Our argument in this series is that Christianity satisfies every human innate longing, our internal cry of our heart, of our lives, who we are, and who we want to be at our very core. In this week in our four-part series, Simply Christian, I'm tackling the question why we expect justice. Justice can be thought of as a dream, a dream where we glimpse a world as one, a world put to rights, a world where things work out, where societies function fairly and efficiently, where we not only know what we ought to do, but here's the key that we actually do it. But because it's a dream, we wake up. And in our awakened state, we realize that we have a longing, a desire, an interest in a world like this, the one that we glimpse in our dream, a world that's been put to rights, a world full of justice. And it hasn't been for a lack of wanting. We, and this is the collective we here, we have done all we can to bring about justice in our lives, in our community, and in our world where possible. We've elected governments and leaders who promise justice, yet justice in injustice remains. We long for justice and the vindication that comes with justice. We long for the order that justice brings, the peace that justice brings, yet for all of our longing, and for all of our crying, we still wrestle with injustice, with inequality, and with the frustration and the brokenness that results. Right in his book Simply Christian opens the book wrestling with this longing for a world put to rights, a world full of justice. And so he gives us an illustration of our innate longing for justice. What he invites us to do is to observe children old enough to talk at play. While listening in on their interactions and their play, we might, at some point, spy a child screaming, that's not fair. See, fairness isn't something that we necessarily have to teach. We don't have to teach kids about fairness. There seems to be something in the kit of what it means to be human that they have a sense and an awareness, as it were, of what it means for fairness to exist. See the line between justice and injustice. Between things being right and things not being right. This line can't be drawn between us and an imagined them. The line of injustice and justice, it runs right through the middle of each one of us. I wanted to share a quick story about injustice from my life. When I moved here to Michigan, I took a job with IBM. And the position that I took was as a network solution architect. Basically, this was in '97 before the internet really had taken off or right when it was taken off. So the internet was still sort of thought of as a fad. But there were some legacy customers of IBM who wanted to move some of their business online. And a part of my job was to design these web systems to allow customers to sell online to put their wares online. And I got involved in a sales opportunity that had already been started by someone else. So when you use sales reps in there, understand, I came kind of late to the sales cycle. And I met with the CIO of the company and with the client rep. And at IBM, it was sort of structured like a HMO. You know, you have your primary care physician and you go in and you tell them what's wrong and then they send you off to the specialist. Well, I was the specialist and the client rep was the primary care physician. So we go down and we meet with the customer. And, you know, I'm thinking, wow, this is going to be a great opportunity because my quota for that year was about $2 million. And if I closed that deal, it would have been close to $2 million, about $1.8. So that was going to really set me up to reaching my quota. And it was going to be a good year. And so we met with the client. I thought it was a great meeting. Later, the client rep and I debrief. And she says, you know, Don, I think you did a fantastic job except the customer doesn't like you. And I was like, oh, great. You know, my first sales opportunity, it's January. You know, I'm just getting my feet wet. And now my deal that I thought was going to make my quotas going down the tank. And I was like, all right, so what did I do? That's wrong. She's like, oh, well, I don't really want to tell you this, but I feel I should. He doesn't like you for two reasons. So I was like, okay, there's two. And I was like, all right, bless her the evil first. And she's like, well, he doesn't like you because you're too young. So I was like, okay. And what's the other? Oh, he doesn't like you because you're black. Huh? I can't change my age. And I'm certainly not changing my color. So how's this going to work? So I decided, all right, well, too bad. We're going to deal with it. And we're going to press on. But that was an injustice. Immediately, I was treated unfairly just because of my age and because of my race. Now, we continue to work the sales opportunity. I closed the deal about a million eight. Like I said, we were getting ready to transfer all of the wares and all the material back to the customers so that they could run it internally. And then the client rep and the CIO of the company, they met again. And in this meeting, there was a turn. There was a change of heart because the CIO, having been engaged with me in the sales process for about three months, realized something. He realized that he had treated me unfairly. He realized that I was actually competent in spite of my age and/or my race. And he said to the client rep, I'm so glad we had Don El working on our opportunity in this deal. See, we know what injustice looks like. And many of us have had experiences of injustice in our lives. And so this leads us to our central question. Why then do we long for or why do we expect justice? And I'm going to offer this as a response to this question. I believe that we expect justice because we are aware of a just God. Those of us who have decided to join up and connect with God at a personal level, not only are we aware of a just God, but we are in relationship with him. As I was preparing for this sermon during one of my dreams because preparation for a sermon involves one's whole life, I had a voice that said to me as I was just waking, Don El, you expect justice because I am just. See, it would seem to me that our longing for our desire for justice flows from the one who is just. Right in his book, Simply Christian, would offer it this way. He would describe it as an echo of a voice, a voice of the just and right God. In the biblical narrative, Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 4, puts it this way, the rock. His work is perfect. For all his ways are justice. O God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and right is he. And the narrative goes on to describe this clear point and this point of God, the God that we serve being a God of justice. Hear the Psalms as they describe this just God. The Lord is known by his justice. The Lord is righteous and he loves justice. The King is mighty. He loves justice. He has established in equity. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. Abraham Hashel in his book, the prophets puts it this way. Justice is God's part of human life. God's stake in human history. Perhaps it is because God sees the suffering of man as a blot on his conscious. Because it is in relations between man and man or as Maria offered, man and woman, that God is at stake. He's in the thick of it. And because he is a God of justice, he is calling us to justice. We have a longing for justice. See, the Christian narrative tells the story of a good and a just God who is concerned with his creation. It tells the story of a God who has been at work putting the world to rights. It tells the story of a God who wants to deal with injustice and the problems of evil. The narrative tells the story of a God who is teamed with his creation and bringing about his justice, his reconciliation and the restoration of all things. This narrative tells us of a God who cares very much about the present world and our very present selves. It also tells of a God who has made us and who has made the world for a purpose. And this purpose does in fact involve justice. It does indeed involve things being put to right, ourselves being put to rights. It tells the story of a God who has devised a plan to rescue us and to rescue our world. See, God's justice, it is a saving, healing, restorative justice because the God to whom justice belongs is the creator God who has yet to complete his original plan for his creation, whose justice is not simply designed to restore a balance to a world that's out of kilter. But instead, he wants to bring to glorious completion and fruition the creation, teeming with life, teeming with possibility, the way that he designed it in the first place. And he remains, implacably determined to complete this project through his image-bearing human creatures, that's us, and in particular through the family of Abraham. So what I want to do now is walk through these views of God's justice. First of all, God's justice is a saving justice. And the picture that I want you to see here is the picture of a personal God who has mounted a personal rescue operation. He himself has set about to put the world to rights. And this rescue operation starts right after the first humans, rebel against the creator God, and they put the creation out of sorts. Now, God's judgment comes here. It comes in the form of an exile, and they were exiled from the garden. But God sets things in motion because he wants to bring his salvation to his creation. And I think one of the interesting things about God's personal rescue operation is that he has decided to team with the rebellious humanity and creation to bring about his salvation. See, he calls Abraham a nomad, someone who wandered in Genesis chapter 12, and he establishes a covenant with him. Here's how it goes. The Lord said to Abraham, "Leave your country, your people, and your father's household, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you." See, in this covenant, there is a promise. And the promise is this, that Abraham and his family will be a blessing to the families of the earth. Now, this promise is repeated over and over again, first to his son, Isaac, then to Jacob, who later becomes Israel. But somewhere along the line, somewhere on their journey to being a blessing to the families of the earth, they find themselves in need of rescue. And the God, the God of saving justice, who is not satisfied to give up on his creation, who is not satisfied to leave us here in the midst of our suffering, he decides to choose another servant, someone who's going to bring about his saving justice. See, he's committed to bringing about this justice. He's committed to rescuing us, to saving us, to redeeming us. And he, again, teams with humanity to bring about this salvation. And we learn of this servant from the prophet Isaiah, who is speaking to Abraham's family in the midst of their exile and echo to the first humans and their exile from the garden. And God makes a promise to send a servant who will bring about this saving justice. Let's hear Isaiah in chapter 42 verses 1 through 4. Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one, in whom I delight, I will put my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. A bruised reed, he will not break. A smoldering wick, he will not snuff out. In faithfulness, he will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged until he establishes justice on the earth. And like Abraham and his family, I find myself, and I think this is our story, we find ourselves in exile. And we desperately need to know that our God or the echo of the voice that we hear in our hearts and our lives, that this God, the Creator God, is, in fact, the faithful one, who is willing to bring about his saving justice, that it is a saving God who isn't satisfied with leaving us here in our own exile. But he is so determined, he is so committed to bringing about his saving justice that he personally mounts a rescue operation that will bring about justice and restoration in our lives. Now, here's the rub a little bit with justice. Sometimes justice is slow and coming. It takes a little while. But we learn that this promise that he makes in Isaiah to send the servant, we learn that it reaches its fruition in Jesus, the same Jesus who was obedient to death on a cross. Who delivers at last God's saving justice, but the work isn't done. As he announced the coming kingdom, both at hand and not yet fully come, there seems to be some work that we get to do and bringing about God's justice in the earth. But more about that later. God's justice is also a healing justice. Now, we personally know that injustice is done to us or not quickly undone. Sometimes it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of prayer. It takes a lot of grace. And most importantly, it takes a lot of time to heal the scars of abuse. The wounds of rejection and the outright neglect. And the Psalms, they seem to echo our internal cry. How long, oh Lord. How long. I want to tell a little bit of my story here. I've been estranged from my family of origin for, let's call it a decade. It's probably being generous to me. It's probably more like 13 years or so. And this is strange meant again, or started when I turned 16. Because at that point in the city that I grew up in in Washington DC, that was the age of consent. So I had self-determination at that point. I didn't realize I could also skip out on school, but I was still committed to school, so I went to school. And I decided that the pain, the neglect, and the abuse that I endured in my family of origin had taken its toll on me. That it had spent itself on me and I had no more energy to deal with it. And I made a really difficult decision, and that decision was to move out. And I moved out of my family of origin, and sure enough, our God, he's a God of restoration. He wants to restore our lives. He wants to restore our families. He wants to restore our bodies. And this God, as if there was some cause-big game at which I was the centerpiece of, decided he wanted to make sure I knew he was a God of restoration. And so I would listen to Christian Radio, and every time someone would get up to preach on Christian Radio, they were preaching about restoration with your family of origin, especially when your parents weren't safe. On the FM dial, on the AM dial, and had satellite existed, I'm sure it would have been there as well. I could not avoid it every time I turned on the radio. That's what was happening. And I was like, "God, are you kidding me? Do you know the pain that I have experienced? The countless nights I've shared this with you before, that I cried myself to sleep, wishing that my family, instead of who they were, that they were Bill Cosby and his family on the Huxables, you know, the Huxable family?" And I'm saying to God, "How can you do this?" I felt like Martin Luther, you know, putting together the 95 grievances against the church, and nailing it to the church at Wittenberg, saying, "God, until you address every one of these, I am not open to this conversation." But our God is a God of healing justice, and he wants to heal us, so time became a bone. And so I went on to college, and we started to make some inroads. And then I moved here, and we seemed to be making great progress at a wonderful clip. At this point, in '97, when I moved here, my mom and my dad, who had been estranged from since '13, when I discovered he didn't want to spend time with me anymore, so I made it easier, I stopped spending time with him. They decided that they would call me on Monday mornings, because I worked for IBM, and Mondays were my conference call day. So at about nine o'clock on Monday till five o'clock, I was on one conference call after another. So they called that eight, and we had a conference call. My mom would call my dad, and then they would call me, and we would talk. And we were making progress. We were healing old wounds. And then I fell in love with the girl, decided to marry her after she accepted, and I introduced -- well, it generally happens that way. Like, I decide I want her, and it's all up to her at that point. And she had to say yes, and I introduced her as best I could to them. And my one desire, my one desire for my wedding, like, would have been like the perfect gift for me was that it would have been my parents being here. Both my mom and my dad. The last time they were together for anything related to me, any accomplishment in my life was probably sixth grade. And so we called them, and we made it as easy as we possibly could. We said, "We'll take care of the expense." You know, all you have to do is say yes, and find a way to get here. And so hope welled within me, that the progress that we had been making up until this point, that we would see some restoration in this relationship, that we would make some more progress, and the wounds of my youth would be healed, and I could be whole again, but we have an adversary. We have an adversary who likes to stand between us and what God is doing in our lives, because he wants us to be broken. He wants us to be an exile. He wants us to be out of relationship, because at that point, we are weak. We are broken, and he can have his way with us. And so on my wedding day, standing out in the lobby, looking, hoping, disappointment set in. It's just set in, because I knew that they weren't going to make it, and all the progress that we had made up until that point. I saw it just kind of waving away. But God did something for me to bring about some healing. It's a wound. It's a deep wound, and it hurts like the Dickens it hurts. And I don't want to process it, and I don't want to deal with it, and I don't want to talk about it, but we serve a God who is a healing God who wants to bring about his healing justice in our lives, because he doesn't want us to be broken. He doesn't want us to be longing in this way. He wants to bring his restoration in our lives, and so standing at these doors with Ken. I looked in on my wedding day at the 200 or 250 or so folks who were here, and I realized two things, both of them having a significant impact on me. The first was there wasn't a single blood relative of mine in the room, not one. And it wasn't for a lack of invitation, and I can't speak for them in their decision not to be here, but boy, that just wrecked me to my core. What is supposed to be one of the most happiest days of my life, here I am, just broken, but our God, he is a healing God. And what he reminded me, the Holy Spirit reminded me, as soon as that thought came, this thought followed, which was, but everyone that's here is here because they want to be. And many of you who are here today were here, representing the family of God, standing in the place of my family when they refuse to stand up. See, God wants to bring about healing, and you might say, "Well, don't know. All I'm hearing is brokenness. All right. Okay. It goes on." That's fine. That means you're paying attention. That's right. It's working. Now, the other day, a confident of mine, sat me down and said, "Donnel, I think you're ready." And I was like, "Oh, that's like a good sign, right?" Someone said, "They think you're ready. You're like, "What am I ready for? You got a gift?" I'm excited about that. Am I ready for kids? Oh, you know, what am I ready for?" And they're processing with me, and they said, "Donnel, I think you're ready." I was like, "Okay." You said that. "What am I ready for?" And they're like, "I think you're ready to start to deal with the wounds that you experience with your family of origin." What? I was thinking you were going to say, "I'm ready for this next promotion or this new thing or, you know, this or that." That is like, I have a list of the things I think I'm ready for, and that's certainly not on there. Are you sure? Are you hearing God? I'm not positive, but he restated. He said, "I think you're ready." He's like, "I think you're in the best emotional state probably of your life that you may be in. You're certainly at the best spiritual state to start to wrestle with and to dive into the wounds that are there." See, that's God's call for healing justice. We hear an echo of a voice, and the voice is telling us that God's justice is a healing justice. Again, I want to turn to the prophet Isaiah as he gives us insight here. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and a release from darkness for the prisoners, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. We receive encouragement from this call of this servant who's going to bring this about, and we see it in its fruition and its completion in the ministry of Jesus. We see Jesus at work healing, and it reminds us that the work that he's doing, it's bringing about God's healing justice. It reminds us that this healing that's taking place in our lives and in the lives of those around us, that it's a sign, and we need signs. They give us insight as to what's happening around us. It's a sign that the Creator, God, is at work through him and through his church. He's at work doing what he promised to do to open the eyes of the blind, to open the ears of the deaf, to rescue us, to return us from our exile, to turn everything right side up. Finally, God's justice, it is a restorative justice. God wants to end our exile. He wants us to find peace and rest. Let me say that again. He wants us to find peace and rest. He wants us to come home again. I want to go home again. He wants to deal with the multiple problems that have resulted from our rebellion. He wants to heal our wounds. He wants to heal our hearts. He wants to restore the creation to its original, glorious intention. Paul gives us a little insight here in Romans 8. I love it. This is what he says. He says, "I consider our present suffering not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." Hear that. The suffering, the wounds, the rejection, the exile, all of those things that make us who we are, that put within us, this longing for justice in the midst of our injustice. Paul tells us that will not compare with the glory that the Creator God wants to reveal in us. He goes a step further. He says, "The creation waits in eager expectation." Why? So that the sons and daughters of God will be revealed for his glory, for his glory to be revealed. God wants to bring about his restorative justice in our lives. So how did this, how did the work for restorative justice, how did it come about? Well, it came about through God's servant, Jesus. And his obedience to death, death on a Roman cross, bringing about God's restorative justice, feeling once and for all with the problems that ails us, that break us, that keep us outside of our true humanity. But the work's not done yet. Again, we turn to the prophet Isaiah for insight here. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one whom men hide their face, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and he carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But Isaiah goes on and he says, "But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities and the punishment which brings us peace was upon him. And by his wounds we are healed. It's God saving, healing and restorative justice." Write sums it up this way and I love this quote. "The pain and tears of all the years were met together on Calvary. The sorrow of heaven joined with the anguish of earth. The forgiving love of God just stored up in God's future was poured out into our present. The voice that echoes in a million hearts, crying for justice, longing for spirituality, eager for relationship, yearning for beauty, drew themselves together. And a final scream of desolation." See, God's plan all along was to bring to us and to his creation his saving, healing and restorative justice. Jesus announces in his ministry the kingdom of God being at hand. And there's a tension in that reality because the kingdom is both here but not yet fully come. And while none of us could get about the task of building God's kingdom, we do have a role. And that role is the best way I can explain it is maybe being bricks as God builds his kingdom. We are bricks which bring about his saving, healing and restorative justice. And that leads me to this question, what is expected of us? What is expected of us in view of God's saving, healing and restorative justice? Well, again, I turn to the prophets of old, this time Micah. Micah answers this question. He has shown you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you to do justice, to love mercy and to walk with humility with your God? So what does it mean for us to do justice? It means for us to reflect the will of our Creator. It means for us to hate oppression. It means for us to hate injustice when we see it. It means for us to care for the weak. It means for us to care for the oppress. It means for us to lift up the cause of the exploited and the ignored. He is calling us to act and kind. Are you willing to be a brick in the building of God's kingdom? I want to be a brick. I want to be a brick. I want to reflect God's justice, his saving, his healing, his restorative justice. Because when I do that, when we get about the work of doing justice, here's what happens. We reveal to a broken, fallen, despairing world, something, hope. Don't give up. Don't give in. This is not the end of your rope. This is not the end of your story. There is someone who has been about rescuing the world. There is someone who has been about bringing things to their rightful state. There is someone who has been bringing about his healing, his renewal, his trans, I have a witness, his transformation in our lives. That's what happens when we do justice. We reveal to this despairing world that there is a personal God who is personally concerned with our personal selves. So personal that he mounted his personal rescue operation to bring us home, to bring us from exile, to bring us peace and rest. If anything, that the biblical narrative is clear on, it's clear on the point that our God is a God of justice. He demands it of his reflected glory in the earth, us, his creation. And when we do justice, we point to that personal God. It is a sign, a signpost that this God, this Creator God, he cares. To do justice means, again, to pick up the cause of the weak, to pick up the cause of the oppressed, the ignored, the exploited, and to champion their voice and their concerns as if they were our own. If any of us who have decided to be called by God's name, with desire to be a light shining in the midst of darkness, here's the easiest way to do it, do justice. Be a brick, justice no one deserves a reward for breathing. Just as no one expects a reward for breathing, justice is as necessary as breathing is. Justice isn't something that we put on our checklist, like our shopping list. I've made our shopping list for this weekend. We need eggs, we need bread, justice. And you buy the eggs, you give someone else your parking spot, justice, and you scratch it off, and you move on. No, it is a constant occupation. It's at the core of who we are. The band can make their way back. We are called to act justly. We are called to love mercy, to walk with humility before our God. God, that is the call that He places on our line.
