Biblical Justice

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I’ve had to start banning certain words at my house, which is a little bit painful for me to have to do as a big free speech guy, but you know, when it comes to your kids, there are lines. And I’m going to tell you about some of the words I’ve had to ban. I’ve had to ban the word bored or any of its related words, boring, all of that.

I tell my kids I have not had time to be bored since 1997. I can find you something to do. Because I don’t even know what bored means anymore.

I hear it mainly from the four-year-old. But he says everything is boring. Well, everything is not meant to be entertaining in life.

Sometimes things are boring and you have to do them anyway. So I’ve banned the word boring. I’ve banned the word fair or unfair.

So I hear all the time, that’s not fair. It’s not fair. I’m sure I used to do that to my parents too because I remember them telling me life’s not always fair.

y’all probably heard that too I think my parents invented that saying but I heard that all the time growing up that’s not fair and it’s amazing how many times I open my mouth and my parents voice comes out and I tell my children life’s not supposed to be fair there are those sometimes things that are not fair and when I would tell charla I don’t think that’s fair I I hear the whining child’s voice saying it so I thought I’ve got to find a different way to say this and so I would say you know as we’re discussing how we handle one child versus handling another child I’d say you know I don’t feel like it’s just if we do this or that and then I realized that’s number one that sounds pretentious that would be unjust it reminds me of all my college professors who just thought they were a little more important than they were it would be unjust if we were to do this but then I realized it’s just the grown-up way of whining that’s not fair so I really I’m kind of at a loss here the word just doesn’t work and and just and justice is one words that’s gotten twisted in our society today.

We’ve spent the last several weeks with me sharing with you some biblical words and concepts that have gotten changed, that have gotten redefined to the point that in our culture we don’t necessarily understand what they mean anymore. And we’ve looked at some of these words and these concepts and why it’s important that we have a biblical understanding of what those words mean. And one of the words that we need to understand is justice.

Because the word justice is thrown around a lot today. Now the problem with that, we would be lying to ourselves if we said that there was no injustice in our country or in our world. Can we agree that that’s true?

There is injustice in our country, there is injustice in our world. But the way the Word is applied to everything, if everything is injustice, then nothing is injustice. I think we ought to save the word injustice for the things that are truly unjust and not just every circumstance that I don’t like.

And yet that’s what I was doing with the Word. I think it would be unjust that. Well, that really pales in comparison to some of the injustices that have been perpetrated in our world and are still being perpetrated in our world.

And as we hear this word being used so much, and folks, please understand this is not a political message today. It’s a message on a concept that we have gotten confused about as a culture, and that bleeds over into our understanding of Scripture. And we need to correct that understanding of Scripture or just come to a biblical understanding of justice to begin with so we’ll know what God’s talking about when He says He’s just. But that word has been so used and so applied to everything.

Right and left, black and white, rich and poor. It’s been applied to everybody’s political ideologies to the point that we don’t know what it means anymore. And so what I want to do today is look and say, what does God’s Word say about justice?

Now that would take us all morning and into the afternoon. I’m not going to do that to you. Like a couple weeks ago when I answered a question on a Wednesday night about the Lord’s Supper, and we went through every passage in the New Testament that talks about the Lord’s Supper.

I didn’t realize how long that was going to take because there aren’t that many, but it still took a long time. The Bible talks a lot about justice. I would like to have found a passage like the one we discussed about love in 1 John 4 where God says, here’s the definition of love.

I didn’t find that. What I found instead was another passage where God gives us a picture. This is what justice looks like when it operates.

And so we’re going to start there this morning in Exodus chapter 23. God gave Israel some instructions about what justice was supposed to look like. It’s a loaded term.

Like I said, everybody in the country thinks it means something different. One part of the country thinks it means all of our outcomes should be equal. One part of the country thinks it means everybody should get what they deserve, exactly what they deserve, no more or no less. I don’t believe that first definition works.

and knowing what I deserve from God, I don’t want the second definition either. Because when it comes to God, I don’t want justice, I want mercy, because I know what I deserve from Him. So let’s look at Exodus chapter 23 together and see if it can give us some insight into what God means by this concept of justice.

If you would, turn there with me in your Bibles. If you’re using a device, there’s a link in our bulletin that’ll get you right there to this passage of Scripture or it’ll be on the screen. And I don’t even have to ask you to stand, I guess.

But if you’re new here, if you would like to stand with us as we read from God’s Word, if you’re able to do so, you’re more than welcome to. Exodus chapter 23, starting in verse 1. I’m going through verse 9 this morning.

It says, You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. You shall not follow a crowd to do evil, nor shall you testify in a dispute, so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice.

You shall not show partiality to a poor man in his dispute. If you meet your enemy’s ox or his donkey going astray, you shall surely bring it back to him again. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden, and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it.

You shall not pervert the judgment of the poor in his dispute. Keep yourself far from a false matter. Do not kill the innocent and righteous, for I will not justify the wicked.

And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the discerning and perverts the words of the righteous. Also, you shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of a stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt, and you may be seated. So this passage deals with justice.

We need to try to understand what the Bible means by the word justice. That’s what we’re doing here this morning. I looked at some various definitions, and one particular Bible dictionary from back in the 1890s said, means rendering to everyone that which he is due.

Basically, what a person deserves. And that same dictionary, it explains the justice of God as that perfection of his nature whereby he is infinitely righteous in himself and all he does, the righteousness of the divine nature exercised in his moral government. And what that means is the justice of God means that he’s going to do right by each of us.

Now, how God manages to juggle all. . .

Well, first of all, he’s God. I don’t have to understand how He does it to know that He does. He’s God.

He can handle anything. How He manages to juggle all of the competing interests and what’s right is beyond my comprehension. And so I don’t come into this discussion saying, I know better than God and He has to meet my standards of justice.

I just want to know what His standard of justice is. A simpler way of explaining this is that justice, from a biblical standpoint is God’s commitment to correct the guilty and protect the innocent in order to uphold His perfect standards of righteousness. That means for us that God will, in His own timing, right all the wrongs that there are.

Now we’ll talk a little bit more about what that means in just a moment. But that’s God’s standard. He’s going to right all the wrongs.

He’s going to protect the innocent. He’s going to punish the guilty and correct the guilty in order to do that. all in accordance with His perfect standard.

And then He tells Israel in chapter 23 here, in what we’ve just read, He says, and now you go and be just. You go and do justice in your dealings with one another. Now, you and I can never be just in the sense that God is. We will always fall short.

If we are looking for a perfect utopia where we can just work it out that everybody will. . .

If we just do it the right way, then everybody will act in a just way and there will be justice for everybody. We are never going to get there. We are always going to fall short because we’re not God.

We’re not perfect like He is. And yet God instructs us to reflect His perfect justice in the way we treat others, in the way we deal with others. He tells us to act in a way that is consistent with the way He would act.

Now that doesn’t mean that it’s our job to right all the wrongs. You and I are not the flaming angel of vengeance flying around, righting the wrongs for everybody. We’re not Superman here fixing everybody’s lives on God’s behalf.

But what it means is it’s our job not to add to the wrongs that are being done all around us. I don’t have a whole lot of control. I have minimal control over what goes on at Washington.

I have the same vote you do. I can’t fix that mess. I have minimal control over what goes on at 23rd and Lincoln.

I have the same vote you do. Although sometimes state legislators will listen to me if I nag them long enough just to get me to go away. I can’t fix that mess.

What I can do is myself do the things that God tells me to do in the way that I treat other people in order not to add to the mess that we’re already in. And that’s what he’s telling Israel to do there in chapter 23. You see, God gave the Old Testament law to Moses.

This is in the middle of the Old Testament law. Exodus chapter 20 is the Ten Commandments. That gives you some idea, if you’re not real familiar with the text, that gives you some idea of where we are.

He gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, and then spends the next several chapters elaborating on that and saying, here are the other laws, here’s what you’re supposed to do. And in the middle of that, he gave them these nine verses to help them understand how they were supposed to apply the law in a just way. Now, you and I, we need to understand that we are not bound to the Old Testament law in the same way that Israel was.

And I said it that way for a reason. Some people will say, we’re not under the Old Testament law. And what they mean by that is, I can do whatever I want.

As Christians, we need to understand there is still a moral law that is rooted in the Old Testament and was affirmed by Jesus and by the apostles in the New Testament. There is still a moral law for which we are held accountable. But it’s not a means to salvation.

We are not under the law in the sense that we are saved by doing good things. And then there are aspects of the civil law that were given to Israel and to the religious law that were given to Israel that do not bind us today as followers of Jesus Christ. I know there’s always some question about that. People say, well, we should follow the Old Testament laws, the ceremonial laws.

Go read what they said in Acts chapter 15. Go read what they said in Galatians. Things are different.

Those were given to Israel. These laws were given to Israel, and yet I still believe that there are principles that we can take and apply as we try to please God, as we try to live in a way that honors Him. These principles are helpful not only for society, but for our individual lives as well.

And the first thing that we need to understand about the biblical view of justice from this passage is that biblical justice is impartial. It’s impartial. That means it doesn’t play favorites. So as he’s talking about this in chapter 23, he’s using the background of a court situation. He talks a lot about what they would do in giving testimony.

Now we think of that as going before the judge and being sworn in and all that. They would have court often at the gates of the city. It was often more informal than what we have today, but it was no less serious than what we have today.

And in verses 1 through 3, he’s talking about this, using the idea of them being in court, and he really drives home the idea that there’s no right reason to do something that’s wrong, especially as it affects somebody else. There’s no right reason to do something wrong. He tells them in verse 1 when he says, don’t circulate a false report.

He’s telling them not to perjure themselves, not to slander somebody else. He says, doing so is wicked, and you are joining the unrighteous. Now, we can talk ourselves into anything.

Well, I told that story about so-and-so because, and we can convince ourselves that there’s a right reason, because the outcome is right. Folks, Christianity is not an ends justify the means faith. We’re called on to do what’s right even when it costs us.

And I understand even as I’m saying that, That’s a hard thing to do, but we’re called on to do what’s right even when it costs us. He says to do this, it’s wicked. We’re joining the unrighteous.

Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Don’t tell a false story. Maybe somebody is guilty.

Don’t go in there and perjure yourself and falsify evidence against them just to convict them. Just tell the truth and let the Lord sort it out, is what he says. In verse 2, Israel is told don’t mistreat people even if the crowds cheer you on to do it.

Sometimes we act in ways that we know we ought not to act. Sometimes we act in ways that we would not otherwise because of the number of people that are cheering us on to do it, because the number of people that are around us clapping for it and cheering for it and trying to convince us it’s right. But he says, you shall not follow a crowd to do evil.

Even if everybody around you is mistreating the person, even if everybody around you thinks it’s a good idea, it’s still wrong. In verse 3, he tells Israel, You shall not show partiality to a poor man in a dispute. He says don’t mistreat people even if you think there’s a good and a beneficial reason.

He gives the idea of a dispute where a poor man has a party to it and presumably there’s some rich fat cat in there that’s on the other side of the lawsuit. And I think there’s something in a lot of us that would say, I’d like to see the poor man come out on top because he doesn’t have as much. Just because the sentiment of wanting the poor man to have more is noble doesn’t mean it’s an excuse to show partiality here.

We skip ahead to verse 6, and it teaches us not to mistreat people, even if it might benefit us. You shall not pervert the judgment of your poor in his dispute. Sometimes people would go to court and try to tip the scales of justice against the poor, which is probably more frequent today and more frequent then than tipping the scales in favor of the poor because they’re poor.

But throughout this passage, God is teaching Israel and us by extension that it’s wrong to wrap our ideas of justice in who a person is. It was wrong in Israel 3,500 years ago when this was given. It was wrong in the United States when it has happened in the past. It’s wrong if and when it happens today, no matter what direction it goes.

It is wrong to wrap our ideas of justice in who a person is. Specifically, he says here, we should not tip the scales of justice in favor of the poor or in favor of the rich because of the group that that person belongs to. At the end of the passage too, he says in verse 9, not to mistreat the foreigner.

You shall not oppress a stranger for you know the heart of a stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I watched a documentary yesterday. I was trying to find something to watch while I was feeding Abigail.

And it was a crime documentary. And they were talking about this man, I believe he was an immigrant from Mexico, in some town in the northeastern United States, and he ended up being attacked by a group of teenagers who were football players. He ended up being attacked in the park, and they claimed it was self-defense.

All the witnesses said it wasn’t. But they beat the man to death, and they were put on trial. And the community, because those were their football players, just reacted in horror. Not that the man had been beaten to death, but that they were trying their football players.

And there were people in the community saying, well, if he hadn’t been in this country, he wouldn’t be dead. Are you kidding me? But that’s the sort of thing he’s talking about right here.

Mistreating somebody just because of where they came from. He says, you know what it’s like to be somebody from somewhere else. Israel, if anybody knows what it’s like to be a foreigner in somebody else’s land, you know.

If anybody knows what it’s like to be the outsider, you know. because Israel spent 400 years enslaved in Egypt. He said, take that experience and learn from it and do better.

Do better for your foreigners than what was done for you. And so biblical justice cannot be based on what a person has. It cannot be based on where they come from.

It cannot be based in who they are. And folks, our society moves toward the idea that it can to our peril. If we move toward the idea that justice is somehow affected by who a person is, it will tear us apart.

This is theologically true, but it’s also good practical wisdom that God gave Israel. Biblical justice is impartial. It’s also impersonal. So we see in verses 4 and 5. So there’s this idea that we want justice.

Have you ever been in a situation where somebody does something to you personally and you just think about how fun it would be to get them? I hear the chuckles. I know I’m not alone.

You can admit it. I know we’re all supposed to be spiritual and come in and put on our Jesus faces, but we’re human. We know.

We’ve talked about things in the office where I’ve said this and this happened. And somebody’s asked, how do you respond? Well, I’ll tell you how the flesh wanted to respond.

What would have felt so great to do, but what I was not allowed to do. And I’ll tell you how I actually responded. We all, when somebody does something wrong to us, it is our normal human instinct to say, they deserve to get got.

And we think that’s justice. No, no, no, no. That’s revenge. There’s a difference.

That’s revenge. And a lot of times people will pull out the eye for an eye phrase. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

It even says that in the Old Testament law. And the Pharisees quoted that at Jesus. And Jesus said, yes, you’ve heard an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, and He talked about not responding in the same way.

He talked in that same sermon about turning the other cheek because they were going out and wanting to be revenged for the wrongs that were done to them. That’s God’s job. By the way, just to speak to the fleshly part of ourselves, God can do a lot better job of it than we can.

So let Him handle it. Not only will He do it right, He’ll do it better. But revenge is not justice.

He gives these scenarios in verses 4 and 5 that involve a personal conflict between a hypothetical personal conflict between the person he’s talking to and their enemy, somebody that’s done them wrong. And in the first case in verse 4, there’s somebody you really don’t like and you see their ox or donkey running off. Now in the flesh, we want to say, oh, that’s so sad.

Maybe we’ll pretend to try to get the donkey back. Be like my three-year-old who says, I can’t reach. Sorry, can’t reach.

Yeah, we’ll just let. . .

He shouldn’t have acted like that. maybe I would have got his donkey for him. God says, help your enemy.

Get his donkey or his ox back. There’s the second scenario in verse 5. If you see a donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would refrain from helping it, you shall surely help him with it.

Now the wording of this was a little confusing to me. I had to dig into it a little bit. But basically he’s saying, if there’s an enemy you’ve got and his animal, his donkey has collapsed under the weight of what he’s carrying, he’s there on the ground, and you don’t want to help him, help him anyway.

That’s what by it. Because especially if the donkey’s carrying a big burden and he’s laying there, he’s not going to be able to get up again. He’s going to die.

And that’s really not fair or just to the donkey either. You think you’re paying the enemy back, but what you’re really doing is harming something else. And so these two verses, he says, help them anyway.

Oh, it would feel so good to let them get got and let them find their donkey laying there dead a week from now. But help. Do what’s right, not what revenge tells you to do.

And so this tells us if we can prevent it, don’t let somebody be injured or harmed because of your personal conflict. And especially don’t let an innocent third party be injured because of a personal conflict. There’s a difference between settling the score and finding justice.

I think the idea spread all throughout the Old Testament law was that if somebody’s done something wrong with you, go to the law and sort it out, not go find your own revenge. But oftentimes when we try to find justice by getting revenge, we end up creating more injustice. Biblical justice cannot be based on how we feel about a person either.

It’s about treating people in a way that God says is right, not what our flesh tells us they deserve. And so there’s already an application here if you’re a believer. If you’re somebody who’s trusted Christ as your Savior, there’s already application here that God expects us to behave justly toward others.

And what that means is that you and I are supposed to be right in our dealings with other people regardless of their backgrounds or how we feel about them personally. This echoes what Jesus said about doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. We interpret that backwards a lot of times.

I remember my mother telling me that as a child. You know, Jesus said do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Right, and look at how she acted toward me.

So clearly that’s what she wanted done to her. talking about my sister. If we’re looking at it that way, we’re looking at it backwards.

No, we don’t get to carry out God’s judgment and say, well, she acted that way, so clearly she wanted to be treated that way. We are supposed to treat others in the way that we want to be treated. It’s echoed in what the Apostle Paul said, be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God for Christ’s sake forgave you.

I hope I’m quoting that correctly off the top of my head. It’s in Ephesians. You can look it up and tell me later I’m wrong.

I think it’s 432. All throughout the Bible it teaches this, especially that we as believers are supposed to treat others in a way that honors God regardless of what we think they deserve or how we feel about them. And I know this sounds like elementary school stuff, Sunday school 101 type stuff, but I’m telling you because it’s hard to do.

We all know we’re supposed to do it, but it’s hard to do. And so this is just another reminder to you and particularly to me because I have a feeling this passage is going to come back to haunt me. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

And for the rest of my life, as the movie says. We also need to understand here that biblical justice, because I understand justice can be an uncomfortable subject. Judgment can be an uncomfortable subject.

Biblical justice is complemented by mercy. And we see this in verses 7 through 9. We tend to think of concepts like justice and judgment as purely in a negative sense.

We think of it as just punishment. We think of it as God’s wrath. We think of it as a bad thing, something that we don’t want to talk about, we don’t want to think about, that we’re a little fearful of.

But biblical justice is wrapped up with the idea of God’s mercy. Now, they are not the same thing, but they go hand in hand. You see, God tells us that His judgment against the wicked, in verse 7, particularly the perjurer, He says, I will not justify the wicked.

He’s somebody who’s wicked, somebody who’s committed perjury, somebody who has wronged another person. He says, I will not justify them. I will not let them off the hook.

That judgment there, that justice, is to protect an innocent person from being harmed by his schemes. Because He ties that in verse 7 to the idea of do not kill the innocent and the righteous. God’s judgment and God’s justice is necessary in order to show mercy toward those who are wronged.

See, we don’t like the idea of God’s justice until somebody else is wrong, right? We’re fearful of the idea of God’s judgment and God’s justice when we’re talking about our sin. Boy, howdy, when we’re talking about somebody else’s sin, particularly that was done to us, we just can’t wait, right?

His judgment and His justice are necessary to protect the innocent. God tells us that His command against bribery is to protect the person who’s injured when somebody’s bribery keeps justice from being dished out. Money makes people do crazy things.

We know that to be true. Money makes people do crazy things. Somebody might take a bribe and say, I’ll look the other way in this case, and then somebody’s injured in that.

Somebody who deserved justice. And so God’s judgment against bribery is designed to protect that innocent person who would be hurt in that. In their mistreatment of the foreigner, in verse 9, he reminds them of their past oppression.

He says, think about what you went through. You understand the heart of the foreigner. Remember how you felt.

Remember what you as a people went through. And then, because of that, show kindness toward outsiders. His judgment was there.

Saying that they were going to be judged if they mistreated the outsiders. Why? Because it was there to protect the outsiders.

See, if you’re like me, and like most people, the word justice or the word judgment often has very negative connotations. It has a negative sound in our ear. Let me ask you this.

Do you want to live in a world where Adolf Hitler just gets to die and get off scot-free for all that he did? Does that sound like a fun place? Do you want to live in a world where Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot are never held accountable for their crimes?

We hear all the time of people who’ve committed heinous crimes, murders, child abuse, and it’s found out years later after they’re dead. And some of them never spent a day in jail. If the idea of justice sounds like a bad thing, if the idea of God’s infinite justice sounds like a bad thing, consider whether or not you want to live in a world where that kind of stuff is never called to account.

God’s justice is there to show mercy because God will right the wrongs that have been committed. Not only the small ones, not only the little things you’ve done in your life, but God is also going to right the big wrongs one day. God is going to take all of the injustice and all of the suffering, all of the evil that man has inflicted on one another and He’s going to sort it out according to His perfect standards of righteousness.

And knowing the evil that exists in the world, we ought to be able to take some degree of comfort in that. That the idea of God’s justice is tied up with the idea of God’s mercy. And even this story draws to mind the connection between justice and mercy.

If we’re looking at what took place right as Israel was coming out of Egypt, they’d been wandering for just a little while and God gives them the law, they had just come out of Egypt. That was still fresh on their minds. And we can look at that whole story.

And if we focus just on the plagues that God unleashed on Pharaoh and on Egypt, justice looks like a very cruel thing. But what was the purpose of those plagues? It’s not a trick question.

Somebody want to answer it? What was the purpose of the plagues? Somebody louder.

Bring the Israelites out of Egypt, out of slavery. God used His justice to be able to show mercy. God’s justice was an instrument of mercy.

Well, what about God’s mercy to Egypt? God gave Pharaoh chance after chance after chance. That’s mercy.

God didn’t crank it up to 11 right at the first incident. God didn’t take the big belt off the first time Pharaoh disobeyed him. There was mercy all throughout this.

It was a way of God to show mercy. We need to understand biblical justice is something that has to be carried out so that God can show mercy to those who deserve justice. And we see that most fully on display at the cross.

The cross was absolutely a demonstration of God’s justice. Because Jesus wasn’t there. I read this week where a skeptic was talking about an itinerant Jewish preacher who spoke out against the Romans and overstepped and got his comeuppance.

That’s not what happened. That’s not what happened. He was put there, Peter says in Acts 2, according to the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.

It was God’s plan. Jesus went there taking responsibility for my sins and for your sins. I believe it was Isaiah who said it pleased God to crush him.

Not because the father suddenly hated the son, but because the father had to fulfill justice. He had to punish those sins. And so the wrath of God, the judgment of God, the justice of God, it was all poured out on Jesus Christ. He endured every bit of that.

And as harsh as that sounds, the only reason He went