Judgement and Justice, Part 1

This is the text of a sermon I gave on November 3rd, 2019

Readings:

Psalm 149

Ephesians 1:11-23

Luke 6:27-42

INTRODUCTION

“Who are you to judge me?” Has anyone ever said that to you? Maybe you’ve said it? It’s a question of outrage, a defensive question. How dare you! What gives you the right? Who do you think you are? It’s the opposite of humility. It avoids scrutiny. It deflects attention.

Psalm 149. How great if this ended at verse 5! A simple exhortation to praise God. We’d all get behind that, apart from the dancing. We’d see victory as victory over circumstances: triumph over the world, the flesh, the Devil. So why, oh why, did the psalmist spoil it by adding:

Let them shout aloud as they praise God,

    with their sharp swords in their hands

 to defeat the nations

    and to punish the peoples;

 to bind their kings in chains,

    their leaders in chains of iron;

to punish the nations as God has commanded.

This is the victory of God's people.

Praise the Lord!

We rightly hate war. We want peace, not war. So should we cringe as Israel praises God while fighting, taking rulers captive, punishing the nations with God leading the way? 

I want to briefly address the issue of judgement and justice.

Israel - God’s Instrument of Justice

Israel, how dare you? Who do you think you are? What gives you the right? Israel was many things; one of them was God’s instrument of justice, internally and externally.

Internally. God set a standard for what is right and just, which expresses who He is. His character is the benchmark of holiness. He expressed His character in human-sized bites when the Law was given to Moses. Directly or indirectly, the Law shows what God would or wouldn’t do (dare I say, if He were human?). He expected Israel to be like Him. Some things are easy to understand. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t mistreat widows or orphans. Some sounds weird. You may eat any land animal that has divided hoofs and also chews the cud, but you mustn’t eat camels, rock badgers, or rabbits. Don’t cut the hair on the sides of your head to mourn for the dead. Don’t wear clothes made of two kinds of material.

These laws would keep Israel holy. There were penalties for breaking them, as with any law. Those penalties were the means of executing justice, just as there are penalties for breaking UK laws.

Externally. Israel was to be holy, keeping God’s laws, a light to the nations, showing what Yahweh was like. A holy people executing His judgments on the nations. As a holy people, God would be with them, leading them. God, the judge and jury. Israel, the executioner. When He told them “destroy the Canaanites”, He was telling them to punish people who practised every sexual immorality and sacrificed their children to their idol. Leviticus 18 has the details. 

We must be clear: Israel didn’t decide what behaviour they disagreed with and look for nations to punish, like moral vigilantes. They didn’t make up the rules. God gave rules to reflect His character. Indeed, Israel often worshipped pagan gods, slept with temple prostitutes, sacrificed their own children, practised witchcraft… Rather than a light to the nations, they often joined the darkness. Rather than execute God’s justice against wickedness, they ended up on the receiving end. Israel’s history is a toing and froing between following, then abandoning God.