"God is... Just"

“God Is…Just”

Robert M. Thompson, Pastor

Corinth Reformed Church
150 Sixteenth Avenue NW
Hickory, North Carolina 28601

828.328.6196   corinthtoday.org

 (© 2011 by Robert M. Thompson.  Unless otherwise indicated, Scriptures quoted are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, Copyright 2011 by New York International Bible Society.)

Justice and mercy met at the cross.

Psalm 94

July 10, 2011

Cry for justice

I’m never quite sure whether to bring the news into a sermon.  If a story has been dominating your attention and mine all week, should we try to get a biblical angle on it?  Or should worship give a respite from topics worn out at the water cooler?

Sometimes the connection is almost unavoidable.  In our summer sermons collectively titled, “Pursuing God,” we had already planned today to speak on the justice of God.  Justice was very much in the news this week.

About two weeks ago, I asked my wife Linda, “What do you know about this Casey Anthony trial?”  She didn’t know much more than I did.  Soon we were caught up in a national crescendo of interest that peaked on Tuesday with a unanimous jury verdict of “Not Guilty.”  We were in Tampa the final week of the trial, which was kind of like being in Charlotte when the Zahra Baker case is tried.  It may have been easy for me to avoid this story in North Carolina until the last couple of weeks, but not for Floridians.

Two-thirds of Americans polled said they believe Casey Anthony “probably or definitely” killed her daughter.  So the expected release of Casey next week raises for most of us the question, “Where is the justice for Caylee?”

Here’s another good question:  “Why do we care?”  We do care, and we should.  But why?  All of this played out in hundreds of miles away, and none of us, as far as I know, has any direct connection to this family.  So why do we care?

We care because we want to know we live in a just society.  We want to trust that our system acquits the innocent and punishes the guilty.  We are linked to the Anthony family, to the state of Florida.  What happened there can happen anywhere.

But there’s more.  We want to know that we live in a just world.  We want to know, on a cosmic level, that right wins and wrong loses.  We want to know that Someone is in charge.  We want to know that God is just.

Show yourself

This is the same yearning expressed in Psalm 94.  We don’t know this psalmist’s name and can only guess at his circumstances.  He seems bitter; unworthy of inclusion in the same Scripture as Psalm 23. Perhaps it will help if we  insert our own complaints as we read his honest cries.

Verse 1 – “O LORD, the God who avenges, O God, who avenges, shine forth.”  The Hebrew original is shorter and perhaps more powerful.  “Revengeful God, Yahweh, revengeful God, shine!”  If revenge doesn’t seem worthy of God, hold your criticism and feel with the psalmist.  What would you pray the day after Allied forces had liberated Nazi concentration camps, unearthing mass tombs?  “God who avenges, show yourself!”

Verses 2-3 – “Rise up, O Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve.  How long will the wicked, O LORD, how long will the wicked be jubilant?”  Remember the dancing crowds on Arab streets the day after 9-11?  Keep that scene in mind as you read these words.

Verse 5 – “They slay the widow and the alien; they murder the fatherless.”  Think not only of Caylee Anthony or Zahra Baker, but let your mind ponder a defenseless rape victim in Rwanda or an orphan whose lost her parents to genocide in the Sudan.  Ponder the unarmed victims of government crackdowns in Libya, Syria, or Yemen. 

These perpetrators of violence are practical atheists, even if they profess faith in God.  Verse 6 – “They say, ‘The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed.”  Worse, they may even believe God sanctions and directs their violence.

In a series of rhetorical questions, the Psalmist reasserts his faith in verses 9-10 – “Does he who implanted the ear not hear?  Does he who formed the eye not see?  Does he who disciplines nations not punish?  Does he who teaches man lack knowledge?”  He is, of course, assuming that his readers at least acknowledge there is a God.  He cant’ imagine otherwise. Intentional atheism is what Derek Kidner calls “the crowning absurdity, reserved for modern man” (Psalms 73-150, 341). 

God not only exists, and he not only hears what we say and knows what we do, verse 11 says “The LORD knows the thoughts of man” (emphasis added), “that they are futile.”  Again, if this seems harsh to you, consider the adulterer you know who schemes to betray vows, or the callous abuser of alcohol who knows they will be behind the wheel of a car risking their own lives and those of others.  Does God not know what they do or how they think?  Of course he does!  He is God.

This assurance gives the Psalmist perspective as he continues –

In verses 12-13, he reflects on his own trials in life, and chooses to interpret them as lessons to be learned, as opportunities to learn patience.

In verses 14-15, he expresses his confidence that justice will have the last word.

In verse 16, he sounds like he’s trying to rally human help for taking justice into his own hands:  “Who will rise for me against the wicked?  Who will take a stand for me against evildoers?”

But the answer in verses 17-19 is not human at all.  For his “help” (17) he looks to God’s “love” (18).  He says in verse 19, “When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.”

When political and social justice are in short supply (20-21), the only response of faith is in verses 22-23, “But the LORD has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge.  He will repay them for their sins and destroy them for their wickedness; the LORD our God will destroy them.”

History teaches us that even in this world those who oppress and tyrannize and deny justice eventually meet their demise.  Hitler’s regime crumbled.  Apartheid was dismantled.  Osama bin Laden is dead. 

Casey Anthony is likely to find that the rest of her life is far from vindication and peace.  Life for her might prove worse than death. One of the strangest reactions in my view to Casey’s acquittal was the threat of retaliation against her – as if murdering her would somehow make the world better, safer, more just.

Justice is hard to wait for.  And sometimes we are called to advocate bravely for equal treatment, as did William Wilberforce, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, and a host of others.  There remain in our world victims of discrimination who desperately need our notice and help.  But what N. T. Wright said of racial prejudice is true of any injustice:  “Getting rid of it is like squashing the air out of a balloon.  You deal with one corner only to find it popping up somewhere else.”  (Simply Christian, 7)

Ultimately our hope for justice is to look up.  What we hold on to is not that the circumstances and systems of this world turn out well, but that God is just.

Echo of a voice

In his book summarizing our faith, Simply Christian, N. T. Wright opens with a chapter on justice.  He says, “A sense of justice comes with the kit of being human” (4).  Even children on a playground will soon be heard saying, “That’s not fair!”

This longing for justice in the world is for Wright evidence for God.  It is one of the “echoes of a voice” within us – the others being a thirst for spirituality, a longing for community, and a love of beauty.  If there are echoes, there is a voice.  If there is a voice, there is Someone speaking. 

Our very frustration, then, with the injustice of the world, far from being evidence that there is no God, points to his reality.  Why?  Because if there is no God, there is no such thing as anything being just or fair.  Things just are what they are in a random universe. 

The cry for justice is a cry for God.  Justice is, as 20^th century theologian Emil Brunner put it, “constancy.”  When we ask for justice, we are asking for everyone to be treated equally.  Poor or rich, black or white, male or female, young or old, we have this inborn desire for equality.  We may differ on what that looks like, but we want “liberty and justice for all.”  That means we want good rewarded and evil punished.  Brunner insists that retribution is a necessary part of justice.  God can’t give laws and then look the other way when they are flaunted.  Payback for evil deeds is only just.

It is at this point that our longing for justice turns from fostering hope to creating fear.  What if God truly does judge all sinners consistently?  What if, when measured against the standard of his holiness, every sinful act, word, and thought is cause for judgment?  What if the line between good and evil isn’t drawn between me and the bad guys, but actually runs through the middle of my soul?  What if the good that I do can be attributed to advantages that I’ve been given, and I realize as I ponder a Casey Anthony or a 9-11 terrorist or a Nazi prison guard, “There but for the grace of God go I?” What if I am one of those whose motives and actions deserve justice?

It is this awareness of my own sinfulness that gives me pause when I read Psalm 94.  If I pray this prayer for the “revengeful God” to  judge evildoers, am I not sealing my own fate?

Resolved on a cross

Christians have wrestled through the years whether psalms like Psalm 94 are worthy of the Bible.  Is this cry for the “revengeful God” to wake up, show up, and act out his wrath a prayer that belongs in the Bible?  Is this a prayer model we should follow when we are angry about injustice done toward us or others?

Yes and no.  Yes, in the sense that honesty before God is always appropriate.  If you’re mad about Casey Anthony or genocide in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, tell God.  He’s OK with that.  It is through that act of candid prayer that you, like this Psalmist, might find “consolation” and “joy” (19).

But there is a sense in which this prayer, and other Psalms of vengeance, are no longer appropriate as expressions of biblical faith because they look forward to a resolution of justice and mercy that for you and me, is no longer future tense.

Derek Kidner says, “It is not open to us to renounce or ignore the psalmists….But equally it is not open to us simply to occupy the ground on which they stood.  Between our day and theirs, our calling and theirs, stands the cross.  We are ministers of reconciliation, and this is a day of good tidings” (Psalms 1-73, 32).

God’s justice gave the Law, and his justice cannot ignore that those who break his law deserve, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “eternal punishment of both body and soul” (Question 11).

What the catechism is doing in that statement is setting us up for what only Christ could do, and what Christ did, when he accepted the full consequence of our sins through the shedding of his blood. 

A. W. Tozer wrote, “There is nothing in (God’s) justice which forbids the exercise of His mercy” (Knowledge of the Holy, 94).  The tension between justice and mercy was resolved forever when Jesus died.  Justice and mercy met on the cross when the vertical beam of God’s wrath toward sin met the horizontal beam of his embrace.

John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins…” (1 John 1:9, emphasis added).  God is just to demand full compliance with his law or else eternal punishment, and God is merciful to accept that consequence on himself.

So the longing for justice is resolved fully and only at the cross, where you and I find mercy.  Next week we turn from God’s justice to his mercy.  Amen.