Be a Voice for the Voiceless | Proverbs 31:8–9

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Well, good morning, South. How are you? It’s great to be here with you. And I also welcome those of you who are joining us online.

As Alex said, I’m Angela Dunn, and I just have the real humbling honor of being one of the pastors of Connection and Formation here at South. It’s my privilege to get to wrap up our study of Proverbs that we’ve been doing most of the summer.

Now, yes, it is the book of Proverbs 31. So before some of you go, “Yes, I love the Proverbs 31 woman,” and the others of you go, “Oh, the Proverbs 31 woman,” we’re not going to be studying that today.

Instead, we’re going to be looking really specifically at Proverbs 31:8–9, which essentially says, “Be a voice for the voiceless.” Be a voice for the voiceless.

Well, this is me, four years old. We were living back east in a little tiny town called Irvington-on-Hudson. It is a little bit outside of Sleepy Hollow. It’s kind of a magical place, especially in the fall.

I was four years old, and there you start kindergarten at four. I was really excited because my mom told me I was going to be taking the bus for the first time. Very excited. Also, I was really into fashion at four. I had let my mom know, “I’ve already laid out everything. I’ve picked out my dress, and I’ve picked out a scarf for extra flair.” You know, it was the ’70s. So I was ready to go. I was absolutely ready to go.

The morning came, and I got on the bus, and it was a beautiful experience. Then the afternoon came, and I was so ready to get back on the bus and tell Mom what a great day it was. I got on, and everything was amazing until he got on.

Until he got on.

He was a few years older than me. He was bigger. And on the way home from school, he started picking on a little kid. It wasn’t me, but I started looking around and trying to notice, “Who’s going to say anything? Is anybody going to say anything? Is the bus driver going to say anything?”

He was just driving and looking in his rearview mirror. None of the other big kids were going to say anything. And so I thought to myself, “Well, I guess I’m going to have to say something.”

A little presumptuous at four, but, you know, I had spunk.

I just felt this sense of injustice, this outrage that I hadn’t felt before, because this big kid was pretty big and the other kid was another kindergartener.

So I decided that I was going to confront him. And I thought, “This can’t be too hard. I’ve seen my mother do it a hundred times, right? This can’t be too hard.”

It turns out that this big kid and I lived on the same street. So I got off and he got off, and I called out his name. I walked up to him and I said, “You better stop that. That was really mean. That’s wrong, and you better leave that kid alone.”

I was so proud of myself. And of course, I immediately anticipated that he would just kind of bow and be like, “I understand the error of my ways. I will stop. You are correct.”

But instead, this giant of a kid looked at me, put his hands on his hips, leaned down, picked up a giant pile of leaves, and dumped them on my head.

I was stunned. I didn’t see it coming. I thought it was going to work out like it always had for my mom. But instead, I just stood there. I was dumbstruck. I was a little paralyzed, and shame crept in because I wasn’t able to stop him. I wasn’t able to stop him.

When things like this happen, it’s so easy to look the other way, to stay quiet, or just kind of take care of number one.

But when this happens, we want a true authority. We want a real authority to come in and not only punish the wrongdoer and set them right. We want the person who’s been the victim to be restored. We’re looking for restoration.

We don’t just want the big kid to stop. We want this kind of restoration. We want justice. That’s what we’re looking for: justice.

I think we all encounter situations like that in life where you’re either seeing someone being mistreated or you’re the one being mistreated, ignored, or steamrolled.

Some of you might stand up like my four-year-old self. That might be your natural inclination, to step right in and say something. Others of you, like my older self, might be a little timid, might contemplate just kind of walking away. You might freeze like I did when I was four, and sometimes still do.

But at the heart of it, what we’re really wondering is, “Is this my responsibility to step in here, for myself or someone else? Is this my responsibility?”

Proverbs 31:1–9 is wise instruction to a king from his mother. Mothers often give wise advice. And she basically tells him, as king, it is absolutely your job to protect the vulnerable and uphold justice. So don’t let the things of the world, like drinking or sexual indulgence, distract you from that very important responsibility. Don’t let it distract you, my son.

Here we’re going to focus on Proverbs 31:8–9:

“Open your mouth for the people who cannot speak, for the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, and defend the rights of the poor and the needy.”

You see, God long ago gave Israel a litmus test. Basically, he said however they cared for the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, or the poor was how they cared for him.

Often scholars call these four the quartet of vulnerability. Over 40 times in the Old Testament, God explains that the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the poor are his heartbeat, making it clear that taking care of the defenseless, the voiceless, is absolutely at the very heart of God.

In the ancient Near East, society was built on family, land ownership, male patriarchs, and it was built that way for legal protection and economic livelihood. So the widow had lost her protection and her provider. The orphan had no family, no legacy, or advocate. The foreigner or the immigrant had no land rights or tribal backing. The poor lacked capital to survive economic hardship. You were absolutely at the mercy of the powerful in order to survive.

In law codes of the time, like King Hammurabi’s of Babylon, if a nobleman injured a slave, he didn’t have to face justice. He just had to pay the slave owner a fine.

That was shocking to me. He just had to pay a fine. Human worth was tied directly to social status and royal power.

But let’s look at what God, the God of the Israelites, in Deuteronomy 10 tells Israel:

“For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords. He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed. He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. So you too must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.”

So we look at Yahweh and we see that he’s not just this king who instructs kings to protect people, although that is true. Instead, here what he’s saying is that he is commanding all of his people to protect the vulnerable and the voiceless because he is declaring that they are made in his image and that every single human life, being made in his image, is valuable.

Look at who Yahweh, this God, reaches down to rescue. Throughout Scripture, he sees Hagar in the wilderness. He hears the groaning of the slaves in Egypt. He defends the widow, the orphan, and he declares every single human life, rich or poor, outsider or insider, foreigner or native, status or no status, they all bear his divine image.

I love what Tim Keller says: “Our God has all power, but he loves to use it on behalf of the people at the bottom. His care for the poor and vulnerable is his calling card.”

Wow. I love Tim Keller.

So let’s look at verses 8 and 9. We see here I’ve highlighted “rights” and “judge.”

I confess I’m going to take you on a little tour of Hebrew. I promise it will be short and not painful. But in Hebrew, God uses active and dynamic words to describe things.

While we might read the word “right” or “judge” and think of a giant courtroom and a robed judge and attorneys and everyone being quiet, and then the judge just kind of handing down a verdict, a little detached, this is not at all the scene being portrayed.

The first word here is din. Din means cause, which is a legal advocate who does what he can to step into the courtroom and fight for somebody who has absolutely no voice in the court.

Tied to the word din is shaphat. Yep, it’s a funny word, right? Shaphat in verse 9 means judge. And while our modern view of the judge is kind of distant and just puts down edicts and laws and verdicts, that’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re talking about a magistrate in ancient Israel who was an active leader who stepped into chaotic situations to make things right. He had the authority to do that, to make the decrees and step in. To shaphat means to step into the middle of brokenness, to take authority and actually restore order, safety, and peace to the community.

So while din is the legal plea on behalf of the powerless, shaphat is the active authority that steps in to break the powers of oppression and set people free.

But I want to alert you to an even larger picture of God’s justice outside the courtroom.

Often in Scripture, justice and righteousness go hand in hand. You simply can’t do justice without righteousness. These two concepts work in tandem to describe a life and society completely aligned with God and his character.

The first word is tzedakah. It means righteousness, and it refers to having a right relationship with God first this way, and as a result, therefore, a right relationship with our neighbors. It’s the character, the integrity, the ethical standard of living. It’s treating others with the God-given dignity they deserve because they are made in his image.

Now the next word, and I promise it’s the last Hebrew word, is mishpat. It refers to this practical, action-oriented application of the standard of tzedakah. It means actively stepping into society to protect rights, to defend the weak, and correct wrongdoing.

So God’s justice isn’t just about stopping the bad guy, the bad woman, the bad group, whatever you want to call it. It’s about healing victims as well. Mishpat uses retributive justice to confront oppression, but it flows into restorative justice through protection, through advocacy and restoration, turning a legal consequence into a real community renewal.

I love what Tim Mackie says. Most often in the Bible, mishpat refers to restorative justice. It means going a step further, actually seeking out vulnerable people who are being taken advantage of and helping them. But mishpat involves way more. It means taking steps to advocate for the vulnerable and changing social structures to prevent injustice.

Zechariah 7 is an example of this. The people in Israel basically come to God. They send delegates to the priests and they say, “We kind of want to know about all these routines of fasting and our calendar of worship and things like that that we’ve been doing for decades. What does God think?”

So they’re basically asking God what I sometimes ask him: “God, are you happy with my spiritual performance?”

And God completely bypasses that question. He cuts through the rituals, which are beautiful and honoring to God, but he goes right through and straight to what actually really matters with him.

He says, “Administer true justice. Show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.”

So he cuts right through.

Israel thought, like I often do, that spiritual health can be measured by kind of what we do and our attendance and fasting and among other beautiful spiritual practices that are so important.

But God redefines true worship here as the active, systemic protection of the very people named in Proverbs 31, the ones with no legal seat at the table, no economic safety net, and no voice of their own.

So God wasn’t asking his people to just feel pity or compassion, although compassion is a beautiful start. He was actually commanding them to use their power. Let me say that again. He was commanding them to use the power that they had in order to speak for someone else and defend them.

God reminded them that true worship is always a reflection of how we love and protect the most vulnerable.

Notice what God is doing here. He’s measuring their heart for him by their heart for justice for others.

God consistently refuses to separate vertical devotion to him, which again is so beautiful, he’s the one that gives us the heart for it, but he refuses to separate vertical devotion from horizontal care for others.

In the biblical worldview, a community’s spiritual health wasn’t measured merely by the intensity of its gatherings, but really it was measured by how well its members reflected God’s heart of justice to those around them.

This is the actual entirety of the gospel.

God didn’t just feel bad for our spiritual poverty. While we were completely voiceless and helpless, Jesus used his power, his voice, his body, his life to comfort us, to rescue us, and to bring us home.

So let me share with you what this can look like practically in real life.

This lovely couple is a pastor and his wife in Texas many years ago. This pastor and his wife were out doing daily, routine hospital visitation. They found in the hospital, in the psych ward, a very terrified, voiceless, vulnerable teenage boy. His name was Alfred.

He’d been in foster care on and off for years, and he had run away from his homes because of physical abuse that had happened repeatedly. He was about to age out of the foster care system, and he had no idea where he was going to go or what he was going to do.

And this lovely couple, Frank and Ida, felt the Holy Spirit as they were walking down the hall and saw this young man. The Holy Spirit said, “I’d like for you to take him home and adopt him.” And that was with them having a young daughter at home.

That one act of sacrifice transformed Alfred’s life. He went to college. He got married. He had three amazing children. He followed the Lord his whole life.

It changed Alfred’s life. It changed his children’s life. It changed Frank and Ida’s life and their daughter’s life. It changed my life. It changed my family’s life, my extended family’s life, because Alfred was my husband JD’s father.

So I get choked up here.

For generations, this couple will have an impact because of accepting the invitation from the Holy Spirit.

So where can we use our voice?

In ancient Israel, the town gate was the public square where legal cases were heard and businesses were transacted and local elders made decisions. For us today, we don’t officially have a modern city gate, but I would suggest to you that anywhere you hold voice, influence, or status is where your city gate is.

Relationally, it could be your neighbor. It could be a struggling child that you know, a coworker, or just a person crossing your path.

Systemically, it’s how you advocate for yourself and others at work, at school, in your city.

Who else are the voiceless then? It’s the single mom and dad who are raising their family on a single income. It’s the foster child waiting for a home. It’s the immigrant or refugee trying to navigate a really complex system that can take a long time without a guide. It’s any child in need, in my opinion, and it’s those in prison and those being detained, as our friend in Christ Murd is.

So poor is not just a bank account. Justice calls us to look for the impoverished in every area of human life.

It’s those without a safety net. It’s the financially squeezed living paycheck to paycheck in an expensive city. It’s mentally and physically overwhelmed people who are navigating illness, trauma, losing a loved one, isolation. It’s the spiritually weak and exhausted and those searching for hope.

But in listing all these things, I do want to take a moment to celebrate what God has been doing at South.

Let’s look at a few things. Our benevolence. We don’t just structurally and financially help our own congregation. We help those outside of it as well. That’s not always the case elsewhere.

Our food bank serves 125 to 150 family communities each week. We have local community outreach partners like North Littleton Promise, Whiz Kids, Love INC, and Celebrate Recovery, and support them.

We have Together Teams as well. I don’t know if you guys remember what this is, but Together Teams really starts by one of you in our congregation having an idea about bringing people together to help solve a problem in our local city. And so, to help you get that idea off the ground, we offer $200 toward that.

These are beautiful things that God is already doing with our collective voices here at South, and I celebrate that.

And I want to humbly, as I call myself forward, call you forward, because not only do I have influence elsewhere outside of South, you do as well. And I’d like to challenge you to use that.

So my question for you is: Are you leaving margin to glean?

“Angela, that’s a really strange question.”

Well, in the Old Testament, like in the story of Ruth and Boaz, God commanded landowners not to harvest to the edges of their field. He required them to leave extra, leave margin, for the poor, the foreigner, the vulnerable to glean and survive.

Most of us don’t own fields today. And if you do, I would like to come and play in the field and maybe plant some things because I don’t have a garden.

However, we do own calendars. We own bank accounts. We have possessions. And we have things like energy that we can give, and talents.

So my question: Are you harvesting to the edge of your life? Are you harvesting to the full edges of your life? Or do you leave margin?

Financial margin. Is every dollar spent on ourselves, or is there room to set aside for an unexpected need that’s been noticed in your family or someone else’s?

How about calendar margin? Do you leave room in your calendar for interruptions? Or is every single hour packed? Because if we pack in every single hour, when do we have time to hear the hurting?

Emotional energy and emotional margin. Are you running on absolute zero?

Some of you, I know you, you are high-capacity people, and your margin could probably be 5% and you can get it all done. I am a little bit slower, and that’s okay, but I need like 20% margin in order to function well, to be emotionally healthy, to be able to support those around me.

So me running to 90 or 95% means I’m not loving others well. I’m not treating my family well. It means I’m not able to stop and listen to somebody in crisis because I’m exhausted.

When we live at 100% capacity, we have zero margin. We have zero margin left for this mishpat kind of justice that is at the heart of God. We can’t be a voice for the voiceless if we are exhausted and too busy.

I love what Pastor Andy Stanley says. He says, “Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone.”

And that really helps me because I’m a very high-feelings, emotive person. So when you have a feeling, I actually feel it as well on your behalf. It’s lovely. Sometimes it’s a gift and sometimes, woo.

But here’s the thing. Andy Stanley, when he gave this quote, was using it regarding leadership, and I thought I have to use it here because it applies, doesn’t it?

If you happen to be like me and you get emotionally overwhelmed because the need is so great, you might, again like me, feel paralyzed and not even know where to begin, and then end up doing nothing.

So let’s stop letting what you can’t do keep you from doing what you can do, and leave a little margin for the one.

But sometimes, even when we leave margin, there are other obstacles that we have to face. Obstacles like indifference.

So where do you find yourself today? Is it indifference? Are you thinking, “This simply doesn’t matter to me”? And if so, I’d really encourage you to ask the Lord to break your heart for what breaks his.

Maybe it’s not indifference. Maybe it’s avoidance or fear. Maybe you’re saying to yourself, “Yeah, but I’m afraid of the consequences. I’m afraid of personal risk, the criticism, the conflict, or the unknown of what actually might happen.”

Think of Frank and Ida. They’re bringing a young teenage boy in with their young daughter. They’re thinking, “What might happen? How is this going to impact our family?” But they trusted the Lord and they walked step by step in faith.

Maybe you’re feeling paralysis and trauma. Maybe you’re saying, “I feel frozen. I don’t even know where to start.” Or like me, maybe you have a past and you got leaves dumped on your head and it was pretty traumatic, right? And those are real things that God cares about.

Maybe you’re exhausted. Maybe you’re looking at me saying, “Angela, I’m running on empty already with my own life and what’s happening, and I really don’t have anything left to give right now.”

So I want to give you a helpful question. At least I found it helpful. Here it is:

If I knew exactly what to do and I had the emotional capacity to do it, would I want to?

Let me read that again. If I knew exactly what to do and I had the emotional capacity to do it, would I want to?

And if you say yes, there’s great news. You are not indifferent. You care. Your heart is not cold. It might just be depleted, afraid, or overwhelmed.

Jesus invites the weary to come to him for rest, not shame and guilt. He invites the fearful and the overwhelmed and the ones of us who might get paralyzed when big things happen to come to him for courage and wisdom and say, “Lord, I’m really scared to take that next step. Will you help me? Will you show me?”

He gives wisdom.

So I would love to invite you to imagine with me what would happen if our church, already doing and celebrating what it’s doing in our local community and how it’s loving them, thought beyond that.

What if we impacted every single person in Littleton together, then every single person in Denver, then every single person in Colorado?

What would that look like? To be a community that other people saw, that we didn’t have a fear of political outcomes, we weren’t self-focused, and when we felt paralyzed, we were able to move through with the heart of God. And we followed through with faithfulness and obedience.

There are countless ways that we can do this. We can live out God’s mishpat kind of justice.

We can do it by providing a meal, maybe to a widow or widower who’s just lost someone. Or maybe they lost someone a year ago and that anniversary that’s so painful is coming up, and maybe you show up and provide a meal.

Maybe it’s checking on a neighbor that you notice is a little bit out of the routine. We had something like that happen, and it turned out there was something wrong and he needed emergency surgery, but he’s doing much better now.

Maybe it’s serving in our children’s ministry. Maybe it’s visiting those who are imprisoned, detained, or sick.

So my question to you that I’d like for you to linger on is: In what area is our gracious and loving and justice-giving God inviting you to take a step with him?

What is that next step that he’d invite you to take? Not with guilt, but with love and invitation.

So today, we’re going to close our service by remembering Christ as our advocate when we were the voiceless, when we were the vulnerable. We’re going to do this through communion. You might know it as Mass or Eucharist.

And when we practice communion, we remember. We remember just who this amazing God is that we follow.

He’s a God that created us for relationship with him. He’s a God whose ways and character we rejected. And he’s a God who didn’t abandon us in that rejection, but made a way through his presence, his death, and resurrection so that that relationship could be absolutely restored.

And we practice our remembering through obedience.

So today, as you take communion and remember this fantastic, powerful, loving, gracious God who has this passionate heart for justice, I would just ask you, since he is the one who used his voice for us, his body for us, his very life to speak for us when we were helpless, let’s ask him:

“Lord, who are you calling me to be an advocate for this week, or to be a voice for? Where might you be calling me this week to step in?”

In a moment, when you’re ready to come forward and receive the elements, there are tables here in the front and also in the back. You can eat the bread at your own determined moment. You don’t have to wait for us. But then at the end, we’ll take the cup together.

Would you stand with me? Whenever you’re ready, you can come and get the elements.