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Will you pray with me?

 

Word of God, speak even now.

Amen.

 

I remember as a kid—I don’t know if it’s cause I was picked on for having red hair or having old parents or just being a shrimp—but I was pretty sensitive to what felt like injustice.

 

I wanted the rules to be fair. I wanted the portions to be equal.

 

If I was taking a shot and you hit my elbow, I wanted the whistle to blow. If I studied for my B+ and you cheated for your A-, I wanted the teacher to know. Or if you stole my lunch in the third grade or stole my brand new Prince tennis racket in the sixth grade or my money from my dorm room in college, I wanna know and get my stuff back!

 

You can relate to that, right: that longing for justice?

 

Don’t we all to varying degrees share this longing for wrong things being made right—for broken things being made whole, for justice being served and injustice being resolved?

 

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we share this longing. And I don’t think it’s the fruit of the evolutionary process.

 

Our longing for justice is intrinsic to us; it’s rooted in our having been made in the image of the Just One Himself.

 

I mean there are many things that the Scriptures claim about God—that He’s loving, that He’s merciful, that He’s sovereign. But one of the most prevalent characteristics is that He’s Just, He’s fair.

He’s all about squaring up and settling up. He’s all about keeping confidence and keeping promises:

always being impartial when it comes to male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile. No one, no one is automatically outside of His love or beyond His reach.

 

He’s just, faithful and true, consistent and proper. You can count on Him! He’s trustworthy never selfishly holding grudges against people, but rightly holding contempt for things that fall short of His glory, holding contempt for things that fall short of His best, for anything that falls short of His design.

 

God is passionate to rectify and resolve, to cure and heal, to remedy and repair. God is just.

 

And our longing for justice is rooted in His unwavering commitment to justice. And that’s good.

It helps us understand a bit of who we are and that’s always helpful. And frankly it sets us at ease when we realize that there is a God who’s aware of the injustices all around us and He’s both able and committed to doing something about it.

 

That’s good. Isn’t it?

 

But here’s what’s not good.

 

If we’re honest, injustice isn’t just out there in the world. Injustice isn’t just something we’re victims of. It’s something we’re contributors to: broken promises, hurtful words, deceit—injustice. Sadly, we receive it, but to varying degrees all of us promote it. Don’t we? Since the Fall: falling short of God’s design, sin. It isn’t just all around us; it makes its home within us:

 

Selfishness, pride, boasting.

Harboring hurt, excluding others or exposing others through gossip.

Wounding others with our words or with our glances.

Allowing our eyes and our hearts to consume images that degrade.

Wanting what we haven’t been given, wishing others didn’t have what we lack.

Needing to be in control. Independence. Self-reliance. Unbelief!

 

I mean this is us, right? Injustice. And it’s great news that there’s a God in Heaven that sees all these things and He’s determined to deal rightly and justly and fairly with all of them. But it’s not good news at all for us when we realize that we also are included in the crosshairs of His campaign for justice: that since we are perpetrators ourselves, His just judgment, His righteous indignation is rightly aimed at us as well. Not because He’s a vindictive God who struggles to contain His rage. No, because He’s Love, and Love is committed to justice. God’s justice—His opposition to sin—is not opposed to Love; it’s an expression of it!

 

And with justice there’s always a price to be paid to set wrong things right and to make broken things whole.

 

I suppose He could have just looked the other way, just ignored sin. But would that have been love?

Would you feel safe? Would you feel secure and taken care if God just let injustice go unopposed?

 

I don’t think so.

 

Yet therein lies our dilemma. I mean we have this unyielding longing for justice on the one hand, and we have a Just God on the other which is great, but our own sin makes us vulnerable to His wrath whenever it comes!

 

So we want His justice, but we really don’t!

 

You know we don’t talk a lot about sin anymore, do we? Frankly, in a culture of relativism like our own where we’re increasingly influenced by agnosticism and atheism, definitive things like sin—this is right, this is wrong; this is good, this is evil—that sounds strange and almost archaic: almost like a passing fad like mullets and shag green carpeting or cell phones that were like this big.

 

Sin is kind of fading as a cultural category isn’t it? I mean when we’re a religious people, sin is important, but now, you know, we’ve “evolved,” we’ve “advanced,” we’ve “progressed,” we’ve “moved on,” and so for many sin is just a relic of the past.

 

But perhaps even more troubling, I think sin is even losing its force in us within the Church.

Perhaps that’s due to the influence of our therapeutic culture—not wanting to offend or be offended.

Or perhaps it’s because we’re so prone to making comparisons and contrasts: you know, evaluating ourselves in the light of one another. I feel pretty good about myself because so and so has it worse, or I feel significant because of my position which is higher than so and so, or I must be rich because so and so is poorer, or I’m skinny because so and so’s heavier, or I’m smarter, I’m good looking, or I’m funny, and on and on it goes, right?

 

And so when we come to sin, it’s easy for us to say, “Well, I’m not really all that bad because so and so’s worse.” And we tend to rank sins in our minds, and so if I haven’t committed any of the really big sins—whatever those might be, then I’m not really all that bad. And if I’m not really all that bad, then I’m certainly not all that concerned about the penalty that hangs over my head as a sinner!

 

I mean, let’s face it, the average person thinks they’re a pretty good person. And they may be, comparatively speaking, but here’s where that valuation is flawed: you’re not my standard, and I’m not yours. God Himself is the one we are to imitate, for we are made in His image which means His character is what we are to be reflecting with one another and in the world.

 

And I’ll tell ya what: I may never have taken someone’s life; I may never have taken someone’s wife; I may never have embezzled money or cheated on my taxes, but if Stephen Kirk stood on his own before the Judge today, the court would be in session a very long time as one exposing, excruciating piece of evidence after another was made admissible and as the charges against me mounted.

 

You see, when the Scriptures talk about sin and being a sinner, they never talk about how much you’ve sinned as though the less you have, the better. No. After the fall there has only been one kind of person in the world: those who sin and that’s it!

 

You know, I was thinking today, “I’m no better than Bin Laden.” Can you say that? Granted, some of my sins may affect less people, but honestly we have both shattered the heart of God! Time and time again I have offered a poor, often unrecognizable, reflection of His glory in the thoughts that I’ve thought, in the words that I said, and the choices that I’ve made, in my reluctance to serve, in my contempt of others, and in my moments when I feel I deserve more or I deserve better.

 

Friends, all of us should be quaking in our boots; we should be awestruck in the face of God’s justice!

 

We want His justice, but we really don’t!

 

Could you stand?

 

This is why tonight is so important! It’s why today is so good!

 

God is Just! But He’s also merciful. He cannot look at your sin and then look the other way and be just! But He can take His Justice upon Himself and be both Just and merciful. And in the person of Jesus on the cross, He did just that!

 

And the Scriptures never tire of proclaiming it!

 

As you listen to the Word of God, may you be washed in His mercy.

 

He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. You’re to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sin. He was delivered over to death for our sin. Christ died for our sin according to the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sin to rescue us. Christ has appeared once at the end of the ages to do away with sin by his own sacrifice. Christ was sacrificed to take away sin—the sins of many people. Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sins. By his wounds, we have been healed. Christ died for sin: once for all, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God. Jesus Christ, the just, is the atoning sacrifice for our sins—for the sins of the whole world. Know that Christ appeared so that he might take away our sin. This is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. Glory to Him who loved us and has freed us from our sin by his blood.

 

It was a GOOD Friday when the justice and mercy of God co-mingled on a cross: justice satisfied, the penalty for your sin paid in full.

 

You don’t have to carry that burden anymore! It’s just ours to consider the cross, to reflect on the cost, to confess, and to give thanks for mercy.

 

Amen.