Sermon Tone Analysis

/Who Cares?/

Social Justice

Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor

June 1~/3, 2007

 

Good eve~/morning!

It is great to be back at Fellowship.

I missed you guys, although I did speak in Ethiopia at a church and they were disappointed that I spoke so short, that I didn’t go longer.

I like those people.

But I like you, too.

John Stanley and I just completed a great ministry run, our world tour.

We started in New Zealand, doing a pastor’s conference there, and then we were on to join the Ethiopia team to discover what God had for us in that part of the world.

We’ll share more about that at the end of this message, but these next few years we are going to be able to make a huge difference in a lot of people’s lives in that struggling part of the world, in addition to our other projects like Cuba and Mexico.

Today is an important message, at least it is an important message to God…because what we are talking about is something that is very high on his priority list for his people…yet to be honest maybe not so high on our list, at least it has not been on mine.

That’s what we are talking about in this series, /Who Cares/.

We are focusing on some things that God cares a lot about that we tend to blow off, or at least shove aside.

This week we are talking about social justice, about the poor and oppressed in this world, about economic disparity—the injustice of some in the world having way too much and most of the world having not enough to survive.

A month or so before I left for Ethiopia, God put that in the center of my heart and thinking, which made me uncomfortable.

In fact, I am one messed up dude.

Really.

In my time in the Bible, I’ve been reading God’s perspective about social justice, and it has messed me up.

Since I feel kind of lonely in my messed-up-ness, I am going to mess you up today, too.

I’m that kind of guy, just want to spread the love, share the messed-up-ness.

For years, this issue of social justice and economic fairness, our responsibility to be a help to the helpless and a voice for the voiceless, has been shoved in the corner of my thinking, and I’ve liked it there.

I knew it was a biblical issue, but stored it in the back of a closet somewhere.

I liked it in the closet, because I didn’t have to think about it much.

Liberal churches focus on that.

But over the last few months, God has forced it out of the closet, right in the middle of the kitchen table.

I don’t think that is just about me, either.

I believe as a church we tend to do the same thing that I have done, and in our general circle of churches we have certainly been comfortable with this issue stuffed in the back of the closet.

Today, we are going to pull it out of the closet and see God’s heart for the poor, the oppressed, and for us who have more than we need…who have not only possessions but also power, and what that means for us.

Today, I’m just going to take you on my journey of messed-up-ness.

So, ready to be messed up?

Let’s go.

One of the passages I read that kicked off my messed-up state of life was in Amos, and it was as I was preparing to speak in New Zealand.

Here it is in the Message translation:

 

*/Slide: ________________/*/ Amos 5:21-24 (The Message)/

/ /

/I can’t stand your religious meetings.

I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions (/remember I was preparing to speak at a conference).

/I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals.

I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image-making.

I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.

When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want?

I want justice—oceans of it.

I want fairness—rivers of it.

That’s what I want.

That’s all I want.

Amos 5:21-24.

/Wow.

I read that, and it made me take a huge step back.

God is serious about this.

He’s not even polite about it.

I’m from Alabama, where we like people to be polite, including our God.

We expect that.

But God is not polite about this; he is passionate about the poor and devoted to justice.

Maybe I can’t keep this in the closet.

That took me on a journey of searching the Scriptures, starting in the Old Testament—and that really messed me up…because God talks a lot about this.

He talks more about social justice than probably anything else in the Old Testament.

It is the primary thing he expects from his people.

I read in Psalms and Proverbs for example how much he identifies with the poor and the voiceless.

*/Slide: ________________/*/ /Proverbs 19:17

 

*/Slide: ________________ /*Psalm 140:12

*/ /*

*/Slide: ________________ /*Psalm*/ /*146:7-9

/ /

/He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done/.

Pr. 19:17.

/I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.

/Ps.

140:12.

/He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets prisoners free, the LORD gives sight to the blind, the LORD lifts up those who are bowed down, the LORD loves the righteous.

The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked./

Psalm 146:5-9.

God takes up the cause of the poor and the oppressed, those who are helpless and voiceless.

That didn’t mess me up too much though, because I know God is that way.

But what started to mess me up was reading his instructions and expectations of his people.

This is something that has to be very high on our list, and it just wasn’t all that high on mine.

In the Old Testament, a chief reason God brought judgment to his people was not just immorality but more important to God was social justice.

In Isaiah, he says to his people,

 

*/Slide: ________________ /*Isaiah 10:1-3

 

/Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.

What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar?

To whom will you run for help?

Where will you leave your riches?/

Is. 10:1-3.

In Jeremiah, he is letting them know that a nation is coming to wipe them out unless they repent, and here is God’s charge against his people:

 

*/Slide: ________________/* Jeremiah 5:27-29

 

/“Like cages full of birds, their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful and have grown fat and sleek.

Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor.

Should I not punish them for this?" declares the LORD.

"Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?” /Jeremiah 5:26-29.

They did not serve as a voice for the voiceless and a help for the helpless, and God is just flat ticked off.

Later, he gives them a chance to make it right, to avoid the coming judgment:

 

*/Slide: ________________ /*Jeremiah 7:5-7

*/ /*

/“If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever.

/Jer 7:5-7.

They have a chance, but they don’t take it.

They leave the issue of justice in the closet.

I’ll read one more Old Testament passage, but please know that there are many.

In Jeremiah 22, God is contrasting one evil king with this father who was good and justice, and here’s what he says,

 

*/Slide: ________________ /*Jeremiah 22:15c-16

*/ /*

/“{Your father} did what was right and just,so all went well with him.

He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.