Trusting the Righter of Every Wrong

Let's take our Bibles and turn this time to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 18. We'll read the first eight verses. Then Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

He said, In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to Him with a plea, Grant me justice against my adversary.

For some time He refused, but finally He said to Himself, Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming.

And the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off?

I tell you, He will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? With so many visitors here this morning, a word of introduction would be in order.

We're studying a series of sermons on the attributes of God. Believing that there is a living God, we want to know what is He like.

And His word has been instructing us. And we've been two weeks now on the justice of God. And so I'm asking this morning, Is there a God of justice ruling over the world, ensuring that every single sin is punished, that every right is rewarded, and every wrong is put right?

And the Bible shouts yes, hundreds of places from Genesis to Revelation. The living God is a God of justice.

But if we go by what we see with our eyes, we may come up with a different answer. We may be quite confused, because justice is not always seen to be operating in the world.

God's administration of justice is not what we might expect, or even what we might want. And therefore, it's something that we need to take by faith, because God says it in His word.

Remember in Acts 27 and 28, Paul is on board a ship, they're on their way to Rome, 275 other men with him, they're sailors, soldiers, and prisoners.

Paul's one of the prisoners. He's going to Rome to be tried in Caesar's court. And remember the violent storm that breaks out upon them for 14 days. They're tossed, they think for sure, they're goners.

And then the bow of the ship is stuck fast in a sandbar, and the crashing surf begins to break the ship in pieces. They all jump overboard.

Some swim to shore, some float on pieces of the ship. But they all reach land safely. And they find themselves on an island called Malta.

And here, the pagan islanders showed them unusual kindness. They built a fire for them because it was raining and cold. And so Paul, the practical man he is, is out gathering up sticks, and he brings a big bundle of sticks to the fire.

And as he comes up and throws them on the fire, the fire itself has driven a snake, a poisonous snake, out of the brush. And it fastens on Paul's hand.

And there it is, hanging there on his hands. And the islanders saw it and said to each other, Ah, this man must be a murderer.

For though he escape from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live. They must have known that some were prisoners. I don't know if they wore white and striped outfits.

But they realize some of these men are prisoners. And they're beginning to wonder, wonder what his crime is, or wonder what he did. And as soon as they see the deadly viper upon Paul's hand, they conclude, we know what he did.

He did something of a capital offense. He must have taken another's life because he deserves to have his own life taken. And the long arm of justice is caught up with him. Justice has not allowed him to live.

Isn't it interesting that even pagans have a sense of justice operating in this world? Pagans without the word of God. A sense of justice.

And that's exactly what we would expect from what we read in our Bibles about conscience. A sense of right and of wrong and of consequences for both. Of an accountability that we all must give.

Of a judgment to come. Romans 1 and 2 speak of this. But without the light of Scripture informing us, this mere sense of judgment in our conscience quickly turns to superstition and nonsense.

As we see here, Paul is no murderer. He's a Christian missionary being tried for his faith in Jesus Christ. Boy, did they miss that one. And so, Paul shakes the snake off into the fire.

And the islanders are just watching him with their eyes as big as saucers. They're just waiting for him to swell up and fall over dead from the poison that they've seen so operative on their island.

But nothing happens to him. And after waiting a long time, they change their minds and said he was a God. He's a murderer.

He's a God. The fickleness of man, but also, we see how prone we are to misread the justice of God. Justice is not always administered in this world the way that we think it should be.

Snakes do not only bite murderers and criminals. We'd like a world like that, wouldn't we, where all the bad things happen to the bad people.

But justice is not being administered in this fallen world in such neat and tidy compartments, is it? Car accidents do not just kill the wicked, but also the righteous.

And little girls die of cancer, and murderers live long on the earth. And our court systems that are committed to administering justice, they do not always get it right either, do they?

Sometimes we hear someone put into jail and who spent the better part of his life in prison, and then some lost fact has been brought to the surface, and lo and behold, they find that he's not the one that was guilty.

And he's served all this time. They put the wrong man into prison. It's a great injustice to punish the innocent, to be blamed for something you didn't do.

More often in our day, the injustice that happens in the world is the other way around, that the guilty go unpunished. They get off the hook. They go scot-free. People get away literally with murder.

It's not right. It's injustice. And the truth is, and we all know it, that in this world, injustice happens. And it happens a lot.

It happens every day all over the world. People are not working. Instead, they're working the welfare system, taking what is not theirs.

Insurance fraud, fraudulent claims costing billions, shoplifting, scammers, so that I go to the senior citizen home and I see plastered all over their walls these big posters warning the senior citizens not to give out social security numbers and personal information.

Why? Because there's scammers preying on the elderly and getting away with it. Contractors who move into a disaster area and take advantage of the needy. Abuse.

It's estimated that in one out of every three homes, women are abused. Children are abused. Workers treated unfairly. People robbed, raped, murdered, falsely accused, slandered, lied about, cheated in business deals, in dividing of an inheritance.

And often, often, the guilty party gets away with it. For everyone that is punished, there are a thousand that aren't.

And just as the bad deeds of the wicked are not always punished, so the good deeds of righteous people are not always rewarded. This, too, is an injustice.

So I'm not playing the prophet when I say to you that injustice has happened to you and will go on happening to you. It's part and parcel of life in a fallen world with sinners.

sinners. But the important question is, what are you doing with these injustices that are done to you? How are you handling them? What do you do about them?

And this is an important question because if you're not handling them correctly, they'll lead you into all sorts of sin. Now, injustice has long been a source of trouble for the righteous, even for the righteous.

It's led them to question the very justice of God. Because by the looks of things, one's, no one's judging justly.

And so many say to themselves and to others, where is the God of justice? Malachi 2.17. Where is he? This one, the Bible says, is judging justly.

Reality seems to mock the Bible's claim. The preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes wrestled with the reality of righteous men who get what the wicked deserve and wicked men who get what the righteous deserve.

Chapter 8 and verse 14. And it's not just minor league believers. It's not just the young, immature Christian that wrestles with the justice of God in this fallen world, but it's the likes of a holy prophet like Jeremiah, the one we've been reading for a year.

And he says to the Lord, you're always righteous, O Lord, when I bring a case before you, yet I would speak with you about your justice. I want to have a word with you about your justice.

why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease? Jeremiah 12, 1. We all remember Asaph in Psalm 73, that leader of the Old Testament worship of God, and yet he nearly lost his faith when he saw the wicked prospering and he, the righteous, being afflicted.

And Job, that most righteous man on all the earth, according to God's estimate, he had trouble with the justice of God. Remember, in all the afflictions that came upon him in a day, there were Sabaeans and Chaldeans involved, and they came and they made off with his livestock, and they weren't made to pay it back.

And while he was living a righteous life, they get off scot-free and prosper for it, and he suffers the loss of wealth and children and health and friends accusing him of being a wicked man.

And though he starts out right, without charging God with any wrongdoing, yet as this injustice wore on, he struggled for meaning in life and came to question the very justice of God.

God has wronged me and drawn his net around me. Though I cry, I've been wronged, I get no response. Though I call for help, there is no justice.

Chapter 19, 6 and 7. As surely as God lives, who has denied me justice. 27, 2. Job is justifying himself rather than God.

Eli, who therefore rebukes him, it is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would pervert justice. Can he who hates justice govern?

Will you condemn the just and mighty one? The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power. In his justice and great righteousness he does not oppress.

And then the Lord himself speaks with Job. And he says, Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? And we remember when the Lord is done dealing with Job, he's humbled in the dust.

He puts his hand over his mouth and he says, Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.

Have you put the justice of God in that category of things too wonderful for you to know? You better have it there or you'll have problems living in this world where injustice often has the upper hand.

When we see the likes of a Job struggling with the justice of God, we'd better take warning. Our sense of God's justice must not be determined by what our eyes see in the world around us, but rather it must come from what our eyes see in his own sacred scriptures.

What does he say about his justice? justice? As in so many different matters, so in this matter, we walk by faith and not by sight.

And so your faith in the justice of God must be sufficiently anchored to the word of God if you would survive all the storms of injustice. So what do you do when you're wronged on the playground, children?

What do you do, dads, when you're wronged in a business deal? What do you do when someone says something that's unfair and wrong about you? Whenever you're treated unjustly, you need to revisit the justice of God.

You need to rehearse the verses. You need to recall them to mind. You need to be convinced afresh that there is a God of justice ruling over all, that good deeds and bad deeds do matter to him, that he is keeping track and he will sort it all out in the end, there is a coming day of judgment when the books will be opened and every sin will be punished and every good deed rewarded and every bad one and every wrong put right.

There's a day coming when the first will be last and the last will be first, when the meek will inherit the earth, when the proud will be brought low and the humble will be exalted, when the scales of justice will be perfectly balanced for every moral being in God's universe.

The judge is on his throne, each will get their due, he will judge the world in righteousness and his people with equity. Psalm 98, 9.

Now what I'm trying to say to you in this long and rambling introduction is this, that you need to have the justice of God screwed down tightly in your heart and mind if you would handle injustice correctly in this world.

It is very important, this is one of the major applications of this doctrine and why we're taking a whole Sunday for it, that if you would survive in a world of injustice, you need to be absolutely confident that your God is a God of justice.

And so whenever you're wronged, you must not only revisit the justice of God, but you must revisit the God of justice, the personal living God who is just.

Now in our country, thankfully, when people are wronged, they can take their case to court and they can seek justice. And compared to the court systems in other lands, we have a wonderful system of justice.

And if you believe you were not treated fairly and got a fair trial, well then you can appeal to a higher court and you can appeal all the way up to the supreme court of the land if your case is deemed worthy.

Well, when Paul was being tried, he wasn't getting a fair shake, so he appealed to Caesar. And so he took his case to the highest court in the Roman Empire.

And that's why he was on that boat going to Rome. But even there he did not get justice and his head rolled. What do you do when you don't get justice?

Here in this parable that Jesus told in Luke 18, is a poor widow. She suffered some injustice from her adversary. We don't know what it was, but being a widow, she was easily taken advantage of in that society.

She had no husband to protect her, to defend her, to stand up for her. So she takes the matter to the judge where she could expect to receive justice, right?

That's his job, to administer justice. So she comes and says, give me justice against my adversary. But this judge was an unjust judge.

Those are Jesus' words in the story. He neither feared God or cared about man. He didn't care that God hates injustice, and he didn't care whether this woman was mistreated.

It was no concern of his. And so he didn't do anything about it. She didn't have any money to bribe him. She didn't have any clout in the community to reward him with a favor later on, coming back his way.

And so he ignores her. But she just kept coming back to him with the plea, grant me justice against my adversary. And Jesus says he didn't have a care about justice, but just finally to get her off his back, as we say.

He said, I will see that she gets justice. Now there's a lesson to the parable. If the unjust judge would finally bring about justice for this poor widow, how much more will God, the just judge, bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?

Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly when the Son of Man comes.

This is a parable taught us that we might not quit praying, that we should always pray and not give up. And part of the prayer life of the righteous is envisioned as being a cry to the God of all the earth, to give us justice.

Are you treated unjustly? Are you wronged? This is the answer. You take it to the Lord in prayer. You start out with the Supreme Court.

You take it to the highest judge in the land, in heaven, in earth. I'm not saying that there are not times to go through the process of the legal system in our nation.

I'm not talking about that. Whatever you do there, you must do this. You must first come to the Supreme Court. You must lay your case before the God of all the earth.

earth. And we must say to him, you know all things. You know what she said. You know what he did. You know my heart. Grant me justice in this matter.

And so we bring our appeal straight to the high court of heaven. And he will bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night. Will not the judge of all the earth do right?

Abraham asks in Genesis 18, 25. And so we present the case to him and we leave it there with him, trusting him to give justice.

Now that's a theme that we see throughout the Bible. Back in the time of the judges when there were no kings yet and there were just judges. Jephthah was one of the judges as we studied. And the Ammonites made war on Israel, falsely accusing them of taking their lands.

Wasn't true. Jephthah, the judge of Israel, said to the Ammonite king, I have not wronged you, but you are doing me wrong by waging war against me. Let the Lord, the judge, decide this dispute this day between the Israelites and the Ammonites.

He appeals to the Lord, the judge, let him decide. And he did decide and gave a tremendous military victory to the Israelites. Many years after Jephthah, Jehoshaphat is now king of Judah and again the Ammonites.

And along with them, Moabites and Munites, a vast army came and made war with Judah. And Judah had not wronged these countries in any way when they came into the promised land, yet here they come with their accusations.

And Jehoshaphat takes his case to the Supreme Court of Heaven and pleads for justice. He says, O Lord, see how they are repaying us by coming to drive us out of the possession you gave us as an inheritance?

O our God, will you not judge them? For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.

O judge one, O just one of the heavens and the earth. Will you not judge them? And the Lord did judge them. And again, gave a tremendous military victory to Judah.

Jeremiah, remember the message we've been reading for the last year? He had a message a lot of people didn't like. In fact, some of them disliked it so much that they wanted to silence the messenger by killing him.

And the Lord showed him that some of the men of Israel were plotting to take his life. So Jeremiah prayed, O Lord Almighty, you who judge righteously and test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them, for to you I have committed my cause.

I commit my cause to you. You judge them. You're the righteous judge. David, when King Saul was pursuing him to take his life, this is right in the best years of a young man's life.

Twelve years given to running. That's not fair. It's not right. It's injustice. King Saul and 3,000 soldiers are after David and David's now hiding in a cave.

And Saul goes into the cave to go to the bathroom and while he's in the cave, David sneaks up behind him and unbeknownst is able to cut off a piece of his cloak, piece of his robe.

And so when Saul leaves the cave, David comes out and shows him the piece of his robe and he identifies himself to Saul. Why do you listen when men say, David is bent on harming you?

Just now I could have killed you, but I only cut off a corner of your robe. Now understand and recognize that I am not guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion. I've not wronged you, but you are hunting me down to take my life.

May the Lord judge between you and me and may the Lord avenge the wrongs you have done to me, but my hand will not touch you. May the Lord be our judge and decide between us.

May he consider my cause and uphold it. May he vindicate me by delivering me from your hand. Do you see the pattern in all these accounts? David's calling on the Lord to look and to consider, to weigh the evidence, to come down with a judgment because he knows he's just and he's willing to let God be the judge and he commits his cause to him and leaves it there.

That's how David handled mistreatment. That's how he handled injustices, being wronged, and he was wronged a lot, and so you find much of this in the Psalms that he wrote.

He called on God to judge, and in Psalm 37 he talks to us and he tells us how to handle mistreatment from the wicked, those who have plotted against us or slandered us or calling us evil.

He says, commit your ways, Psalm 37, commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he'll do this. He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn.

He will make the justice of your cause shine like the noonday sun. So be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath. Do not fret. It leads only to evil. David's telling you when you're done wrong, you're going to be tempted to get angry.

You're going to be tempted to fret and get all uptight and nervous and worrisome. You'll be tempted to get even, to do back to them what they did to you.

Revenge. The answer, commit your way to the Lord. The Lord who is just. Trust in him to judge for you and to make clear the justice of your case.

Are you innocent? Then you have nothing to hide. You come into the presence of the judge and you say, I commit my case to you, judge, and he will vindicate you. So be still before him and wait patiently for him.

You can afford to wait patiently. He's sure to bring justice. He is a God of justice. You see how important it is to rest in God's justice when we're wronged.

It's no small part of the answer to not letting it get to you, not letting it eat you up on the inside and consume you and get you all bent out of shape. Trust in his justice.

All else leads to evil. Perhaps the apostle Paul was thinking of this very passage in Romans chapter 12 verses 17 through 21.

Paul himself a man who is often mistreated and he tells us how to handle injustice is done to us. Romans 12 17 do not repay anyone evil for evil.

That'll be your first plan. That'll be a strong temptation. That will be suggested to you over and over. Give them a dose of what they've given you.

And so his very first word is do not repay anyone evil for evil. But he doesn't just stop there. He doesn't say, come on, just don't don't pay them back. No, he goes on to say, be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.

They do evil, you do right. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written, it is mine to avenge, I will repay, says the Lord.

Do you see the place of the justice of God in learning how to handle injustice? Don't you get even, why not? Because God is the one who does pay back.

Justice is his dealings, he's the judge, vengeance is his, he will pay back. It is mine to avenge. So on the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, you feed him.

If he's thirsty, you give him something to drink, and in doing this you'll heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So every time you're mistreated, whether it be big or small, evil is trying to overcome you.

The evil that they did to you is trying to beat you. Don't let it. Don't let it get the best of you. Don't let it conquer you.

And a sure sign that it is won is when you get even. loser, you've lost the battle. You've been overcome by their evil.

Instead, every time you're mistreated, you're called to overcome that evil with good. Not to be conquered by it, but to conquer it by doing what is good, returning their evil deed with your good deed.

That's victory. That's overcoming. That's being more than a conqueror. But notice the role of God's justice in all this. What's to help you to do good back to them?

Why don't you have to be the vigilante who takes the law into your own hands and meets out the punishment yourself? Because you know there's a judge on the throne. And you know he will do his work just fine.

So this lets us see that any revenge on our part is unbelief. Really. It's believing that God's not a fair judge.

And he might mess up on this one. So I've got to make sure that I give justice out. I think I can do a better job than you on this one Lord.

It is blasphemous isn't it? But that's what we say when we get even. We say to God scoot over. I think I'm a better judge than you. No no.

Paul says he will repay. So you go on doing good. It reveals the heart of the vigilante. The man who takes the law into his own hands and gets revenge personally.

It's unbelief. So we must be absolutely convinced brethren that God is just and will administer justice perfectly. We can trust him to do so.

That's crucial to our handling injustices biblically. If I am the least bit suspicious that God is going to go soft on crime in the end, then I'll be tempted all the more to take matters into my own hand and get even.

If I'm suspicious at all that God's really not a just God. So to the Thessalonian believers suffering mistreatment and persecution, Paul writes in his second epistle chapter 1 and verse 5, all this is evidence that God's judgment is right.

That God's judgment is right. And as a result, you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are suffering. God is just. He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you.

And he'll give relief to you who are troubled and to us as well. And this will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven and blazing fire with his powerful angels. You see, the justice of God is the guarantee that all wrongs will be put right.

freezes us to respond in a correct way to mistreatment. The apostle Paul was mistreated not only by out and out enemies, but he had enemies in the church.

Remember, as we studied through 1 and 2 Corinthians, especially 2 Corinthians, we saw that he was misjudged, mistreated, and slandered by some in Corinth. And how does he handle the injustice?

How does he keep from being consumed by it and paralyzed from it? Well, he tells us he appeals to the highest court and trusts the justice of God to get it right. 1 Corinthians 4, 3-5, I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court.

Indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time.

Wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time, each will receive his praise from God.

So wait for the Lord. Withhold your ultimate judgment. The judge is coming. And then everyone will get what they have coming because he can see to the heart of a man.

He can see to the motives that move the man's hands and lips. And so he can judge aright. Wait for the Lord.

It all comes down to this. Patiently waiting until the judge returns. Patient waiting. Can you wait until then for justice to be served?

Can you go on praying and pray your whole life long waiting for the judge to return to meet out justice? There are voices under the throne of God in heaven still crying out, how long, oh Lord, until we get justice, we who have been beheaded for the gospel?

How long till you avenge our blood? Can you wait? Oh, when we get revenge, we show our impatience.

Not only our unbelief, but our impatience. We can't wait for the justice of God. We have to deal it out ourselves. Proverbs 20 and verse 22. Do not say, I'll pay you back for this wrong.

Wait for the Lord and he will deliver you. So in your desire for justice, brothers and sisters, wait, wait for the Lord. You say, that'll mean the rest of my life without that money that could have been mine.

That $10,000 that I was cheated on. And you're thinking of all the things that you will miss out on because of that $10,000. Dear brother and sister, what is your life?

You got another 10, 20, 30, 50 years? What do you have? Eternity is a long time for the Lord to make it up to you. You can afford to wait.

He has all eternity to right that wrong. The just judge will make it right. For the Lord longs to be gracious to you.

He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him. Isaiah 30 and verse 18. you'll never regret having waited for him.

You will for sure regret having taken matters into your own hands. The wheels of God's justice may sometimes move slowly, but they miss nothing.

They miss nothing. So that's how we deal with injustice. As we present our case before God, the God of justice, the judge, and we leave it with him. We trust him.

And oh, the freedom that you enjoy. Whatever the injustice to know, it's going to be dealt with. I don't have to worry about that. I can put it behind me.

I can move on because he's going to make it up to me. Faith enables you to put it behind you. Faith enables you to get on with your life. How many are stuck in life?

You know them. You've met them. You work beside them. You're related to them. They're stuck in life and they're brooding over the injustices that they've suffered and they've never moved beyond them.

The money that they lost. The lie that was spread about them. The mistreatment in a marriage, in a family, at work, in a church, at school. And the injustice done to them comes to define them.

It controls them. It enslaves them. And because of it they've grown cynical and bitter and revengeful and unforgiving. They've been overcome with evil.

But oh, the wisdom of God in calling us to come to the judge and to lay our burden there, to trust him, and then to be free, to go on loving our enemies, to go on doing good to those who speak evil against us.

We must know the justice of God, and then we must trust the God of justice. Some of you have suffered far more than I have, and I can barely enter into your sufferings.

Have you thought that there's a reason behind why sufferings of injustice have hit you so? Have you ever thought that God means to glorify his justice in your life in a way that's peculiar to you?

That you have this opportunity to show off how just God is by committing! all this injustice to him and believing he will take care of it.

Know how you speak well of God when you trust him for his justice to be served. confident that the judge of all the earth will get it right.

I want to set before you one who suffered more injustice than you will ever suffer. because no matter how much you suffered it doesn't compare to the injustice that the Lord Jesus Christ met in this world.

Remember that Ethiopian eunuch traveling along reading Isaiah the prophet and Philip hops up alongside of him and finds what he's reading. What was he reading? Isaiah 53 8 In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.

Who is he speaking of here? Philip says he's speaking of the Messiah and we know him to be the Lord Jesus the Messiah and in his humiliation he was deprived of justice.

Here he is the judge and he steps off of his throne as it were in heaven and he comes to earth and he suffers humiliation and in his humiliation the judge is deprived of justice.

Do you know he's able to sympathize with you in your injustice? He's able to say I've been there I know what it feels like. He was deprived of justice the just one.

He was falsely accused he was lied about he was robbed of justice in his trial he had a crowd pleasing pilot sitting on the judgment seat.

He was spit upon beaten and flogged mocked and insulted the holy and righteous one stripped and nailed to a cross and made to appear in front of all onlookers to be just another low down criminal.

the shameful and painful death of the cross and I want to know what enabled this man Jesus this perfect man Jesus to handle such injustice and the apostle Peter tells us that when they hurled their insults at him he did not retaliate and when he suffered he made no threats instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly 1st Peter 2 23 he entrusted himself to the judge and he knew him to be a just judge and so he got on with loving his enemies and dying for our sins and not being overcome with evil he overcomes evil with good notice that it was the justice of

God that had no small part in that process he entrusted himself to him who judges justly and in so doing he's left you an example that you should follow in his steps when you're mistreated to this you were called you who are suffering injustice because Christ suffered for you leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps and trust yourself to him who judges justly leave it with him seen any good movies lately read any good books lately what makes for a good storyline is it not when we see truth and right for the moment being pressed down and evil and wickedness ascending and reigning and it creates a certain tension

I believe there's something in the heart of every man and woman that's why it appeals to us there's something it's not right for it to be that way and then as the story comes to the conclusion we see right triumphing over wrong and every bone in our body every feeling and nerve in our our being says that's the way it's supposed to be you see story writers have learned to tap into the story writer the God who is writing his story in history and there's the tension all throughout the world all throughout the ages since the entrance of sin where it seems that the wrong is ascending and reigning on the throne and right is oppressed and put down it seems as if evil would steal every cause for happiness from the heart of man and then we see Jesus Christ the writer of every wrong putting things right in the end we've read the last pages of the book and we see that he wins though the wrong seems off so strong

God is the ruler yet Jesus who died shall be satisfied and earth and heaven be one may the Lord add his blessing to our thoughts together on the justice of God and may we all take refuge in his wonderful savior let's pray our father would you keep us from being conformed to this world from thinking like they think lest we take revenge and pay back evil with evil keep us from just judging things by our eyes that would tell us there is no God of justice and we pray especially for those who are severely tried like Job was like Asaph like Jeremiah would you draw near to them and convince them afresh this morning that you are the just judge of all the earth and that they can safely confide and entrust themselves to you that you are the one who judges justly so enable them by your mighty power to overcome evil with good oh

Lord help us we're we're going to be mistreated this coming year would you help us to remember these things that you've spoken to us that as soon as we've we've been mistreated as soon as that word's been spoken against us as soon as the injustice is felt that we'll be called back to you the God of justice and we might appeal to you and leave our case at your feet oh help us in these things we're weak but we do want to glorify you we want a world to see that we believe you to be as just as your word says you are so help us we ask in Jesus name amen