Justice in the Last Days

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Well, from the time that we are little kids, basically from the time that we’re old enough to be aware of what’s going on around us. One of the earliest values that we take to heart is the idea of justice. Little kids have the idea that there’s supposed to be justice in the world.

Somebody takes their toy, that’s not, what do they say, that’s not fair. Yours, yeah, yours works too. They know, hey, that’s supposed to be mine.

Or if somebody gets more than they do, if you’ve ever tried to split a cookie in half and you didn’t get it exactly 50-50, they will let you know. It’s almost like it’s written in our DNA that there is supposed to be justice. And yet the idea of justice is really hard to nail down what it even is.

We have trouble defining it. We have trouble figuring out what would be just in any given situation. I had to take a class on ethics at OU years ago, and we spent several weeks just going over the idea of justice, and they have these different theories of justice.

There’s retributive justice. There’s punitive justice. There’s.

. . I can’t even remember.

It was nonsense, a lot of it. So I’ve blocked a lot of it out of my mind. But there are all these theories about what justice even is.

And then we see the way the word gets thrown around in our society today. It’s an election year. Is anybody else tired of hearing that everything is a justice issue?

And some of us are just tired of hearing about it altogether. Can November just get here? All right.

But everything’s a justice issue because you’re trying to. . .

Well, justice, we want to make sure everybody’s protected. But a lot of these ideas that are being thrown out as though they are justice issues in order to accomplish what somebody is calling justice, somebody else, some other innocent person has to be harmed in the process. And where’s the justice in that?

Reproductive justice, somebody is harmed in accomplishing that. Climate justice, income justice, everything that somebody wants to throw the word justice onto, They’re trying to make it better for one person and hurting somebody else in the middle. Justice is really hard.

And then it’s even more confusing because we look at our justice system, and we see sometimes what we call miscarriages of justice. That somebody is very clearly guilty of a heinous crime, and they walk free because of some procedural technical issue. Or somebody very clearly, you know, by common sense, didn’t do anything wrong, and they get sent to prison for years and years.

We see those miscarriages of justice. And it just really, we get to the point where the word has lost all meaning, if we’re not careful. And yet the Bible teaches us that God is just. The Bible teaches us that God has a standard of justice.

So we hear that and we think, based on our experiences in the world, well, this is justice and this is injustice. We take all this salad of definitions and try to cobble together an idea of justice, and we think that’s how God acts and how God works. This morning we’re going to be in Joel chapter 3, where God gives the nation of Israel a picture of His justice and what it’s actually going to look like in the future, that God does promise that His justice will come to Israel.

And depending on where they stand with God, that can be a good thing or a bad thing. We talked about this Wednesday night in the book of James. I and we talked about this those of you who were here Wednesday night that our view of justice really depends on which side of it we’re on and and I’m known for kind of driving slowly and so when somebody tailgates me and then tries to whip around me and almost hits me and they’re going 80 you know down down I-44 and then suddenly I see the the colored lights behind me zooming past me going to get them.

It’s a beautiful thing. I love it. And yet I get pulled over driving through Lawton because I’ve got a tail light out and get a $200 ticket.

My flesh thinks, can’t you go chase some real criminals? I deserve to be stopped over the tail light. I don’t know that I deserve the ticket and they took it away, but that’s neither here nor there.

If we’re on one side of justice, we really like the idea. If we’re on another, we don’t. And so depending on which side of God’s justice the people of Israel were going to be on, what He’s promising here could be a good thing or a bad thing.

But this morning in Joel chapter 3, we’re going to look at something about God’s justice. Now, because I couldn’t find. .

. So go ahead and turn there with me if you would. Because I couldn’t find a real good spot to divide this chapter, we’re going to go through the whole chapter this morning.

Now, that means we’re not going into great detail on any particular part of it. If you want that, come back tonight as we do our question and answer time. We’re even going to talk about it side by side with the book of Revelation.

That seems to be what everybody’s interested in as we go through Joel. But this morning, we’re going to take a very quick overview of this chapter and look at the picture that God is portraying of His justice as they approach a time of judgment for Israel. Once you find Joel chapter 3, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

Joel chapter 3. And if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Joel chapter 3, it is on the screen for you as well. So here’s what he says in this final chapter of Joel.

He says, For behold, in those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of my people and my inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and they have divided up my land. They have also cast lots for my people, traded a boy for a harlot, and sold a girl for wine that they may drink.

Moreover, what are you to me, O Tyre, Sidon, and all the regions of Philistia? Are you rendering me a recompense? But if you do recompense me swiftly and speedily, I will return your recompense on your head.

Since you have taken my silver and my gold, brought my precious treasures to your temples, and sold the sons of Judah and Jerusalem to the Greeks in order to remove them far from their territory, behold, I am going to arouse them from the place where you have sold them and return your recompense on your head. Just real quick, what he’s talking about here is that some of the pagan nations around Israel have mistreated Israel in some pretty terrible ways, and in that they thought they were proving something against the God of Israel. Because there’s a history here where the God of Israel has shown himself mighty over their gods.

The Philistines, for example, we have their God repeatedly, years before this, falling down overnight, his head and his hands falling off the statue in front of the Ark of the Covenant. There were defeats that were imposed by the God of Israel on these people. And so as they’re mistreating Israel, they’ve got this idea, we’re getting payback against them and their God.

And God’s saying, you want to come at me and you want payback? Payback you shall have, is what he’s telling these pagan countries. Verse 8, he says, and I will also, excuse me, Also, I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hands of the sons of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabaeans, to a distant nation, for the Lord has spoken.

Proclaim this among the nations. Prepare a war. Rouse the mighty men.

Let all the soldiers draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears.

Let the weak say, I am a mighty man. Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, and gather yourselves there. Bring down, O Lord, your mighty ones.

Let the nations be aroused and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the winepress is full.

The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision. For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

The sun and moon grow dark, the stars lose their brightness, the Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem. And the heavens and the earth tremble, but the Lord is a refuge for his people and a stronghold to the sons of Israel. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain.

So Jerusalem will be holy and strangers will pass through it no more. And in that day, the mountains will drip with sweet wine and the hills will flow with milk and all the brooks of Judah will flow with water and a spring will go out from the house of the Lord to water the valley of Shechem. Egypt will become a waste, and Edom will become a desolate wilderness because of the violence done to the sons of Judah, in whose land they have shed innocent blood.

But Judah will be inhabited forever, and Jerusalem for all generations. And I will avenge their blood, which I have not avenged, for the Lord dwells in Zion. And you may be seated.

So it seems that God has jumped ahead here in what He’s telling Joel to tell the people of Israel. God has jumped ahead from the matter of the locust to this final future restoration of Israel, that we’re talking about this great day of the Lord that He’s been foretelling all through the prophecy. And Joel here is describing God’s judgment on the neighbors of Israel who have oppressed her.

And this passage is focused on God’s justice. Now, there’s also, because our view of God’s justice depends on which side of it we’re on, there’s also this part of our flesh that recoils from some of these things that we’ve read here. Well, that sounds a little harsh.

Boy, this is kind of a downer or negative thing that He’s telling them here. But that’s because our idea of justice is flawed. Really, what we want is not justice.

It’s what works for us. And we know this because the world even today looks at God and says, well, how can a just God allow X, Y, and Z to happen? If God was really just, he wouldn’t let this happen.

He’d punish those people. And a lot of those same voices will look at things like this in the Old Testament, where God did step in and God did punish, God did impose justice on the guilty, and people today will say, oh, how could a just God order all those consequences, all that slaughter? Well, we can’t have it both ways.

We’ve set up a criteria where we’re the standard of justice, and God has to do exactly what we think He ought to do. but we see from what he’s telling the the people that he’s talking to the philistines and these others who have who have treated israel who’ve treated judah in such horrific ways god’s saying your your ideas about what’s supposed to happen and my ideas are not the same thing and we’re going to come down to the valley of decision and see who’s in charge and I’ll admit in in my flesh that’s always a feel-good message. But folks, the justice of God, and we’ll get to this a little more in just a moment, the justice of God means that God is always going to act in a way that is right in any given situation.

God is always going to eventually right the wrongs, and He’s going to do what fits His purpose and what fits His nature. And we see here in this passage that God’s justice is perfect even when it doesn’t run on our schedule. Now, for Israel, this message, they’ve been on the receiving end of the justice of God in the first two chapters, and now God’s saying, but those who have mistreated you are also going to find justice as well.

And this is a recurring theme in some of these Old Testament prophets. The Babylonians were used by God to discipline Israel. And Israel’s looking at God saying, the Babylonians are worse than us.

Why are we getting punished and they’re getting by with it? And God’s saying, don’t worry, justice is going to come for the Babylonians as well. For a people who are being oppressed by the Philistines, for a people who, you know, their children have been stolen from them and sold off into slavery and human trafficking and all sorts of evils.

This message that these countries are going to face a judgment time is actually a comfort to God’s people. In our comfort in the Western world, we read passages like this and we recoil. But if you talk to believers in countries where it’s a lot harder to be a Christian, they’ll say the idea that God’s justice is going to come and God’s justice is going to right the wrongs, it’s a much more comforting notion for them.

And so this promise of justice for Israel as they’re reading it is a good thing. Wait, God sees what’s been done to us. God understands and cares about what we’ve suffered, and He’s going to fix it.

But there’s always the expectation from us that God’s going to fix things at the time we want them fixed. They were hearing this promise of justice, but He’s talking about at the beginning of this, He’s talking about those days, and at that time, toward the end in verse 18, he says, in that day, he’s talking about something in the future. They wanted, I’m sure, just knowing human nature, just knowing how I am, when he’s talking about justice, they’re saying, all right, bring on the justice.

I want it now. I want to see those colored lights zoom and pass me on the highway. But everything he’s telling them about is going to be in the future.

So he promises justice, but he says they’re going to have to wait for it a little bit. But he promises here to set things right completely as we look through this passage. He promises that he’s going to restore Israel.

Now, all of this is conditioned on the fact that he has called them in chapter 2 to repent. And when they’ve done that, there’s the promise on the other side that God is going to restore them, that he’s going to judge the pagan nations around them that have mistreated them. His justice is going to be perfect.

It’s going to be complete. There’s not going to be one thing that they’ve dealt with that God is not going to take care of. But the catch is they’re going to have to wait.

And there are going to be times in this world that you and I are called on to suffer for His sake. Now, we don’t suffer anything like our brothers in China or Vietnam or Eritrea or North Korea, some of these countries where you take your life into your hands by being a follower of Jesus Christ. We don’t suffer like that, but there are going to be times that there’s a cost imposed on us to be followers of Jesus Christ. Part of the reason we can bear that cost is because we know that our God is just, and we don’t have to worry about taking care of it. We just be obedient and trust that God’s going to deal with it in His time.

So we know that God’s justice is going to be perfect in its scope, but we have to wait a little bit to experience it. So what does God’s justice look like? It’s one of many attributes that God has, is His justice.

But it’s one of the ones that’s most often confused and misunderstood for the reasons I outlined at the beginning. God’s justice, there are about three things that we see in this passage that it tells us about God’s justice and what that’s going to look like when His justice shows up. First of all, unrepentant sin is remembered and repaid.

In verses 1 through 8, the whole thing is about God dealing with the sins of these nations who have had opportunities to repent, who have had opportunities to run to Him, and they’ve doubled down, not only on sin, but on sin that was hurting God’s people, sin that was bringing reproach on God’s people, sin that was mistreating people for no other reason than that they followed God. God was going to call the nations of the world to the valley of Jehoshaphat, which in some places in this passage he calls the valley of decision, meaning there’s going to be a decision made when we step into this valley. We’re going to know who’s on the right side of things when we come out of here.

God was calling the nations into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and He’s going to remember everything that they’d done to Israel and repay them for their actions. Talks about this in verses 1 and 2, about gathering the nations and entering into judgment there on behalf of His people who have been scattered. And there’s this sort of list of the things that they’ve done to Israel.

God’s saying, I’ve noticed. Every little thing that you’ve done to my people, I notice. It talks about them scattering the people of Israel.

It talks about in verse 3, them casting lots for my people. That’s talking about taking them into slavery, trading a boy for a harlot, selling a girl for wine that they may drink, buying and selling people, human trafficking. There’s theft in verse 5, talking about stealing the gold and over out of the temple, not only that, but taking those things to their temples to be used in their blasphemous rituals.

They have come at God, and they have come at God’s people. And now understand, God is merciful. God has given each of these countries opportunities to repent.

Some of the Old Testament prophets wrote prophecies specifically to these nations, calling them to repent, calling them to turn to the Lord while there was still time. They had the same opportunity to repent that Israel did, but they refused and they doubled down. And so we’re told here that God is going to remember and going to repay according to their actions.

Now, why this is so important for us? You know, we’re thousands of years in a whole ocean separated from these particular problems that were going on. But what this tells us is that we can be sure that because God hasn’t changed his approach to sin hasn’t changed and as much as God remembers all the times we’ve been wronged God remembers all the times that we have committed wrongs and God is merciful God offers opportunities to repent the new testament says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance It’s God’s will.

It’s God’s desire for you to be reconciled to Him no matter how you’ve sinned, no matter how far you’ve wandered from Him. It’s God’s desire to have that relationship and that fellowship with you. But God also knows He told us in advance it was going to happen.

There’s going to be a certain, well, He didn’t tell us numbers, but there’s going to be a certain portion of humanity that looks at God and rejects God, looks at that offer of repentance and restoration and rejects that and says, no, I love my sin too much. I don’t want any part of that. And they reject the offer of compassion.

They reject the offer of mercy. And if we stand before him and his judgment in that unrepentant state, God is going to remember and going to repay. That’s not a fun thing to hear.

It would be a lot worse if we didn’t hear it and went and had to stand before that judgment unwarned. God gives us opportunities to repent. God gives us opportunities to be reconciled to Him because the reality of His judgment and the reality of separation from Him is worse than what He wishes on us.

And I just want to say right here, because a lot of times the question comes up, the question has even come up in Christian publications, or ones that call themselves Christian publications. Why can’t God just be more chill about sin? Why can’t God just let it go?

Why does God have to treat it like such a big deal? Because sin is not just something God doesn’t like. I mean, that’s part of the definition.

It’s part of the definition that I use, that sin is anything we think, say, do, or don’t do that displeases God. That’s part of the definition. But if we understand that the moral law, the standard of right and wrong, is based on the character of God, that right is right because that’s who God is, then embracing sin is not just a difference of opinion with God.

embracing sin is a rejection of God in everything that He is. That’s why it’s such a big deal. That’s why God cannot allow sin to coexist with Him in heaven. That’s why that sin has to be dealt with.

And so unrepentant sin is a continual rejection of God. And we can be sure that God is going to deal with it in a just way. We also see in verses 9 through 16 that the reality that we will give an account for what we have done is inescapable and final. There were evidently some of these pagan countries who thought that they could escape, they could overcome in the valley of Jehoshaphat, they could prepare themselves.

God tells them, raise up an army. take your spears and beat them into pruning hooks, and take your plowshares and beat them into swords. See what you think you can do.

You’re still going to face judgment. He even summons the nations to battle in verses 9 through 11 because they’ve been warring against Him all this time. Of course, God knows that any battle that they would try to wage against Him is a lost cause.

No matter how well they prepared, they were going to face His judgment. No matter how strong, when I say how well they prepared, I mean no matter how strong they thought they were. No matter how they thought their religion was going to protect them because they appealed to their gods.

No matter how they thought their wealth might insulate them from the judgment. They were going to, the judgment of God was inescapable. There was one thing that they could do to prepare, and that was repent.

And that was the one thing they’d refuse to do. When he talks about putting the sickle in and treading the winepress, these are ideas that somebody in a farming society would understand that there comes a time when the crop is ready to harvest, and you’ve got to do something. Where the winepress is full, you can’t fit any more grapes in it, and you’ve got to do something.

That’s the picture he’s giving about their sin. there’s a time when sin is full up and you’ve got to do something and that’s where he’s talking about the valley of decision here and verses 14 through 16 give us a picture of how they’re not going to be able to withstand his judgment for all their multitudes in verse 14 the day of the Lord was still near he said the sun and moon would grow dark, the stars would lose their brightness, the Lord roars from Zion, His voice utters from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth tremble. No matter how well we think we’ve got things together, God is a judge that we’re all going to face.

There’s no amount of human preparation, no amount of human defense that is going to spare us from the certainty of that judgment. And in our society today, we think, I don’t have to answer to God. I read where somebody said, you know, God did X, Y, and Z talking about some of these things in the Old Testament, he’s going to have to ask me for forgiveness.

I don’t think that’s how that works. I mean, I’ve only been reading the Bible a few decades, but I don’t think that’s how it works. Or we can avoid it.

I’m strong enough. I’m well put together enough. Or if I just avoid it and don’t think about it, I don’t believe it’s going to happen.

But none of what we do to try to insulate ourselves is going to spare us from the certainty of God’s judgment. And here’s the final thing about His justice. God will keep all of His promises.

Now, that can be a good thing. That can be a bad thing. But here in these verses 16 through 21, we’re looking specifically at Israel.

We think God’s justice is just a negative thing. That, oh, it’s punishment. It’s answering for our sins.

God’s justice means that He’s also going to keep His promises. It means that God is not the kind of being that is going to promise something and then go back on it. Meaning when He promised to restore Israel, He was going to keep that promise.

Even when Israel fell short, God was going to keep His promise. When God promises forgiveness and salvation to us, He’s not going to go back on that. God is a God of justice, and that means He keeps His promises.

He promised in verses 16 through 17 that He was going to protect Israel. He told them in verse 18 that He was going to provide for Israel. He told them He was going to preserve them in verses 19 through 21, because He talks about these countries that had formerly been a threat that would be a threat no longer.

God’s going to preserve them from those threats. God keeps all of His promises. That’s part of His justice.

So as we try to come to terms with the idea that God is just and that His justice is perfect, we have to remember both sides of that coin. There is the negative side in which we can be certain that sin is a big deal to God and He will deal with it accordingly. But there’s the other side of that coin that when God says, I promise that you’re going to be forgiven, I promise that I will choose to remember that no more.

It’s not that God forgets our sins, but once they’ve been forgiven, He says He chooses not to remember them, meaning God has chosen not to hold those sins against us. We can be certain that because God is a just God, He’s not going to promise something and then rip it away. And we can’t talk about the justice of God without recognizing that we understand that justice most clearly through the cross.

The cross tells us everything we need to know about the justice of God. Because Jesus wasn’t crucified by accident. I heard one skeptic describe it once as he ran his mouth off and got killed by the Romans.

They made it sound like, oops. But folks, that was the whole plan. Jesus predicted His own death and resurrection at least nine times in the Gospels before it happened, many times predicting the manner of His death.

Not only that, His death and His manner of death were foretold by prophets for thousands of years ahead of time, including a pretty graphic description by Isaiah about 700 years before the fact, when crucifixion wasn’t even widely in use. But there are pictures of the death of Jesus going back to Genesis chapter 3, telling us this is part of God’s plan all along. And one of those things it tells us in Isaiah 53 is that it pleased God to bruise him on that cross.

It pleased God to crush him, not because the Father suddenly decided he didn’t love the Son anymore, but because of what Paul says, that he who knew no sin became sin for us. He took responsibility for our sins, and God’s justice was pleased to punish those sins in full. That when Jesus Christ went to the cross, He took responsibility for my sins and yours.

He did it willingly. It was part of the plan for Him to go there and do that so that God’s justice could be satisfied, that sin could be punished just as it needed to be. But not only that, God’s justice shows up at the cross because for thousands of years, God had been promising, you can’t do enough.

You can’t be good enough to be right with me. And so I’m going to have to make a way for your sins to be forgiven. And I’m going to forgive you and I’m going to restore you.

I’m going to show you my mercy. Well, that happens because of what Jesus Christ did at the cross and because He rose again to prove it. God’s justice in the sense of His punishment being poured out on sin was accomplished at the cross.

But His ability to keep His promises of forgiveness and salvation were also accomplished at that same cross. it did both it dealt with the sin and it kept the promises God will always do what is just God will always do what is right even if we don’t understand it even if it doesn’t meet our standards of those words we can trust in God’s justice and we can hope in his mercy because they go hand in hand.

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