Sermon Tone Analysis

The road to oppression is paved with corruption...

I have a friend who is going through a difficult time at her work.

There are some higher ups who have plans for the facility where she works that would include her and the rest of her co-workers loosing their job.

It would also mean the facility shitting down, which would affect the community as a whole.

There have been meetings upon meetings that on the surface look like the higher ups are listening to the concerns of those beneath them, but no one is convinced they are being heard.

There are secret meetings and shady decision making going on behind the scenes; that was recently made public.

The higher ups have had no problem bending the rules to suit their agenda.

By all appearances, it looks like the higher ups will prevail and win the day.

My friend is out of a job.

The community she worked in and served is at a loss.

It leaves everyone involved and watching from the outside wondering, where is the justice?

Augustine once said,

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?”

Augustine of Hippo

So it seems to appear in the case of my friend.

When righteousness and justice are not valued in the way God values them, those who lord their power over people rob them of their ability to enjoy life under the sun.

The road to oppression is paved with corruption.

Where corruption erodes righteousness, justice deteriorates.

Where there is no justice there is no freedom, only oppression.

That is life under the sun in our Genesis 3 world.

Solomon says as much in Eccl 3:16-4:3; 5:8.

Essentially what you will see this morning is,

Justice and rightful governance are meaningless apart from Jesus.

If you are banking your life on finding perfect justice in this world you will be disappointed.

Solomon teaches you in our text that, in our broken world,

Justice suffers at the hands of in wickedness in a meaningless world (Eccl 3:16-17)

Inverse 16, Solomon laments that justice suffers at the hands of wickedness.

The place that Solomon is referring to is the space given to a community where the law is sought to provide justice.

In ancient Israel it was at the city gates with the elders of the community, or it could refer to priest people or royalty.

Four our context it would be the judicial systems, our courts of law and Congress.

Just laws should be discerned by judges who are characterized by righteousness.

Just laws should be enforced by law-enforcement officers who value righteousness.

Just laws should be made by men and women who desire righteousness and justice to protect the people they represent.

Solomon says, this is not happening.

Essentially where you should find righteousness and justice, instead you find wickedness-hence injustice.

“Injustice is justice that suffers at the hands of wickedness.”

God hates injustice and commands that humanity conducts itself with a high sense of justice.

Consider what the prophets say.

And yet, what do we see sinful man do with justice?

We make it wicked.

When God confronts the rulers and leaders in Isaiah’s day, he says to them,

He talking to those who abuse their authority for personal gain.

The prophet Jeremiah rebukes the rulers and leaders of his day for their injustice and oppression. he says

When I look at the prophets and see how the leaders of their day corrupted justice for their own personal gain, I see how corruption abuses justice, politicizes justice, and makes justice morally inconsistent; and I realize in y own context there is nothing new under the sun.

Corruption abuses Justice

Sadly, at the expense of good men and women who serve faithfully in our communities, we still find lawlessness in police departments.

In November of 2020, Fox2News released the story of Donah Sandford, who was kidnapped and raped by Leon Pullen, a St. Louis police officer.

There is a website developed for the sole purpose of keeping track of police corruption in St. Louis.

As of right now it has over sixty-four articles detailing cases against St. Louis police officers.

Now, it should go without saying that most police officers are good people who work at doing the right thing, and that most departments are run by good people who try to uphold the law.

I personally know several police officers and I find these men to be of great character.

However, there are enough bad apples in the bunch to cause us to pause in concern.

Justice is not meant to be abused.

Corruption Politicizes Justice

Sadly, the courts are not fairing much better.

We have once of the best judicial systems in the world.

We are deemed innocent until proven guilty and we are judged by our peers.

And yet, somewhere down the road we allowed political ideology to determine our judges.

Have you ever noticed that when you vote for a judge on a docket, or if a judge is appointed by a congress, that their political affiliation is mentioned?

Why do I need to know what side of the isle you fall on in your politics?

Lady justice is blindfolded for a reason.

We have deemed it necessary to know their political affiliation because we have concluded that one political ideology is more just than another.

Right is only deemed right if it lines up with the right, and wrong is only wrong when it lines up with the left, and vice versa.

Justice is not meant to be political.

Corruption Makes Justice Morally Inconsistent

Good night, let’s not get started on Congress.

The whole lot of them, both the left and the right, are as shady as an oak tree in the middle of Texas.

There is no moral compass in Congress.

We have taken our moral compass out when we abandon the word of God.

There is a movement to remove any form of God’s word on our buildings and monuments and any influence in our laws.

This has opened the door for self-preservation and greed to corrupt so many decisions made on the hill that any sense of doing the right thing, the just thing, is seen as foreign, even malignant.

And you see the affects of abandoning God’s word.

L”ook at how they treat each other with contempt.

Look at the morally confusing policies they pass regarding marriage, race, money, and health mandates.

Look at their inability to lead the free world in a clear vision of democracy.

China and Russia, two atheistic Communistic regimes, look at America’s confused sense of justice and say to us, “What moral high ground can you stand on when you condemn us as unjust?

How is your justice any better than our justice?”

Justice is not meant to be morally inconsistent.

We mourn the deterioration of justice in our country.

We mourn it with every riot, every protest, every election, every political decision made in our state and federal government, every conflict we find ourselves engaging over seas.

Journalist and Christian author G.K. Chesterton gives some insight to our mourning of justice.

He says,

“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.

That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.

It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just.

It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.

Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly.”

G.K. Chesterton

Justice deteriorates when God’s “claim” is taken lightly.

When God’s morals and values and authority is taken lightly, man is left only with his sense of justice, which is meaningless in this world.

Depraved and sinful mankind does not know how to be righteous and just with his neighbor.

Humanity is not capable of holding the line of justice fairly because sin taints every aspect of our justice.

The best we can do in this world is unholy and unrighteous justice.

Furthermore, if you are banking on having true justice in this life, meaning you believe there is life after death or in a just God, then you will soon find that is a meaningless endeavor.

Our culture is fighting tooth and nail to rid itself of and influence of God’s presence, his word, his church, or his people-hence we mourn.

This is life for us under the sun.

Justice is mixed with wickedness, so justice suffers at the hands of corruption-hence injustice.

Our mourning is not forever, though.

Our ultimate hope is not in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights, or those we elect to lead us.

There is a God who is just.