Good morning, my name is Deanne Gordon. Today's reading comes from Isaiah chapter 42, and it's found on page 717 in the bibles underneath the seats in front of you. Isaiah chapter 42 verses 1 through 9. Here is my servant whom I uphold my chosen one and 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 read he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law the islands will put their hope. This is what the God the Lord says. He who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth, and all that comes out of it, who gives breath to its people and life to those who walk on it. I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. See the former things have taken place, and new things I declare before they spring into being, I announce them to you. The word of the Lord. Thank you, Dean. We are in these days looking at the character of God. For the last several weeks, we have been looking at his attributes. Simply another word of, for speaking of his character traits or its qualities. And today we continue that series. We are looking to add a series that I have called Behold His Glory. We are answering the questions, who is God, and what differences it make. It should make a lot of difference to us. The more we find out who God is and what He is like. For the past several weeks, what we have learned is that He is glorious, that He is holy, and that He is gracious. And today we are going to take it one step further and talk about God's justice. And it is very likely, in my opinion, that this attribute of God is perhaps the least understood of all of the ones that we are looking at in this series. So let me dwell on it with some care. And I hope that you will take away something from this study that will not only enrich your understanding of God, but will also change your life. I have certainly been praying that it will change mine as well. We are going to talk today about the fact that God is just. Now, what does that mean that God is just? Well, I will bring you two things. The first is we are going to do it very quickly and spend most of our time on the second thing. But the first thing I want to show you is that being just means that God is a judge who must punish sin. And the second thing that we are going to look at and spend most of our time with is that God, based on Isaiah 42, is a servant king who lives up the poor and the helpless. That's what justice means. So let's begin with that first point. That being just means that God is a judge who must punish sin. I want to brief on this one because I think we covered it a couple of weeks ago when I talked about the fact that God is holy. But I do want to show you from Psalm 9 some verses. And if you don't want to turn to that, you can look right up here on the screen. Now, I want to teach you a couple of Hebrew words that we are going to see crop up again and again and again and again this morning. So reading from Psalm 9 says this, I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart. I will tell of all your wonders. You have sat on your throne judging. Now, there's the first word. It's the Hebrew word, Shafat. It's a verb, and I'll tell you what it means in a little while. But you have sat on your throne judging righteously. The Lord reigns forever. He has established his throne for judgment. And that's the Hebrew word, Mishpat. So Shafat, Mishpat, they are related to each other. One is a verb and one is a noun. Hold on to that and we'll come back to it. He will judge Shafat, the world in righteousness. He will govern the peoples with Mishpat, justice. Arise, O Lord, let not man triumph. Let the nations be Shafat judged in your presence. Strike them with terror, O Lord. Let the nations know that they are but men. Now, the reason I underlined all those is to show you the frequency that you run into these two words. Shafat, Mishpat, what do they mean? They basically mean doing what is right. Correcting that which is wrong is one of the main meanings of the word justice or judging. And one of the ways that God makes things right, one of the ways that he corrects things that are wrong, is by punishing evil doers, by punishing those who reject God and disobey Him and reject Jesus Christ as their master and their Lord. Now notice in this Psalm that we're supposed to praise God for that. Now, when's the last time you praised God for his judgments, for being a God of wrath, in other words, but this Psalm says that it is praiseworthy for God to be that way. I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart, because you will judge the world in righteousness. Sometimes you'll hear people say, I don't really like the God of the Old Testament, because that's the God of wrath. I really prefer the God of the New Testament. He's the God of love. Well, you need to read your Bible more carefully than that if that's the way you feel, because the New Testament says that God is going to call every human being to account for his or her life. Matthew 25 is this very famous story where Jesus says that one day he's going to sit on a throne all of the entire human race before him and separate individuals into two groups, sheep and goats. Those who knew him and loved him and followed after him, those who rejected him, the sheep and the goats. First Peter 4 says that they're going to have to give an account to him who is the judge of the living and of the dead. Now, I want you to know that Jesus will be fair and impartial in his judgments. Absolutely. He does not show favoritism. He doesn't lean toward the Anglo-World or toward Europeans or toward Presbyterians. No God is impartial. And the Bible says very, very clearly that there is a place called hell, where those who reject Jesus Christ will spend their eternity. That's part of his justice. It says in 2 Thessalonians, chapter 1, he will punish those who don't know God and don't obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord. These are words that you've got to weigh in your heart and believe because they're in the Bible. God is a judge who must and does punish sin. What we're talking about here in this particular case is God's retributive justice, retributive, or another word for that would be his punitive justice. And it's one side of the coin that we're calling justice. But that's only one side of justice. That's only the first thing we want to learn from the Bible about God being just. I used to think that that's all justice is. I used to think that it's only that God punishes the wicked. That he unleashes his wrath upon those who reject him. But if you trace the word justice through the Bible, you're going to find out that there's much more to it than just that. Justice means not only punishing evildoers but giving people their rights. Justice means protecting the vulnerable from being exploited and oppressed. Justice means healing the sick and loving the poor and feeding the hungry and dealing fairly in the marketplace. And standing up for those who are exploited, it means being kind and compassionate and merciful. And that's just as much a part of justice as was the retributive kind that we were looking at earlier. It says in Isaiah chapter 1, it says, stop doing wrong, learn to do right, seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. You see that's a whole different side of this coin of justice, isn't it? And this is not his retributive justice. This we're going to call his restorative justice. God restores that which is broken. He makes things right and he corrects that which is wrong by fixing that which is broken and damaged. Namely the hurting, the oppressed, the helpless, the hungry, the poor, and so on. It says in Psalm 146, look at this Psalm, I've got some excerpts from it here. God executes justice, Mishpat, for the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free, the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. He lifts up those who are bowed down, he loves the righteous, he watches over the sojourners. I know the word for that would be immigrant or alien. He upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. Oh, now that is his retributive justice at the very end, but the rest of that Psalm is talking about his restorative justice. The way God loves the helpless and helps the weak and lifts up the vulnerable. And then one more is from the prophet Zachariah. Look at this passage. Administer true Mishpat. There it is again. Show mercy and compassion to one another. Don't oppress the father, the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. Tim Keller says that in the, someone some author said that that's the quartet of the vulnerable. The widow, the fatherless, the alien, the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other. Now see what I'm showing you there from the Bible is that God's justice is not only retributive, it's not only punitive, but it's also restorative. I shudder to think or won't say negative or positive because they're both biblical, they're both good. We praise God for both. But one is punitive toward those who disobey and the other is uplifting or positive or restorative to those who need God's mercy. And that restorative justice is what we see dealt with here in Isaiah 42. So now let's dive into the text now that I've kind of given you that really long introduction. In Isaiah 42 you're going to find out that God is not only a judge who must punish sin, but he's also a servant king who lifts up or restores the poor and the marginalized. Look at verse one, it says, here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one and whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice, Mishpat, to the nations. Now this is the voice of God the Father speaking about Jesus or God the Son. Jesus is the servant king who restores that which is broken by caring for the weak and for the helpless. And we know that this is talking about Jesus because of Matthew chapter 12. Matthew chapter 12, you can just jot that down in your margin if you want to. In Matthew chapter 12 you find the story of Jesus healing a man with a shriveled hand. You might have seen people like that with that particular problem. He runs into this guy who has a shriveled hand. And around Jesus there are a bunch of Pharisees, self-righteous Pharisees. And they're hoping Jesus heals this guy because it's the Sabbath day. And if Jesus heals on the Sabbath they figure that's one more proof that Jesus was a charlatan and a fake. Well Jesus takes up on their dare and he heals this man with a shriveled hand on the Sabbath day. And then a few verses later Matthew quotes Isaiah 42. And he says this was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. Here is my servant to whom I've chosen. The one I love in whom I delight, I'll put my spirit on him. He will proclaim justice to the nations, a bruise, read, he won't break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. So this passage Isaiah 42 is talking about Jesus, the Son of God, the chosen one who comes in as the servant king to the world. Now let me show you four things. Four things that Isaiah the prophet teaches us about Jesus, the servant king. First he's humble. He's humble. You see that in verse two. It says he will not shout or cry out or raise his voice in the streets. That's a piece of Jesus' humility. Have you been watching the speeches lately? Have you been following politics? You know the rancor that often comes out, the loudness, sometimes the negativity, the shouting, the arguing back and forth. It can get somewhat discouraging at times. What a contrast is Jesus to that. Here's the servant, here's the creator of the world, the king of the ages. And yet what strikes me about Jesus as he's portrayed in the gospels is how calm and modest and restrained and meek he is. Now don't mistake that for weakness. Jesus is a strong savior. But he is meek, he is mild, he is humble. The second thing Isaiah tells us is that the servant king is merciful. He's merciful because in verse three it says, a bruised read he will not break and a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out. Now let's park on that verse for a few minutes. A bruised read, what in the world is that? A bruised read is like a person who struggles with, let's say, an addiction. Somebody who comes from a broken home would be a bruised read. Somebody who has made mistakes and is suffering the consequences of them. Somebody who just doesn't have it all together. You know any bruised reads? I'm one. I think many of you, most of you, maybe all of you are bruised reads. The word bruised means crushed. Broken, smashed up, beaten up by life. That's what a bruised read is. I was in Panera the other day. The one over here on University Boulevard. This is where most of what I say on Sunday morning actually is birthed. So you can thank God for Panera over there. I love that place. But there's a woman that frequents that Panera a lot. And I'm not going to describe her. That would be somewhat embarrassing for her. But she's a woman who is an obvious bruised read. And what I find in myself is an aversion to that. I don't want to engage her. I want to walk around her. I want to pretend I don't see her. Isn't that evil? Do you know any bruised reads like that? Those are the people God's attracted to. Those are the people Jesus was attracted to when he was here on the earth. The poor, the leper, the sick, the diseased, all bruised reads. Someone less merciful than Jesus would come up to that woman over there or some other bruised read and just say, what a broken read. Let's snap it off. Get out. Get. What? You're in the way. I don't need you. But not Jesus. He doesn't break a bruised read. It's mercy. It's mercy. And then Isaiah goes on to say a smoldering wick. He won't snuff out. What's a smoldering wick? A smoldering wick is somebody who just, somebody I think who has a little shred of hope. Who's just sort of hanging on the life by thread. A smoldering wick is like somebody who's trying to make life work but just can't do it. You know somebody like that? He or she is always a day late and a dollar short. I think of the kid, for example, who colors outside the lines. That's a smoldering wick. I think of a student. If you're a teacher, a student in your class who just can't get math. No matter how hard she tries. I think of that person with no social skills. Somebody who doesn't smell quite right. That's a smoldering wick. Somebody who says all the wrong things at all the wrong times. And you just can't believe they do. That's a smoldering wick. Somebody with less mercy than Jesus would just come up to a smoldering wick and blow it out. What? Come on, get your act together. Why don't you figure out life? What do you keep doing that? Not Jesus. When he sees a little shred of hope, he fans it into flame. He's so patient, isn't he? He's so long suffering. When we're ready to give up on somebody, Jesus is just getting started. If you've got some smoldering wicks and some bruised reads in your circle of influence, watch your attitude toward that person. Because it will reveal much about where you are, where your heart is. How much or how little mercy you have, Jesus is merciful. Because Jesus says, I love those people. Those are the ones that I came for. Not the powerful, not the strong, not the ones who act like they've got it all together, but who, the outsiders, the strugglingers, the rejects, the powerless, the bruised and the smoldering. Well, the third thing we find out from Isaiah is that Jesus, the servant king, is faithful. He's faithful, not only humble and merciful, but faithful. It says in verse three, in faithfulness he will bring forth mishpot. There it is again. He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. In his law, the islands will put their hope. The point here is that Jesus, our servant king, he's going to succeed in his plan to make all things new. He will not be foiled, he won't be frustrated. He's faithful. And the fourth and final thing that we see here is that Jesus is mish and all. He's mish and all. Verse 6 and 7 say that the Father says to Jesus, I will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness. That is Jesus' mission. He said as much when he said in the synagogue in Nazareth, that's why I've come. He reads from Isaiah 61, which is very similar to this, and he says, that's why I'm here. To help the poor, to reach out to the vulnerable, to lift up those who are bowed down, to defend the defenseless and administer to the needy. Jesus Christ, you see, our servant king is four things, humble and merciful and faithful and mish and all. As he brings justice to the nations. Now, if you've been with me so far, you've learned two things. You've learned that justice being, God being just means two things. Means that he's a judge, he must punish sin, and then we spent most of our time looking at the fact that he's our servant king who came to lift up to restore the hurting. So what? Is that just a great lesson in theology? Now, you can all go and say, I know God better now, or will it change your life? Because there's a deep and an important implication of the fact that God is just, and it is this, that we, his people, we, his followers, we, his church need to be humble and merciful and faithful and mish and all, as we join with Jesus in his work of making things right in the world. Friends, that's one reason God left you here on the earth to partner with him as his body to join him as he works to make all things new in the world. We are to be a part of doing justice. It says that in Micah 6, 8, very well known verse. He has showed you, O man and O woman and O child, what is good, and what does he require of you but to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God. So we're charged by God to do justice in the world. And the kind of justice he's talking about there is the restorative kind. We're part of God's plan to restore things and fix that which is broken. Jesus cares for the poor. He cares for the marginalized through us, his church. You know, it's surprising to us that there was a time not long ago when we evangelicals thought this kind of talk didn't belong in Bible-believing churches. You understand what I'm saying? This kind of talk about helping the poor and feeding the hungry and being there for the needy was something that liberal churches do. We're not current conservative Bible believers like us. Or this is something the government's supposed to do, not the church, but that's changing, praise the Lord. And more and more, we're learning that this is part of our task as missional Christians here in the world. We are now gaining this new awareness that Jesus calls us, not only to spread the gospel by word as important and vital as that is and as imperative as that is, but to do it also by deeds of love and mercy. In fact, what we seem to be learning more and more in the church today hours as well is the fact that if we don't do that, our words are not going to make a whole lot of difference. If we don't demonstrate by deeds of love and mercy our love and care for our community, they will not respond as we hope they will to our words. Love is the greatest apologetic. Leslie Newbigin said this, look at this fantastic quotation. Leslie Newbigin wrote this one time, I think. Yes, the church cannot accept as its role, simply the winning of individuals to a kind of Christian discipleship that concerns only the private and domestic aspects of life. Instead, it will be a community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighborhood. That is what God is teaching us here at UPC that we belong out there, that church happens out there, where we live, where we go to school, where we work, where we shop, we carry the gospel with us and we love those that God has put us around. This is what Jesus meant when He called us to be salt and light in the world. It is what the Old Testament prophets meant when they called us to be people of justice. It's what the book of James means when it calls us in the words in chapter 2 to say faith by itself, if not a company by action, is what? Dead. Faith without words is dead and it's what the early Christians did. If you read through the book of Acts and the letters of Paul, you see the early church not only doing evangelism and building churches but also healing people and sharing their resources and taking care of widows and things of that nature. In other words, demonstrating their faith by a life of justice and mercy. I love what the emperor Julian, he was called the apostate in the 4th century, said about Christians, listen this, he said in the 4th century nothing has contributed. Now Julian was not a Christian, so keep that in mind. He says nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of the Christians. See he would say that you and I believe in superstitions. Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of the Christians as much as their charity to strangers. The impious Galileans, that's you and me, the impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor but for hours as well. See Julian is taking notice of the fact that the Christian people of his day were not only professing faith in Jesus, not only reading the Bible and praying and doing the things that Christians do but they were also loving their community and loving their neighbor. Friend, you cannot love God, you cannot love God and be indifferent to the struggles and needs and problems of the bruised reads and the smoldering wicks of our world. You cannot love God and profess to be his follower if you are blinders on to the needs around you and doing nothing to alleviate the suffering of the poor. And look I'm not just talking about giving handouts here. What the Bible is calling us to, what justice is calling us to is creating some long term solutions to the problems that we're aware of around us. Justice means, for example, creating some nonprofits, it means cooperating with some existing organizations to correct some of the moral evils that are around us in our day like abortion and sex abuse and alcoholism and hunger and crime and all those other things. Here at UPC, we have a vision and it's what we believe is God's vision for the world. Our vision is of a world made new by the gospel of grace beginning here in East Orlando. We dream, we envision, we hope and pray for things that are broken to be fixed for that which is wrong to be made right and for restorative justice to take place in our neighborhoods and in our communities and one of the ways that we are now making this happen by God's grace is through our quarterly Saturdays of service. Now let me take a moment to make sure you know about this, it's coming up this Saturday at the end of this week we're doing another Saturday service February 4th and look I just want you to do it. As your pastor I believe it's important for us to band together, we'll have a great time if nothing else. But it's this Saturday morning we meet here in this room at 830 and as your green insert in your worship guide will tell you we're going out to four different places next Saturday morning as a church. We're going to the community food and outreach center, we're going to Christian help which is an organization in Castleberry that helps people find jobs. We're going down here down the street to university high school and just help them clean up the grounds and the other place we're going to is Bithlow. Bithlow is at community on 50 you go past when you're going to the beach. Bithlow is a place where there is horrible illiteracy. There is horrible drinking water, there are toxic chemicals leaking into the soil and affecting people's health and mental capacity. Let me show you some pictures of what the average or the typical homeowner in Bithlow lives in. This is a home that some of our people have been to, there's a roof, there's a ceiling. This is what the people of Bithlow deal with every day. How would you like to live in this kind of trailer? Here's an example of some of the water that just sits around Bithlow all the time. There's a home, an interior of a home and here's a kid who's happy that some people care for him but I just want you to notice his teeth. This is very, very typical of the residents of Bithlow because of the drinking water, because of the food problems that they have and things like that. Here's a kid who's asking for UPC to come and help and we're going to do that this Saturday. Some of you are going to go to Bithlow and work. I don't know which project I'm assigned to but I'm going to one of the four. And last time I think we had 100 to 125 or so people here, do you think we can do 200 this time or is that ridiculously low? How many of you think that's a ridiculously low number? No? Okay, thanks for realistic. Some of you do. It might be. Let's beat 200, at least. Alright, make me look to be a fool for saying 200. I ask you to be here Saturday morning, A30, unless you're sick and don't go getting sick this Friday, unless you're providentially hindered and unless you're working. This is the new normal here at UPC, okay? This is what we do. And if you cannot all be here, I hope you will be to serve our community. Why? Let's end the note on the question, why? Why do this? Why do justice? Why care about these smoldering wicks? Why care about these bruised reads and the poor and the helpless? Is it just because Jesus said to do it? Is it just because when we do it we feel less guilty? Is it just because we want to be nice? So everybody will think we're nice people? No, that's not why we do justice. We do it because God has given us restorative justice and we take it and give it away to other people. It's because you were blind and God gave you sight. It's because you were deaf and Jesus gave you ears to hear the gospel. It was because you were poor and Jesus gave you an inheritance laid up for you in heaven. It's because you were and still are a bruised reed whom he doesn't break. You were and are a smoldering wick and you've received the grace and the love of your heavenly father. That's why. See, on the cross, here's the whole secret. On the cross, God gave his son Jesus retributive justice because he had become our sin and and God gave his full wrath upon his son on the cross. It's because God gave his son retributive justice that you and I could receive restorative justice and we give it away to others around us. It's because Jesus was bruised that we bruised reads have hope today. He was bruised on the cross and it's now called us to go out and help those who are bruised. How can you? How can you not spread the grace and the justice of God when you have been such a gracious and helpless recipient of his restorative justice? Let's pray. Father, you have reminded us today of our calling to be the body of Christ not only to one another but to people out in the world. Thank you for giving Jesus retributive justice on the cross so that we could receive this restorative justice that we're talking about today. Thank you for making all things new through the gospel. Thank you for loving us bruised reads and smoldering wicks. Thank you for being crushed by our sins so we could be healed. So, Father, would you help us please to resist the tendency to care only about ourselves and to settle into our places of comfort? Guide us please Lord as a church to image Jesus to a world that's filled with injustices. Please show everybody here this morning where we fit into your plan of making things right. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.