Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Now when Jesus was come into the province after three days, he ascended from Caesarea to Jerusalem. Then the high priest and the chief of the Jews informed him against Paul and besought him and desired favor against him that he would send for him to Jerusalem laying wait in the way to kill him. But Festus answered that Paul should be kept at Caesarea that he himself would depart shortly thither.

Let them therefore, said he, which among you are able, go down with me and accuse this man, if there be any wickedness in him. And when he had arrived among them more than ten days, when he had tarried rather among them more than ten days, he went down unto Caesarea. And the next day, sitting on the judgment seat, commanded Paul to be brought. And when he was come, the Jews which came down from Jerusalem stood round about him and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove.

Well, he answered for himself, “Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar have I offended anything at all.” But Festus, willing to do the Jews a pleasure, answered Paul and said, “Wilt thou go up to Jerusalem, and there be judged of these things before me?” Then said Paul, I stand at Caesar’s judgment seat, where I ought to be judged. To the Jews have I done no wrong, as thou very well knowest.

For if I be an offense, or have committed anything unworthy or worthy rather of death, I refuse not to die. But if there be none of these things whereof these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Caesar. Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? Unto Caesar shalt thou go.

Let us pray. Almighty God, we stand before you as your army. An army that did not volunteer. An army that was drafted. And yet an army once enlisted into your service through your election, through your calling, through your grace to us miserable sinners. Rejoice in our standing in Jesus Christ our savior and consider ourselves your servants. Bless us, Lord God. Prepare our hands for warfare. Prepare our minds for the intellectual warfare that goes on in this world. Prepare our hearts, our ethical conduct that we may be successful in the moral warfare that goes on as well.

Lord God, we stand before you as your servants. Instruct us from your word. May your Holy Spirit be in the context of us. Give your servant guidance and direction in the proclamation of this word. Keep me from error, Lord God. And Father, we pray that your congregation gathered might be taught by your spirit from your scriptures things of you that we might serve you, that we might glorify you in all things that we do and that we might enjoy you all the days of our lives.

To that end, we also ask for your blessing upon the Sabbath school teachers who will instruct the children of this army that they might also grow up to be servants of yours. In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

What does it mean to you as you think about justice, that word, the implications it has for your life? What’s your emotional response to that term? What the definition of justice as far as you’re concerned. What’s the applicability of justice to your life? What does justice have to do with the life that God has given you to live out on this earth?

Justice is a topic of much conversation in the context of this last nine months during the O.J. Simpson trial and some other rather infamous trials we’ve had in the last few years in this country as well. Is justice being served? That’s the constant question. It’s a question that cannot be answered by our culture because justice is a term that has no definition.

Justice is the conformity to a standard. And when that standard is not known, then justice cannot be known either. Justice is not what seems right to us, what our mind thinks about something, how our emotions react, whether we like an act or not, an act or should be punished, shouldn’t be punished—all that means nothing apart from a standard. And when the standard is not fixed, you have injustice by definition.

When you have no law, you have no justice. And so this culture cries out for justice, justice, justice. But it cannot meet that need. It is a frustrated culture. And it’s frustrated because it does not want justice. It may desire what it considers to be justice for other people usually, but it certainly has rejected the justice of God because it’s rejected his law. God forbid that be our state and the Christian church here at Reformation Covenant Church.

Unfortunately, it’s far too often the state of many churches. I want to take this Lord’s Day to talk about justice. It’s at the center really of this narrative that we have—this deliverance narrative, we’ve called it—the Apostle Paul and yet another appearance before a Roman and Jewish set of accusers in a Roman court. Yet another deliverance by God through different secondary means that he’s used in other deliverances recorded in these few chapters of the book of Acts having to do with Paul’s ministry at Jerusalem and Rome. I think justice is at the center of this text.

I wanted to mention that you know we practice our proper response to God’s word on a regular basis in our worship service. We recite these psalms responsively and they mean things. You know it would be really useful to you. I noticed that as I recite responsively the psalm, sometimes it’s a little tough to figure out what’s going on because you’re anxious to do your part correctly, you know, and when you make a mistake every couple three months as most of us do, it makes you fearful that somebody might have heard you and so you’re kind of focusing on your part of the responsive reading and you tend not to catch what’s being said sometimes, and that’s not the purpose of the responsive reading.

The responsive reading is to help us to respond to God in his own words. So it would be good for you when I’ve properly given you notice—and sometimes I don’t—but when I do properly give you notice of the next week’s responsive reading, Elder Mayer is always faithful to give what I tell him is going to be next week’s responsive. It be good to read that so you understand what you’re reciting. But these things are over and over the basic truths of scripture, as Elder Mayer said, are profound and yet simple, and these things are repeated over and over.

I noticed as we were reading this particular responsive reading that God’s speaking of God’s deliverance and his prayer to God really fits in quite well with the narrative of Paul here and his deliverance. There are sinners who have tried to lay traps for Paul and he doesn’t want to fall into their nets. He says let the wicked fall into their own nets. Of course, I choose these responsive readings usually to try to correlate to the scripture reading or some aspect of what we’re dealing with in the book of Acts. But actually I think John U. chose this particular one, but let the wicked fall into their own nets whilst that I escape. And that’s what happens in this narrative—Paul escapes, we escape.

Then as we were singing the psalm, we sang, “Arise and save me Lord for thou hast smitten hard the jaws of them that hate me. Ye thou didst fiercely break for me thy servant’s sake the teeth of the ungodly.” Apostle Paul is delivered here. The enemies’ teeth are broken, so to speak. The teeth that want to devour Paul and kill him are stopped essentially because they can’t prove the charges.

And even Festus here is demonstrated to be a man of injustice. So Paul is delivered out of his hand by his appeal to Caesar. But significantly, I want us to understand that as we sang, “Thou didst fiercely break for me thy servant’s sake, the teeth of the ungodly,” Paul’s deliverance is not a deliverance so that Paul himself might be able to go about his personal liberty in isolation from his call by God. Paul has a mission.

You see, Paul was going to Rome to witness to the Lord Jesus Christ. That was his mission by God. God had told him he should do that. God had come to him in a personal visitation by the Lord Jesus Christ to assure his heart that he would be able to fulfill that mission. Paul’s deliverance wasn’t so that he could just get delivered. It was to the end that he would be God’s servant. And it was for him, God’s servant’s sake, that he was delivered from the hands of those that were against him.

Now, this is real important for us. If somehow all we think about God’s providence and delivering us is that we might just sort of have a good life then and not have troubles in our life, we miss the entire point. We’ve said this over and over, but it’s good to repeat it. What is the purpose of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. The chronology of that statement, the implication of it, is obvious and true.

It is our first responsibility not to have a pleasant life. It is our first responsibility to glorify God. And in glorifying God, then and only do we enjoy him all the days of our lives. We’re called to serve. Paul had a focus. Paul’s appeal, Paul’s great concern for justice, was connected to his mission that he was on from God. Each and every one of you have a Rome, so to speak. Each and every one of you have a mission from God that he expects you to accomplish.

He has called you for that purpose. You’re each his servant. And if you seek deliverance from difficulties and problems, it should be to the end that you should serve God in your mission. And you don’t want people that are going to try to distract you from your life’s purpose and calling that God has given to you—from your mission, long-term and short-term missions. You don’t want people to detract from that because you want to be the servant of the one who has saved you and called you lovingly in the Lord Jesus Christ and extended mercy, grace, and compassion to you.

What is your Rome? What’s your Rome?

For the children in the congregation right now, the Rome is primarily maturation. You got to grow up to be young men and women and your Rome, your mission, is that next stage of maturation. We have a daughter approaching graduation from high school and you know it’s kind of perplexing to her because she’s never done that before and she knows it means there’s a turn here. It’s a turn in the road. For your first you know ten, twelve years of schooling, it’s a fairly straight line. There’s maturation and then things happen. There are these graduation points and turns and twists. Emily graduated last year. Her life is pretty different this year—working a lot. Things are different.

So for young children their Rome right now is submission to their parents and the other authorities God has set in their place that they might mature in their faith, and their Rome, their mission, is to be good at moving toward maturation.

Mothers’ mission—much of it is raising their children in the context of the family in which they’re called to serve. Your Rome is doing a good job of providing, nurturing your family up physically, providing for them and helping them to mature. That’s your Rome.

Rome for men—their Rome is usually is more connected with a sense of vocation or calling in terms of employment in the economic sphere. They also have a Rome, of course—we just have one responsibility, but we—they also have—we all—men, heads of households, those who are married and have children—part of our role is to raise those children right, and that’s a limited task. Your kids are only going to be home you know fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years at the most, usually. So you have a goal in mind of launching them out of the home as warriors for the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s a Rome for you, and you want to be delivered by God from difficulties that oppress you so that you might reach your Rome.

Focus on that. And men, as I said, their vocation is a Rome to them—hopefully the rest of their life. They’re serving God and applying his word and his truths to their job place and exercising dominion and changing the face of the earth. Adam was to go down those rivers that went out of the Garden of Eden, making the rest of the world into a garden and extending the garden of God.

And men, whether you’re called to build houses, help in that, sell books, sell groceries, provide for paper across the different portions of the United States so that paper can be used in the exercise of dominion—you see, all your vocational tasks are related to the extension of the garden of God into this world. That’s your Rome. That’s—you should want God to make you effectual and dedicated in that task and to carry it out.

Now you have many Romes in your relationship as a churchman and as a citizen. And my Rome is a little different. My Rome is in terms directly of the church. When we were on vacation—an interesting concept, vacation—when we went up to Canada for a while, my wife and I tried to write out according to Greg Harris’s model mission or purpose statements for various six, seven, or eight different aspects of our life.

And I would recommend to you that you do the same thing. Now, you don’t have to do it. There’s nothing in the scriptures that say you got to write out a long-term mission statement and make goals based on that. But I think it is a good thing to do because it helps us to focus on our Rome. Paul knew what his mission was. And so Paul is dedicated to it. When he appealed to Caesar, it wasn’t so that he might have personal liberty to walk around having a good time. It was so that he’d be effectual in ministry and get into Rome. See?

And I want you to think as you think about justice that it is central to your calling, to your Rome. And you know, as I’d urge the men particularly—the men here—to think of your Rome and that aspect of your calling as a businessman, as a vocational calling, employment—what do you do for work? Think of what that is. Write a long-term purpose statement for why you’re doing it. Why has God put you on this? Most of us don’t choose our vocations. God, in his sovereignty, guides and directs us to them. Why? Why has God called you, you know, to be involved in the paper industry or groceries or farming or construction, whatever it is? Why has God called you there?

And of course, some of the women, single women particularly, have a sense of vocation too. And it’s good to think that through self-consciously. And as you write a purpose or mission statement for yourself as a Christian businessman, for instance, you know, avoid just sort of saying, “Well, I want to be a good testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don’t want to be dishonest. I just want to be honest.” Think in terms of not just the morality of your work, but think of the purpose.

Again, if you’re building houses, understand the value of housing in the kingdom of God. What a picture of God’s blessing a house is, you know, and what all these things. Food is nourishment. Your goal is to nourish people if you’re involved in the grocery business—to feed them the fruit from the acceptable trees, so to speak, in the garden. You see? Well, think about that. Establish your Rome. Commit yourself to it and understand the relationship.

And what we want to talk about today—and I’ve already taken a lot of time for that—but we want to talk about today is justice in the context of your Rome, the application of justice and the particular sphere that you’re called to minister in. Last week, what did I say? The basic overview of this narrative could be seen as: just ask, justice appeal, king. Apostle Paul sought justice. It was a central concern of him because he was trying to fulfill his mission. On the basis of that, he made an appeal. We’re going to talk about appeals next week. And he made it to a king, a ruler, a sovereign under the great King, Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul knew that—we sang in one of the songs earlier, the responsive reading, we talked—oh yeah, the entrance psalm: “I’ll put no confidence in princes. The Lord he shall my refuge be.” Yeah. God doesn’t want you appealing to Caesar as if Caesar is the end of the matter. But he also doesn’t want you not appealing to Caesar and taking and perverting that psalm we sing to think that somehow it’s not important to use the secondary means God has used to affect justice in the context of your life. It is a deformity of piety—true biblical piety—to say I’m not going to appeal to my parents when injustice happens to me or I’m not going to appeal to the church and I think there’s a need for changes done.

I’m not going to do it. I’m just going to pray and I’m not going to talk to Caesar. I’m not going to talk to the elders. I’m not going to talk to my wife. I’m not going to talk to my husband. I don’t believe that’s what the scriptures teach at all. Scriptures teach that there are many, many examples of proper appeals. And next week, that’s what I’m going to talk about. I’m going to stay in this text and talk about biblical appeals—an essential part of our life.

And so, piety that denies the secondary means—a false sense of true biblical piety. A false piety denies those means. I would also say that this idea that somehow all we’re trying to do is make it through this life till we get to heaven is also a perversion of biblical piety. True biblical piety is focused on the goal or mission God has for you to accomplish in this life. You see, this is not just a holding room.

I saw a thing the other day—kind of a takeoff on an ER (emergency room)—was waiting room, you know? And some people act like—oh, some Christians act like—instead of being involved in real life, care of people and extension of the truths of the scriptures, we’re just in a waiting room once you become a Christian till you get to heaven. Well, that’s not what you’re in. So Paul was focused. Paul sought justice and that justice drove him to make appeals to the secondary means God had provided for him.

And I want you to do—think today about your particular role. If you don’t do anything else this week as application, think about, men, your vocational calling as it relates to the word of God, and focus on what then your goal should be—to make that calling effectual in your life. Right? And part of that certainly is honesty in your workplace, but it should be much broader than that.

Okay, let’s talk about justice because I think at the center of this appeal of Paul, he has a great desire for justice. And this is evidenced at least two things in the context of this text.

First, it’s evidenced by his affirmation of the death penalty. Paul says here that if I have done anything worthy of death, I’m willing to die. You know, Paul affirmed the justice of the death penalty to the end that he desired for himself to be judged relative to his integrity. Now I know we’re all—not everything we do has some aspect most things we do have an aspect of sin to it, et cetera.

But nonetheless the scriptures say you can live in essential conformity to the Ten Commandments. Not total perfect conformity. The Lord Jesus Christ has given us his righteousness, his justice, his conformity to God’s word as our right relationship. But nonetheless, God says that you shouldn’t be doing things that his law says the death penalty should be enacted against you for. And Paul could say to Festus, I haven’t done it. I shouldn’t be executed, but if I would have done it, I should be killed.

Just as in Joshua—remember that nice appendix at the end of the book of Joshua when the tribes go back across the river, the two and a half tribes, and then they build an altar, an Ed, a witness—and the people in Israel think that they’ve done it, they’re going to worship at that altar instead of at Jerusalem. So they’ve apostasized from the faith, they think. So they send Phinehas, you know, the spear chucker, to go lead a group of men against those tribes and to kill them because they’ve broken God’s law.

But what do the people across the river say when they’re confronted with this altar they built? They say, “If we’ve done this thing, if we’ve apostasized from God, if we’re going to offer worship offerings not at Jerusalem, but at some other place where he hasn’t directed, we’re willing to die. That’s what they say. But that’s not what we’re doing.” They said, “We just did this as a reminder that we’re one with you and we need to go to Jerusalem.” Just the reverse of what you thought.

So Paul here also toward the end of the book of Acts gives us a picture that our mission in life as part of the body of Jesus Christ—the corporate body—should also involve a desire for justice. Even to the end, the extreme that if we do things that are unjust, we should desire punishment for them.

What did we read in that responsive reading? “Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with men that work iniquity. Let me not eat of their dainties. Let the righteous smite me. It shall be a kindness. And let him reprove me. It shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head. For yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities.” See, the psalmist said—Paul said—the man is a model of virtue.

At the end of the book of Joshua—say, “If we do things wrong, we want our brothers and sisters to come and chastise us and rebuke us and if necessary, kill us.” That’s what they say throughout the scriptures. Is that your sense of justice? Are you that committed to the standard of God’s word?

And you may say yes because you quickly scan your life and say, “Oh, there’s nothing going to be—there’s no death penalty waiting. So, yeah, I can say yes to that.” But what we have to admit here is that the test for us is when we do things wrong. And when our neighbor comes to us and when he chastises us and says, “Well, you know, I think you might have screwed up here”—do we hear that? I you know, in our flesh, we don’t—flesh—we sort of bridle against that.

I was at a sermon in another church on our trip to Canada, and the man was preaching on how “let not many of you be teachers, they’ll incur a greater wrath.” And that’s, you know, he was talking about the dangers of how in America everybody wants to instruct everybody else in what’s right. And that’s certainly a danger. You don’t want to go around as a know-it-all or as a moral know-it-all and tell everybody what they’re doing wrong. That’s wrong. You know, if you do that, it’s sin.

On the other hand, it seems to me that in most churches in America, we have just the opposite problem. Nobody wants to put these words—”if I’ve done things wrong, let the righteous smite me, and it shall be a kindness”—nobody wants to practice those words. And because nobody receives it, nobody wants to give it either because they don’t like to get broken relationships. So Paul’s concern for justice is demonstrated by his desire for the death penalty.

And by the way, we could spend some time here upon Paul’s affirmation of the death penalty not just for capital crimes. You have people say, “Well, the penal sanctions of God’s law in the Old Testament, yeah, the death penalty was practiced for a lot of stuff, but in the New Testament, the righteous—the justice of God now—only says you should be put to death for murder.”

But Paul here, the things he was accused of that he said, “If I’m guilty, I’m willing to be executed or not”—he wasn’t accused of killing somebody. He was accused of profaning the temple of God. Okay, which was a capital crime in the Old Testament. And he’s saying that in the New Testament, his concern for justice doesn’t say, “Well, you don’t understand, that’s not a capital crime.” He says it is a capital crime. You see, he reaffirms the death penalty for multiple offenses other than murder.

Paul was a theonomist if you look at it that way. He’s talking about civil sanctions. The problem with—for most people is not personal conforming to the Ten Commandments. That—well, it is for the dispensationalists, but for Reformed folks, that’s fine with the denominations. What they don’t like is the assertion that the law of God should be the standard for civil governors. But Paul is talking about civil government. He’s talking about civil governors, and he’s saying it is the right thing if you were to put me to death for having done these particular crimes. It’s right of you to do that.

So Paul affirms the death penalty, and by way of the implication for us, he says—of course—that he had a great concern for justice. Again, Psalm 7:3 and following: “The Lord my God, if I have done this, if there be iniquity in my hands, if I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me, yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy. Let the enemy persecute my soul and take it. Yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth. And lay mine honor in the dust.”

And that’s all that Paul is saying here. If I’ve done this thing, what they’ve accused me of here, of sinning against the body of God, the people of Israel, profaning the temple or rejecting civil government somehow—then let me be put to death, he said. And that’s just what Psalm 7:3 says. Paul affirms—I believe—the death penalty and theonomic approach to civil ethics. And this is in the context, though, of his desire and his conformity to justice as defined by God’s word.

So Paul’s great desire for justice is demonstrated, as evidenced by his affirmation of the death penalty. It’s also evidenced by his appeal. Again, he makes this appeal because this is the right thing to do. Deuteronomy 24:17 says, “Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger.” This is Paul. He’s a stranger in this Roman court. He’s a citizen, but nonetheless, he’s still in a weakened position before them. You shouldn’t do that.

In Exodus 22, he that—uh, 22:21—”Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for ye were all strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry out at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.”

Paul knew that law, and he knew that injustice was being done to him, and he knew he was supposed to cry out to God. The widow’s responsibility, the stranger’s responsibility, when they face injustice by the civil magistrate, by the people of God, is to cry out to God. So Paul’s crying out to God, and he does it through the secondary means of crying out to Caesar. Remember, the word appeal means to call on the name of Caesar for deliverance from his state.

You know, most of the women in this church are very familiar with Peter’s teachings on submission relative to their husbands. And you know that the whole point of that—one of the big truths of that section of scripture—is that you’re submitting to God in heaven. You, like Jesus, are trusting God to be just toward you. Even as you submit to your husband, as men submit to civil rulers, as the servant submits to his master. It’s not a submission ultimately to them. Paul isn’t calling on Caesar ultimately to deliver him. He’s calling on God to deliver him, but he makes use of secondary means.

And this is application to wives and their husbands. We’ll talk more about that next week in terms of—I think—what I think the scriptures teach in terms of making a proper appeal in the context of the family. But in any event, so Paul has a great desire for justice, and there’s a great failure of justice on the part of both Jew and Gentile.

Very significantly here, God has condemned both Jew and Gentile in these narratives because the Jews are certainly unjust. They’re trying to plot a conspiracy to murder him. And the Romans are no better. They seem better. They’re not quite as cantankerous as the Jews against Paul. But both—you know, Happy Man and Prosperous Man—both Felix and Festus, that’s what their names mean—both of them are more concerned with getting by with these Jews they’re governing. And so they have Paul sit there for two years in the case of Felix. And Festus is trying to put pressure on Paul to get back to Jerusalem. And Paul knows that—probably Festus knows too—that’s not a safe route for Paul’s life.

And so we have a great demonstration or a condemnation of those outside of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ of injustice. It may seem at first that the world around us can be just, but it really can’t be. Paul has a great desire for justice, as evidenced by these things.

R.J. Rushdoony in Salvation and Godly Rule says that the whole of recorded history is one great longing for justice. Nothing ever has been more conspicuously absent than justice. Though kings and commoners have professed their love of it, neither the rulers nor the revolutionists have been able to institute justice. Something clearly has been wrong.

When the demand for justice is so extensive and the professed love of justice so well—not universal—we can only conclude that either the profession is hypocritical or the idea of justice false or both. Clearly, humanistic attempts at gaining justice have been signal failures. Justice has been defined in terms of man, not in terms of God, and the result has been injustice. Only through the biblical doctrine of justice can men realize peace and order.

So I want to take a little bit of time now to talk about the scriptural teachings relative to justice. If it’s so important in the context of this deliverance narrative—so important to our lives—we need to understand a little bit more about what it is. I mentioned last week that justice is essentially synonymous with righteousness. We don’t think of that.

Let me read a quote here from Girdlestone’s book Synonyms in the Scriptures, an authority on the original languages, and he says this about the terms justice and righteousness: “It’s unfortunate that the English language should have grafted the Latin word justice, which is used in somewhat of a forensic sense, into the vocabulary at all. So Girdlestone would just say we never heard of the word justice because he says there we are already possessed of the good word righteousness—as it tends to create a distinction which has no existence in scripture. This quality, in other words—there’s no in the scriptures there’s no distinction between righteousness and justice. This quality may be viewed—that is, justice or righteousness according to scripture—in two lights.

In its relative aspect, it implies conformity with the line or rule of God’s law. The word in the Hebrew means conformity to a standard, and that is God’s law. In its absolute sense or aspect, it is the exhibition of love to God and to one’s neighbor, because love is the fulfilling of the law as the scriptures clearly tell us. But in neither of these senses does the word convey what we usually mean by justice. No distinction between the claims of justice and the claims of love is recognized in scripture.

To act in opposition to the principles of love to God and to one’s neighbor is to commit injustice because it is a departure from the course marked out by God in his law. So, helping us to redefine what we think about justice, Girdlestone says there’s no distinction really between justice and love. When you fail to extend mercy—you can look at it this way in the book of Micah: “Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God.” They’re not separate things. If you’re walking humbly with God, you’re going to do justice and love mercy. And to love mercy, to extend mercy, to love your neighbor and to love God is to do justice. And to fail to extend mercy is to do injustice. You can’t have one without the other.

And we’ve talked about the political parties trying to do that—the left and the right. And it’s important that we recognize the signal integrity of God’s salvation involving both justice—conformity to his standard—but more than that, the positive application of love in the world. So Girdlestone says, and we should understand, the scriptures teach that love is the fulfilling of God’s law. God’s law is the standard that justice is a definition of conformity to, and so to fail to love your neighbor—when your children fail to love each other, when husbands fail to love wives, when wives fail to love husbands, et cetera—then we have injustice.

We have communion today as we do every Lord’s day, and we’re going to go break bread together. We’re going to eat together a communal meal, a happy meal—a meal that demonstrates our love for each other. And if we have ought against each other, if we’ve sinned against each other, if there are broken relationships, there’s injustice in the context of that meal. The communion in the context of the agape is a great picture of how these things work together. Injustice in the community is not to be left lying out there. It’s to be dealt with.

And so justice has—this is essentially synonymous with righteousness, and it means conforming to God’s law in its minimal aspects—doing what is not breaking God’s law—but also then doing what God’s law requires. Sin is any—one of conformity unto, as the Westminster Catechism says, or transgression of. It’s not just transgression of—it’s want of conformity unto.

And God’s word says that we’re supposed to love each other, and if we have want of conformity to that, that’s sin. In the scriptures there are various words for sin—words used for sin. And one of them is unrighteousness or unjustice. In fact, in 2 Timothy 2:19, we read that “let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” Iniquity. You might say, “Well, I’m not doing any iniquity. That sounds like it’s pretty bad stuff.” But the word iniquity there simply means a failure of righteousness or a failure of justice.

So if you’re going to use the name of Jesus Christ and not carry it vainly, then you shouldn’t commit injustice—is what it’s saying. You see? So justice is real important to us. See, as you understand this, it’s a minimum criteria of calling yourself a Christian legitimately to have a life characterized by justice, not characterized by injustice.

Well, then we better, you know, think about how we’re going to apply it in our lives and what it really means to us. Justice has a firm relationship to mercy as the scriptures tell us. Proverbs 28:8 says that “He that by usury and unjust gain increases his substance shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.” The contrast to the man who steals is the one who pities the poor and extends mercy and grace. Who’s just in that sense? Our savior says in Matthew the twenty-third chapter, verse twenty-three, that he can accuse men of denying the weightier aspects of the law. Do you remember what those weightier aspects are? They should be central to our understanding of who we are. They should be a measure of us as we come to be evaluated by God every Lord’s day. They should be measured in terms of our goals for our particular Rome.

What are those weightier matters of the law? Those weightier matters are judgment, or justice, mercy, and faith. Same basic requirements that Micah has put out for us. The scriptures from one end to the other talks about justice, mercy, and then faith—a humility before God.

Commenting on this, a man, a commentator named Harlson, says this: “The time-honored distinction between the Old Testament is a book of law and the New Testament is a book of divine grace is without grounds or justification. Divine grace and mercy are the presupposition of law in the Old Testament, and the grace and love of God displayed in the New Testament events issue in the legal obligations of the new covenant.”

So, commenting on this text, he says, you know, the point of this is that these things are not isolated but they’re essentially a unity before God. Faith, justice, and mercy are essentially aspects of the same thing. We have a King, and the King is instructing us here in his word. That word is always a law word. We don’t think of that when we think of King Jesus. Probably people today act more like he’s like the king of England, you know, or the queen of England. What power does the king or queen have in England? They don’t have any power. They’re just a figurehead. Power has been transferred from the monarchy to parliament to the people.

You see, in England, whether we like that or not politically is not my point. It’s an illustration of how we use the term and fill it with modern meaning. And so a king is just sort of a titular head of a government, someone who attends functions. And yeah, he’s got a crown on, but he has no—his word is not a law. Well, in previous days, when a monarch spoke, his every word was a law. See, when the King speaks, it is law.

Now it’s also grace because he’s speaking to you. God gives us his law graciously. To not know his law and then find ourselves with lives filled of injustice and God’s wrath against us—that’s not—you know, God would not be merciful to do that to us. He mercifully gives us his law. But his every word is a law to us. And that word that commands us to extend grace is just as much law to us.

Rushdoony, writing in Salvation and Godly Rule, said that justice in the Bible means the righteousness of God in man. It means moral and religious perfection of man and the application of that standard and way to all of life. There can be no mercy if there’s no justice. Mercy is not antinomian but an aspect of the law as our Lord makes clear in Matthew 23:23.

So there is a relationship between the standard, then, and the application of God’s revelation of his word. Now, so justice is the same as righteousness in the scriptures. It means it’s got a lot of application to our lives as Christians. It has reference to a standard. That standard is the word of the King. And the word of the King is both a law word and a grace word. And for us to be just before God requires conformity to his law, which includes not just avoiding transgressions of it but walking in conformity to every requirement of it. And the central summation of that law is to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

So justice is the application of that standard. Again, Rushdoony writes this—that he says that God’s judgment and mercy move to the same end, and the fulfillment of justice is in the restoration of all things. And this means salvation. Isaiah 45:21 refers to God. It says that he is “a just God and a Savior.” Isaiah 45:21 does not say “he is a just God and yet he’s also a Savior.” We think of it that way sometimes, don’t we? No matter what we want to say to the contrary, frequently we’ve been drilled and our minds tend to think of God’s just, but then he extends grace. He’s a just God, but he’s also then, in spite of that justice stuff, he becomes a Savior and gives grace to us.

But commentators say that really the terminology there means he is “a just God and Savior,” meaning those things are together. God’s justice, his law, demands restoration and restitution, right? Justice. God’s law says if you steal from somebody, you’re supposed to repay two to fivefold. Restoration and restitution. Justice is involved with restoration of fallen man back into a positive state of righteousness. You understand?

Justice—the point of God’s justice—drives Paul to Rome to seek the restoration of all things. Justice is to flow out and to change the world and to make restoration of the world in the correct order and law of God. Men desire the end result of that blessing, but they don’t desire the justice that is the means of accomplishing all of that.

God is a just God and Savior at the same time. He is righteous, just, and redeeming, and therefore a Savior. Salvation implies the necessary restoration of peace, order, and justice. And so it’s a very important task for us to make for ourselves.

Now, so those are some of the big points, and I want to then speak a little bit now about justice, money, and morality. Justice is important. It should be a central desire of ours for our realms—for the Rome of the church, so to speak—for the mission of the church on the earth. Salvation means the restoration of all these things. It implies the connection between justice, mercy, and love. Our savior tells us that justice or righteousness is one of the weightier matters of the law along with mercy and faith. It ties those things together for us into a bundle.

And so it means that our life—that mission statement, again, for your vocational calling, men, for instance—should involve desiring your workplace to manifest justice. Right? Because if you don’t, then you’re leaving it in an unsaved state, so to speak. You want to extend salvation. You want to extend God’s order, the kingdom of Christ, his law and conformity to it. And to do that, justice is central to that thought.

How are you moving—to move your particular vocation into a sphere, make it into a sphere of justice? Well, this next topic can show you some of the ways. There is a relationship in the scriptures between justice and money. The scriptures tell us—many of you have heard this, some of you haven’t. Maybe we need to hear it again. And I’m sure we need to hear it again. I know we need to hear this over and over and over.

As long as the apostate money system of our culture remains, Christians need to be reminded that it is an unjust standard. And it is, in the words of Micah, a treasure of wickedness in the land. Let’s read these verses—some of these references I’ve written down in your outline under point C, “Justice, Money, and Morality.”

Proverbs 16:11: “A just weight and balance are the Lord’s. All the weights of the bag are his work.” Profound statement. We know by this that there can be just weights and unjust weights. Just measures and unjust measures. And the ones that God makes are his workmanship, and their justness themselves.

Leviticus 19:35-36: “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall ye have. I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt.”

Now there’s a commentary on this that R.J. Rushdoony quotes in his book on systematic theology, from the Torah, and let me read this commentary: “He who has measures for the purpose of a sale is like a judge, because God says don’t do unjustice in judgment. So he that has measures for the purpose of a sale is like a judge. And if he is deceitful, he causes five things: He defiles the land. He desecrates God’s name. He causes the Shekinah, rather—the Shekinah, rather, it’s the glory of God—to depart. He causes Israel to fall by the sword. And causes them to be exiled from the land. Foremost in the mind here is the need to safeguard the community from such abuses which bring these five results in their wake.”

That’s the application of Leviticus 19:35 relating it to Ezekiel 45:10, which reads: “Ye shall have just balances, just ephah, and just bath.” And as Ezekiel goes on to describe these things—that the commentators talked about. But the very important point here that Rushdoony makes in commenting on this commentary is this: Note this important fact. Every man as he deals with measures is compared to a judge meeting out either justice or injustice. See, “he shall do no unrighteousness in judgment.” Then it talks about the mediums of exchange in a culture.

So each of us, as we’re involved in transactions, should desire—like Paul did—to be able to transact those business with a just weight and measure. Right? Otherwise God says you’re getting close to being an unjust judge. So we are involved in transactions. This is immediate application to us.

False weight, false balance is an abomination to the Lord. A just weight is his delight. Proverbs 11:1.

Proverbs 20:10 and 23: “Diverse weights, diverse measures. Both of them are alike abominations to the Lord. Diverse weights are an abomination unto the Lord, and a false balance is not good.”

Ezekiel 45:10: “Ye shall have just balances. Just ephah, and just bath.”

Micah 6:10: “Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is abominable?”

God refers to injustice in the mediums for exchange as abomination to him and the treasures of wickedness. We have in our—