Dennis Tuuri

Interesting words. Each morning with destruction the wicked our reward to free from evildoers the city of the Lord. Strong words. We begin today a series on doing justice. Doing this very thing. And we begin by turning first to a consideration of who our savior is and who we are in him from Matthew 12:15-21. Matthew 12:15 to 21 is the sermon text for this morning. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew from there, and great multitudes followed him, and he healed them all. Yet he warned them not to make him known that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him, and he will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench, till he sends forth justice to victory and in his name Gentiles will trust.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for this wonderful picture of who it is that we worship and what it is that we celebrate this Easter tide season. Bless us, Lord God, with the consideration of Jesus Christ. Give us faith to believe that indeed he is bringing justice to victory in the whole world and to see our place, our participation in that as his servants, the servants of the servant of the Lord. Bless us, Lord God, with an understanding of this text and the many other texts we’ll look at this morning. May your word, Father, come to us by your Spirit, transform us, and empower us. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. Who are you? What’s your identity? Why are you here? Why has God called us to this place? Why has he brought you into existence? The question of our identity is a central one, of course, in any time or in any place. And I think it’s a central one for the church today.

And I think we’re sort of like a man in a movie, Bruce Willis, in the movie Unbreakable. Now, I tried to watch it this week. It turns out I don’t have it, so I didn’t watch it this week. And it’s been a couple years since I watched this movie. I think some of you have probably seen it. In the movie, at the beginning of it, Bruce Willis realizes that he’s unbreakable. He’s in a train wreck. He doesn’t get hurt. Everybody else is dead or dying or whatever it is. And he seems to have this super power that he’s unbreakable. But he doesn’t have a very good life. You know, as I recall, his marriage is on the rocks. They might even separate early on in the movie. He’s not happy about what he’s doing in life. He’s kind of depressed all the time. You know, it’s just not a good thing.

And little by little throughout the movie, what happens is he comes to a realization of why he’s unbreakable and the purpose of his life. And the purpose of his life is to do justice. It’s to protect the people that are preyed upon by evil people in his culture, to protect them and to bring justice against evildoers. And he comes into an awareness of this and then of course everything flourishes. Now there’s plot twists and stuff. Samuel Jackson plays Mr. Glass, I think, or whatever it is. Got one of these broken bone syndromes and he’s the evil wicked guy. And that’s a—I think I just ruined the movie for you—it’s a bit of a surprise at the end, but in any event, you know, I think that’s the way the church is. You know, the church is unbreakable. You know, the church will never fail. The church will always be in existence. God has promised he’ll protect his church. The church is unbreakable.

But the church in America, though continuing its existence, you know, doesn’t quite know, at least during my lifetime, hasn’t quite known what it’s about, what it’s supposed to be doing. And so we end up focusing on just saving some people, you know, a few brands from the fire in terms of personal evangelism. But even there, we take this word evangelism, which is huge and monstrous, and it talks about the transformation, the putting to rights of the whole world, and we shrink it down to, you know, proselytizing people—and that’s a great thing to bring them to Jesus, of course, and prepare them for heaven. But why are we here? Is that it? Is our identity totally subsumed in, well, we’re sinners and then God saves us and then we go to heaven. Is that who we are? And the answer is no.

The church, I think, needs to awaken and actually is awakening to one of her central tasks in the world, and that is the same task that Bruce Willis had: to do justice. And I think that the problems in our marriages, the problems in our culture, the problems with all the infighting in churches that happen, many of these things that are sort of portrayed in that movie, they’ll be fixed not by attacking them directly, but by restoring us to who we are as those who do justice and who work to remove evil from the city of God and specifically from the city you live in.

Our identity is all wrapped up with Jesus Christ. That’s who we are. We’ve been having a series of Sunday school classes going through some Peter Leithart lectures on postmodernism and Solomon and particularly the book of Ecclesiastes. Fascinating series of classes. Our last one, by the way, is next Sunday. And Matt Dao and David Dalby will be the presenters at that class and we’ll be talking about language and both the correct critique that postmodernism and specifically a French man named Derrida has to language and the difficulty, the impossibility of communication, and yet that the critique is good in the fallen state, but the answer is found in the scriptures—that God’s Spirit allows us to communicate. So it’ll be a fascinating wrap-up to the whole class next week. I encourage you to attend.

Well, a couple weeks ago the last lecture by Peter, or one of the last lectures, was on the decentered self. So postmoderns say that modernism—which is not Christian, right?—but modernism, the modern world since, say, Descartes. Our identity is interior to ourselves. We’re in here somewhere and this is who we are and I think therefore I am. This identity—and for Descartes mostly it’s about doubting. That doubt is that thought that gives him: if I can doubt whether reality is true or not, I’m doubting, I’m thinking, and therefore I am. So his self is totally internalized, right? And so postmodernism: no, you exist in the context of a world and people and culture and yourself is decentered. There’s nothing there really at the center of who you are. You are who you are in relationship to the environment that God has placed you in. You’re decentered. Okay?

And so, and that’s—I’m, you know, this is based upon my understanding of what Peter said in listening to an hour of this. So if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I think that’s the idea. And we would say as Christians, that’s right. Actually, that who we are, our identity is not found interior to ourselves. It’s found in the person of Jesus Christ outside of ourselves. We’re hidden. Our life is hidden in Jesus. We’re united to Jesus outside of ourselves. And yes, he dwells within us by the Holy Spirit, but our identity is found in someone outside of ourselves. We’re Christians. We’re little Messiahs. We’re little Jesuses, okay? Little saviors in the world. That’s who our identity is. It’s found outside of ourselves.

You know, the Greeks say, “Know yourself.” And the Bible says, “The heart is desperately wicked. Who can know it?” You can’t know yourself. So give it up and instead know Jesus. And as you increase in your knowledge of Jesus, you’ll increase in your knowledge of who you are because that’s what your life is as a Christian.

Matthew in this gospel tells us in a summary form who Jesus is. Now I know you know a lot more than this, but I wanted to look at this text and say who’s Jesus, right? And the text quoting from the book of Isaiah says that Jesus is this: He’s a servant. Behold my servant, whom I have chosen. This goes back to the sections of Isaiah called the servant songs where the servant of God will come and he will suffer and die for his people—the suffering servant, right? And so Jesus is identified first and foremost as that servant. Okay? And so death and resurrection is talked about here.

He’s a servant, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my spirit upon him. Jesus Christ has the Holy Spirit giving him his identity, preparing him for his task. Okay. There’s a relationship and community between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And Jesus is empowered by the Spirit to do something, to carry out his mission as the suffering servant. And the text goes on to tell us what it is.

What is the Spirit going to empower him to do? And by implication, what is his Spirit indwelling us to do? He will declare justice to the Gentiles. It’s summed up in that phrase. He’ll declare justice to the Gentiles. That’s who Jesus is: he’s the empowered suffering servant who dies and is raised up for the particular task of declaring justice to the Gentiles. That’s who we are. And if you want to think very simply about what a Christian is, that’s who we are. We’re those who have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection who are empowered by the Holy Spirit for a particular task in the world. It’s why we’re here. We are here to declare justice to the Gentiles. That’s it.

Now, it goes on to say what’s going to happen as a result of that. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. His method is not the typical methods of how this justice will be accomplished. A bruised reed he will not break. A smoking flax he will not quench. He was telling him don’t say yet all these great things I’m doing because that’s not his way. His way is quieter than that, right? And so that’s something about his method and we’ll talk about that in the weeks to come as we continue on in this series.

And then the last thing—it tells us then what the end result of this is. He will not quench a smoking flax until he sends forth justice to victory. Jesus’s identity is the one who comes to suffer and die for sins, but not just for your personal salvation, for the sin of the world. John tells us, to bring the world to resurrection new creation life, little by little, not by boom, great show of power. He’s doing things quietly, but he is sending forth justice to victory. In his name, Gentiles will trust. This isn’t a failed proposition. The proclamation of Jesus’s gospel has the guarantee that the Gentiles will trust in it as he brings forth justice to victory.

That’s Jesus Christ in a summary form here. And I know we could talk about lots of things, you know, many pictures of Jesus, but in Matthew’s gospel here early on, it’s a summary statement of who Jesus is. And because it’s a summary statement of who Jesus is, and because we’re Christians, our identity is not found interior to ourselves. It’s found outside of ourselves in union with Christ, which then changes who we are, right?

That means it’s a summary statement of who we are. We’re those who are to bring forth justice to victory, to purge the city of God from evil by doing justice. And we have the promise of God that the end result of the work of Jesus Christ, the acts of Jesus through his apostles, the acts of Jesus Christ through his body, the church, which is unbreakable—that body will be used by Jesus Christ as an empowered group of people by the Holy Spirit to bring justice to victory. That’s who you are. You’re Bruce Willis in Unbreakable. And it’s time the church woke up out of her slumbers, out of the delusion she’s told herself about who she is, out of letting the world define who we are, out of letting niceness define who we are, to wake up to who we are and get about our task. That’s who we are.

And that’s what I want to talk about for the next six weeks or so, maybe more: is doing justice. And doing justice not in some abstract way, but in your life, in your family, in the church, and very importantly and most significantly, in the city in which we live. If we have injustice in the cities, why is that? It’s because Christians are not bringing forth justice to victory because we don’t see it as who we are here. So I believe that the responsibility for the mess that Bruce Willis was in and his culture, and the mess that we are in, is because of a failure of the church to awaken to our identity, which is now happening, to bring justice to victory.

Now, it’s a complicated task and the church is going to get right and wrong in some ways. And as most of you know, I was at a conference a month or so ago, 4,000 people, and some of the speakers were helping them bring justice to victory and really challenging them. And some of them were not really talking about bringing God’s justice to victory, but some kind of humanistic form of justice. So we’re going to have to talk about what justice is in the sequence of these sermons.

But today, the big deal for today, you know, as Bonhoeffer would say, the apple I’m putting in front of you that I want you to grab for—the big picture today—is doing justice. And your identity is wrapped up in the doing of justice, bringing justice to victory in the context of the world, the Gentiles. And God promises you that as you get about that task and as we do that task corporately and individually, the Gentiles will trust in Jesus. The world will be saved. Oregon City and the cities in which you live in will be places of justice once more. So that’s who we are. That’s the big thing I want to say today.

Now, getting back to Jesus. This is sort of my first sermon after the five sermons I did on Lamentations. And I want to make a relationship between all of this and that by talking about the fact that we’re in Easter tide now. We’re in the third Sunday after Easter—third Sunday of Easter rather. And this is a season in which people meditate and hear sermons about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and what that was all about. And I want to talk just briefly here about this in relationship to Lamentations.

Lamentations ended with the promise that the exile would become a new exodus and the prophets—we’ll read here a few verses in a couple of minutes. But that’s the idea. The exile that happens to Judah that was talked about in the fall of Jerusalem, that’s talked about in Lamentations, would lead to a new exodus. Exile to exodus. And that’s the big theme of the scriptures, right? The exile from the garden will lead to a new exodus into the garden city. And the exile into Egypt will lead to a new exodus from Egypt, etc., etc., etc. That’s what the big pattern is.

And Lamentations, the idea was in 70 years this exodus would happen. And we know about Nehemiah and all that stuff. But we also know that Daniel wrote, in Daniel 9:24, the angel told Daniel, “70 weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness.” This is the 70 weeks or so.

So Daniel’s like, “Well, we got 70 years. We’re at the end of the 70 years.” And God tells him, you know, that 70 year thing, that’s true in one small sense, but the major lift from the minor fall, the major lift in this story. The true exodus of all exoduses will happen not in 70 years but in 70 weeks of years, in 490 years. That’s why everybody was excited about what’s happening with messiahs during the time of Jesus, because they knew this prophecy and they knew it was up.

So Jesus comes as the true and ultimate one who leads our exodus that’s described in new creation terms in the book of Isaiah and the other prophets that we talked about in Lamentations. That exodus, that coming back out of exile, is ultimately going to be fulfilled. Daniel understood through the Messiah coming, not in the return under Nehemiah, ultimately appointed to the coming of Jesus Christ. And so the Easter season is a celebration—and this is why it’s kind of connected up with Passover and various faith communions. It’s a celebration of the great Passover, the great exodus.

Jesus on the mount of transfiguration in Luke 9:31 we read this: that Moses and Elijah appeared there with Jesus, right? And it says they appeared in glory and spoke of his departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Okay. Now that word departure—it’s the word exodus. It’s only used three times in the New Testament. One to talk about somebody’s death. Our death is an exodus. But the other time it actually specifically is referring back to the exodus that we think of from Egypt. And here it’s not just talking about him passing, his death. It’s talking about the exodus that would be the proper way to translate this. The exodus that Jesus will accomplish in Jerusalem.

You know, so the exodus is talking about what he is going to accomplish. His identity as the suffering servant is wrapped up with him going to Jerusalem shortly from this text. He’s going to die and be raised up. And by doing that, he will accomplish the exodus of all exoduses, the return from exile of all returns from exile, the return of the second Adam and the people united to the second Adam into the new creation, the garden city, not back to the old creation. Now, that’s what Easter is about. Hallelujah. Praise God. I mean, that’s, you know, this is huge stuff.

And this new creation is what the exodus is about. Let me read one verse from Isaiah 43:16 where God talked about, you know, the same thing that Lamentations talked about. They’re being taken into exile and the coming exodus. And this is what God says: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King. Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters.” God was describing to the people of Isaiah’s time that when they came back from exile, it would be like a new creation. At Passover, God created a people. It’s a new creation event. And you know, as they go through the wilderness, by the way, what are we told? We’re told that the Spirit was hovering over them like a bird. The same language used of the Spirit at creation.

Now, ultimately, that’s picturing the exodus that Jesus will accomplish at Jerusalem. And what it’s telling us both in the Egyptian exodus and here in the return after 70 years from exile—that the great creation of the new Israel will happen in 490 years when Messiah comes, when Jesus comes, to accomplish the exodus of all exoduses. And by doing that exodus, he will bring about, he will create the new Israel. He will create the new world by making a path through the sea. Jesus will go into the deathlike seas for us and make a path through those seas. He’s the forerunner and the world then will move into the new creation.

We’ll bring justice to victory in the context of the created order because Jesus accomplished that very thing in his death, resurrection, and ascension and the giving of the Spirit, which ends this season that we’ll talk about. So, you know, we’re—this imagery here is based upon the work of Jesus in suffering for our sins, being raised for us, being ascended to the right hand of the Father, and giving his Spirit. Well, giving his Spirit so that we then would be the body of Christ empowered to participate as the newly created new Israel to bring justice to victory and the water will flow into all the world. That’s us, empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. That’s our job. That’s who we are. That’s what we’re called to do.

So Jesus and the whole Easter tide season is directly related to the theme of what this all accomplished. Isaiah 55:12 and 13: “You shall go out with joy, be led out with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you. And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn, picture of fall, shall come up the cypress tree, picture of new world. And instead of the brier, shall come up the myrtle tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that will not be cut off.”

That’s a description in the immediate context of the exile into Babylon and the return from exile 70 years later. But of course, it didn’t really happen because, as the angel told Daniel, 70 weeks will be the ultimate fulfillment of this language. And this language has now been accomplished in the exodus that Jesus accomplished for the world in Jerusalem. That’s what’s happening.

The brier trees are pictures of men. You know, the healed man saw men as trees walking. That’s what we are. We’re trees and we’re either brier bushes and thorn bushes or we’re cypresses and upright trees. And so Jesus is doing away with evil men from the city of God, which now fills the whole world. He’s cleansing cities by converting brier bushes into myrtles and cypress trees or removing them. And he doesn’t do that in some kind of you know, supernatural way—that isn’t, well it is supernatural—but the way he accomplishes that is through his body. That’s us. That’s you. You’re Spirit empowered individually. We’re the temple of God corporately. And the scriptures tell us individually the Spirit dwells in us. Why? To cause our identity to be linked with Jesus, to empower us to bring justice to victory.

To bring justice to victory and to enjoy the wonderful blessings pictured for us. Isaiah 65:17-18: “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing and her people as a joy.”

That’s the Easter message: that those things prefigured by the return from an exile, that exodus, were really small little indicators of what would be accomplished by Jesus at his exodus accomplished at Jerusalem. He created the world anew, and he does this through creating Jerusalem a place of rejoicing and a place of empowered ministry so that we leave this place empowered by the Holy Spirit to do justice.

Now justice is a hugely comprehensive term and we’ll talk about that in the next five or six weeks. But that’s who we are. That’s what Jesus accomplished in his death and resurrection and ascension and the giving of the Spirit—new creation. He created us anew. The end result of this as it moves forward is Isaiah 65:25: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”

He was wounded for our transgressions. The suffering servant is the beginning of the text in Matthew. He dies for us and we have relationship with him to the end that the wolf will lie down with the lamb. At least in that imagery, if not literally being developed—and who knows with the way animal husbandry works—but at least it’s an image of nations and peoples no longer warring and fighting unjustly, but rather bringing justice to victory in relationships among nations.

Justice is about relationships—relationship between us and God, us and ourselves, us and other people, and us and the created order. And in those relationships, Jesus is bringing justice to victory.

Now, I want to talk next about the imperative of doing justice. And what I’m going to do here is just read some texts. “What’s that doing justice thing, Pastor Tuuri? Why are you so jazzed about that?” Well, I think it’s because—and as you’ve already heard this morning—it’s central to our identity. It’s who we’re supposed to be. And I don’t think we’re doing that great a job of it yet. I think we’re doing better. The church is waking up to it. But I think we got a lot of waking up to do. There’s a lot of injustice in Oregon City. Do you know that there’s a lot of injustice?

You know, I was thinking, this is a little out of place, but let me just say this now so I won’t lose it. Reformation Covenant Church was birthed in the context of doing justice, relieving oppression, and specifically here I’m referring to the political work that was done by the members of this church. Primarily we had the lead role in the thing. Howard L. and I went down there and got the legislation introduced. And I know you’ve heard the stories, but look at it from this perspective: when RCC started, we began in the context of rolling back oppression. It is a damnable oppressive lie for the state to tell parents that they can’t do a good enough job of directly educating their children or of picking people they’d like to educate their children, and that they’ve got to submit to some kind of state sanctioned teacher. That is a damnable oppressive lie, and the church has stood still for this thing for far too long.

You want to send your kids to public school, okay, be careful. But don’t go telling me and don’t go telling parents that they got to prove to you somehow that they can educate their children or that they have to prove to you that the teachers they want to use are good enough teachers based on your certification standards that have nothing to do with my sense of values, the word of God. That was oppression. It remains oppression. It’s not as oppressive because God gave us victory. He brought justice to victory in allowing us to homeschool freely without having to go and ask permission from the local school administrator who at that time could say yes or no regardless of whatever job you were doing with your kids. They could score in the 98th percentile and he could still say no, it’s not good for them. And that was legal and you could do nothing about it in this state. Oppression.

RCC was birthed in the context of doing justice. And I think that’s, you know, one of the reasons why God has blessed us. But you know, you can’t live on some kind of heritage like that. We need to continue to do justice. There’s all kinds of things as we could think about. Charles Colson died yesterday. There’s a man who tried in his way, with his limited ability because of his rejection of God’s law, but he tried to do justice in the context of prisons. There is injustice aplenty in the prison, in the penitentiary system of the United States, and specifically of Oregon and more specifically of, you know, the city jail.

Well, there aren’t bad guys there. The guards aren’t bad, but I’m telling you, there’s injustice. I think it’s unjust to take away a guy’s name and make him into a number. I mean, I could go on, but the point is RCC was birthed in the context of doing justice. We might not have thought it that way. That’s what it was. And what we were doing was primarily for ourselves, right? It was kind of a selfish thing. We wanted to deliver ourselves because we had kids we wanted to teach. And you know, maturation is sort of—that’s how you begin life. But what you learn is your identity in Jesus is helping other people not be oppressed.

And Isaiah 58 says that’s the essence of Sabbath keeping: is to remove oppression from people by doing justice for others. Okay.

So here’s some texts, and you know, so the whole point of this—by Chris W. would say, the one string on that banjo today is—I want you to leave this place today with a sense of your identity being united with Jesus who came to bring justice to victory, and therefore I want you to be committed to do justice. And to that end, let’s read some scriptures.

Psalm 15 is an entrance liturgy. It says, “Who gets to go to worship?” And it begins by saying, “Lord, who may abide in your tabernacle? Who may dwell in your holy hill?” The answer is: “He who walks uprightly and works righteousness, who does justice.” It’s the second thing listed. “Speaks the truth in his heart.” And then there’s some negatives. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. The second positive listed to get into this building today—we’re supposed to make sure before you come in that you do justice. It’s an entrance requirement for the very worship service of God.

Let me read a bunch of other texts here. Zephaniah 7:9 and 10: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another.” Now, let me point out something there. That’s kind of like the two tasks. I mean, justice is comprehensive, and goodness and mercy are related to it as well. It’s kind of those two things. We’re going to read Micah 6:8 here in a minute. God has told you what you’re supposed to do: do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. That’s the kid’s coloring sheet for today.

But we’re supposed to render true judgments. Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” I was reading these texts in preparation for my sermon, and you know, a lot of the prophets—several of the prophets—say, you know, you guys are oppressing widows and poor people and you’re doing it to build your big fancy houses, right? And I’m not going to let you live in those houses or drink that great wine. And I thought to myself, in our city, you know, people are on hard times, fees have been raised, they got some stupid urban renewal development going on that means they can’t use the tax revenue for basic services like fixing the roads. They got to do other things, you know, putting in traffic abatement programs. Oh, I shouldn’t get off on my own personal stuff on this stuff.

But what they’re also doing is they just built a brand new police building right down the street from our house. And the thing has vaulted ceilings. I guess it’s beautiful. It’s, you know, it’s like one of those places with hunstones of brick. We got, you know, a new city hall being planned. It’s going to be big and spacious and wonderful. Have you noticed this throughout this country? That’s what’s happening. People are losing their houses or at least having to cut way back, and the civil government puts up bigger and nicer buildings all over the place. It’s astonishing, and I think it is directly related to justice and the oppression of people for the sake of—well, it’s not rich people. Well, there are rich people. We can talk about that. But I think the biggest thing going on is the civil state building buildings and making improvements on their buildings that the average citizen in no way can afford, and they’re sucking that money out from the average citizen who’s going further and further into debt and he’s oppressed. Okay. Well, okay, we’ll talk about specifics. I shouldn’t get off on specifics now. I just want to make the simple point that the text tells us that we’re supposed to do justice, right?

Jeremiah 22:3: “Thus says the Lord, do justice and righteousness and deliver from the hand of the oppressed.” Okay? And we’ll see another set of texts next week that justice and righteousness are synonyms. There’s a problem we’ve got—I’ll talk about in just a minute.

Micah 6:8: “He has told you, oh man, what is good? What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice, to love kindness, walk humbly with God.”

“Open your mouth. Proverbs 31:8 and 9. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Psalm 82:3: “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless. Maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.”

Proverbs 31:8-9: “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Now, I’m not, you know, don’t get in your mind you’re starting to think, uh-oh, he’s going to turn socialist on us or social gospel. I’m not talking about how we help the poor and needy. I’ve already given you a couple of ways I think that are important in terms of tax policies, education policies—the kind of oppression that I think goes on. So don’t get hung up in that. But just hear that whatever it is, whoever we’re supposed to help, the poor and needy, we’re supposed to be doing justice by considering them. Okay.

Isaiah 58:6-9: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? That’s job one. Now, listen to job two: Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? Bring the homeless poor into your house. When you see the naked, cover him. And not to hide yourself from your own flesh. Do justice, love mercy, and what’s the end result? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily. Your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, the Lord will answer. You shall cry, and he will say, ‘Here I am.’

“If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, if you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as bright as noon day.” And he goes on to say, keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath is about those two tasks repeated at the end there: do justice, love mercy. And they’re kind of both connected, right? I mean, justice is a comprehensive term that encodes all of that, but they’re separated out in terms of actions of doing justice, relieving oppression, and at the same time showing mercy.

It’s my contention that the church mostly in America for a long time has emphasized the loving mercy thing and acts of benevolence. “With deeds of love and kindness, the heavenly kingdom grows.” Half true. But some of those deeds of loving kindness are supposed to be deeds of justice, relieving oppression from parents, the oppression of the teachers union trying to tell you that you can’t figure out how to educate your children best. What an affront. You know, it’s amazing to me what people can put up with. You just sort of grow up in this thing, you sort of, oh, okay. No, you step back a little bit and think about what’s going on and it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? What am I missing here? I mean, to me, I’m amazed that the church has let this happen and that we haven’t been more responsive to it, seeing it as oppression.

Okay, so I’m getting sidetracked again.

Deuteronomy 16:20: “Justice and only justice you shall follow that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God has given you.” That tags up at the last verse. You want the blessings? You want to ride on the high places of the earth? You want to be fed with the heritage of Jacob, your father? Who gets to inherit the earth? Well, these texts tell us: when we do justice and only justice, no injustice in our actions. And doing justice, bringing justice to victory in union with Jesus Christ, that’s the condition by which we may then live and inherit the land that God is giving to us. And if the church is dispossessed culturally today in America, it’s because we haven’t done justice. We haven’t done it.

Amos 5:11-15: “Therefore, because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him. That’s interesting. Some tax policy stuff. Well, you have built—this is the one I was talking about earlier—houses of hunstone, etc. You who afflict the righteous, dropping down a couple of verses, you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, turn aside the needy in the gate. Therefore, he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it’s an evil time. And here’s how you get out of evil times: Seek good and not evil that you may live, and so the Lord your God of hosts will be with you. And the good specifically is defined there as in terms of justice. And then he goes on to say, ‘Hate evil, love good, establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remainder of Joseph.’”

How do you get blessing? You do good. You establish justice. You do justice. You bring justice to victory. Because that’s why Jesus raised himself and was raised up from the dead and ascended to the right hand of the Father. His rule, his session at the right hand of the Father, is all about bringing justice to victory.

Jeremiah 21:12: “Oh house of David, thus says the Lord, execute justice in the morning and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed, lest my wrath go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it because of your evil deeds.” Ah, Lamentations, right? His mercies are new every morning. And what are we supposed to do in the morning? We’re supposed to do justice in the morning. Don’t wait. Get at the task. He says first thing. God’s mercies are new every morning. And one way that manifests itself—the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to get up and have new mercies that day by getting rid of more injustice, by doing justice from the morning on. That’s what it says here. Lest my wrath go forth like fire and burn with none to quench it. We’re supposed to execute justice in the morning. Do justice.

Jeremiah 22:13: “Woe to him who builds his house with unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice.” And then dropping down a couple of verses: “Do you think you’re a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father, you know, our identity is tied up with who we are descendants of. Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness. That’s our heritage. That’s our place in Jesus. That’s the people that God created at the first exodus. People that do justice and righteousness.”

Isaiah 42:3-4: “A bruised reed he will not break. A faintly—this is the verse that Matthew quotes—but still and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. He’ll bring forth justice.”

Isaiah 11:4: “But with righteousness, the Messiah, with righteousness he’ll judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” And as we sang this morning from Psalm 98, he comes to bring equity and judgment and justice. And you know that we’re part of that. That’s who we are, going into the world that God has given to us.

Proverbs 24:11: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death. Hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” Positive statement that we’re supposed to rescue people who through oppression are being led away to the slaughter. Lots of implications for that in Oregon City.

Amos 5:15: “Hate evil, love good, establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord our God of hosts will be gracious.” See this repeated theme over and over again. You want a good life, do justice, and God may indeed then bless us.

Proverbs itself—the book is this. The purpose of the book is laid out in the first couple of verses: says that the proverbs of Solomon son of David king of Israel are “to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing in righteousness, justice and equity.” The purpose of reading the proverbs isn’t, you know, so you get by okay at your job all day. Part of it—that part of it’s justice at your job. But one of the main purposes of Proverbs is to teach you how to do justice. That’s what it says.

So, doing justice. Why do we have such a hard time with this? I’m—part of it is, you know, how we interpret the Spirit. Jesus Christ is empowered by the Spirit, and the Spirit is who empowers us to do our work. But what does it mean? You know, to the Greeks, the idea of kind of spirituality was an enthusiasm. It was kind of like becoming mad. It was detached from this world. And so often so many thoughts of the Greeks were brought into the Christian experience. And so when we look at Pentecost, we don’t see it for what it is. And what it is—the empowerment of the Spirit to preach the word of God. There’s a relationship between Spirit and word, and that word is that creative word. Jesus himself is the word that brings about new creation, that rolls back oppression, and allows us to do justice.

So in the Bible, justice is obviously related to the Spirit of God. The Spirit dwells upon Jesus in Matthew so that he can bring justice to victory. And in the Bible, the Spirit is linked to the word. And so, you know, I think N.T. Wright uses this illustration, you know, the Holy Spirit—the empowerment of the Spirit isn’t like a day in Disneyland or something. That’s not kind of the purpose of it. The purpose of the Spirit is to make us wise, to make us new creation beings who are related to God’s word and take that word into then the doing of justice.

So we see justice being done improperly because we see justice based upon kind of a human need: Well, what’s fair, what’s right, what seems right to us rather than tying justice to the fixed word of God. And that’s in part because of our flawed view of spirituality, what the Holy Spirit does.

Let me just read a few texts here that show the relationship of the Holy Spirit and the word.

Acts 4:31: “When they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken. This is the coming of the Spirit there in this place. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.” The Spirit empowers them to speak the word of God with boldness. Spirit and word.

Acts 6:7: “Then the word of God spread and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith.” And so this link of Spirit to word. When we read then that the Spirit is going forward in victory, it’s described that the word of God is spreading. Spirit and word. And then the word of God grows and multiplies in Acts 12. So the Spirit is linked to the word, and the word then has success in the accomplishment of justice in the world.

Psalm 33:6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” So the word of God is the means of doing justice. And so our justice is defined by God’s law, not by what feels right to us. And the Spirit empowers us because the Spirit is tied to the word. He brings that creative word of God’s scriptures to us and helping us to apply it in our context. And the end result of that is new creation life, justice being brought to victory.

Again, in 1 Thessalonians 1:6, we read: “You became followers of us and of the Lord having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Spirit.” So at the middle you got affliction and joy, and you got word and Spirit. They’re linked. The Spirit of God brings the word of God to us. We can’t do justice without the Spirit. It’s the Spirit that empowers that comes upon Jesus for his task. And by way of what that means is if our identity is in him, the Holy Spirit is the absolutely critical dimension to be able to do justice.

Next week we’ll talk about justice and sex. And those they’re linked in the scriptures, and it’s related to this idea of holiness. Without the Holy Spirit, you can’t do justice. You just can’t do it, because it’s the Spirit of God that is birthing the new world into existence, that’s relieving oppression and bringing justice. And that justice is defined not by some ecstatic spirit of experience, not by some enthusiastic thing. We have churches filled with people that are trying to feel better. But that’s not the gig here.

You get—you’re like Bruce Willis. The churches are like Bruce Willis. He doesn’t feel too good and he tries a lot of things that might make him feel better. And he tries kind of enthusiastic, spirit-filled deals where you kind of try to work yourself up. Or he doesn’t in the movie, but by way of analogy the church does that. But what will jazz you, what will give you passion, is the passion of Jesus, the zeal of the Lord of hosts. It accomplishes bringing justice to victory. He was passionate, spirit-filled, and passionate about doing justice. And so the Spirit is linked to the word.

Our passion comes from a knowledge of the word, and that gives us the—ministers of the Holy Spirit to us. And the Spirit then empowers us to apply that word in analyzing: Where’s the injustice in the city in which I live? Where am I supposed to do justice? Because I don’t know who else is going to do the job. Who else is going to do that job? Well, somebody with a different definition of justice. And then you’re going to end up with more of what we got.

So the Spirit being linked to the word and justice being defined by the word is absolutely critical for this ministry and task. Okay.

Now I’m going to the next section, and I’ll talk more about this Spirit next week and the role of Jesus Christ to the Spirit coming from the mount of olives for his week, ending up in his passion, and how we’re grafted into the olive branch. Those are images of the Spirit. So understand that doing justice is critically tied to the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. And so that’ll be an emphasis over the next six weeks.

I’m going to put aside these verses on justice and righteousness that I wanted to talk about. There are a ton of them that shows the relationship between justice and righteousness. Let me just kind of move toward conclusion with addressing a couple more points on the outline.

By the way, Brad Hangartner sent me an email a couple of months ago—maybe a month ago—on justice. And he cited Psalm 37:30-31: “The mouth of the righteous speaks wisdom. His tongue talks of justice. The law of God is in his heart.” So do you see the relationship? The law of God—the Spirit ministers the law of God to us. And the end result of that is us doing justice, speaking about justice and accomplishing justice in the context of the world. So justice, law, Spirit.

And so some of the problems with our righteousness—our righteousness problem today—and I’ll try to get through this very quickly. A couple of errors. The antinomian problem. So if justice is so directly related to the law, and it is, then a church that still wants to get involved in justice but is largely antinomian is going to have problems. So that’s one of the problems we have. That’s why we’re not doing justice or not doing it effectively. The church—Bruce Willis in the illustration, right?—the unbreakable thing is not in tune with God’s law, and all the cool things that are happening everywhere and the cool churches that are going up. You know, if those churches don’t hook up with the law of God and its definition of what justice is—for instance—and its approach to things, they’re going to fail. Now, they’re going to do some good things. Great. But this is a foundational problem we have.

And again, it goes back to the Greeks. The Greeks saw things in abstractions and things were like in opposition to one another. And so, for instance, Spirit and rationality are kind of opposed to one another. And so, to get spiritual, you got to be ecstatic. And the church bought into that and we became charismatics. You know, the Greeks thought in terms of dialectic things in opposition. And the church bought into that. And the church today thinks in terms of law versus grace or law versus love.

What does the Bible say? Right? Love is the fulfilling of the law. It’s funny how people use these phrases. “Well, if love is fulfilling law, let’s get rid of the law then. That’s what that means. Means law is irrelevant.” No, you missed the whole point. The point is there’s no opposition between law and love. They’re tied. In the Bible, we don’t have the conflict of interest ultimately because God is sovereign. We have the harmony of interests. That law and grace, law and love, justice and mercy—these things go together. They’re not in opposition.

Well, we think of them in terms of opposition. And so we don’t have the law and we don’t have a sense of the law. The law bothers us because it’s not of grace, because we’re using Greek categories. And we get all messed up. And so we abandon the very thing—the law of God—that’s going to be the Spirit’s work in empowering us to define and do justice in the world. You see how bad that is? It’s a problem, right? It’s a problem.

And there’s another righteousness problem. And that is that we think of righteousness in two ways. One: imputed righteousness of Jesus. That’s what we normally think of. Okay? And then secondly, well, personal righteousness. I should not do bad things. But that’s not what the word means. I mean, it is in terms of imputed righteousness, but righteousness and justice are synonyms. We’ll talk more about this next week, but I’ll show you over and over and over. They’re synonyms. And when we shrink down justice or righteousness to the personal imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us and maybe a little bit of personal holiness, we have radically missed the mark. All of those texts I just read about doing justice, we missed those because we’ve shrunk it down in our heads.

It’s hard for us to wrap our minds around doing justice and righteousness when those terms have been defined in terms of just our personal relationship with God.

And there’s another problem, and I’ll just touch on this. You know, I know our church is in the middle of some crucial conversations. If you guys have the book, read it. These are good times. There’s all kinds of things happening here. One of the tasks we set ourselves to at the Heathman was to try to develop a paper and some teaching on the role of women in the church.

I want to talk about women. I want to talk about mercy and justice, loving mercy and doing justice. But I want to be careful and I want you to know that I understand my limitations and that I don’t want to misrepresent things. I’m sure that I could spend all day, all week, arguing with some of you about what I’m going to say in a couple minutes. And I’m not holding on to it tightly, okay? It’s kind of loose in this hand, but I think it’s there.

You know, it’s hard talking about male-female relationships, sexual relationships. You ever had a conversation about race where the person in the room with you is black? That’s kind of hard. It feels personal, right? So it’s kind of hard to discuss it. And, you know, when you talk about male-female relationships within a mixed sex context, you have that same hardness, but it’s even worse because black people are primarily—a little bit of more difference. Probably it’s just a color pigmentation thing. Men and women, no—it isn’t restricted to the biological differences. If you don’t know what I mean, get married. And if you are married and don’t know what I mean, wake up. Something’s wrong there. You’re quite different. And so it’s hard to talk about it.

And so when we talk as a church this year and the next year of the two-year goals that we’re setting for doing this, you know, please be patient. Please practice crucial conversation skills about the various things we’re involved in. And then the final thing that’s difficult about talking about male-female relationships—because we have it—it would have been easier 100 years ago when there wasn’t so much controversy, but now God has given us in his grace. And we believe in the ultimate harmony of interests. He’s given us a cultural dialogue about it that’s quite difficult because it’s not being held really in a Christian context.

And so women get kind of offended quickly if you start saying anything that they’re going to interpret as something less than full equality. And men feel like, you know, we’re kind of on our heels in the whole conversation. I don’t know if you women know that, but that’s the way we kind of feel. Like we know we probably did a lot of things wrong, but we don’t think we’re all wrong. And it’s just hard. It’s hard. These are hard conversations.

But let me suggest something here. I kind of think, at least culturally and maybe biblically, that one of the problems in the church is that it’s been feminized. Great book by Anne Douglas: The Feminization of American Culture. And it’s feminized in terms of moving from Calvinism to Arminianism. And I know it’s offensive to women because it’s not feminized in the sense of true biblical femininity, but just go with the analogy here. It’s kind of feminized. And as a result of that feminization, we like things like kindness and grace and love—Inc., love in the name of Christ—and we’re going to go help somebody and bring them a blanket or whatever it is, or do some good thing for them, right? That’s kind of the church is more into that stuff because the church has become more feminized. And I think that feminist ideal is related somehow to the loving of mercy thing.

And whether that’s biblical or not biblical in terms of a sex differentiation, I’m not sure. I do know that when it comes to waging warfare to affect justice, to do justice through warring against evil people—which in the Bible is one of the aspects of justice—women couldn’t be combatants. I know that much. And I know somehow that in Proverbs, the mother still has a law, but it’s a law of kindness. And I just sort of think, like in that movie, a recent movie, Tree of Life—if you had cast the mother as the embodiment of nature and the husband as the embodiment of grace, I just don’t think it would work.

And now maybe I’m wrong and maybe that’s culturally contexted, etc. But my point is this: It’s easy to get churches to do love, Inc. It’s going to be harder to get churches to do justice, Inc. Justice in the name of Christ in the culture. But importantly, I think, for men at least, and for the fullness of biblical femininity, justice is absolutely essential in terms of looking at oppression that goes on and moving to remove, making steps to remove oppression, to bring justice, to eliminate abortion, to free up parents, to change the prison system, to take people whose, you know, who have through taxation levels and government policies—their families have been destroyed and they’re living now as basically servants of the state—to empower those people again.

I think if we don’t get at that, men won’t feel like men. I think men need that task, and I think women, to feel fully biblical women like they have a right to—have to have that task as well. And I think that one of the problems why it’s hard for us to do justice and to get jazzed about it is because we’ve kind of got this feminized version of things. And somehow we think it’s just through deeds of love and kindness that things are going to happen, not recognizing that justice—biblically defined—is a deed of love and kindness, but it doesn’t look like it, you know, to the pagan, the Gentile.

But Jesus is bringing forth justice to victory.

You know, in closing, illustration: Jesus, the exodus that he would accomplish. You remember the exodus? They come out through the Passover and they get to this river and the Egyptians are hot on their heels. And Moses parts the river, right? Parts the sea. And they go through it. They’re commanded to go through it. Imagine yourself there. You’re on the edge of this deep body of water. You got these two, miraculously, these two huge walls on either side of you. And Moses—God through Moses—commands you to go forward, man. That’s dangerous. That’s difficult.

We say, “Give us some miracles so we can walk by faith.” They were given a miracle, but they had to walk by faith. Or so we don’t have to walk by faith, but they had to walk by faith. That’s the way the miracle worked. They had to believe that those walls wouldn’t keep crashing down somehow. They had to believe that.

It’s dangerous. What I’m asking you to do: to significantly commit yourself to the passion of Jesus to do justice, okay? To bring justice to victory in small ways, in large ways, whatever ways. But to see it as part of your identity. That’s dangerous work for all the reasons I’ve said and for more. You know, justice—if we’re talking about justice and correcting systems of oppression, there are people in the Department of Education that ran into me, literally banged me in the hallway, hit me. A woman did. It’s going to be worse than that when we try to do justice in the context of a culture. It’s dangerous waters. It’s dangerous because we’re not sure we can get it right. We’re not sure we’re not going to turn—we might turn into social gospel. That’s dangerous to us. These are dangerous things to do as we go forward wanting to bring justice to victory.

But I’d ask you to consider: what choice do we have? The Egyptians are on our tail because we haven’t been acting like the people of God. He’s chasing us with them. And now he’s telling us, “Now look, the only way out of this thing is to wake up to who you are, Bruce Willis. You’re unbreakable. The church will survive. You’ll survive. Your relationship with God is intact. Now do what you’re called to do. It’s the only way forward.” And the end result of that way is the promised land and blessing. But you got to go into the water.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that you would be with us by your Holy Spirit and word, enabling us to know where to go in terms of doing justice and then to have the courage to step into situations that are dangerous for us for the sake of the gospel of Jesus. We thank you for reminding us today what the fullness of that gospel is. And we pray that you would continue to remind us of our participation in that work.

Help us, Lord God, to be characterized as men and women who do justice and as a church that works in cooperation with other churches here in Oregon City particularly, that we might do justice in Oregon City and in the other cities in which our parishioners live. Bless us, Lord God, as we offer ourselves to you as those who want to respond by committing to do justice. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.