20/20 Vision Series -- Biblical Justice: A Vision for Justice

Well, for those of you who don't know me, I'm David Spickard, and I'm one of the elders here at Christ the King, and it's really an honor for me to walk through our scripture this morning. But before I do that, I want to do a couple of things.

One is Jeff last week spent some time at the beginning of our service talking about the resilience of our church over this last year and just the way that God has worked in and through us in light of COVID and all the challenges that we've had. And I just want this morning to honor our pastors and our staff for all that they have done this year behind the scenes, much of which we do not know, the kind of perseverance and faithfulness in leadership.

I'm reminded there are so many things that we can talk about that they have done. For this year, it's been really stressful for pastors and church leaders to navigate everything that's related to COVID. And I think about this last year ago, this week, Jeff started every morning, six days a week, for five months, morning devotions online because he wanted us to be reminded of the goodness of God in light of all that was going on. I just feel like we need to give them a round of applause for all that they have done. It's just been a real blessing.

And then the second thing I want to say is on behalf of the elders, we are really excited about our new vision. By God's grace, Christ the King, we will be a people deeply transformed by the Gospel who plant churches, become cross cultural disciples, and pursue justice starting in Downtown Raleigh. We're so excited about it because we believe it reflects what we've always been, that these have been dynamics about our church that we want to make sure are in writing and that we put stakes in the ground. It's bold. It requires us to really depend on Jesus.

And we also believe that it's central to the Gospel. It's about what it means to be a follower of Christ. It's not something extra. So we are thrilled with the way we are intentionally walking through this and how this is being owned throughout our Church, how we see this being a part of our DNA—not just something we do, but who we are. We also recognize that we're not going to have all the answers, that we're not experts in this, and it could be messy and challenging, but we trust that God is going to be with us and teach us and grow us together as we take this journey together.

So we're excited, and today we get to continue our study on our vision as we're walking through what it means to pursue justice. And you see the diagram that's in your worship guide and maybe on the screen of how this vision lays out. Jeff has preached over the last two weeks about what justice is and how God feels about justice, and I want to build on that this morning by giving us a vision for justice.

And we're going to do that through a very small verse in Proverbs, Proverbs 11:10. You guys have come on this Sunday where you have the all-time record of the shortest amount of Scripture that we've ever had in the history of Christ the King. We're even going to read just half the verse of Proverbs 11:10. This is the NIV version, which you will find in your worship guide, and as is our custom, let's join together as we read Proverbs 11:10.

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices. — Proverbs 11:10

How about we do that again?

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.

Let me pray. Jesus, we thank you that you're with us. We thank you that your hand is on your church and on each one of us and that you're speaking to us even now. Your presence is with us. We pray this morning that you would give us a vision of what it means to be men and women of justice so that we can be about your work and your kingdom in the world. We give you honor and glory and praise. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Overview of the Message

Well, the structure of my sermon is very simple. I want to give a brief overview, a brief review of where we've been so far about justice and how we think about justice. I want to walk through our Scripture, Proverbs 11:10, to give us a vision for justice, and then I want to give us four steps of what it looks like for us to pursue that vision for justice.

What Is Justice?

So first, where have we been? What is justice? Now, we've been talking about these words: Mishpat and Tzedakah.

Mishpat is the Hebrew word for justice in the Bible that means rectifying restorative justice—meaning everything is as it's supposed to be. So if you do something wrong, you're punished; if you do something right, you're given your due.

And then there's the other word, tzedakah, which means righteousness, which means everything is in right relationship with one another. We're in right relationship with ourselves, with each other, with God and all of creation.

And so whenever you see in the Bible, when you read justice and righteousness together, that is mishpat and tzedakah, and that's God's original definition of social justice. It's what Jeff did a couple weeks ago when he talked about "Under Pressure" and then "Ice Ice Baby." I'm not going to sing for you guys this morning like he did, but that is God's original definition. He came up with the concept of social justice. Relationships, tzedakah, that's the social piece. Mishpat, justice, everything as it's supposed to be, social justice. Now, social justice is extremely central to who God is.

We see in Isaiah 30:18:

For the Lord is a God of justice.

It's not just what He does, it is who He is. He's actually naming Himself in this verse. In Isaiah 61:8, we see:

I'm a God who loves justice, for I, the Lord, loves justice.

And then we see in Jesus, when Jesus came on earth, in the very first sermon that He gave in Luke 4, He describes what He came to do. He came to justify us with Himself so that we have a right relationship with Him, that we are completely justified because of what He's done for us on the cross. And then He came to provide mishpat and tzedakah throughout the earth. And so when we read in Luke 4, when He opens up the scroll and He says:

I came because God has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

That is God's call on Jesus to come and bring justice and righteousness throughout the earth. So His Father, as His followers then, that's what He commands us to do. And we talked about this last week, Micah 6:8:

What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

And not only that, doing justice is a sign of the authenticity of our faith. Again, we talked about this last week, and the idea of it's a proof of our faith. And we see this in 1 John 3:17:

But if anyone has the world's good and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?

See, this is incredibly important. It is a question of whether God's love is inside of us, the extent to which we care for those in need. So there is a one-to-one correlation between the strength of our faith and our desire for justice. So if you ever want to know if your faith is authentic, take a peek at how we feel about those in need. Do we have compassion that wells up inside of us?

We don't have compassion and then God gives us faith. God gives us faith and then He wells up in us a compassion, a desire for those who are hurting and broken, and that is the way we can understand the authenticity of our faith.

So justice could not be more central to who God is and what He's about. And therefore, it could not be more central to who we are and who we are about.

And so I want to ask you this question: Do you see yourself as a man or woman of justice? Just as God said, "I'm a God of justice," can you say, "Hey, I'm a man of justice. I'm a woman of justice"? Hey, my name is David. I'm a man of justice. How does that sit with you? How do those clothes fit?

It's interesting because we might feel like we're not worthy, but we are worthy because God has empowered us to be His ambassadors in the world, proclaiming justice and righteousness in the world. Therefore, we can have a cape. We can put our cape on, man of justice, woman of justice, whoever is your greatest superhero that you ever wanted to be, you can put on that cape. But God also gives us a towel because the kind of justice that He's talking about comes with a towel, one where he washes his disciples' feet, where we come and we serve. If you love Jesus and have been justified by him, then this is who you are. You are a man or woman of justice, and that's what He's called you to be.

Understanding Justice Through Proverbs 11:10

So if that's our identity, then how might we have a vision for justice? So that leads us to our scripture in Proverbs 11:10. It's a short verse, but it packs a punch:

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.

For us to understand what's going on in this verse, I want to unpack the key words. First, the righteous. Who are the righteous? If you remember at the beginning, I mentioned mishpat and tzedakah. Tzedakah is righteousness. This word in the Hebrew is tzaddikim. It's the plural version of tzadakah, and it refers to people.

Doctor Amy Sherman, in her book Kingdom Calling, which I highly recommend, describes the tzaddikim as people of power, wealth and influence in a community. So this word is used all throughout the Old Testament to refer to people of power, people of wealth, and people of influence in a community who steward their prosperity not for themselves, but for the blessing of others. And they steward everything that they have.

And when I say everything, I mean everything. Their money, their time, their relationships, their networks, their home, all of their possessions. They steward them for God's peace or shalom, a sense of wholeness, and justice, mishpat, to make everything right.

So the tzadakim don't steward what they have out of guilt and shame. And this is really important for people who most all of us are in a position where we have some level of wealth, power and influence, and we feel like we can feel guilty for what we have. Instead, they steward it out of their creative imagination and faith, knowing that all that they have comes from God.

So this goes way beyond the idea of just giving back or the traditional idea of charity, where we give to those in need out of our excess. This is whole life stewardship of all that we have to create fairness, generosity, and equity. So that's the tzadakim.

Now, second, the word rejoice. This is an extremely important word. This is the only time it is used in Scripture. It is a wild, unbridled, exuberant celebration. This is May 8, 1945, VE Day, Victory in Europe, when millions of people across the world ran to the streets for a wild celebration when Germany surrendered to mark the end of World War II. This is June 19, 1865, when over 250,000 slaves in Texas wildly celebrated all across the state because Union soldiers showed up in Galveston, Texas, letting them know they were free, even though they had been freed two years before from the Emancipation Proclamation, but the word hadn't gotten to them in Texas. And so they ran wildly throughout the state celebrating their freedom. We call this Juneteenth, which is commemorating the actual end of slavery in the United States. And this is April 4, 1983, when Coach Jim Valvano ran wildly across the court looking for someone to hug when NC State won the national championship.

You get the picture. This is, I cannot run as fast as I possibly can to get to the street, to celebrate wildly with people. It even has a war connotation, which is the idea that the war is over, our oppressors are gone, and we have won.

When it says the city, it means the whole city, meaning people at the top and people at the bottom, which means even those who are the poorest of the poor or those who are most marginalized are dancing in the streets. And why are they rejoicing? What does the verse say? The righteous are prospering. The righteous are gaining more wealth. The righteous are having things go well with them. The righteous are getting more power and more influence.

Now, let's stop and consider that. Does that make sense? The rich are getting richer. The people of power are gaining more power. Instead of people being resentful, angry, discouraged, the whole city, including even those who are most marginalized, most overlooked, are dancing in the streets. Why? Because the tzadakim, when the tzadakim win, everybody wins. The tzadakim, people of power, wealth and influence, use their resources not for themselves but for the pursuit of God's peace and justice. And when they do that, the entire city, everyone rejoices.

And Amy goes on in her book by saying, The city is marked with beauty, unity, security, a lack of violence, wholeness, hope, comfort, economic flourishing, sustainability, and ultimately peace with God. After the last year, I'd like to live in a city like that. Wouldn't you? We all would.

So the question for us is, how can we be the tzadakim? How might God use each one of us to make our whole city rejoice? Whether we have a little or a lot, all of us we have a measure of power, wealth and influence so that we can be a people with a vision for justice and steward everything that we have so that our city can rejoice.

Now, there's a lot that we can say about what it looks like to be the tzadakim. But I want to give you four qualities based on what we see from the ultimate tzadakim, Jesus. The ultimate one who's righteous and how he pursued justice. And here are those four qualities:

First, we see the whole playing field. Second, we build cultural competency. Third, we give power away. And fourth, we take bold and courageous action.

Seeing the Whole Playing Field

First, we see the whole playing field. Now, I grew up playing basketball, and one of the first skills you learn when you play basketball is how to dribble. And this applies if you're learning soccer or other sports like that. For those of you who play basketball or maybe soccer, what did your coach say to you when you were learning how to dribble? Do you remember? What did you say? Look up. Keep your head up. Right? It's amazing when you watch people dribble soccer, basketball, hockey, they don't even look down. You can't look down.

Because if you're a point guard for a basketball team and you're bringing the ball up, you've got to not only know what you're going to do, you've got to be able to see the whole court. You've got to know what all your players are going to do. And you've got to know the opposition. Now, when we are confronted with injustice, our natural tendency, our first question usually is, "What am I going to do? How are we going to fix this?" But I want to submit to you that that should not be the first question we should ask. We need to ask the question, "What do I need to see?"

Jesus was a master at seeing. When He looked at others, He did not just see them, He looked right through them and He knew them. And we see this in Matthew 9:36:

Seeing the people, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. — Matthew 9:36

The Sadducees don't just live in their own world with their head down. They have their head up and can see things around them that others can't see. And they see themselves, they see others and they see their community.

So for themselves, they are very self aware. They understand their need for God, their desperate need for God and the need to be justified and the ways He has made us to be ambassadors for Him, His representatives in the world. They realize their unique value and giftedness. They understand their sin, their sins of commission and omission that we talked about a few weeks ago. They understand their blind spots. They're okay to unearth their internal biases. They don't get defensive about that. And they embrace their vulnerability. They see vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness.

They're in tune with others. They know what makes others tick. And they are great listeners. One of the best ways we can pursue justice, and I am going to speak in general for guys like me, we could be a lot better listeners. We can just sit and listen and be people who ask good questions, listen to know, be present, to follow through and be people who show up, people that others can rely on.

And they see their community, particularly those who are hurting and materially poor. I love the picture in Matthew 15 where Jesus describes Him going up on a mountainside and He sat down. And great crowds came to Him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and they put Him at His feet and He healed them. Jesus positioned Himself on the side of the mountain so He could see the community and He could see all the needs that were coming to Him.

Two years ago, in April 2019, Raleigh received another accolade as a city. We have a lot of accolades of the best place to live and work in America. And this time we were ranked—you're not going to believe this—we were ranked number three, third in the world, for the best quality of life. Can you imagine? We were number three behind a city in Australia and a city in New Zealand, which means we're number one city in The U.S., according to this publication, for the best quality of life in The U.S. That same week, that very same week, the New York Times ran an article called "The Neighborhood is Mostly Black, The Home Buyers are Mostly White," exposing the growing gentrification in Raleigh and the lack of affordable housing in our city. Currently, Raleigh is short 60,000 affordable housing units. Recently, Raleigh ranked forty-eighth out of America's 50 largest cities in upward mobility, which means that if you are born poor in Raleigh, you have a high likelihood of staying poor in Raleigh.

So which city do we live in? The one with the third highest quality of life or the one that has a shortage of affordable housing and one of the lowest rates of upward mobility? The Sadducees make sure that they see and are intimately connected with both. They are students of history, they understand how we got here, they understand the complexity of these issues. They recognize nuance and don't just give easy answers to hard problems. And they are intentional about exposing themselves to people and places in their city often overlooked.

I want to encourage you, one of the first steps you can take to pursue justice is simply to take a drive around our city. Just go on a drive. Go to the places you rarely see, particularly those where people in material need live. Learn the neighborhoods, the street names, the schools, the history, the businesses, the churches, go shopping there, eat at the restaurants there, keep your head up, and make sure you see the whole playing field.

Building Cultural Competency

Number two: The Sadducees build cultural competency. To be honest, we should be awesome at this. We should be incredible as followers of Jesus at crossing cultural lines, not because we want to be relevant or considered woke, but because of two main reasons. There's probably many more reasons, but I want to give you two.

One is we understand the concept of Imago Dei—that everyone is created in the image of God. Therefore, not only does everybody have extraordinary worth and value, but it also means that each of us carries with us aspects of God in our vast array of color, personalities, gifts and talents. So if we only spend time with people who are like us, we miss out on seeing and experiencing the fullness of God. And if that happens, we miss out on knowing God completely, which is our biggest need in life.

Our biggest need in life is to know the Creator of the universe completely, and God rests in each one of us as image bearers of God. If we only take a slice of who we are as a people, then we only engage with only a piece of who God is.

The second reason we should be experts is Jesus, right? The Sunday school answer. He was a master at crossing cultural, racial, social, ethnic, political, economic and gender lines. He crossed a huge gap by becoming man—God becoming man, Emmanuel, God with us—and getting proximate to us. And then in all his dealings with people, you see him being intentional to cross cultural lines.

We saw this when Danny preached a few weeks ago with Jesus and the Samaritan woman, and how Jesus was so intentional about crossing the line of gender, faith, economics, culture, and race in just that one encounter with the Samaritan woman. And what I love about that story is the verse we often may overlook in that story of Luke 4, which is Luke 4:4, and it says:

And he had to go through Samaria. — Luke 4:4

If you know the context, he really didn't have to go through Samaria. He wasn't in a hurry. Jesus was never in a hurry. Jews always went around Samaria. Always. Why? Because Samaritans were hated foreigners, half-breeds. They did not want to associate. You think racial injustice or disparity in our world is tough, and it is. It was nothing like Jews and Samaritans. Jews always went around, didn't ever want to be in the presence of a Samaritan. And what did it say? "And he had to go through Samaria."

Why? Because he wanted to uplift the Imago Dei, to help us understand everyone's dignity, to offer grace, to know the history of how we got here, to continue to speak truth. And in that encounter with the Samaritan woman, the Gospel went beyond Jerusalem—from the Jews to Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.

If you look at your world and you find that you're mostly around people who are like you—same education, same color, same neighborhood, same belief system, same age, same economic status—I want to challenge you to take a step. Take a "he had to go through Samaria" step. Be intentional about where you put yourself in places where people are different from you, where even you are the other or the only one in the group. And watch God expand your understanding of Him so that He can help you know Him fully and completely and experience His fullness.

Sadakim Give Power Away

Number three: Sadakim give power away. Now, this is a tough one. Our culture these days is all about power—who has it and who doesn't have it. And the idea is that if you have power, particularly if you acquire that power unjustly, it is your responsibility to give it away, to equal the playing field. And while that can make sense and is right in many situations, we need to be careful with that picture of giving away power.

Because oftentimes we are thinking of authoritative, dominating, lord-it-over-you power—power over someone. And just redistributing that type of power doesn't solve anything. And in fact, it makes everything worse. If we who have been oppressed demand power for those who have been oppressive, and that power is a dominating, authoritative, lorded-over-you power, then we, the oppressed, simply become the oppressor, lording our power over other people. And now we are in a vicious cycle that we can't get out of.

But the power that Jesus demonstrates is a much different power. It's a disarming, uplifting power—a power that causes us to go low, to serve, to decrease so that others increase, and even to disadvantage ourselves for the sake of others.

Jesus did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but He emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant and He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. — Philippians 2

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you might by his poverty become rich. — 2 Corinthians 8

Sadakim know that all their power and influence comes from God, and it's an emptying power—a power where we die to ourselves, where we disadvantage ourselves. So success is not found then in the way the world measures success, where success is based on how we compare ourselves to others, on who's the best, who has the most, who's achieved the most.

No, success comes by emptying ourselves for the sake of others so that all people flourish, again, particularly those who are broken, hurting and overlooked. And we see this when Jesus said:

Whoever loses their life for my sake, will find it. — Matthew 16:25

And then when Paul says to the Philippians:

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. — Philippians 1:21

So when we all get to the point where we want to lose and die to ourselves, then everyone wins, including us. There's no zero sum game where there are winners and losers. All boats rise. The pie gets bigger.

Now this can be extremely challenging, particularly if you are someone who has really been hurt and been abused by power or oppression. How is it possible to turn the other cheek and recognize, too, the need for justice and accountability and how important that is? That's why I think for me the civil rights movement was so powerful in Martin Luther King's leadership. He demanded justice from the oppression for people of color. But he led a non-violent movement that respected all people, even those who were being oppressive. And so the strategy was to stand and resist. And because of that, so much progress has been made and we all know that a lot more needs to be made.

I also think about Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for thirty-eight years, who decided to learn the language of Afrikaans, the language of his oppressors, to build mutual respect. And then that became the conduit for him to lead South Africa out of apartheid. And then I think, of course, Jesus who took on the ultimate condemnation, oppression and died a sinner's death so that we might have life.

How do we follow Jesus' example and become poor so that others might become rich? We want to lose, and that's okay. Because we understand we operate from a different success, a different paradigm. Up is down, left is right, the kingdom of God last is first, right? When I think of that, I think of having to forgive people who are hard to forgive, people who have harmed me, and what it looks like for me to forgive them. I think about laying down my preferences for the preferences of others, sacrificing something that I love, and ultimately letting go of my money in a way that hurts.

Much of the injustice we see in our world today is deeply connected to the abuse of power and also the love of money, which often power and money are synonymous. If we want our city to rejoice, we're going to have to disadvantage ourselves, give away power and be overwhelmingly generous with what God has given us, particularly our money.

Bold and Courageous Action

Alright, finally, take bold and courageous action. And I will conclude with this. Jesus' ultimate act of justice was to go to the cross, and at the cross he paid the price for our sins so that you and I can be completely justified and forgiven and experience his justice and righteousness. And as followers of Christ, we are commanded to take up our cross and follow him. So this compels us to be people of action. We can't just talk about justice. We have to pursue it.

It's bold and courageous action because taking action to pursue justice is not easy. It's why we don't do it. It's much easier to just sit and let other people do it instead of being the one to pursue justice ourselves. We'll be misunderstood, we'll have to make sacrifices, people will criticize us, it will be frustrating, it will feel like going three steps forward, five steps back, one step forward, eight steps back, five steps forward, one step back. It's like beating your head against the wall. And we may never see the fruit of our action. What we hope for, that rejoicing city of all those qualities I mentioned earlier, we might not see, but our children may see it, or our children's children, their children's children's children. But we operate with a sense of urgency today so that that can be realized in those generations to come.

It's also bold and courageous because we need to dream and think big. We need to have big dreams and big ideas. And that's why I love and am so inspired by our partnership with Mount Pleasant Worship and Outreach Center. Pastor Philip Walker and his congregation saw gentrification coming to the neighborhood where they ministered, saw real estate prices going way up, people moving into downtown and recognizing that those prices would not be affordable for their people who have been residing in that community. And so they proactively started buying up properties. And now they are putting together and building a $12,000,000 affordable housing project on Sawyer Road to provide 150 affordable housing units for people in their community. For that small church, that is a big vision. That is stepping out in faith and believing that God can do far more than we can think or imagine.

This can feel overwhelming and paralyzing. We see all the issues that we've talked about over these last weeks.

They're messy, they're challenging and they can feel like we don't know what to do or they feel paralyzing. But pursuing justice just starts with one small step. Again, I go back to Jesus and the Samaritan woman and how that one encounter with that one woman brought the Gospel to an entire people. One intentional action, one purposeful conversation, one unlikely new relationship.

So that's what I want to challenge us with this morning. What is that intentional action? What is that purposeful conversation? What is that unlikely new relationship for you and me? You and I just have one life to live here on Earth, and I don't know about you, but I'd like for it to be about justice and righteousness.

It just says Jesus came to do mishpat and saddakah—to create foretastes of God's kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And we do so looking forward to the day when justice and righteousness will be perfected and we will have a wild, unbridled celebration. It's going to be a party, y'all, in the new heavens and the new earth. We are going to be dancing in a city that is perfect with the God of the universe, the hope of the world and the God of justice. Amen?

When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices. — Proverbs 11:10