Doing JusticeApril 19th, 2013

As we get started this morning, I’d like you to think, for a moment, about some of our basic human emotions…

- Emotions that we all experience s/a joy, sadness, fear, comfort, anger, peaceful, worry, or regret. Think about those core human emotions.

- Now, with those in mind, let me ask you… which emotions do you think most often characterize the OT prophets?

Go ahead and speak it out… What emotion do you think most often characterizes the prophets that you read about in the Old Testament?

- Lighthearted? Playful? Not really! Cantankerous? Yes! I mean, don’t the prophets pretty much strike you as bunch of cranky guys?

- Last week, for example, we look a lot at a guy named Amos who look right at the people of Israel and said:

- “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who oppress the poor, crush the needy.” That’s kind of a cranky thing to say, isn’t it?

Isaiah says, “Stop bringing your meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. I can’t bear your evil assemblies.”

- Micah puts it like this: “Should you not know justice, you who hate good and love evil, who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones, who eat my people’s flesh, strip off their skin, break their bones in pieces, chop them up like meat...”

- Talk about cranky ! That’s a little over the top, isn’t it?

And not only do they use angry words at times, but, in order to make a point, the OT prophets have been known to occasionally resort to what seems like shock tactics… doing things that often look downright bizarre.

- Hosea marries a prostitute to show people how unfaithful God thinks they are.

- Ezekiel eats food cooked over excrement to show people how defiled they are… and lays on his side for much of 3 years.

- Jeremiah digs up a filthy, buried, unwashed undergarment, and uses it as an object lesson to show people how repellent their behavior is. And wears a yoke around his neck!

- In fact, both Micah & Isaiah go naked for a period of time to show just how “naked” Israel’s sins are before God.

The prophets seem to do all kinds of stuff like this and, frankly, it makes us uncomfortable, right?

- You might even wonder why these guys can’t see the glass half full from time to time?

- Couldn’t just one of them write a happy book?”- You think about all that and may you wonder, “So, why in the

world should we read them?”- Why should we study prophets like Amos & Micah for example?

Well, sitting here in church on a Sunday morning, one good answer might be because… they’re in the Bible!!

- Because God might actually have something relevant & current to say through them!!

- I mean, can you imagine getting to heaven and having Obadiah & Haggai, for example, walk excitedly up to you and ask you, “So, how’d you like our books?!”

- What are you going to say? “Well, sorry... I didn’t read them. They were in a bad location... I could never find them… and when I could… well… they were just a little too whiny for me!”

But there’s more to it than that. There’s a reason why God chose 17 books of the Bible to be the Books of the Prophets.

- There is a reason why WE need— perhaps more than any other generation of Christians since Pentecost— to be reading their words.

- And that reason might have something to do with why they seem a bit cantankerous at times.

I asked you a few months ago to imagine that you’re listening to somebody sing and they’re singing loudly & totally “off key”.

- Of course, some of you might not have to imagine, because you’ve just been sitting next to someone like that this morning.

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- Now, if you’re musically insensitive—if you have a tin ear— then it’s not going to bother you all that much.

But if you’re musically sensitive—if you have perfect pitch—it’s a different story because you know exactly how the song should be.

- You know what the song should sound like. When I listened to Kelly Clarkson, Mariah Carey, and Witney Houston singing the National Anthem… it was near perfection.

But, when Christine Aguilera forgot the words while singing it at the Superbowl a few years ago…

- Or, far, far worse, when Rosanne Barr did whatever it was she did when singing the National Anthem 23 years ago,

- It can make you cringe… because you know what its supposed to sound like… and how far off it is.

Now, imagine listening to Rosanne Barr singing that minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, and year after year…

- knowing what the National Anthem was supposed to sound like… - knowing how beautiful it could be if it were just sung by someone

who knew what they were doing.

Guys, we read the prophets and we think, “What’s the big deal? What are they getting all heated up about?”

- You see, the prophets.. they knew what it was supposed to sound like… they knew what God’s heart was… they knew what God’s intention was for the world…

- They understood God’s dream of shalom… the way God wanted the world to be… and how far from it its become.

- they knew how wonderful it could be if God’s people would just surrender their hearts to Him and live in authentic community.

The prophets were anything but hard of hearing… it was as if they were unable to miss a note even if they wanted to.

- Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t drown out the sin… they couldn’t drown out the injustice and the cries of those around them.

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- Truth is, what seems to separate us from them isn’t so much the seemingly over-the-top things they said or did at times.

- But rather, what so often separates them from us is our ability to pretend those cries aren’t there .

Because of how complicated our lives can be, we’ve developed what seems to be an inability to see beyond our own circumstances.

- “Things are really going pretty well for me… not perfect, but ok. And, I know there is suffering in the world. I read about it sometimes and it’s terrible, but as long as it doesn’t touch my life, as long as it doesn’t touch my home, my neighborhood, I would prefer not to think about it.”

So what if in ancient Palestine, the poor got ripped off? Where is it any different? Why are these prophets going off the deep end?

- Somebody shades the truth a little for profit; somebody gets a little wrapped up in their own comfort;

- Somebody gets a little careless about remembering those in need; Somebody ignores the poor…

- Why should the prophets act like the world is falling apart? Why are they so cranky?

Well… Jesus, whom besides being the Son of God, is also called a prophet, said that every time somebody is hungry and doesn’t get fed…

- Every time somebody is thirsty and doesn’t get something to drink, every time somebody is naked and doesn’t get clothed,

- Jesus says that He Himself shares in that suffering… it is as if it was His cry for help we ignored.

- And yet, we still think at times, what’s the big deal? You see…

To the prophets have been given this crushing burden of looking at our world and seeing what our God sees… feeling what God feels.

- If the prophets were cranky… its because when they looked out into the world, they couldn’t help but hear just how out-of-tune it has all become…

- How deaf we’ve become to the cries of 300,000 child soldiers, some as young as seven or eight, who are being exploited in armed conflicts in more than 30 countries in the world.

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How is it that we can’t hear the cries of 8000 church born with or infected with HIV every single day in Africa?

- Every day of the week, another 6000 children in Africa are orphaned because of HIV.

- The rich trying to get richer, looking the other way while people die of poverty, and thinking God is really pretty pleased with their lives, pretending that the world is really going pretty well.

You see, every one of the prophets learned this truth about the human race... that we really don’t want to know the truth…

- Maybe because of the all that’s going on in our own lives… maybe we really can’t handle the truth.

- In fact, we have a deeply vested interest in not getting it. We don’t want to know about the suffering & lostness “out there”

- And we don’t want to have to deal with emptiness we can so often feel “in here”, in our hearts and souls.

We don’t want to consider how our overcrowded lives have left no a “no vacancy” sign to compassion and what this has all done to our world…

- let alone the impact its’ had on our souls. We don’t want to know, because that would make us uncomfortable.

- Micah put it like this: “If a liar and deceiver comes and says, ‘I will prophesy for you in exchange for wine and beer,’ he would be just the [right] prophet for this people.”

What Micah is saying is that comfort has become a virtue higher & more powerful than compassion & generosity .

- And so, with deep disappointment, Micah is saying that, from where it stands now,

- The people would gladly do away with the Prophets of God in exchange for a charlatan offering false prophesies in exchange for a few beers and a bottle of wine.

They’d rather numb their mind with one-too-many beers or a little too-much wine, than to allow the realities of their world to touch their hearts.

- They had become so completely tone deaf to the cries of injustice and sheer lostness around them…

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- That it was simply easier to kick back, have a beer, and get comfortable

Abraham Heschel, a wonderful scholar… and student of the prophets, writes that “events that horrified and appalled the prophets are everyday occurrences on our world, all around us and we don’t want to know and we don’t want to hear and we don’t want to see it. And we don’t want anybody to tell us about human misery and injustice, because it might disturb our comfort.

We just get used to our world like you get used to wearing a watch after a while… like you get used to stuff that you never fixed around your house after a while— we just don’t notice it anymore.”

Well… the prophets noticed. That was their gift. That was their burden. For them it might have even been their curse. They noticed.

- Heschel then says: “The prophet is a man who feels fiercely, God has thrust a burden upon his soul and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Prophecy is the voice God has lent to the silent agony. God is raging in the prophet’s words.”

- Those prophets spoke the heart of God. They saw what he saw. They felt what he felt.

So, why do we read Micah? Why look at the Book of Amos? Because our failure to so will come at a great cost to our own souls… AND

- the well being of this world that matters so much to God . That’s why we read the prophets.

- Because God wants to open our ears to what He wants to say… and sharpen our vision to what He wants us to see.

- But then, how should we respond to what the prophets say? What should we do?

Should we just be paralyzed by the immensity of the injustices around us , because it’s way more than we can fix?

- Should we sit around doing nothing , except feeling overwhelmed by guilt over our own complicity? How should we respond?

- Well, Micah, sums up the kind of response God is looking for in one of the great passages of Scripture.

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It’s the only statement I will ask you all to carry away this morning, because if you grasp this one thing, you grasp the heart of the prophets.

- To the question of “what should we do now,” this is what Micah says in chapter 6, verse 6:“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?”

Notice how he keeps upping the price... “Shall I give my firstborn for the sin of my transgression, the firstborn of my body for the sin of my soul?”

- And then, Micah writes something that by its very simplicity ought to rearrange our lives to the core.

- To the question, “What can I do?” Micah says, in verse 8, “He has shown you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”

What would happen if, in this world, if in this room, we just did those three things? “To do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God?”

- Micah cried out to Israel... “You know what you need to do to turn this around. You can pretend you don’t;

- You can act all confused; BUT “He has shown you, oh man.” “He has shown you what it is He requires of you.”

- There is no doubt… God has been quite plain on this from the beginning. Will you “Do justice?” Will you walk justly?

Think for a moment about how mad you get when somebody treats you unfairly… when somebody says something to you that you don’t deserve.

- Think about how angry you get when someone cuts you off on the highway… the injustice of it!

- These things make our blood boil... in fact, we share these stories of injustice perpetrated against us for months…

- “You’ll never believe what this guy did to me on Route 80!”

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And yet, I hardly allow myself consider the 2 million people driven into homelessness and 300,000 people killed because of the horrific war in Darfur, Sudan over the past ten years.

- “Oh, Craig… don’t be hard on yourself… life is so complicated… how can we really grasp what is going on there anyway? Don’t be hard on yourself.”

- But… why not? Why, as followers of Jesus, why can’t we expect more from ourselves? Why can’t the world expect more from us?

Last year there was someone who left the church after Easter because they were offended that we used an image of an Easter Egg on our roadside banners.

- The egg was cracked… and out from the cracks was this glory… representing the reality that there’s more to Easter than eggs.

- This person saw this as such a huge issue… God was so offended by this… so why wasn’t I?

- What a perfect picture of where we’ve fallen… to get entirely worked up over an Easter egg alluding to the resurrection…

And yet utterly numb to the reality that over 10 million children are victims of today’s sex trade industry…

- trafficked from one country to another , for example… sold into prostitution and sexual slavery…

- Ten year olds serving as indentured servants in brothels in New York City… in all our cities.

And yet, we’re not offended by that. We’re offended by Easter Eggs. We’re offended by Beyonce’s Superbowl halftime show.

- We’re offended by Hollywood & by the “liberal media”.- The list of things Christians find “offensive” seems to grow

longer and longer.- But, let me ask you… what offended Jesus… the One we’ve

purposed to give our heart, mind, soul, & strength to?

Now, the Pharisees… they too were always offended… offended that Jesus would allow a prostitute wash His feet with her tears.

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- But Jesus didn’t say, “Woe to you!” when a partially dressed women, just caught in the act of adultery, was draped in front of Him.

- He didn’t say, “Woe to you!” when a rough fisherman named Peter would use off-color language or when speaking to a lying tax-collector named Zaccheus.

Instead, it was to the Pharisees that He said, "What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs--beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity.” (Matt 23:27)

It was the Pharisees who valued their righteousness more than justice and truth and love.

- God, how can we have fallen so far that we’re beginning to look more like them than You…

- Where we’re more concerned about our right-ness being transgressed and our righteousness being tarnished,

- that we forget that our righteousness comes from a Savior who sat with sinners and touched lepers and said, “what you do to the least of these you do unto Me.”

So, what can we do? Well… “He has shown you, oh man… DO JUSTICE, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

- God says, “Do justice.” And “doing justice” means that we get as impassioned when somebody else is the victim of injustice, as when you are, yourself.

- Do Justice! See the injustices and be willing to respond. - And, in particular, have a passion about injustices impacting those

whom we might be inclined to overlook .

We looked at Deuteronomy 24:17 last week… where God calls us to remember the alien, the fatherless, and the widow.

- We’re told over and over again to remember the poor around us. - Beyond the abject poverty that inflicts the third world… in just

the last seven years, the percentage of Americans living at half the poverty level… has increased by 26%?

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Guys… have we discovered by now why God calls on His people… not governments… to make a difference in this world?

- Yes, government programs can help… but it’s the Church whom He’s called to be that City on a Hill… that Community of Hope in a despairing world.

- We live in a world where large and small injustice is standard operating procedure.

And God says, “You be an agent of justice. You be passionate about justice.” I can’t correct all the injustice in the world,

- But I can do some things. I can notice when there is a note sung off-key… when someone is suffering around me.

- And I can pray and I can ask God to help me treat others fairly.- And yet, it needs to extend beyond our thoughts & prayers into

tangible expressions of mercy & love to the world around us.

1 John 3:18 says, “Dear children, let's not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.”

- From the beginning of Scripture, the Bible says that our hearts for God—yours and mine—will be revealed by what we do…

- not by our feelings of compassion, but what we do for the least of these.

- God says, “This goes right to the core of what I value.” So He calls on us, His people… to DO JUSTICE.

He also says “Love kindness.” The word Micah uses, Hesed, is a very rich word that reflects God’s incredible heart of mercy...

- that tangibly flows out of His endless love and goodness. - It’s a love that always seeks to express itself in action . It is

never confined to a feeling.- I mean, can you imagine a world where people set out, each and

every day, with a heart to simply “show kindness” to those around them?

I heard a story, some time ago, about a young man from Californian named John Gilborn.

- When John was 5 years old, he was diagnosed with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy… a progressive & cruel genetic disorder.

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- He soon understood that it would eventually destroy his muscle, and in ten more years or so, take his life.

It seemed as though, every year, John lost something. One year, it was the ability to run. He couldn’t play sports with other kids.

- Another year, he could no longer walk straight . Soon, all he could do was watch others play.

- Through all of this, he began writing fairly extensively. He writes about Junior High; how it was perhaps the hardest era of his life.

Junior High is already a tough period for a lot of people. In fact… Catholic theologians got it right…

- There is such a thing as purgatory… and it’s called junior high—a place between heaven and hell where you’re forced to go and suffer for your sins!

- But John was bullied there, and humiliated, until he was afraid to go to school. Nobody stood up for him.

One year, when he was a little younger, he was named poster child for Muscular Dystrophy in California.

- That very night, the NFL sponsored a fund-raising, auction dinner, at which John was a guest.

- The players let him hold their huge Super-Bowl rings, which were about the size of John’s wrist.

- And when the auction began, one item especially, caught John’s attention: It was a basketball signed by all the members of the Sacramento Kings—an NBA team.

John got a little carried away, because when the ball was being bid, he immediately raised his hand.

- And as soon as it went up, his mom yanked his hand down as fast as she could. John said, “Astronauts never felt as many G’s as my wrist did that night.”

- The bidding for that basketball went on and it kept going up.

It rose to an astronomical amount—more than anything else, even though it was not a particularly valuable item in that auction.

- Eventually, one guy named a figure that stunned the room.

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- Nobody else could match that. And he went to the front to collect this wonderful prize that cost him so much.

But instead of returning to his seat, the man walked across the room and placed the basketball in the thin, small hands of a boy who admired it so intently.

- He put that ball into the hands of a boy who would never dribble it down a court;

- never throw it to a teammate on a fast break , and never fire it from three-point range.

- It was the quintessential act of kindness. So… let me ask you…

Have you bought a basketball for anybody lately? I don’t know how we do it but we make kindness so complicated... but it’s not.

- Have you bought a basketball for anybody lately? - Have you just gone out of your way to show kindness to someone

for no reason at all... except to empower & bless?

You see… that’s supposed to be our way of life, but it starts with a first step. What will that first step be for you?

- For the guy who bought the basketball for John Gilborn, it started with a recognition that it would cost him something.

- But man… was it worth it… that expression of kindness was worth it.

- Micah calls us to Do Justice, to Love Kindness… and then he tells us to Walk Humbly.

“Walk humbly,” Micah says, “with the Lord your God.” To be honest, this phrase probably had special meaning to him,

- because I think it’s hard work to be a prophet … and yet, not get all self-righteous about it.

- Truth is, the “Church” has a reputation for being a bit self-righteous, doesn’t it.

In fact, some of you may have experienced the joy of having some self-righteous Christian Confront you or those close to you

- with arrogant superiority, which they quickly excuse… because “I’m a prophet!”

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- But, understand that there is a very important theological distinction between being a prophet & being a pain in the neck.

- Because what burns most deeply in the heart of a true prophet is not anger or a sense of superiority…

- but a deep love emanating from a kind & compassionate heart.

In fact, a true prophet remembers that he or she, is one of the sinful people who have helped to mess up this marvelous world that God made… and so, they walk humbly.

- And when that happens with us—when we, as His people, walk in humility as Jesus modeled to us each & every day…

- When we live life “doing justice” and “loving kindness” and “walking humbly” before our God,

- Than Micah says that something will happen. In the closing words of the Book of Micah, God says this…

‘Yes,’ says the Lord, ‘I will do mighty miracles for you, like those I did when I rescued you from slavery in Egypt.’ ‘In that day, nations will see and be ashamed, and they will come, trembling out of their dens and turn in fear to the Lord our God. For who is a God like you who pardons sin and forgives transgression? You will have compassion on us and hurl our inequities into the depths of the sea. You will show us your faithfulness and unfailing love as you promised to our ancestors Abraham and Jacob long ago. (Micah 7)

“Where is there a God like you? And what does this magnificent God want? What does God require of you? He has made it clear. You can try and fog it up if you want to. You could pretend to be confused. But that just won’t hold up. He has made it clear. “Do justice and love kindness, and walk humbly before the Lord our God.”

Folks, an unmistakable part of our calling... a non-negotiable part of whom God has made us to be as His church... is our calling to justice, mercy, and compassion.

- God is asking us to take Him seriously... to take His passions seriously.

- He is inviting us to embrace what is on His heart... to hear like the prophets, the cries of the world around us.

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- And to see, like the prophets, the horrific fruit of injustice that exists from our neighborhoods to the nations.

As individuals and even as a church, we won’t be able to fix all the problems around us... But we can start!

- You see, what God expects to characterize His people, are hearts of love & compassion.

- For Him, they are the ultimate expression of a transformed life.

That of all the values embraced within the Kingdom of God-- love, mercy, and compassion are the most important…

- Because, in every respect, they authenticate our faith and identify us as His people….

- They demonstrate & validate that life we receive solely by His grace as we believe in Jesus.

But this requires intentionality. It requires that we “pay attention” to the world around us. Who around me is hungry?

- Who is unable to help themselves? Who can’t read & write? Who has never heard about Jesus?

- Who is sick ? Who is being denied medical care? Who is weak? Who is feeling the sting of prejudice and hopelessness?

You see, we can choose to pay attention… or not. We can choose to respond… or not.

- We can extend our hand. We can notice. We can see. We can feel. We can hear. We can pray. We can care. We can serve.

- We can extend ourselves OR… We can avoid. We can withdraw. We can reject. We can look the other way. It’s up to us.

Guys… let’s be a church that isn’t tone deaf to the poor... to the weak... to the widows... and to the abandoned.

- Let’s be a church that embraces the Dream of God... to be that community of hope in a despairing world.

- There’s a great calling on our lives. We’re not here by just circumstance.

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In John 1:6 we read that “There was a man sent by God and his name is John.” We read past this verse... but think about what it is saying.

- When you go to work in the morning, do you think “I am a person sent by God to reflect & show His kindness and mercy and love.”

- “There was a man sent by God and his name is John.” o “There is a woman sent into the corporate world... and her

name is…” o “There is a man sent to minister to that sick neighbor... his

name is...” o “There is a woman helping the disabled find jobs... her

name is…”

DO NOT MINIMIZE your assignment. YOUR life has a purpose. We, as a church, have a purpose… a community, sent by God, whose name is Vineyard…

- Designed to first & foremost, be His people and to live life in HUMILITY in His presence and His blessing…

- And to then Be a blessing to the world around us as we “Do Justice” and “Show Kindness” to a world in desperate need of the kind of hope only Jesus can bring.

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