I

had to get my box of Kleenex because I was already a mess during worship.

And if you’ve seen me preach here before, it’s Ooh, it’s not looking good. I tend to cry when I preach. So it’s already a basket case. Whew. As it’s hello. Good morning, South Fellowship Church. If you’re new or new ish, my name is Aaron Bjorklin. I’m one of the pastors here. I normally appear singing the music and stuff, but thank you, team, for leading us so beautifully to the throne this morning.

As it’s been a tradition during this Advent season that would you stand for the reading of the Scripture passage for us today? The passage comes from Revelation chapter 5. Starting in verse one. Then I saw in the right hand of him who was sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals.

And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll? But no one. In heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. And I wept and wept. Because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.

Then one of the elders said to me, do not weep. See the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and it’s seven seals. And it may be more traditional church. You typically say this is the word of the Lord for the people of God. And you would say, thanks be to God.

You can have a seat. Let’s pray. Father. Thank you for this morning. Thank you for the reminder of these old carols and these new songs, that you are king of kings and lord of lords. That you are a worthy king. This morning, Lord, I pray that you would, in our hearts, that we would grow more and more to appreciate your power, more and more.

Your authority and your kingship.

We’re here to listen to your word. Teach us, we pray. Spirit, be at work. We ask this in your beautiful matchless name. Amen. During the Christmas holiday season, for a lot of families, they have a tradition of watching Christmas movies, and sometimes you repeat movies over and over again. I don’t know if your family’s like that, but you have the Christmas Carol and the Christmas story and all these sorts of things for us.

It’s elf. We have to watch elf every single year without fail. It’s a, we’re devastated if we don’t get a chance sometimes two or three times during the season. But what I’ve also learned over the years is that some Christmas movies are more controversial than others. How many of you think of this as a Christmas movie?

Anyone? Christmas movie? Got some votes? We got some Christmas movie votes. That’s not a lot of you. What if I did this? Is this helpful? Does that help? Christmas movie. All right. Another movie that’s a little controversial when it comes to Christmas is this one. And I didn’t think it was that controversial growing up.

I loved this movie, but when I got married to Alison, she just, she hates this movie because the kid is a punk and he’s, so the protagonist who’s supposed to be the good guy is a very disobedient, disrespectful kid. And she’s just he just rubs her the wrong way. But the reason I loved the movie growing up is because the entire premise, whoa, clicking through all sorts of stuff here.

All right. That was not me. So did I lose it? Are we back to normal? All right. So the reason I love this movie is the entire premise of this movie. The satisfaction of this movie is that. Sweet justice happens one time after another, right? You get these two villains who find out that this little boy’s been left home alone in this really wealthy neighborhood, so they’re gonna rob the house, and they’re like, Eh, it’s just a kid.

We can still rob the house, right? So they go in, and oh, they are caught off guard because there’s just moments that are just sweet justice, right? And then one after another you get, he gets, they get hit in the face with irons and get paint all over them. They slip on ice and it’s just ah, it is so satisfying to see the villain get what’s coming for them.

And a lot of movies are this way. In fact, a lot of kids movies, it’s the end of the movie of Frozen when the Duke of Weselton gets put in his place, or it’s at the end of Jurassic Park when the computer nerd who’s let go all of the dinosaurs and starts all the mayhem, he’s trying to run away and make his profit, and he gets eaten by a dinosaur.

It’s just so satisfying, isn’t it? And I think we, we like to see the justice and sweet justice moments portrayed in stories and narratives and movies. But if I’m honest, I struggle with justice and judgment in reality, especially when it comes to moments when I read about it in the scriptures.

Maybe it’s just me, but. I like to see it on the screen, but when I read passages about the judgment, the wrath and the justice of God, it just rubs me the wrong way because I was taught that God is loving. We learned about it last week again, this grand story that unfolds to portray the love of God for the world.

And then you read a passage about him judging the people of Israel or judging another nation or whatever it may be. And there just seems to be this discrepancy. Is it only me? So today I want to ask the question, what do we do with the judgment and the wrath and the justice of God passages? What do we do with them?

And I think the passage that we’ve already read this morning is going to give us some insight into how we can think about the wrath and the judgment and the justice of King Jesus. But in order to do that, we’re gonna need to think a little bit differently about how we read this passage. In order for us to engage this text well, we have to try and imagine ourselves in the seat of the original audience who heard this letter, these letters to this churches and this letter, this revelation that they received.

So the first question I’m gonna ask is, what did they hear when they read about this scroll? Look at it with me in the beginning here in verse one. It says there’s the scroll, right? Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne, a scroll with writing on it on both sides and sealed with seven seals.

When john’s original audience read this, they would have had some inside scoop into what he was trying to talk about here with a scroll, because several of the prophets that they had in their lineage had spoken about scrolls and had some imagery around scrolls. So what did they hear? Perhaps they reflected back on the book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel chapter two, and then and later on in, or all the way to chapter three, verse two says this, then I looked, this is Ezekiel speaking. Then I looked and I saw a hand stretched out to me and it was a scroll. So there’s your image. Which he rolled before me and both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.

And he said to me, son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll, then go and speak to the people of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat. And what we find out from the prophet Ezekiel is he eats this scroll and then the message that he’s supposed to go speak to the people of Israel is a message of judgment.

You guys are off the rails. You do not care for the needy and the poor and the and widow. And so therefore, exile is coming. You’re going to get taken over. It’s a message of judgment. And this scroll represents the message of God to a people who have gone astray. And then if you look further into the, into Revelation, we’re in chapter five now, but if you look at chapter six and seven and eight, you get to find out what’s the content of the scroll that we read about in Revelation.

It turns out it’s a lot of the same thing. Each seal is opened and there’s a horse that represents judgment that goes out and one is enacts like murder and a sword and justice and judgment and justice and judgment and then sprinkled throughout revelation. We see these little moments where the people of God are still preserved.

So the scroll in the whole scope of scripture represents. These ideas. The scroll is God’s plan for justice and redemption. The stiff arming of the evil of the world and a plan to preserve and care for some. So there’s the scroll. But there’s another image here. If you jump down later on in this, in our passage, chapter 5, and you read this.

Or what’s the lion image? We read this in verse 5. Then one of the elders said to me, do not weep. See the lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the stroll. So when they read Lion, what did they hear? This image shows up all throughout the Old Testament, and his audience would’ve known this.

Probably the first and most important reference to the Lion of Judah is when. That title is first given in Genesis chapter 49 verses 8 through 9. And what’s going on here is you have a father who is blessing his sons. You Jacob’s blessing his sons, and he’s speaking prophecies over his sons and what is to come.

And he says this, Judah. Your brother will praise you. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies and your father’s sons will bow down to you. You are a lion’s cub. There’s our image. Judah, you return from the prey, my son, like a lion he crouches and lies down, like a lioness who dares to rouse him. The scepter will not depart from Judah.

Now, and I’ll just continue. The ruler’s staff from between his feet until until he who It belongs shall come and the obedience of the nation shall be and then you if you drop down to verse 10 Oh, I took it out. So it speaks again of the lion of the tribe of Judah So you have this prophecy that Judah who ultimately will represent the tribe of Judah is Going to be an authoritative tribe, the kingship tribe.

And we know that the King David came from that tribe, from the tribe of Judah. And ultimately Jesus is from the tribe of Judah. And so it’s this image. First, it represents the kingship and authority of that title, but it also represents something else. Again, it’s all over the old Testament. I’m not going to read them all for you.

So let me just give you a little bit of a snapshot. These passages plus more use the image of a lion to talk about the power, to illustrate power and danger and violence. So in their mind, as they read this chapter five of Revelation, they’re picturing this authoritarian figure that’s very dangerous and potentially violent.

And then we have the lion as a judgment figure against evil. And that’s found all over the Old Testament. Amos, Jeremiah, Hosea, Isaiah, and on. Let me just give you one example from Jeremiah. A lion has come out of its lair. A destroyer of nations has set out. He has left his place to lay waste your land.

Your towns will lie in ruin without inhabitants. So this is a scary image, right? If you put all that together, when they read line of the tribe of Judah, they’re picturing an authoritarian figure who’s very dangerous, who will judge. All right, how we doing? All right, so what did they hear when they read root of David?

Okay, there’s another image here. So if you look down it, I don’t think I included this again, but if you look down right after the lion says in verse five, it says this, see the line of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He’s able to open the scroll. So what did they hear when they heard root of David?

Again, this is an image that’s calling back. It’s pointing back to the nation of God, to a prophetic text that came prior. And we read this already as part of our worship service. I’m going to read it again for you. A shoot will come up from the stump. There’s that root idea, and it’s all throughout the prophetic books.

The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and an understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of fear. He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes or decide by what he hears with his ears, but he will not With righteousness, he will judge the needy.

With justice, he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips, he will slay the wicked. And then jump down, verse 10, it says, And that day, the root of Jesse, or the root of David, will stand as a banner for the people. The nations will rally to him, and he will and his resting place will be glorious.

So when they read the root of David they have a promise of a king who will bring justice. So this passage screams of the judgment, the authority, the power, the danger, and the justice of King Jesus. Did you know that this is who Jesus is? He is a just, dangerous, powerful, authoritarian King. How are we doing?

And so when I asked the question at the beginning, what do we do with judgment and wrath passages? In other words, this passage, what do we do with a passage like this? What do we do with it? Then something strange happens in this passage. I don’t know if you noticed it, but look at it with me. Here in verse four.

So John is reading about this just king and then he’s sad that no one can open the scroll of judgment. He’s sad, so sad that he says this in verse four, I wept and I wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll of judgment. By the way, the scroll of justice, by the way, this is why he said, why in the world is John weeping?

He must think something different about the justice and judgment of God than I think. He is devastated that justice will not unfold upon the wickedness and the evil of this world. He’s devastated and he’s moved to tears. And so the question I asked this week was, what do we do with the judgment, wrath, and justice passages?

That the question this text asks is this, It assumes we need justice. But who is worthy to judge? That’s what the text asks. Who is worthy to judge? In her incredible book, The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge starts to plumb the depths of what the cross means. And in her passage on judgment and justice, she writes this, Injustice is a threatening subject for the ruling classes who have time and inclination for reading books like this one.

Those who suffer most from injustice are the poorly educated, the impoverished, and the invisible. She goes on to say the irony of this book is most, the people who are most oppressed in this world will probably never read this chapter. And so if we’re dis, if we’re uncomfortable. With the justice of God, it’s probably because we are not the oppressed.

If we resist seeing God as a judge, it may be that we haven’t faced injustice beyond our control. Because, church, listen to me. Justice is the cry of the oppressed.

When you’re deeply abused, deeply taken advantage of, the thing you long for most is a just king. And if we’re uncomfortable with that perhaps we find ourselves in this space where we’ve disconnected ourselves from the needy and from the poor and from the oppressed. If you’ve ever found yourself where you’ve just been wronged deeply, you know that you long for justice.

It’s one of the reasons why we love seeing it on the movie screen. We know deep down in the core of who we are without even consciously being aware of it, that justice should come.

If we are uncomfortable with the justice of God, could it be that we are the oppressed, the oppressors?

Hang with me. There’s some hope at the end of this. But she goes on to say this, as in communities today, she’s speaking of the book of Isaiah. So in the book of Isaiah, there’s this indictment against Israel. And she says, she tries to connect us to that same indictment. She says this, as in communities today, the good church going middle classes were not themselves murderers.

In Isaiah, they weren’t necessarily murdering people and they did not have blood on their hands in any direct or literal sense, but the indictment is relentless nonetheless. And the call to repentance and reform unequivocal. It goes on in chapter one of Isaiah, right after this is what God says in the context of that quote that I just read.

God says, wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Can you hear the heart of God saying, it’s not okay that these people are being oppressed.

It’s not okay that the widow is not taken care of. That’s not okay. I will not stand for it. That’s the voice of the lion of the tribe of Judah. So I’ll ask this. What about the cross? What about the love and what about forgiveness? If we start to get the impression that forgi the forgiveness of God is a light and easy thing for him to do, then we’ve misunderstood the gospel.

It was not easy for God to give his only Son.

And we’ve, if we think that forgiveness is an easy task for God to do, it is infinitely complicated because he has a mixed emotion about every single person because we are all the oppressed and we are all the oppressor. I was born, some of I was born in Rwanda, or in Zaire and raised in Rwanda.

And in 1994, April 6th, 1994, the Rwanda genocide took place and my family was there when that started. And in a hundred days, 800, 000 of men, women, and children were massacred during the Rwanda genocide. Some estimate after that millions of people were killed. I show you this pile of machetes because this was the primary instrument that killed the majority of those people.

I could show you much more. heart wrenching images. And I decided not to, in a mixed audience of ages and stuff, but if you’ve heard about Rwanda, it’s terrifying. But it didn’t start here in 1994. It started in 1959 when the West started to make allies with the Rwandese people. There was the Tutsi tribe and the Hutu tribe.

They were both populating the land. The Tutsi tribe were taller. They were slightly more educated, maybe coming out of Ethiopia, slightly more educated in that space. They were a warring tribe. So they had a more authoritarian kind of persona about them. And the Hutus were the majority. It was about 16 percent Tutsi and the rest aside from a few smaller tribes there, but the majority of the rest were all Hutu tribes, but they were, the Hutus were just simple farmers.

And the Tutsis had come in and set up shop in the land and they’d allowed the Hutus to continue farmer, farming, but they were really the ones in charge. And so when the West showed up, they started to ally with the Tutsi tribe. And he, and they gave them Western resources and they negotiated with the West and so forth.

And eventually the Hutus started to realize, wait a minute. Yeah. We’re way more of us than there are of them. And so they rose up and they killed the leaders of the Tutsi tribe and they would cut them off at the knee because they’re, they were taller and their height represented their authority and the authority of both them and of the West.

And they said, I will put you in your place. And that generation saw their parents killed or cut off at the knee. And it was this memory that was locked inside of this tribal vendetta between the Jews and the Tutsis. Now the Tutsi tribe fled the country and they went to some neighboring countries. And they were these refugee figures.

And so the West came in and said, Oh, how can we help you? And they offered aid to the Tutsis. One of the ways that they offered help to the Tutsi tribe is they asked what can we do for you? Can you please train us? And so the Tutsi military was trained in Utah, in the United States, by the United States government.

And In 1994, during peace talks, when things got tense, and I won’t go into all of the details in the history of it because it’s complicated, as many wars are they were much more westernized and highly trained in comparison to the Hutu tribe. But when the tensions rose and the first shots were fired, the Hutu operated like a tribal African would, and they rose up and they killed.

Kids and women, because you do not let your rivals survive. Otherwise they’re going to grow up and kill you back. So they just operated like a tribal nation would, and they did a lot of the massacring that 94 genocide represented. But the Tutsis actually won the battle because the Hutus were not trained and they would just waste all their bullets.

They ran out of ammunition and the Tutsis ultimately rose to power. It was a heinous crime. You had. Children observing their parents being dismembered, Children themselves being dismembered. It was a horrific, the largest mass exodus of a nation since the Holocaust. Horrific. And some crimes are so damaging and have such long lasting implications that violent retaliation is the only reasonable human response that should not happen.

Human beings should not treat other human beings that way. Agreed. And the only reasonable, it’s not okay, something has to happen, right? It’s the only reasonable human response is that you rise up and you kill those who killed your parents. And this is the cycle of Rwanda. And it’s been happening actually for about 700 years.

Justice is infinitely complicated though. Justice is infinitely complicated. Who should be brought to justice? Should it be the Hutus who did the lion’s share of the killing? Should it be the Tutsi tribe who leveraged their relationship with the West in order to be authoritarians over the poor farmers of the Hutus?

Should it be America who trained the Tutsi tribes Who should receive justice? That’s a complicated question to answer. To illustrate how complicated justice can actually be, let me just tell you a brief parable of a girl. Just imagine with me, there’s a girl, and when she’s about two years old, her mother starts to physically and emotionally abuse her.

And all that continues all throughout her elementary school years and middle school and high school. Eventually she gets away, but she struggles to trust people. As you can imagine, the person who was supposed to protect her had been the one who abused her. And so it took her years, deep into her thirties, to even trust someone again.

And eventually she met a man and they got married. And she, and they were, became pregnant with their first child. And she was excited for the opportunity to not live like her mother had lived and be a better parent. She had her baby and then the massive amounts of hormones and stuff that takes place in a woman post pregnancy, she fell into deep postpartum depression and she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders because she said, I want to be better than my parents and I have to be a perfect parent and that weight started to crush her it deeper and deeper into a cloud of depression.

But she found out that if she had a couple glasses of wine at night, he would take the edge off. And a glass of wine turned into a bottle or two of wine and she would wake up the next morning with headaches and a crying baby and headaches don’t mix very well. And even though she desperately wanted to be a better parent to that child, that little boy, she was drunk most of the time just to ease the weight and the pressure and the pain.

And so she neglected him. And he grew up. craving the affection of a woman, and he became a womanizer. Who deserves the justice of God in this little parable? Was it the original mother who abused?

What if I told you that original mother had been taken advantage of by a neighbor boy and had grown up with her own traumas? The justice of God is the justice. True justice is so complicated. How do we know who should receive it? We live in the murky waters of injustice. And then we read prophetic texts all throughout the Old Testament like this one.

Jeremiah 23, 5 says this, The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up from David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right. Now can you feel the longing for that kind of a king? He knows how to weigh the scales. He knows how to weigh the scales. He knows who needs to carry the weight of that justice and who needs the hand of mercy.

This is our king. This is the one that we worship. And if we can’t see a God, if we cannot see God as a just judge, we cannot understand the scriptures. The majority of the Old Testament and New Testament are, is speaking to marginalized peoples. And so if we have tensions when we read the Old Testament, part of it is because we generally speaking are disconnected from the oppressed.

But let me make this assertion when John’s original audience heard this letter, they were probably more comforted by the idea of a lion of the tribe of Judah than even of a lamb that was slain because they wanted justice. And as we have been studying throughout the book of Revelation, there’s this mixture of judgment and mercy in these letters to the seven churches.

Correct. These are churches that were deeply oppressed. They were dying in the streets at the hand of Rome, but they were also participating in ju in oppression and so there was this mixture of ju of oppression and oppressing. So both the wrath. and the compassion of God are kindled when he looks upon injustice.

Imagine the complexity of God’s emotions when he looks upon a child who has deeply abused another one of his children, but also he knows the backstory that led to the brokenness that led to the oppression. Imagine the complex emotions of our king who wants to be a merciful God. How is he supposed to be that?

The wrath and the justice of God is an expression of his love. He longs for things to be made right, that we have made wrong.

I love this passage because look at what happens. John’s weeping and then in verse five, we read this. Then one of the elders said to me, do not weep. See, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David has triumphed. He is able to open the seven seals and John’s hardest quickened the lion, the just king, the dangerous king of kings and Lord of Lords.

He is going to be worthy to unfold judgment and justice on all the evil and all of the oppression that takes place in the world. And then he turns and what does he see? He sees the lamb. He sees a lamb that was slain. That is mind boggling. Only the wisdom of God decides to leverage all of his power and his danger to become a slain lamb on behalf of all of the oppressed and all of those who are oppressors.

This is the gospel, my friends. He found a way. Amen. He found a way to be both just and the justifier. Why is he worthy to open the scrolls? Because he’s the only judge who could possibly get it right, who could possibly weigh the scales correctly. He is the only one. And I think Generally, when you’re preaching sermons, you’re supposed to have a big idea.

And I couldn’t think of a better big idea than one that’s already been given to us in the book of Romans chapter three. When Paul says this, he did all of this to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so that he could be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

There’s this famous quote. From the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you, some of you may have heard it. Aslan is being described to the kids, and they ask Mr. Beaver, is he a kind lion? Is he a nice lion? And Mr. Beaver says this, of course he isn’t safe, but he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.

And as that story unfolds, We see this lion figure masterfully portrayed for us by C. S. Lewis in this narrative, who when Edmund comes back and sheepishly admits that he has betrayed his siblings, and he’s betrayed all of Narnia, the witch comes and says, you know the rules, you know the rules, way back from the foundations of Narnia, written into the rules was that I, Every single betrayer or every single I don’t know the word of it, but every single one who’s betrayed belongs to me.

And Aslan understands that’s true. So he takes the witch into the tent. He says, I will speak to you privately. And then he relinquished her rights to Edmund. And then we see the scene of this lion going to be killed, and he takes the place of Edmund. And as a kid I thought, why can’t they just say sorry and make up?

This is the tension that we have. Why can’t forgiveness just say, no big deal. Because something wrong has happened and it must be dealt with. All of the wickedness of the world that I described in Rwanda, the parable I told you of a girl, all of these things must be dealt with. But our King chooses to take on that upon himself.

So out on the wall we have this statement that this is our longing as South Fellowship Church. We want to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. Now, let me tell you one area that we cannot do that. We are not called to be the judge. We are not called to enact justice ourselves.

He’s the only one who is worthy to open the scroll of justice and judgment. But what we can do is we can fight for the oppressed. We will never be the just king. Only he is worthy. This is the power of this text. Only Jesus is worthy because he alone is both lion and lamb. That is beautiful. That’s the gospel.

But the question remains, what can we do? What can we do? Man, I told you I needed this Kleenex box. Ah. I’m leaking. What can we do?

So we heard already this morning about the food bank shop, and we know that we serve a lot of refugees as they come into the food bank. One of the things I encourage you to do, one of the best ways to rekindle your appreciation for a just King is to hear the voice of the oppressed. And the reality is every single one of us has been wronged.

By someone else. Our sin has roots that stems generations prior to us, and our sin has implications that will go beyond us into the lives of our kids and our friends and so on and so forth. So we are all both the oppressor and the oppressor. But if you struggle with a just cause, and the judgment and the wrath of God, then I encourage you to sit with and be with and engage with the most marginalized peoples of the world because when you hear their voice crying for justice, one, you can tell them about the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

Two, you’ll start to appreciate the goodness and the beauty of a just king. So I’d encourage you to engage with that food bank shop. It’s just one opportunity for you to take care of those who are oppressed and maybe hear some of their voices.

Did you know that one of the most repeated prayer requests we receive at the food bank is this? Pray that I can begin working legally to care for my family. They’re not just looking for free food. They want to do things right. And the systems make that very difficult. And I get it. That’s complicated.

There’s systems for a reason, right? This whole last election cycle, the border and the crossing and all this, it’s complicated stuff. But the people of God are meant to fight on behalf of the oppressed. And I get that’s complicated and it’s a multi layered issue. And this is why I’m so grateful that I am not the lion.

And I am not the lamb, but he is. But what I can do is we as a church family can show up and try and meet the needs of the oppressed and those who are marginalized. It’ll help us understand the scriptures better. It’ll help us understand the heart of God better. And maybe just maybe we will also start to feel that sense of injustice and pray differently and engage the text differently and on.

So care for and hear the voice of the marginalized. The gospel will come alive to you again. Is the gospel dead to you right now? Have you lost the excitement in the gospel? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because you’ve lost it. You’ve lost access to God as not just a kind, merciful, loving, forgiving God, but you’ve also lost the fact that he is kind and merciful and he pursues the justice of the needy.

And so engage both spaces and the gospel awakens because only he could have come up with a gospel like that. I’m gonna invite the team back up and we’re gonna sing a closing song. Let me, as they come up here, let me offer you one more little nugget of hope. One of the travesties that I sense in my own soul is that I know That I live in this murky waters of injustice.

The clothes that I wear might have been made by someone who was oppressed. My phone was maybe made in a sweatshop that was where someone, some child is crying out to heaven, please. The injustice of America that makes me work these kinds of hours. I don’t know. Our own injustice is so we can’t even escape it.

We’re all indicted because of the air that we breathe. And it’s we just can’t escape it. And so one of the complexities that I feel when I read about the justice of God is I know I’m indicted, but there’s a promise that we’re gonna sing about in just a moment that even our own injustice will be dealt with and he will remove our brokenness.

Come behold the wondrous mystery. It is a mystery. The Christ, the Lord upon a tree in the stead of ruined sinners hangs the lamb in victory. See the price of our redemption. See the father’s plan unfold, bringing many sons to glory. Grace, unmeasured love, untold. What a foretaste of deliverance. How unwavering our hope that Christ in power, resurrection as we will be when he comes.

There’s going to be a day as you stand, can you stand with me? We’re going to sing this song. There’s going to be a day when all the injustice in our own lives will be eliminated by the good king who can weigh the scales correctly. Let’s sing.