Confronting Injustice
Notes
Transcript
We are hyper aware that there is great evil in the world. Every human being has an awareness that there is evil in the world, but we seem to have greater awareness of the evils in the world than ever before. Our access to the internet, the 24 hour news cycle, our endless scrolling on social media surely all contribute. I don’t want to demonize those things, but the reality is that we are connected to world affairs, and the world is screaming to us that it is broken.
Every one of us has experienced either directly or indirectly a measure of injustice. Somebody bullied us at school. We were skipped over for a promotion we earned and deserved. Some of us have gone through divorce. Some of us have lost our spouse to a disease. Some of us know what it is like to bury their child. We all know the feeling of experiencing pain and saying, “It’s not fair.”
Today, our culture has about ten thousand crusades going on at any given time. Everyone who has launched a crusade is outraged at whatever the problem is. Then they are even more outraged if you are not as outraged and don’t join them in their crusade. There are lots of things to be outraged about, and we should. The people of God should be outraged when injustices take place.
But how do we respond to injustice in the world? How do we respond to injustice in our own lives?
Sometimes the best way to learn is experiencing bad examples. When we last left off in the story of Genesis, Jacob was returning home after twenty years. He did the brave thing and met with Esau face-to-face. The interaction went way better than expected. Esau invited him to meet up with him back in his land, but Jacob landed in a place called Shechem, named after the prince of the city. Jacob buys some land from him and settles there.
Let’s dive in to Genesis 34.
Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land.
When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force.
He was deeply attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her.
So Shechem spoke to his father Hamor, saying, “Get me this young girl for a wife.”
Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter; but his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob kept silent until they came in.
Then Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to speak with him.
Now the sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it; and the men were grieved, and they were very angry because he had done a disgraceful thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done.
A grave injustice has been done. Dinah, the only daughter Jacob has, goes out to see the women of the land. She’s in a place that is foreign to her. She’s never been here. She’s new in town. It’s a new country, a new city, and a new culture. She seems curious to go see how the women of the land conduct themselves. She is met with a terrible fate. Shechem, the prince of the land, the man who the city is named after, sets eyes on her and defiles her. The word doesn’t exist in Hebrew, but we know he rapes her. And it’s disgusting.
Sex is one of the most beautiful and most intimate acts between a man and a woman. When it is violated in any way, the results are disastrous. Yes, all sin has the same result in the sense that all sin results in the death of one’s soul as well as the death of one’s body. But sexual sin runs deeper than any other sin, and our culture is addicted to it. A terrible injustice has been done.
When Jacob finds out about it, he holds is peace until his sons come in from the field. What makes matters worse is now Shechem is infatuated with his victim and wants her as a wife. He says, “Dad, I gotta have her. Go get her for me.” If your daughter’s rapist came to you and said, “I want to marry your daughter” your answer is going to be, “Heck no! Over my dead body!” This is adding insult to injury. You can feel the tension. You can feel the anger. So they come up with a plan.
They say, “We can’t do what you are asking. There’s a requirement to be met first. They aren’t about to marry off their daughters to uncircumcised men. Now, they aren’t exactly telling the truth. They have no intention of intermarrying with these people. But they are also a covenant people. The sign of the covenant God made with Abraham was what? Circumcision. They may be acting deceitfully, but they aren’t lying about the requirement of being circumcised. So Hamor and Shechem go back and manage to convince every man in the city to undergo circumcision.
Three days later, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, go into the city while every man is recovering, and wipe them all out. Verse 25 says,
Now it came about on the third day, when they were in pain, that two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and came upon the city unawares, and killed every male.
They killed Hamor and his son Shechem with the edge of the sword, and took Dinah from Shechem’s house, and went forth.
If you are reading this the way I do, there is a part of you on the inside shouting, “YES!!!! That’s what you get! Wipe them all out! Level that place! Nobody messes with my family and gets away with it!” Justice has been served!
But that isn’t the lesson to learn in this chapter. This chapter is not about executing swift justice against those who deserve it. We should be outraged when we experience injustice whether it is personal or on a larger scale. How we respond is just as important.
How we respond to injustice is just as important as the outrage we feel.
How we respond to injustice is just as important as the outrage we feel.
This example in Genesis 34 is a poor example of responding to grave injustice. Jacob was not thrilled. It’s not that Jacob was passive, he just knew the way they responded mattered as much as being outraged in the first place. When Jacob finds out the news, he does nothing. Some people see this as passivity. I see this as restraint. All you have to do is insult my wife or my child and I am ready to skin you alive. I won’t, but I would be lying if I said those thoughts didn’t enter my head. When my blood gets pumping, I get quiet because I know if I don’t I may come unglued. I see a Jacob who is ready to go to war, but he exercises restraint.
When his sons go and wipe out the male population of an entire civilization, he isn’t cheering his sons for doing something he didn’t have the guts to do. Let’s look at his response in verse 30.
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me odious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and my men being few in number, they will gather together against me and attack me and I will be destroyed, I and my household.”
But they said, “Should he treat our sister as a harlot?”
Our immediate answer to that question is, “Of course not!” But that doesn’t give us permission to pursue our own justice. So what do we do? We are going to swallow some hard pills.
The apostle Paul says in Romans 12:19
Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
Vengeance belongs to the Lord. We have to trust him to do what he has promised. When a drunk driver causes a car wreck and steals our loved one, when cancer leads to the death of a loved one, when we see another headline of a child abused by someone who was supposed to be a safe person, when we experience pain that makes us want to remove the head of the one responsible, our job is to give up control and give it to God.
Give it to God.
Give it to God.
This is hard enough, but it gets worse. There are two more verses on Romans 12. Verse 19 says to give your hunger for vengeance to the Lord. He is the only one who can execute proper justice. But the last two verses tell us what our responsibility is.
“But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
You know the Golden Rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Jesus calls this loving your neighbor as yourself. The easy thing to do is retaliate against injustice, and yes, evil people need to be dealt with properly. We should hold our government accountable when they fail to uphold proper justice. We should hold evil people accountable for the crimes they commit. But as you deal with interpersonal relationships you fight tooth and nail to make sure they are held accountable, but you also serve them. When hostility is met with unmatched kindness, God goes to work on that person.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
You have the power to do this. How do I know? Because you have the Holy Spirit of God in you. Only twice did Jesus overturn the tables in the temple. He spent the majority of his time amongst the poor, the oppressed, the sick, and the marginalized of society. The world around you expects retaliation, but Jesus provides another way.
Love without limits.
Love without limits.
This doesn’t mean we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of. We do everything we can to see that justice is served if a crime is committed against us or someone else. But there is a process that doesn’t include vigilantism. When we bring that to the personal level, and we are willing to leave the outcomes to God, we are free to love our enemies without restraint.
Jesus was very outspoken toward the people who had the authority to bring justice but didn’t. The Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes were all people who twisted the law to suit their own purposes. Confronting injustice from that angle means we use our voices to hold our government accountable. But when it came time to demonstrate the greatest act of love known to man, Jesus stayed silent as he was whipped by the Romans, as he carried his cross to Golgotha, and as he was hung on a cross. As jesus hung there, he had words for John and his mother, but for those who were crucifying him, he said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” When we give the outcomes to God, Jesus becomes our example to love without limits.
Retaliation is the easy path, but it is not the only path. Simeon and Levi were scolded for their actions. They were excluded from the blessings of Jacob in Genesis 49 for this behavior. Answering violence with violence brings greater violence. Loving your enemy is the way of Jesus. God has a way of using your love for those who persecute you to bring conviction to them.
Who do you need to love today? Do you know that Jesus chose to save you though you were an enemy?
For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
Christ gave himself for you so that you would no longer be an enemy of God. Who in your life needs to experience the love of Christ through you?
