Rev. Damein Schitter: Hello everyone.
Rev. Damein Schitter: This is Pastor Damian.
Rev. Damein Schitter: You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando.
Rev. Damein Schitter: At New City, we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life.
Rev. Damein Schitter: For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom.
Rev. Damein Schitter: Thanks for listening.
Gina Fickett: Please join me in praying the prayer of illumination.
Gina Fickett: Heavenly Father, may your word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.
Gina Fickett: Today's scripture reading is from Psalm 37, verses 27 and 28.
Gina Fickett: Turn away from evil and do good, so shall you dwell forever, for the Lord loves justice.
Gina Fickett: He will not forsake his saints.
Gina Fickett: They are preserved forever.
Gina Fickett: But the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
Gina Fickett: This is God's word.
Gina Fickett: Please be seated.
Benjamin Kandt: I would like to believe in God.
Benjamin Kandt: I simply can't.
Benjamin Kandt: That's a line from Ta-Nehisi Coates' book which is entitled we Were Eight Years in Power, and the reason he gives why he can't believe in God is he says that when I was nine, some kid beat me up for amusement and when I came home crying to my father, he said fight that boy or fight me.
Benjamin Kandt: He goes on to say at that moment my dad taught me that we live in a godless world and that there was no justice in the world except the justice we dish out with our own hands.
Benjamin Kandt: Happy Father's Day.
Benjamin Kandt: Welcome to Worship with New City.
Benjamin Kandt: We're going to talk about justice today.
Benjamin Kandt: Now, if that feels like that doesn't go hand in hand, consider this the Lord in Genesis 18, 19 says that he called Father Abraham.
Benjamin Kandt: He chose him to teach his children to keep the way of the Lord by doing justice and righteousness.
Benjamin Kandt: In other words, integral to being a father is teaching your children to do justice.
Benjamin Kandt: This is actually deeply relevant from a biblical worldview.
Benjamin Kandt: So what is justice?
Benjamin Kandt: Well, thomas Aquinas famously defined justice as to render to each what each is due.
Benjamin Kandt: To render to each what each is due.
Benjamin Kandt: That's good.
Benjamin Kandt: To expound that a little bit what justice is really.
Benjamin Kandt: It's giving people what they are due, whether provision or protection or punishment, whether provision or protection or punishment Surrender to each what each is due.
Benjamin Kandt: And so, listen, I want to do justice to justice, but I can't say everything there is to say this morning.
Benjamin Kandt: So next week will be kind of a part two of sorts, but this morning, really, what I want to get at is that I personally feel a growing ache to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with my God, and I want that for you too.
Benjamin Kandt: But if you're anything like me, there's something that happens when you sense that a call to do justice, you sense that call, but then you also hear and feel that something's a little bit off in our society's calls for justice, and so you feel conflicted a little bit.
Benjamin Kandt: And so what I want for you is I don't want you to give up on God's call to do justice just because there's probably some injustice in our secular society's calls to justice, tracking with that.
Benjamin Kandt: And so my intent for the sermon is to contrast Psalm 37's biblical vision of justice with our cultural moment, secular social justice models.
Benjamin Kandt: It's important for me because I don't want you to think that you're not able to do justice just because you disagree with what you see on your news feed.
Benjamin Kandt: And so what that means is, as we look at Psalm 37, we're going to see that justice belongs to the Lord, that he loves it, he defines it and he will bring it about.
Benjamin Kandt: And so, to that end, I have three points the motive of justice, the standard of justice and the goal of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: If you have a Bible or a device or your worship guide, go ahead and get Psalm 37 in front of you.
Benjamin Kandt: We're going to look closely at this text together this morning.
Benjamin Kandt: I want to begin in Psalm 37, verse 27, where our scripture reading started this morning.
Benjamin Kandt: This is what it says Psalm 37, 27.
Benjamin Kandt: Turn away from evil and do good, so shall you dwell forever, for the Lord loves justice.
Benjamin Kandt: So when we ask the question of the motive of justice, we're saying for what reason?
Benjamin Kandt: What should be the motivating principle as we do justice?
Benjamin Kandt: Well, I'm helped because Johannes Kepler, the 17th century astronomer, he wrote that in all of his science he was simply thinking God's thoughts after him.
Benjamin Kandt: I love that language.
Benjamin Kandt: That's a really great way to talk about the motive of disciples.
Benjamin Kandt: We, as disciples of Jesus, we're simply trying to think God's thoughts after him, feel what God feels after him, what makes God mad and sad and glad.
Benjamin Kandt: I want that to resonate in my own heart.
Benjamin Kandt: But we also want to love what God loves and hate what God hates.
Benjamin Kandt: And in Psalm 37, verse 28,.
Benjamin Kandt: It says the Lord loves justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Do you love justice?
Benjamin Kandt: Do I Like?
Benjamin Kandt: When you watch the news or scroll your feed, do you hear the cries for justice among your neighbors?
Benjamin Kandt: Does it move you?
Benjamin Kandt: This dates me a little bit, but the song that was a big deal when I became a follower of Jesus had a line in there which I loved which was break my heart for what breaks yours.
Benjamin Kandt: But instead we often plug our ears to the cries of justice because it's too hard for our own hearts to bear.
Benjamin Kandt: But the Lord loves justice.
Benjamin Kandt: This matters deeply to God and so therefore it ought to matter deeply to us.
Benjamin Kandt: But there is a limit to feeling God's feelings after him.
Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse eight.
Benjamin Kandt: It says this refrain from anger and forsake wrath.
Benjamin Kandt: He can be wrathful at injustice, but you all refrain from anger and forsake wrath.
Benjamin Kandt: Fret not yourself.
Benjamin Kandt: It tends only to evil.
Benjamin Kandt: Let me make that plain you can be unjust in your pursuit of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: The motive of secular social justice is often vengeance, bitterness, resentment and rage, but this text says that that tends only to evil.
Benjamin Kandt: Instead, christians are to never avenge ourselves but leave it to the wrath of God.
Benjamin Kandt: For it is written vengeance is mine.
Benjamin Kandt: I shall repay, says the Lord.
Benjamin Kandt: So how do you avoid vengeance in your pursuit of justice?
Benjamin Kandt: What does that look like?
Benjamin Kandt: Well, verse 5 puts it like this Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act.
Benjamin Kandt: He will bring forth your righteousness as the light and your justice as the noonday On June 1st, rev Reynolds was up here teaching us that commit your way to the Lord means to roll your life onto him.
Benjamin Kandt: So what does that mean?
Benjamin Kandt: What does it actually look like in practice to roll your life unto the Lord when it comes to our pursuit of justice?
Benjamin Kandt: Let me tell you a story about that.
Benjamin Kandt: Martin Lloyd-Jones was a pastor in the 20th century in London and one time, during World War II, lloyd-jones was preaching at Westminster Chapel and as he was preaching, a bomb was dropped by the Nazi Air Force, the Luftwaffe, and it was dropped on a building across the street.
Benjamin Kandt: But it was such an intense explosion that it caused dust from the ceiling to fall down on the congregation where he was praying.
Benjamin Kandt: He was praying in that moment, so what did he do?
Benjamin Kandt: He paused and then he just kept praying.
Benjamin Kandt: Later, in another sermon, he said about this particular instance.
Benjamin Kandt: He said I was never worried for a second about a man like Hitler.
Benjamin Kandt: It was enough for me to read Psalm 37.
Benjamin Kandt: That is so punk rock.
Benjamin Kandt: I love that.
Benjamin Kandt: We need preachers like that this day.
Benjamin Kandt: Where are they?
Benjamin Kandt: Listen, he was talking about verse 35.
Benjamin Kandt: He says this I have seen a wicked, ruthless man spreading himself like a green laurel tree, but he passed away and behold, he was no more.
Benjamin Kandt: Though I sought him, he could not be found.
Benjamin Kandt: Where is Hitler now?
Benjamin Kandt: Or Stalin, or Nero, or Herod, or Mao.
Benjamin Kandt: Where are they now?
Benjamin Kandt: Verse 36, quote behold, he was no more.
Benjamin Kandt: You see, imagine what it would take for Nazis to be dropping bombs on your city and saying I was never afraid of Hitler because I read Psalm 37.
Benjamin Kandt: What would that take?
Benjamin Kandt: How did Martin Lloyd-Jones do that?
Benjamin Kandt: How do we do that?
Benjamin Kandt: Well, in psychology there's this concept called a mutual mind state.
Benjamin Kandt: A mutual mind state is when you're like seeing your kids play and they fall and they skin their knees, and then they look at you to figure out if they should freak out or not.
Benjamin Kandt: In that moment, what's happening is their mind is syncing up with your mind, and your mind, if it's calm, regulates their mind and makes it calm.
Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 13.
Benjamin Kandt: It says this in our text the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.
Benjamin Kandt: Listen, if the Lord isn't worried about the future, neither should we.
Benjamin Kandt: Now the Lord looks to the future.
Benjamin Kandt: We want to feel his feelings after him.
Benjamin Kandt: He's not fretting.
Benjamin Kandt: Why are we?
Benjamin Kandt: But here's the reality is that God looks to the future and laughs, not because evil is funny, but because it has an expiration date.
Benjamin Kandt: And so we look at our father's face and we say you're not anxious, I'm not anxious Mutual mind state, but the ultimate freedom from anger, vengeance and anxiety is actually found somewhere else.
Benjamin Kandt: It's found in the cross of Jesus Christ.
Benjamin Kandt: I've been apprenticed under Rachel Denhollander in this way.
Benjamin Kandt: She was a gymnast and, in 2018, was the first woman to publicly accuse Larry Nassar of his heinous abuse, if you know that story, which led to hundreds of other women to come forward and share their own stories.
Benjamin Kandt: Now, after Denhollander did this, she actually wrote an article with her husband called Justice the Foundation of a Christian Approach to Abuse.
Benjamin Kandt: You see, she's a Christian.
Benjamin Kandt: I actually think she's in the PCA, our denomination, and she said she argues in this article.
Benjamin Kandt: I would read it.
Benjamin Kandt: It's great.
Benjamin Kandt: She says the way forward really is through this classic doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, which says that on the cross, jesus took the penalty for our sins so we could be forgiven.
Benjamin Kandt: She's saying that's the way forward for justice for victims of abuse.
Benjamin Kandt: I don't know if your mind went there.
Benjamin Kandt: Hers did, because she's trained and deeply immersed in a biblical imagination.
Benjamin Kandt: Now she gives four reasons why that's the case, why the cross of Christ can give both comfort and vindication for victims, and she says this?
Benjamin Kandt: Number one the reason is because the cross means that God hates evil and the injustice of abuse.
Benjamin Kandt: The cross says that.
Benjamin Kandt: So then, a victim's sense of injustice and desire for vindication it's actually upheld at the cross.
Benjamin Kandt: Injustice and unrighteousness are real and God hates them.
Benjamin Kandt: That's what the cross of Christ says.
Benjamin Kandt: But number two the cross shows us that forgiveness and justice can be friends, not enemies.
Benjamin Kandt: You see, jesus bore the divine wrath against sin on the cross.
Benjamin Kandt: So then, we are freed to forgive, because we know that every sin against you, every evil done against you, every injustice against you is either going to get what it deserves on the cross of Jesus Christ or in hell for an eternity.
Benjamin Kandt: That means that justice and forgiveness can go together.
Benjamin Kandt: They're not enemies, they're friends.
Benjamin Kandt: Number three the cross redeems power dynamics.
Benjamin Kandt: Think about the misuse of power in abuse.
Benjamin Kandt: But the cross redeems it because the strong God becomes weak to strengthen weak sinners.
Benjamin Kandt: You see, at the cross, the son of God sets aside his divine prerogatives and the strong becomes weak, so that at the cross, god can act for others, using his power to act for others to overcome evil, to uphold justice, to free the enslaved, to restore creation.
Benjamin Kandt: God himself perfectly identifies with the victim on the cross of Jesus Christ.
Benjamin Kandt: Fourth and finally, in her article she says the cross shows that both victim and perpetrator need forgiveness and justice, something often missing in secular social justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Both oppressor and oppressed need forgiveness and justice.
Benjamin Kandt: You see, the cross actually helps Christians to refrain from viewing criminals and abusers as the other and as fundamentally different from ourselves, because we know the seeds of every sin dwell in every human heart.
Benjamin Kandt: Den Hollander actually put this theology to work in the courtroom when she looked at her abuser in the eyes and she said quote I pray you experience the soul-crushing weight of guilt so that you may someday experience true repentance and true forgiveness from God, which you need far more than forgiveness from me, though I extend that to you as well.
Benjamin Kandt: More than forgiveness from me, though I extend that to you as well.
Benjamin Kandt: Where did she learn to do justice like this?
Benjamin Kandt: Well, she learned it from the only true standard of justice, which is the point two, the standard of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 27 with me again.
Benjamin Kandt: It says this turn away from evil and do good, so shall you dwell forever.
Benjamin Kandt: What is good and evil?
Benjamin Kandt: Who has that knowledge.
Benjamin Kandt: We all know that there is right and wrong, but we disagree where it comes from.
Benjamin Kandt: If we've evolved, then where do we get this sense of justice?
Benjamin Kandt: Vladimir Soloyev says it like this.
Benjamin Kandt: Vladimir Soloyev says it like this man descended from apes.
Benjamin Kandt: Therefore, let us love one another.
Benjamin Kandt: Do you hear the silliness of that?
Benjamin Kandt: We laugh, but that's what we're being told.
Benjamin Kandt: Why is it wrong to be violent, arrogant or oppressive?
Benjamin Kandt: If we live in a world ruled by the survival of the fittest, where the strong eat the weak, then why do we feel outraged when people use power to oppress others?
Benjamin Kandt: Why?
Benjamin Kandt: Who are you to tell me what's right and wrong for me?
Benjamin Kandt: Where do you get this idea of fairness or justice, of rights, if there is no God?
Benjamin Kandt: You see, secular social justice cannot give what it offers.
Benjamin Kandt: Let me just give you one example as a case study.
Benjamin Kandt: The best-selling author, yuval Noah Harari, says it like this in an interview with NPR.
Benjamin Kandt: The title of the interview is this why did humans become the most successful species on earth?
Benjamin Kandt: This is what he says.
Benjamin Kandt: Quote most legal systems today in the world are based on a belief in human rights.
Benjamin Kandt: But what are human rights?
Benjamin Kandt: Take a human being, cut him open, look inside you'll find a heart, kidneys, neurons, hormones, dna, but you won't find any rights.
Benjamin Kandt: The only place you find rights is in the stories that we have invented and spread around over the last few centuries.
Benjamin Kandt: They may be very good stories, but they're still just fictional stories that we've invented.
Benjamin Kandt: Did you catch that?
Benjamin Kandt: Without God, human rights are a fiction that we've invented.
Benjamin Kandt: Dostoevsky puts it like this if God doesn't exist, everything is permitted.
Benjamin Kandt: If all moral values are relative and social constructs, then how can you make the case that we all ought to treat others with love and not exploit them?
Benjamin Kandt: You cannot, if you'd rather.
Benjamin Kandt: Another philosopher, homer Simpson.
Benjamin Kandt: He says the truth is more of a hunch that you're willing to die for.
Benjamin Kandt: That's the basis of secular social justice a hunch that you're willing to die for, because rights don't exist.
Benjamin Kandt: You can't cut a human open and find them there.
Benjamin Kandt: They're just in the fictional stories that we tell.
Benjamin Kandt: Listen, since Genesis 3, human beings have been grasping for what's called the knowledge of good and evil.
Benjamin Kandt: In other words, secular social justice is built on this right to determine good and evil for ourselves.
Benjamin Kandt: But here's the problem Resistance to submit to God's definition of good and evil is itself the source of all evil and injustice in the world.
Benjamin Kandt: So what is the standard of justice?
Benjamin Kandt: Look with me at verse 30.
Benjamin Kandt: It says this the mouth of the righteous utters wisdom and his tongue speaks justice.
Benjamin Kandt: The law of his God is in his heart.
Benjamin Kandt: His steps do not slip.
Benjamin Kandt: Jesus taught us that out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
Benjamin Kandt: So how do we quote speak justice, verse 30?
Benjamin Kandt: Well, we need the law of God in our heart, verse 31.
Benjamin Kandt: You see, we need a transcendent moral reference point of good and evil.
Benjamin Kandt: Francis Schaeffer said if there is no absolute by which to judge society, society is absolute.
Benjamin Kandt: One of the questions I ask when I'm talking to people about the Christian faith and moral relativism is hey, do you think the Nuremberg trials were a good idea?
Benjamin Kandt: That's when Nazis were judged for their crimes against humanity by non-German cultures.
Benjamin Kandt: If everything's relativistic, how can one culture impose its values on another culture?
Benjamin Kandt: How can one culture impose its values on another culture?
Benjamin Kandt: That's the principle of multiculturalism.
Benjamin Kandt: It doesn't work.
Benjamin Kandt: If there's no transcendent reference point by which all cultures can be judged, then right and wrong is just whatever the society discerns it to be.
Benjamin Kandt: Here's the thing.
Benjamin Kandt: I think we don't want a standard outside of ourselves, because if there was one, we would realize we haven't lived up to it.
Benjamin Kandt: It's like that moment when you're driving in the car and you realize that you're speeding in a school zone and you do that little panic move, maybe slam on the brakes real quick.
Benjamin Kandt: That's what all of us experience existentially, if there's a transcendent moral absolute outside of ourselves by which we all must be judged.
Benjamin Kandt: Now, some of you might not agree with that.
Benjamin Kandt: I understand it, that's okay.
Benjamin Kandt: But I just want you to consider that maybe you haven't even lived up to your own standards of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: There's this illustration about if you had let's just imagine your whole life.
Benjamin Kandt: You were born and you had a voice recorder hanging around your neck and every time you made a moral judgment by which you bound someone else she shouldn't do that, he should really do this it just clicked on and started recording your own voice.
Benjamin Kandt: And then you die and on that great day when you stand before God as your judge, all he does is says can I see your voice recorder?
Benjamin Kandt: And he simply presses, play and plays back every one of your own moral judgments, every time you bound somebody else by what they should or shouldn't do.
Benjamin Kandt: And then he just looked at you and pointed at it.
Benjamin Kandt: How would you fare in that moment?
Benjamin Kandt: How do you feel right now?
Benjamin Kandt: That's our own standard of justice, not even God's standard of justice, which is much higher, much more exacting, much more pervasive in its assessment of our existence.
Benjamin Kandt: In our call to worship in Romans 3, it put this forward that Christianity believes that before God, every mouth will be stopped and the whole world will be held accountable to God.
Benjamin Kandt: That day is coming.
Benjamin Kandt: But listen, that day is not only just, it's actually humane.
Benjamin Kandt: It's humane because what it means is that there is no elitism before God, and if there's no moral elitism before God, then there ought not be any before man.
Benjamin Kandt: In other words, male and female, black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, oppressor and oppressed, all stand before God as lawbreakers in need of his mercy.
Benjamin Kandt: You know that you've received this just mercy because it will make you merciful in your pursuit of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Augustine of Hippo says it like this there is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future.
Benjamin Kandt: Let's look at that future together when we look at the goal of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: This is where we'll close.
Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 27 with me Turn away from evil and do good, so shall you dwell forever, for the Lord loves justice.
Benjamin Kandt: He will not forsake his saints.
Benjamin Kandt: They are preserved forever.
Benjamin Kandt: But the children of the wicked shall be cut off.
Benjamin Kandt: Where is justice headed?
Benjamin Kandt: This is a good question to ask your not yet disciple friends and neighbors.
Benjamin Kandt: You ask them a question, something like if your religion or your ideology was perfectly attained, what would that look like?
Benjamin Kandt: What's the end game?
Benjamin Kandt: That's the question we ask when we talk about the aim of justice, the goal of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Now, secular social justice can't agree on this, because for libertarians, justice means individual freedom.
Benjamin Kandt: For progressives, justice means fairness for all.
Benjamin Kandt: For utilitarians, it's maximum happiness for the maximum amount of people.
Benjamin Kandt: For postmoderns, it's subversing oppressive power.
Benjamin Kandt: Who's right, you see, for followers of Jesus, justice is heading somewhere far more beautiful than any of those, because it's not about a utopia that we build, it's about a kingdom that we inherit.
Benjamin Kandt: Look at verse 28.
Benjamin Kandt: It says this the Lord loves justice.
Benjamin Kandt: He will not forsake his saints, his saints.
Benjamin Kandt: They are preserved forever.
Benjamin Kandt: Because biblical justice believes that the goal of justice is actually the glory of God and the healing of all things under his reign.
Benjamin Kandt: That's the goal we're after.
Benjamin Kandt: That's the aim, the end, the telos of justice for followers of Jesus, and the Bible gives us a picture of that in that future in Revelation 7-9.
Benjamin Kandt: It says this there's a great multitude that no one could number, from every tribe, every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice.
Benjamin Kandt: Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the lamb.
Benjamin Kandt: This is where biblical justice is going Not merely peace, not only equity, but a multi-ethnic, multilingual, united people, forever reconciled around the throne of God Almighty.
Benjamin Kandt: That's the end, the goal of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: So I want to pause here for a moment.
Benjamin Kandt: I want to speak to our brothers and sisters of color in this room.
Benjamin Kandt: I simply just want to say I see you, I'm so thankful for you.
Benjamin Kandt: I want to name that because I think that there's a cost, an unseen cost, that you pay to be a part of a church that's majority dominant culture.
Benjamin Kandt: But you pay that cost and the rest of us are so grateful and we bless you, we honor you for being in our midst.
Benjamin Kandt: But why would I say that?
Benjamin Kandt: Do I say that because you know, right now, diversity is in vogue in our culture?
Benjamin Kandt: No, because if you study history, you realize that cultural values are fickle and flimsy like anything else.
Benjamin Kandt: I mean, just consider how many DEI departments were developed and ditched in the last five years.
Benjamin Kandt: No, I say that I can say that with joy, because Revelation 7-9 is what we're going for, it's the aim of our existence, all of human history is heading in that same direction and I want New City to get in on it.
Benjamin Kandt: A multi-ethnic, multilingual, united around the throne of God, people of God that are worshiping, saying salvation belongs to the Lord.
Benjamin Kandt: I want us to get in on this and so we can celebrate whatever diversity we have in our midst, because, as one scholar says it, the church does not merely have some kind of relationship to social justice, but rather the church is God's social justice, right here in our midst.
Benjamin Kandt: We are the people, what Martin Luther King Jr called the beloved community, the people who one day will cause mankind to say surely there is a God who judges on earth.
Benjamin Kandt: Psalm 58, verse 11.
Benjamin Kandt: So it's no accident that MLK also said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Benjamin Kandt: He believed that deeply, and because he believed in a God who judges the earth and makes all things new.
Benjamin Kandt: That's why three times in Psalm 37, it says for us, to quote wait for the Lord.
Benjamin Kandt: Now, that's not a passivity, that's not an inaction.
Benjamin Kandt: It's rooted in a confidence that we can act because God will act in our pursuit of justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Now, contrast that, because for secular social justice there is no moral arc to the universe.
Benjamin Kandt: If it in any way bends towards justice, it's because we must bend it with enough force from ourselves.
Benjamin Kandt: That's why secular social justice is so militant and unforgiving and belligerent and self-righteous and hypocritical, because it is imminent justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Ta-nehisi Coates said it like this there was no justice in the world except the justice we dish out with our own hands.
Benjamin Kandt: Now let me affirm something here.
Benjamin Kandt: We all share a longing for justice, all of us.
Benjamin Kandt: But Christians believe in a transcendent justice that will roll down like waters, because we believe, as we're going to confess in a little bit here, we believe that one day Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead.
Benjamin Kandt: We believe Psalm 37, verse 37, there is a future for the man of peace, but transgressors shall be altogether destroyed.
Benjamin Kandt: The future of the wicked shall be cut off.
Benjamin Kandt: What do we do with the coming judgment of God.
Benjamin Kandt: You can't read this psalm without finding it Verse 9, 10, 20, 22, 28, 34, 38.
Benjamin Kandt: It is all over the Bible.
Benjamin Kandt: The idea that God will not judge evil could only be invented in the secure suburbs buffered from the realities of human evil.
Benjamin Kandt: John Stott says it like this God's judgment is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations.
Benjamin Kandt: Only God's judgment can do justice to our cry for justice.
Benjamin Kandt: Someone else said it like this faced with a world of rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.
Benjamin Kandt: A God who would not judge, a God who is not angry at injustice, would not be worthy of our worship, because that God would not be good.
Benjamin Kandt: But if God judges evil, where does God stop Systemic injustice?
Benjamin Kandt: What about personal evils?
Benjamin Kandt: What about envy, bitterness, lying lust, gossip, greed?
Benjamin Kandt: Where does God stop For the self-aware among us?
Benjamin Kandt: We realize that if God judges evil, god must judge me, and that gives us a sense of fear of the Lord.
Benjamin Kandt: But in that moment I want to go back to what MLK said.
Benjamin Kandt: Does that mean that the beloved community is just better than everybody else?
Benjamin Kandt: No, we're simply those who have stopped running from God and started running to God.
Benjamin Kandt: This is verse 39.
Benjamin Kandt: The salvation of the righteous is from their own doing.
Benjamin Kandt: It's not what it says.
Benjamin Kandt: The salvation of the righteous is because they're a little bit better than their neighbors.
Benjamin Kandt: No, the salvation of the righteous is from the Lord.
Benjamin Kandt: He is their stronghold in the time of trouble.
Benjamin Kandt: He is their stronghold in the time of trouble and with God as our stronghold, we wait patiently, expectantly for justice to roll down like waters.
Benjamin Kandt: Let me give you a picture, as we close here, of what that might look like.
Benjamin Kandt: On January 1st 1863, abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves free in the United States of America.
Benjamin Kandt: But in Galveston, texas, slaves wouldn't hear this news until June 19th 1865, over two years later, when Union General Gordon Granger arrived and he read General Order no 3, which says, quote all slaves are free.
Benjamin Kandt: We call that Juneteenth and it's actually coming up this Thursday.
Benjamin Kandt: We'll celebrate it nationally.
Benjamin Kandt: It's a holiday.
Benjamin Kandt: It's worthy of marking and honoring and celebrating, and so what happens here is that freedom had been won, but it took time for the news to spread.
Benjamin Kandt: That's the moment that we live in now.
Benjamin Kandt: We live here and now, where Jesus has already won.
Benjamin Kandt: He has defeated all of the sources of injustice.
Benjamin Kandt: On the cross and in his resurrection, jesus has suffered more injustice than any human in the history of humanity.
Benjamin Kandt: But Jesus will also bring the sword of justice on every human in the history of humanity, except for those who flee to him as their stronghold.
Benjamin Kandt: So God could be both just and the justifier of all who have faith in Jesus.
Benjamin Kandt: But listen, the good news of that victory is still making its way into every corner of this world and into every corner of our hearts.
Benjamin Kandt: We're living right now between proclamation and fulfillment, between the cross and the crown.
Benjamin Kandt: And so what do we do?
Benjamin Kandt: What do we do in the tension of the times that we live in?
Benjamin Kandt: Psalm 37 says it like this we turn away from evil and we do good.
Benjamin Kandt: We commit our way to the Lord.
Benjamin Kandt: We trust in him and he will act.
Benjamin Kandt: He will bring forth our righteousness as the light and our justice as the noonday.
Benjamin Kandt: We live now in light of the king who will bring justice and healing in his wings.
Benjamin Kandt: Let's pray, king Jesus.
Benjamin Kandt: We look to you now because you alone are worthy.
Benjamin Kandt: You alone hold together all of the cries for justice from all creatures on planet earth, you yourself being the victim of the greatest injustice that's ever happened that the perfect, spotless, innocent son of God was slain and murdered on a cross because of an unjust trial.
Benjamin Kandt: But you did it for us and for our salvation, and so we look to you with hope.
Benjamin Kandt: Give us your spirit of justice to enable us to lead us, to give us the motive according to the standard and towards the goal that you have for justice in your world.
Benjamin Kandt: We pray this in your name, Jesus.
Benjamin Kandt: Amen.