A Kingdom of Justice (Proverbs 21:15) | Different

Brant site or in Kitchener. Really glad to have you joining

us this morning is we have a special morning this morning,

not just because it's snowed, although our guest speaker here

this morning because he comes from the West Coast, is very

impressed that you Ontarians would brave the Blizzard out

there and make it out today. I'm shocked there's anyone in

this room right now. He is.

Unbelievable. We had this discussion.

So Jeremy Johnson, who's with us today, Jeremy is one of the

senior pastors at Village Church, which is a multi site

church started out in BC, although now you've got you've

got sites across three different provinces right in Calgary and

in Oakville here in Ontario as well.

We're really excited to have Jeremy.

Not only is he a pastor at Village, but Jeremy has also

been deeply involved as an ambassador for international

justice ministries. So IJM for a number of years.

And so Jeremy is going to speak to us this morning on the topic

of biblical justice because our Christmas offering this year is

really going to be focused on us as a congregation, how we can

take part in that. So I'm happy to turn it over to

Jeremy. Let's give him a big round of

applause as he comes this morning.

Thanks, Derek. Well, good morning Forward

Church. You've such a great church,

getting to know your leaders and a lot of your team here this

year actually. And then this morning, what an

amazing church. So it's an honor for me to be

able to be here this morning. Yes, my name is Jeremy, senior

pastor at Village Church out on the West Coast.

But I was actually born just a little down the four O 1 in

London. So I have some history here and

I am still a die hard Leafs fan. I don't talk about it a lot out

there, but hopefully this isn't being recorded or anything,

right. I, I'm a huge Blue Jays fan, of

course, still a huge Blue Jays fan.

We're not going to talk about any of that this morning, of

course, recent events. But I try and get to a game

every time I come back to Ontario, I try to get to a game.

So I was here recently meeting with some pastors in the summer

and so I got a chance to go to a a game.

But I'm a massive introvert actually, so there's nothing

better for me than free night, go down and see a Jays game all

by myself, just me in the game. Now if you don't know about

baseball, it's a funny thing. Baseball is designed to do 2

things. It's designed to make you really

bored and it's designed to make you really hungry.

That's how baseball games work. That's why they're so long.

That's why they have the inning structure.

It's make you bored and make you hungry.

So here I am at the game and I'm snacking away, you know, going

pretty hard here, like hot dogs and Pepsi's and one of the big

family Cracker Jacks. And it gets to about the 6th

inning and I'm still going. So I go out in search of a new

snack and I find the greatest snack I think I've ever found at

a baseball game, which is, I don't know if you've seen these,

it's the helmet, like the actual baseball helmet full of soft

serve ice cream. You've seen these.

It's unbelievable. It's like the size of an actual

man's helmet full of soft serve ice cream.

It's incredible. The greatest thing I've ever

found. So I, you know, now I have no

one with me. So I have 0 accountability

around my life choices in this evening, of course.

So I, I buy this thing and I go back to my seat and I sit down

and I'm, I'm going away and I'm thinking you could wear the

helmet. It's a real helmet.

You'd have to, you know, lick the, lick it clean, of course,

because there's nowhere to clean it, which would kind of be

psychotic. But anyways, so here I am.

I'm licking it clean. And I, I, I kind of noticed

there's there, there's someone watching me in a row.

You know, you get that feeling. You just know it's happening.

So I look over kind of like, yeah.

And there's two women. There's women.

They're just staring at me. And I think their, their faces

were like half awe and half judgement with how I describe

it. And I could tell she wanted to

say something. So I waited.

And she just goes, you are an eating machine.

This is what she says to me. I have, we have never seen

anything like this in our life, right?

It's like the 6th inning. And I don't know if that's a

compliment or not. I'm not sure how you're supposed

to take that at moment. Now here's the thing, just they

knew nothing about me. They knew nothing about my life.

They knew nothing about my story, anything, whatever.

All they knew about me was what they saw.

What they saw was what they knew.

And that's all that mattered. I could have sat there and

explained to them, you know, I try to eat healthy, you know, I,

I care about fitness, whatever. I could have, you know, said all

these things, it wouldn't have mattered, right?

They saw what they saw. And that's just how it goes for

us as Christians today in our culture, people see us and they

see what they see, and that's how they form their opinions

about us. Doesn't really matter sometimes

what we say. It's what they see us do that

ends up giving them the impression of what we are like,

what the church is like, what Christianity is like, what God

is like. You know, there's a study done

really recently actually, and it looked at people who don't go to

church and just said, why, Why don't you go?

And one of the number one reasons why people reported they

don't go to church is because they think the church is just

full of hypocrites and they just don't want to be associated with

hypocrites. That interesting.

So I think that's a problem, but maybe an opportunity, an

opportunity for us when it comes to the conversation around

justice. You know, our world loves the

idea of justice. Like our culture right now loves

the idea of justice. We see it everywhere, social

justice, environmental justice, online justice, just kind of

just people yelling at each other, you know, in comment

sections. But culture loves justice.

They do. It just doesn't have any, any

good reason for why justice matters.

There's no cultural foundation for the point of pursuing

justice. But we know that there's a point

to it because for us as the church, as Christians, justice

isn't just an idea. Justice is actually the very

nature of God himself. We're going to look this morning

at Proverbs 2115. It's a great short little

proverb and it's so profound. I just love this proverb.

So let's take a look at it. Proverbs 2115.

Here's what it says. I'll read it for you.

It says when justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but

terror to evil doers. When justice is done, it is a

joy to the righteous, but terror to evil doers.

What a profound little proverb. When justice is done, the first

word when is very important. This proverb, it reminds us that

there is justice and there's injustice in our world.

It's not a theoretical question. There are real wrongs that need

to be set right. Some days, I don't know if

you're like me, it can feel like the injustice is just winning.

The problems of the world seem so immense.

The injustices around us seem so impossible to even think about

tackling. Did you know that there are

actually more people in slavery today in the world than ever at

any other point in human history?

Isn't that crazy? All the progress, all of

everything. Sometimes it just feels like the

evil, the injustice, is winning. And how can we possibly be

equipped to solve any of these massive problems?

I remember a few years ago, it was the middle of the night at

home and I was woken up by our, our house alarm.

Our house alarm went off. And of course, that's not really

what you want to be waking up to, Of course, is your home

alarm going off in the middle of the night.

So I, I got out of bed and I hit the keypad things.

We had a thing in our, our bedroom and I turned it off.

And of course, the next thing that happens is you get a phone

call. So you get a phone call.

I pick it up and it's the alarm company and the the alarm

company, you know, they're on the phone.

They say hello, your, your alarm just went off.

Said yes, that's correct. I turned it off.

Seems like we're good. Yeah, they said OK.

Is everything OK? I thought, huh, that's a good

question. It's 3:00 AM and my alarm just

went off and I'm upstairs. I don't know if everything's OK.

Actually, the alarm just went off and the guy on the other

line goes on the other end of the line says OK, can you go

ahead and check for me? But everything's OK.

I thought, hold on a SEC. This is where I realized the

whole home and alarm company system is kind of a scam.

Sorry. Is the plan when my alarm goes

off in the middle of the night that I go downstairs and just

confront whoever it might be that is armed downstairs?

Is that the plan right now? And that was the plan.

So I I felt very ill equipped. I'm not the kind of guy ready

for combat, I'll just put it that way.

And so I don't want to look bad in front of my wife, of course.

So I'm just going, Yeah, of course, yeah, no problem.

I'll go down and take care of whoever this is, you know, so I

making lots of noise getting to the stairs hopefully and

listening. Please don't be anyone down

there, you know, turns out there's no one down there.

But I was very ill equipped. I didn't feel ready for what I

was being called to do. The problem seemed a lot bigger

than something I could handle. But the word when in this

proverb isn't an if. It also, for us as Christians,

carries the certainty of what God is doing when God brings

justice in His name. Ultimately, this verse points

beyond our efforts. It points to the certainty of

what God is doing when God brings justice in his name.

It's pointing to God's character because from the beginning to

the end, the story of Scripture is the story of a God who is

setting all things right. In Exodus 34, God reveals

himself to Moses and he says a few words about himself.

This is what he says and describing himself, he says the

Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and

abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast

love for generations, forgiving iniquity and transgression and

sin. But who will by no means clear

the guilty? Our God is love.

He describes that in that little explanation of himself for many

sentence, many, many words. But that love all ends up

looking like justice. Justice isn't something that God

just decides to do. It's who He is.

His character, his actions, his words, all of it are perfectly

aligned together in this idea of pure justice.

That's why we as Christians can be confident that in the end,

God will set all things right. I've got to visit field workers

with International Justice Mission out around the world.

This idea is how a field worker in an IJM office in the

Philippines can keep rescuing children that are caught in the

online sexual exploitation of kids, knowing that there are

still thousands and thousands more that are trapped and need

rescuing. How do they possibly go on?

How do they possibly keep doing this?

Because they know that justice for Christians is not a

hypothetical, it's grounded in God's very character.

And that's how we as the Canadian church, we can be bold

because we're not working towards a possibility.

We partner with a promise, a promise of God's good and

perfect justice. So what exactly does God's

justice look like? Well, we've talked about how

it's not really partial, it's not really optional.

He doesn't sit on a justice committee where they're deciding

whether there's going to be justice.

This is his nature. His justice looks like, as we

read in Exodus, love in action, love that rescues, love that

restores, and love that reform. So let's just break it down for

a SEC, how God's pure justice looks.

So the first part of God's pure justice is this, that his

justice rescues and restores. In Luke 10, we get this great

story from Jesus of the Good Samaritan famous story.

Sure. Most of you are familiar with

the story. A man is beaten, he's left for

dead, the side of the road in a ditch, and a priest just walks

by. A Levite just walks by and of

course the Samaritan stops. But what's the Samaritan do in

the story? The Samaritan doesn't just pull

this this person out of the ditch, you know, dust them off a

little bit and then pat them on the head and come on their way.

He tends to his wounds. He puts him on his own donkey.

He even pays for his care and then he promises to return and

check in on him later. That is a picture of biblical

justice. That's a picture of God's pure

justice. It doesn't just stop at rescue.

It continues into restoration. A number of years ago, I also

got to visit an aftercare home for girls.

This was in South Asia, in India and to a girls rescued from the

sex industry in in in a city in in India.

And the first time I went, IJM was showing me around and they

said, you know, we have dreams for this place, but it's a

really tough place for these girls.

It was I was sad. It was dark, it felt kind of

neglected and underfunded. So it wasn't enough to just

rescue these girls, but then put them in a system that was

broken, that wasn't right. So what we did was IGN stepped

in and they wanted to do more the rescue.

How did they do the work of God's holistic look at justice

in the world? And so I got to actually visit

it again a couple years later, and it was astounding to see the

difference now. It was a totally different

place. It was light, there was safety.

There's a feeling of hope. The girls were full of joy.

Because justice in the biblical sense always moves towards

wholeness. OK, what else does God's justice

do? Well, God's justice also

condemns. Now, this is the part that

culture doesn't love. Sometimes we don't love the idea

of God's condemning just justice.

We love the rescue part, not so much the judgment part.

Unless it's someone you know we don't like.

Maybe. But Exodus 34 reminded us God

will by no means clear the guilty.

Why? Because his love demands it.

A God who loves cannot look at exploitation and depression and

violence and simply shrug. We can't.

One of the most important aspects of how I've seen this

work out in our partnerships around the world, and

specifically definitely with AJM, is how they're helping

justice systems solve the problem of keeping perpetrators

accountable. So last year I got to be at a

dinner with prosecutors and judges who talked about the

importance of criminals facing real consequences for their

actions and how through training, seminars and advocacy

efforts for victims, what International Justice Mission

was able to do is actually help increase the convictions

happening in the country and the sentences for those crimes.

Because you see, God's not indifferent.

The reason he hates injustice is because it destroys what he

loves. And this should actually be good

news for our culture. This should be something that we

talk about. This should be something we

should be proud of. God's justice will not fail.

And this is where the idea of biblical justice differs from

just cultural ideas of social justice.

Social justice is often reactive.

There's no real fixed moral point.

It's really just chasing shadows.

But biblical justice flows from a God who is perfectly loving

and so therefore perfectly just. So our call is not to be judges.

Our call is to simply act like the God that we serve,

reflecting his justice through our compassion, our courage to

fight, and the truth that we stand for.

But even that isn't the full picture of God's justice.

God's justice does something else.

God's justice reforms. It reforms the systems that

perpetuate injustice. It's not enough to rescue

individuals or just punish offenders if the environment

still produces the injustice and depression, right?

I have two sons. They are both in grade one.

They are twins. And this is not a hypothetical

situation. If one of them were to take, you

know, a hockey stick and just smash the other one in the face

with it, they're boys. That's what happens.

You know, when I was to take my one son who just got hit in the

face, he's crying. And I take him away and I say,

oh, are you OK? And I make sure he's OK.

And I say, look, we're putting your Pokémon away for the night

or something, right, As a punishment, you know, for, for

my other son. But then I just said to my hurt

son, all right, we'll go back. And my other son's still

standing there, you know, with a stick in his hand.

I'm not. That's not justice.

I got to take the stick. I got to change the environment

or I haven't actually made justice whole.

So that's why I love when I hear these stories of, say,

Guatemala, where in Guatemala, what we've seen in our

partnership with IJM is laws and government practices actually

being written into code based on biblical principles of dignity

and protection that have been cut and pasted out of the IJM

manuals. Changing the environment,

changing the system. That is true justice.

That's the ripple effect of God's justice.

It actually transforms environments.

Now, it's a crazy section of the Bible, but in Revelation 18 and

19, there's this picture that's painted of this vision that John

gets, and it's this crazy vision that's representing how God is

going to set things right in the new creation.

And what happens in those chapters, what we see is the

righteous are rescued, the wicked are judged, and the evil

systems of Babylon are destroyed.

A holistic approach. And then all of the oppressed

and the Saints rejoice because sin and injustice are finally

gone. And that's the hope that we as

Christians can live for and the justice that we are called to

live out. OK, so back to the the proverb.

We when justice is done, we get 2 responses, 2 responses.

A joy to the righteous, but terror to evil doers.

Joy and terror. Let's look at joy for a minute.

Those who look like Christ rejoice when justice is done.

Why? Because we've been forgiven,

forgiven by Christ, and we understand, hopefully, mercy and

grace and love. So justice should naturally for

us bring unbridled joy. We should love seeing justice

being done. We should be excited about

seeing justice done. You know what brings my son's

unbridled joy? Candy and Pokémon.

They don't even, you know, this is fascinating.

They don't. They told us they don't even

want to go to Disneyland anymore because they want to go to

Japan. That's interesting.

They have in their heads, for some reason, this idea that

Japan is like a large town just full of Pokémon and candy, which

might be true. I don't know.

Anyways, it's crazy. Don't want to go to Disneyland?

The church should be the loudest voice fighting for justice and

celebrating when it happens. Too often.

We talk about as the church pointing people to the Kingdom

of God, we're pointing people to the Kingdom of God.

But pointing doesn't mean in this that kind of a theological

context. It doesn't mean pointing to them

to something like directing them over here.

Pointing them to the Kingdom of God means we embody the Kingdom

of God. That's what it means.

We embody the Kingdom. This is how God's Kingdom breaks

into our world through the church.

We don't just tell people, we actually begin to create a world

that is the Kingdom of God, where we live in it every day.

People should see the justice of God by how we as the church

live, not just by what we're saying or pointing people to.

And that's why in Revelation 18, it warns the church, It says

come out of Babylon, my people, lest you take part in her sins.

Babylon is representing a system of exploitation, of power used

for control of the self, to exploit others.

And so for Christians, coming out of Babylon, I think for us

in Canada means not being indifferent.

Being different in Canada means not being indifferent.

We can't look away from the injustice that's done globally.

We can't look away from the injustice that's being done even

in our own backyard. Canada represents one of the top

Four Nations in the world consuming online sexual sexual

exploitation of children material.

Indigenous women and others are trafficked at far higher rates

than other groups. This isn't something that's just

someone else's problem somewhere else.

Injustice is our problem, and as the church, we have to care.

Imagine, though, if the reputation of the Canadian

church was one of righteous joy at justice being done.

If people looked at us and they said those are the ones who

fight for the vulnerable, those are the ones who rejoice when

the oppressed go free, those are the ones who are making it

happen. Imagine if that was how our

country saw us. That would be game changing for

our witness. Rodney Stark once wrote that the

early church actually exploded in growth because it was

compassionate in the face of suffering and injustice, plagues

and poverty and persecution. The church didn't run from it.

They were the only ones who stayed.

They ran toward it. And that's part of what exploded

the church in the early centuries.

This could be that kind of moment for us as the Canadian

church. But when justice is done,

there's a second response. It's a terror, A terror to evil

doers. I remember one of my professors

at Regent College years ago used to say the Gospel is good news,

but it's also bad news. Sounds pretty heretical, but

what he means is it's good news for those who receive it, but

it's bad news for those who resist it.

When the systems of Babylon all collapse in Revelation 18, when

exploitation loses its power, you know what the wicked do?

It says. They weep and wail.

They weep and wail. That's a sobering moment that

actually challenges me. I hope it challenges you because

it asks us a pretty profound question.

Would we, would I really rejoice at God's justice being done, or

would I mourn at what that might cost me?

Would you really rejoice at God's justice being done or

would you mourn at what it might cost you?

Would we celebrate the fall of Babylon or would we miss the

comforts that it gives us? It's a sharp call to self

examination to let God shape our hearts so that we love justice

more than our own convenience. But I don't think we need to

dwell in conviction on this. Remember, God is, yes, a God of

justice, but also God of mercy. Like Exodus 34, it said,

merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding and steadfast

love. He knows that we as this church

aren't perfect. He knows that we're in a process

of being sanctified. Yet He still asks us in our

imperfectness to partner with Him in this work in the world.

Because God's justice does always cost something, right?

Look at what he did. It cost Jesus his life.

It always cost something. When Jesus said in Matthew 16 to

take up your cross, he's not just talking about dying.

He's talking about living a certain way, living differently,

living sacrificially, laying down our comfort so that others

might find freedom. When Paul says he's been

crucified with Christ, he means he's literally killing the life

that he had and cared about before Christ.

And he's now living a whole different kind of existence

where he says Christ now lives in and through me.

He now embodies the life of Christ in his actions, in his

heart, the character of God. And he does so, he says by

faith, faith that the cost is worth more than the price to

follow the call. That's what we have to wrestle

with. Now imagine a church full of

people who have taken up their cross, who have crucified their

old lives, now live through Christ's power and character,

all with huge, huge faith in what God can do, not for

themselves, but for others, and most certainly for the

oppressed. Wouldn't that be amazing?

What could that church do? But that's what the Kingdom of

God looks like. That's what we are called to

look like. That's what the cross

accomplishes, rescue, freedom and restoration, and we see that

in God. It's always worth the cost.

If it was for Him, it certainly is for us.

A few years ago, I was at a global prayer gathering in

Baltimore with International Justice Mission and my church

Village Church had partnered with IJM for years and we had

funded or helped fund 2 field offices in the country of India.

1 was fighting the sex trafficking exploitation of kids

in brothels and on the streets in Kolkata and the other was

fighting against a system of bonded work slavery in the city

and area of Chennai. And I got to walk those streets.

I got to see those places. I got to see, you know, what

the, the streets and the brothels and the, the brick

kilns and everything looked like.

I got to meet survivors. And then years later, I'm

standing at this convention in Baltimore as thousands of IJM

staff are all gathered together from all around the world to

hear a report on these two specific areas and what had been

achieved. And when they announced the

findings in these two areas, the room of thousands of workers

just erupted. Here's what an independent third

party auditor found after all of the work the village got to

partner in directly in these two areas.

In Kolkata, they found that there were now 0 minors in the

red light districts, in brothels in the whole city.

Children no longer for sale in one of the worst red light areas

in all of South Asia. That was actually done and still

today in Chennai, they reported a third party audit reported

bonded labor slavery had been reduced to 0 or nearly zero in

Chennai, in the targeted regions around.

You know what that meant? It meant over 300,000 people

rescued and the system changed so millions protected in the

future. This is the kind of impact that

is actually possible. And so I stood there

overwhelmed, not just because of my church's partnership in these

initiatives, but because I was seeing with my own eyes what can

happen if God's people believe He can actually do what He says.

If we just have faith, there's literally nothing, nothing that

is off the table for our God. Anything is possible.

There is nothing that the church in Canada cannot do by the power

of Christ in US and the movement of His Holy Spirit through US.

Do you believe that earlier this earlier this year, I got to be

back in South Asia, this time in Kolkata again celebrating

everything I was just talking about.

And as we're celebrating, I learned about a crisis going on

right across the border in the neighboring country of

Bangladesh. Here it was similar to Kolkata,

the exploitation of children on the streets and in brothels, but

happening at an even greater scale than what we saw in

Kolkata. So the dream was pretty simple,

but impossible. Could we take everything we had

learned, everything we had proven, everything we had done

successfully in Kolkata and take that across the border to see

the same justice but this time at the scale of a nation?

We met with Ijms, national director for Bangladesh, and I

asked her what is the biggest prayer request you have so we

can pray this morning? She said we've been waiting for

three years, three years for the government paperwork to come in

so that we can be approved to actually start working.

We're all set up and ready to go, and we've been sitting here

for three years waiting for the paperwork.

So we prayed. A few minutes later, as we're

still talking, she suddenly stopped.

She pulled out her phone and she said the approval just came

through. Minutes after praying with her

and asking God what would be the call for the Canadian church in

this project in Bangladesh that happened.

And in that moment I knew God's in this and we have a calling.

We are called to play a part as a church, not just village

church. I think the Canadian church.

And I thought, what if, what if the Canadian church could be

written into the story of how an entire nation was transformed by

the justice of God? What if years from now, the

history books said that Bangladesh was transformed into

freedom for its children because the Canadian church stood up and

we attempted to do the impossible and then achieved it?

That's the vision. That is the invitation to us

that God is putting forward for us as the Canadian church today

and forward. I ask, will you be a part of

seeing the dream of children in Bangladesh freed?

Will you join village church and churches all across Canada who

are saying yes to something absolutely historic together?

Imagine the children rescued, Imagine the systems of the

country for oppression reformed, and imagine the witness of the

Canadian church strengthened like never before to our

culture, that we might be known for the good we have done as a

demonstration of embodying God's Kingdom and character together

as his church. It's a massive task, yes.

Can God do it? Absolutely.

Because in the end, and Revelation 18 reminded us of

this, justice is an optional. Justice is inevitable, so we can

Live Today in full confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit,

the love of Christ, and the unstoppable justice of our great

and holy God. Would you join me in pray?

God, we first just honored you. We honor you, and we praise you

because of who you are. You are this perfect love.

You are this perfect justice. And so we humbly kneel and bow

before you and say you are great, you are holy.

And God, we ask that you would continue to pour out your love

and justice into the world around us, here at home and

abroad around the globe. God, would you give us a vision

that matches your vision? Would you give us a scope of

vision that matches your scope of vision?

And would you give us a sold out confidence?

God, to the assurance that we find in you that you will make

things right and that you are making things right and that you

ask us to participate with you. God give us by our Holy Spirit

confidence to do this work. Shape us also by your Spirit to

look and be and act more like you and your Son Jesus Christ.

We pray all for your glory in Jesus name, Amen.