

Work for Justice

How many of you guys love action movies? Do you ever wonder why? We love the idea of the bad guy getting caught. We love the idea of the one getting wronged gaining retribution. We have an innate desire in our hearts that has been placed there by God that affirms our longing for things to be made right when wrong has been done. How many of your wives are addicted to crime shows, cold case files, podcasts, etc.? (Are they planning on killing us and getting away with it?) (Give the example of the live action “Tarzan” because he put skin in the game and went back to the Congo and left his comfortable life in order to set the people enslaved by King Leopold unknowingly by those outside of the situation)

It’s interesting the wording that Micah uses here in this iconic verse…he says “DO justice.” In my flesh I would prefer the command to “love justice.” Phrased that way, justice subtly becomes more abstract and far away. It’s always easier to affirm the “idea” of something. It’s easier to point fingers at the broken world around us and find all of the ways that injustice is happening around us while never actually doing anything about it.

Ranting, arguing, and complaining about the lack of justice in our world costs us little to nothing. But I believe that’s why the doing justice makes personal, time-consuming, heartfelt demands on us. That’s why when people asked John the Baptist what repentance looked like, his answers were things like: “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none,” or, “Collect no more [taxes] than you are authorized to do,” or “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusations, and be content with your [soldiers] wages” (Luke 3:11-14). The heart is deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9).

Real heart transformation is revealed in tangible, sacrificial acts of justice. Loving the idea of justice is cheap. But doing justice almost always requires loving a vulnerable or oppressed person in a way that is personally costly to us. True love is not cheap, so God tests our hearts by making justice concrete, something we must do.

Sprinkle of Application

Love kindness

Hebrew word “Khesed” (loyal covenant keeping love)- a word that means love, generosity, and enduring commitment all into one. Describes an act of promise keeping loyalty that is motivated by deep personal care.

Ruth to Naomi- Staying committed to stay by Naomi’s side. It’s an expression of Ruth’s character. Her loyal love is truly inspiring.

Let’s take that deeper to the one that shows the most amount of Khesed in the Bible, think of Jacob the grandson of Abraham for example…He is lying and deceitful towards his family, but God has chose him and keeps the promise to Abraham through Jacob even through Jacob’s sinfulness. 20 years later, when Jacob realizes how undeserving he is, Jacob says in Genesis 32:10“I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.” And he’s right, but God’s Khesed was never about Jacob’s worthiness in the first place. It was about God’s faithful love and keeping His promise.

When it comes to kindness, God flips this around and commands us to “love kindness” not “do kindness” because the command to “love kindness” has the same heart-revealing effect as the command to “do justice.” In this case, commanding action rather than affection is a bit more manageable and measurable (especially when measured against others). PAUSE

The command to “love kindness” pierces to the heart. This is far more demanding than merely doing kind things, which can easily be reduced to “occasional kind acts.” Loving kindness requires a deep heart orientation that shapes ALL of our actions.

We can’t love kindness without loving people. We may be able to get away with telling others we love justice without doing much justice. But it’s very difficult to get away with saying you love kindness if others know us to be harsh, defensive, self-centered, impatient, irritable, critical, or willing to step on people to get our way.

Just like doing justice, loving kindness is costly. It almost always requires loving people in ways that place their needs and preferences ahead of our own. We can’t love kindness and love selfishness at the same time.

There is a direct tie between the poor and needy and the idea of justice in the Bible. (The Bible talks about the poor more than anyone else) There are more than 2,000 verses in the bible that talk about the poor, justice, and poverty. Approx. 300 about the poor alone.

God’s heart is for the widow, orphan, immigrant, and the poor. In the OT, God casts vision for the nation of Israel that they would be a people that would reflect His character. Part of that vision is a community that looks after the families and individuals among them who have less than what they need. Deuteronomy 15:7–8““If among you, one of your brothers should become poor, in any of your towns within your land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother, but you shall open your hand to him and lend him sufficient for his need, whatever it may be.” Deuteronomy 15:10“You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.” Psalm 82:3 “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.”

Context: There were laws for landowners in the OT involving the harvesting of grain. Lev. 19:9-10 states that “ When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edge of the field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Don’t strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and resident alien; I am the LORD your God.” Example: This came to bear in the book of Ruth when Ruth goes to the field of Boaz to gather grain behind the harvesters. Naomi and Ruth were both widows and in a difficult financial situation.

God’s indictment on the Israelite people was that their leaders had become wealthy through theft and greed. And their prophets were corrupt. They are happy to promise God’s protection to anyone that has the money to pay them. They run the land through bribery, they bend justice to favor the wealthy, and the poor are stripped of their land, security, and their hope.

Over and over, Jesus shows that our relationship to our resources was an indicator of our relationship to God. The gospel of the kingdom of heaven creates generous people. In light of the generosity of God towards us— bringing us from death to life — we now look to extend that life to others.

Look at the radical example of the early church in Acts 2. They sold their possessions and property and distributed to all, as any had need.”

Sprinkle of Application: Do I really love kindness? Or do I mainly love the idea of kindness? Micah 6:8 exposes my own heart: I can love abstract ideas of justice and kindness, and neglect their practical expressions. I cannot “do justice” or “love kindness” without loving real people.

Walk Humbly with God

To walk humbly with God is a description of the heart’s attitude toward God. God’s people depend on Him rather than their own abilities. Here is what Israel said in response to God’s indictment on them. They asked “with what shall I come to the Lord?” Isn’t that what we do in our flesh? Instead of walking humbly with God, we try to appease God with our good deeds. We are like Israel in that we try to deal with our sin problem with external solutions! “If I can just clean up this area of my life then God will be happy with me.” The reality is is that in their hearts, Israel thought that their relationship with God was about transactions! They had gotten so used to the sacrificial system that their response here revealed their true heart towards their relationship with God. They thought they could simply bring forth external solutions to God for their inward heart problem. But here is the issue…they missed the point! They and we can’t buy off God, at any price!

Instead of taking pride in what we bring to God, we have to humbly recognize that no amount of personal sacrifice can replace a heart committed to justice and love. The response of a godly heart is outward (do justice), inward (love mercy), and upward (walk humbly).

As we read Micah, let’s keep in mind that God is in the business of changing us; he loves us too much to leave us where we are. Let’s listen to his voice so we can become more and more like Jesus—brimming with justice and loving mercy.

The message of Micah is still relevant today. Religious rites, no matter how impressive, can never compensate for a lack of love. External compliance to rules are not as valuable in God’s eyes as a humble heart that simply does what is right.

Land the Plane

The summary of the book of Micah pointing to the gospel. Micah 7:18–20 “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.” God must confront and judge evil among His people…but God’s covenant love and promise are more powerful than human evil.

Micah 6:8 isn’t a salvation text. To make it a salvation text would be to misunderstand what the prophet was saying to God’s disobedient covenant people. None of us can do what God requires until first we come to God as broken sinners who need to be saved. Unsaved people who think they are doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God are fooling themselves.

Our english word justice means “upright, just, or fair.” Ex. Have you ever said “Well that ain’t fair!” Fairness means we all deserve hell! Here’s the deal. God can’t sweep sin under the rug because He is just. He has to deal with it. So, who’s shoulders will it lay on? Your’s or Christ’s?

The glorious gospel miracle is that what God requires of us in Micah 6:8, he purchases for us and accomplishes in us.

Salvation, not judgment, has the last word. Micah teaches us that God is just, but his mercy is greater through the cross.

Sprinkle of Application: What will you to this week to walk humbly with God, to learn to love what He loves, and to do what he does?

“Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.”