Justice and Mercy

I heard a story recently of a man by the name of Percival Lowell.

Percival Lowell.

Percival Lowell was a highly respected scientist in the late 1800s, early 1900s, especially in the area of astronomy.

He uh devoted most of his life and his work to outer space.

Uh he was Harvard trained, and at some point in the early 19th century or early 1900s, he became really intrigued by Mars.

And so he started to really study Mars.

And he decided to basically set up what at that time was the best viewing spot of Mars on Earth.

He went to what's now known as Flagstaff, Arizona.

He went to a place of high elevation.

There was very little uh cloud cover, cloud issues, and he got the best technology of the time in terms of telescopes, and he began to examine Mars.

And he was as he was examining Mars, uh he started to notice uh what he perceived to be canals on Mars, and and he saw that as an evidence of intelligent life on Mars.

And so he wrote a book about it, and because he was an eminent character and highly, highly respected scientist, people took it very, very seriously.

He had some people who pushed back against him and said, you know, I don't know if you're seeing that correctly.

And of course, he kind of was hard to push back against because a lot of the other viewing sites were at lower elevations.

They were a place with actually a lot of near major cities, they were at universities near major cities, and his was kind of out in the middle of nowhere.

And so because he was an authority on the subject, because he had spent so much time viewing, and because he had kind of a superior space to view, he was totally convinced.

And he convinced a lot of people.

There were a lot of people that believed that these canals were evidence that there was life on Mars.

Um, and so he spent years, years looking in a telescope and actually mapping and sketching maps of Mars.

Now we know, now with the technology we have, we've sent probes up to Mars, we've mapped literally all of Mars, and we know that there are no canals on Mars.

What was going on?

Well, what was going on is actually a couple things.

One, uh Percival Lowell, once he sort of locked in on that there were canals on Mars, he really, really, really wanted to see canals on Mars.

That was part of it, it was confirmation bias.

But the second, which is more interesting, is that Percival Lowell had a rare eye disease that's now been named after him.

It's Lowell syndrome.

And basically what he was doing was he was seeing uh the veins in his own eyes.

He had inflamed, um, enlarged veins in his own eyes.

So as he was looking through his own eyes into the microscope and seeing canals, he was actually mapping out his own veins in his own eyes.

And when you think about that, it's pretty remarkable to think about the fact that somebody who was so sincere, uh, somebody who had done quite a bit of work, did not see what they thought they saw.

In fact, it was his own eyes, it was his own self that was causing him to be confused.

And as I thought about that, I thought about Psalm 139 when David says, Search me, O God, know my heart, try me, he says.

In the NLT, it says, put me on trial and test my anxious thoughts.

See if there be anything in me that offends you.

Is there anything in me, is there anything I'm seeing when I look out that's actually my own veins and my own eyes?

Is there anything that I'm looking and I want to see it so bad that I'm seeing it?

And that is one of the powerful things about this moment, in these moments, is that I believe that as we come to God, all of us are prone to spiritual lowell syndrome.

All of us are prone to seeing our own veins and thinking they're your canals.

All of us are prone, even with sincerity and diligence and hard work, to not see the right thing.

And yet it's in these moments that through the power of God's word, through the power of God's Spirit, He may help us see something or learn something that we've not seen before.

So let's take this moment right now and prepare our hearts.

Lord, we prepare our hearts today to receive from you.

Lord, help us today, even with good intentions, to not misconstrue the veins in our eyes for canals.

May we not today so badly want to make a case, so badly want to see something, that we make it appear in our minds.

I pray, Lord, that you would help us see the truth and know the truth.

And Lord, we know that that truth will set us free.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

I want to uh start in the book of Micah, uh, Micah 6.8.

Micah is uh in the biblical genre of books, Micah is a what's called a minor prophet.

So if you think about, uh you maybe heard that term before, the prophets, the major and minor prophets, what's a prophet?

A prophet was somebody in the Old Testament that God used for foretelling or forthelling.

Foretelling or forthelling.

Fortelling would be to predict something that was that would happen in the future.

So it's foretelling.

Um there are some things in the Bible, there are prophecies that were foretold and that come true uh within the timeline of the Bible.

Then there are other prophecies that are prophetic that are still yet to come true, that are still prophesying into the future.

So it's foretelling, but it's also forthelling.

It's speaking forth, thus saith the Lord to the people, thus saith the Lord to the nation.

And so we have um uh we have the major prophets, which would be like Isaiah would be a major prophet, and what's the difference between the major and minor prophets?

It's not that the it's not that the uh prophets were greater, it's that their books were longer.

That's the difference.

So, for example, Isaiah 66 chapters in the book of Isaiah.

And we're gonna look uh here in the book of Micah.

Micah is seven chapters, it's a it's a minor prophet.

So the shorter books, shorter prophets were minor prophets.

The book of Micah, if you were to sort of summarize it very, very simply, it's a combination of judgment and hope.

Judgment and hope.

God speaks through Micah to kind of call out the behaviors of the people, to call out the behaviors of the leaders.

In some ways, it's somewhat subversive.

They're going in a direction, and the power structures are being challenged, and it's disruptive.

And he says, because look, look at what's right in front of you, look at the decisions, look, these behaviors have consequences, and so he calls it out through Micah, and then he offers hope and he says, Listen, it's it's it's bad, and there's gonna be judgment, but it's not over.

And God is still loving and God is gracious, and so you have these sort of competing ideas of judgment and grace happening simultaneously.

And it's in uh Micah chapter 6 that we have this really powerful, concise statement about what God wants from his people.

Micah 6 · chapter mention

And it says in verse 8, it says, He has shown you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you?

What does God want from you?

To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

And to walk humbly.

Let's actually start in the middle.

Let's start with love mercy.

Let's think about that.

If you think about the nature of mercy, mercy is um in some ways an opposing idea to justice.

Because justice is you get what you deserve.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

And so you do this, that behavior, justice means you do this, and then we gotta get the scales of justice even.

Mercy is you don't get what you deserve.

You should have got this, it should have happened like that, but you didn't, you didn't get the justice.

You didn't get what you had coming to you.

If you're in a power position where you have somebody's fate in your hands to serve justice and you were to give them mercy, okay, that's tough.

That's tough if you've ever been in that spot, especially if they did you or somebody you love wrong to be able, you now have a bona fide case as to why they deserve justice.

And if you found it within yourself in some way to be merciful, I mean, that's pretty respectable all by itself.

That takes a large amount of maturity.

But to love mercy, to actually love it, that seems like a pretty high bar.

Uh it makes me actually think about one of the great stories in the Bible.

It's a great story, it almost reads like a screenplay.

It starts in Genesis 37, it goes all the way through Genesis 50.

It's this guy by the name of Joseph.

Joseph is introduced in the scripture as his father's favorite son, and there's so many details, there's so many specifics.

I'm gonna hit you with the cliff notes of the story, but even the cliff notes are amazing.

I would encourage you if you're a little bored in your Bible reading, go spend some time in Genesis 37 through 50.

Uh, it says in verse 3, Jacob, who was Joseph's father, loved him more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.

That's a noteworthy detail because essentially Jacob, we see really how dysfunctional Jacob is.

And we actually have more backstory on Jacob in terms of just uh, he's an interesting, complex character.

But Jacob loves Joseph.

He has a special affection for Joseph.

Why?

Because he was born to Jacob in his old age.

It's really more about Jacob than it is about Joseph.

It's just like he's like, you know, daddy still got it.

You know?

In many ways, Joseph, it wasn't about Joseph.

It was about Jacob proving his own virility as he was aging.

It was it was him proving, you know, what he could still do and who he still was.

And because of that, um, Joseph gets this special treatment, and it says, and uh it says in as we read on, one day Jacob gave made a special gift, had a special gift made for Joseph, a beautiful robe.

This is the coat of many colors.

It said, but his brothers hated him because his father loved them more than the rest of them, so they couldn't say a kind word about him.

I'm gonna really have to summarize, but basically, the uh Jacob continues, the father continues to show favoritism to Joseph, and it's really rubbing the brothers the wrong way.

Joseph has some dreams about the fact that his brothers would one day bow to him.

That didn't go over well.

It's the youngest brother, you know, and this is more than just we think dad might like him better.

This is like we know dad likes him better, to the point that he actually sends the older boys with the most unenviable task.

They have to go follow the herds, the wandering herds.

So they they they're sleeping outside, they're sleeping in tents.

Uh it's it's it's a manual labor type job.

And as they go out and they got to follow these herds and you know, all over the land and do this hard work, Joseph is chilling at home, sleeping in his own bed in his coat of many colors with all of dad's favoritism.

And they've been gone a while, and it says in the text that Jacob says to Joseph, okay, who's about 17 years old at this point.

Uh he says, look at this, verse 14, go and see how your brothers and the f and the flocks are getting along, and then come back and bring me a report.

Not, hey, go help them out, because they might be overloaded.

Go supervise their work.

Make sure that they're doing good work, and if they're not, come back and rat on them, basically.

Come give me a report.

This isn't said in the text, but you can kind of feel it.

The brothers, you know, well, it does say that they couldn't say a nice word about them, but you have to imagine they probably said a lot of not nice words about them.

At some point, they're there the those feelings, the frustration, and of course, you know how that stuff spirals when you got 11 people standing around talking about how much they don't like somebody.

And it says that he goes to Shechem, which is where he thought they were, but they're actually in Dothan, so he has to go 15 more miles.

They see him coming, and when they see him, they go, There's daddy's favorite, and his little sweet little coat of many colors.

And look at it, look at him coming over here, the the dreamer.

And so they their their their their dysfunction, their bitterness, their jealousy, the group think it spirals into we're gonna kill him and just tell our dad he was killed by a wild animal.

How's he gonna prove it?

And so one of the brothers, Reuben, just kind of pipes up, he's like, hey, yo, listen, maybe we ought to, let's not do that.

Let's let's sell him.

We'll sell him into slavery.

So at 17 years old, and we find out later actually, that he begged for his life.

He thought they were gonna kill him.

Imagine, imagine so much hatred in a family.

Not some stranger, not some person in a far off distant land, your own brethren, your own brothers hating you so bad that as you beg for your life, as you beg for your life, they they they hate you.

They sell them into slavery.

And if you kind of go through the story, you know, he it's like so inspirational.

Like Joseph keeps taking lemons and making lemonade.

He keeps turning it around.

He goes into Potiphar's house where he's a slave, and he develops administrative skills and and and he keeps his head up and he keeps his heart right, keeps his attitude right, his integrity is being developed, and and so he takes over this entire estate, and he's like the head man in charge.

And then and then uh Potiphar's wife falsely accuses him, false accusations, and he ends up in prison.

And it's like you can't keep a good man down.

He bounces right back, he he goes and he he's making hay in prison, he's he's actually being responsible in prison, he's being fruitful and productive in prison.

And as he does that, he rises the ranks while a prisoner, they're like, this guy is amazing, and he goes to the top of the food chain in prison.

Ends up, Pharaoh has a dream, and he no one can interpret it.

Joseph interprets his dream and says, Look, here's what's about to happen.

We're about to have seven years of prosperity, but we have to be really wise.

Because seven years of prosperity, we have to build barns, we have to have systems, processes, people, infrastructure, logistics.

We got to get all this stuff down so that we can store food for seven years, because after the seven years of prosperity, we'll be seven years of no food.

And if we don't take care of it when we're prosperous, we're gonna end up starving.

So he does seven years of hard day in and day out work.

He's gotta do seven, he's gotta do 14 years worth of work in seven.

So he gets everything stored up in seven years.

Keep doing the math here.

He's now 30.

Dang, I need to do the math.

It's two years into the second seven-year period.

He's 39.

He's 39 years old.

And 39 years old, two years into the famine, his brothers show up because they're starving.

And now it's the it's like poetic justice, dude.

In the words of Michael Scott, oh, how the turntables, oh, how the tables have turned, right?

It's turned, it's been a reversal.

Now they show up.

And they don't recognize him, it says in the text, but he recognizes them.

And he's in a spot now.

What do you do?

Do I act justly or do I love mercy?

Spoiler alert, he ends up showing mercy.

But I'm gonna show you how he gets there.

Because we're not just gonna go, yeah, be merciful, walk out, and not have a deeper conversation.

But let's really think about this for a second.

To act justly in this situation, it still would have been a good story.

Imagine if he's there and he and he he's like, remember me?

Remember me?

Twenty-two years I've been away from home.

Twenty-two years ago.

My brethren, not some foreign power, my brothers sold me into slavery because it was a better option than killing me, which was planning.

Now you guys are gonna do 22 years to pay back justice.

And it would have been a good story.

I mean, have you ever read The Count of Monte Cristo or seen the movie?

Have you ever seen the Shawshank Redemption?

The good guy gets away with the stuff, and the bad guys end up obliterated.

Or they end up incarcerated, and the good guy rides off into the sunset.

Like, who wouldn't like a good story of these guys having to pay their 22 years for what you did?

Let's pause there for a second on love mercy and let's go to act justly.

The idea of justice means that there's a judgment.

Somebody's got to make a judgment.

Somebody has to put themselves in a position of judge.

That's what a judicial system, a justice system is.

That some accusation happens, so there's a crime that's committed, and you you stand before a judge and you present your case, and you get support and you get help, and you talk about uh the facts, and you present your facts, and and at some point somebody who is fair-minded and intelligent, supposedly you get a you you get a fair trial, and so you have a judge and you have a jury, and and now this whole thing comes, and some there's a judgment.

We're either guilty or innocent, and if you're guilty, here's what here's what the justice is, judgment.

And this is why when we even talk about judgment, judgmental, you hear within church, the first thing that comes to mind in judgmental is Matthew 7, where Jesus says, judge not lest ye be judged.

Which is one of, in my opinion, the most misunderstood texts in the whole Bible.

Because judge not lest ye be judged is like the one verse that everybody knows.

Especially like if you've ever tried to hold someone accountable for like their behavior, like they love to whoop that one out on you.

Oh, I thought you were a Christian.

Don't you know the Bible says don't judge?

Don't you know the Bible says not to judge?

Well, look at the text a little closer.

If you look at Matthew 7, okay, Jesus says starts off with, judge not lest ye be judged.

But let's let's read it as as Jesus said it.

It says, judge not, or you too will be judged.

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged.

And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Jesus, let me be very clear here.

Jesus in Matthew 7 is not saying that you should never render a judgment.

In fact, if you keep going in Matthew 7, Jesus talks later about judging false prophets.

He's like, There's gonna be people among you that will set themselves up and they're false prophets, and you're gonna have to be judgmental.

You're gonna have to judge.

You're gonna have to know the difference between the real ones and the fake ones.

How are you gonna do that without being judgmental?

You're gonna have to judge.

And he says, here's how you judge you judge them by their fruit.

You need to watch their lives.

It's not just what comes out of their mouth, it's what they do.

Watch them, watch them, and and then you're gonna have to make a judgment.

We know it's not even logical for you to never make any judgments about anybody.

That doesn't make any sense.

You know this instinctively.

Let some weirdo start sniffing around your kids.

You get real judgmental real quick, you get real inquisitive real quick.

I'm I'm gonna render a judgment.

A lot of life is you have to make judgments.

A lot of our growth, by the way, happens when people perceive us a certain way and talk to us.

It's accountability.

So when you hear Judge not lest ye be judged.

This is not to negate accountability.

Accountability is a part of healthy community, it's a part of healthy relationships.

Jesus is talking much deeper about how to judge better.

And the certain lowell syndrome that we're all prone to.

So he says, essentially, judge fairly.

He says, judge not lest ye be judged.

He said, the same way you judge others, you shouldn't judge others in a way you wouldn't want to personally be judged.

You want to be as fair as you can.

And he says, Why would you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?

Verse 3.

Verse 4, how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when all the time there's a plank in your own?

You hypocrite.

First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

So he's not saying that there's not a place for judgment.

He's also not saying that imperfect people can't correct each other.

I can be corrected.

You can be corrected by someone who's not perfect.

So you're not perfect either is not like a good excuse for you to not receive what somebody helping you.

In fact, notice what he said deal with the plank in your eye, then you can help somebody with the speck in theirs, because we don't want a plank or a speck.

But what you don't want is spiritual Lowell syndrome where I'm looking at my own eye veins and calling your stuff can out.

I need to deal with my own.

We start there.

So I want to give you three things that I think will help us and how these work together between judging, acting justly, and loving mercy, and when we and then we're gonna apply it to our own life situations.

The first uh question I want you to ask yourself, three questions.

The first one is do I condemn others while ignoring my own faults?

Do I condemn others while ignoring my own faults?

In other words, I shouldn't go around condemning, criticizing, and judging without first taking a look at myself.

In other words, before I pick up a rock, I should pick up a mirror.

John 7, the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery.

What's justice?

She's caught in the act of adultery.

What's the law say?

She should be stoned to death, right?

So they all come around.

That's that's the that's what would have been the just act.

And and Jesus says, All right, everybody, get ready to do justice.

Everybody ready?

Everybody have a rock?

Okay, he without sin cast the first stone.

In other words, what does he do?

He said, look at yourself before you do this.

Because you're looking at this person a certain way, you're casting judgment, and that whole idea of picking up a mirror before picking up a rock caused each one of them to instinctively think about, or it should have caused them to think about in such a way that they became merciful.

So are you condemning?

Am I condemning others while ignoring my own faults?

The second is this are my judgments redemptive?

Are my judgments redemptive?

As I'm judging, as I'm judging a person in a situation, do I judge people without desiring to see them return to God in his ways?

Or is it really vindictive?

Is it, you know, she deserved that one.

If it was up to me, it would have been worse.

I'm glad I'm glad that happened to him.

In a way that isn't redemptive.

Our judgments at our heart should be redemption.

Let's go back to Joseph.

The story gets so good.

I just don't have time to do it justice.

I'm gonna go as fast as I can.

He sees his brothers immediately, he's provoked emotionally.

And as he sees his brothers, he puts them to a test.

So he sees them and he and he, you know what he does?

The one who was falsely accused, falsely accuses them.

He goes, Oh, I know, I know you guys are spies.

Like, we're not spies.

He's like, Yes, you are.

You're here to see how vulnerable the land is.

You're spies.

And he starts to probe them with questions about their family.

And they said, Oh, no, no, it's we're this many brothers, and we have a younger brother at home.

Benjamin.

Now, ding ding ding, Joseph knows I was the favorite because I was born to dad in his old age, and now there's one that was born to dad in his even older age.

So if I got a coat of many colors, what kind of treatment do you think Benjamin's getting?

And so he says to him, bring him to me.

And he incarcerates one of his brothers and says, I'll hold him till you bring the other brother, and then I'll know you're not spies, you're telling the truth.

They go home, and their dad won't, their dad is just as same old Jacob as he's ever been.

Because he won't release, he's like, you know what, he can keep the other brother, I'm keeping my youngest.

And it wasn't until they got hungry again, they ran out of food, that the boys had to go back, and they finally convinced their dad to take Benjamin, and the brother said, We promise we'll bring him back.

So he goes in now.

Check this out.

They show up, and Joseph sees them, and he recognizes he sees Benjamin, his younger brother, and he throws a feast and he gives them all food, and he gives Benjamin five times the amount of food that he gives the rest of them.

He's like, there's another coat of many colors.

And then at the end of it, he plants stolen goods in Benjamin's bag.

And so they go to leave, and he goes, Wait, wait, wait, somebody stole something.

They're like, No, none of us did.

They take the stuff out, and sure enough, Benjamin has the stolen goods in his bag, and Joseph says, now he's my slave.

And all of the brothers said, You can have us.

You can have us.

Just let him go.

Reversal.

All eleven, the uh the the brothers that gave up the one brother in a 22-year span and had a redemption, a change of heart.

And now the test goes from them to Joseph.

What is the intention of your judgment?

And when he saw that the brothers were willing to give themselves up, the same brothers who 22 years earlier were willing to give their brother as a slave, were all willing to give themselves up as slaves to save.

And it says in chapter 45, he couldn't hold it in any longer, and he reveals himself.

I'm Joseph.

And you want to talk about mercy.

He didn't just let them walk, he brings them in, he lets them eat off of his seven years of hard work.

He takes care of them and their families.

He is extravagant in his mercy.

I guess my question is as we're trying to figure out justice when you're making judgments which are necessary.

This is not, we want loving mercy, isn't it we allow perpetrators to perpetuate abuse, dysfunction, pain?

This is not about lacking accountability.

This is about judging as correctly as we can.

This is not looking at a speck in someone's eye and seeing a plank in our own.

This is not spiritual lowell syndrome.

This is about, is my intent redemption?

The last thing is am I judging others by their actions, but judging myself by my motives?

Am I judging others?

But you did that, but I meant this.

But you did that, but I meant this.

You know, this is it's a wild story, man.

This Joseph story, if you think about the fact that Joseph probably saw the actions of his brothers one way when he was 17 and he saw it different when he was 39.

Something about 22 years of complicated life.

Something about 22 years of being in bondage and being in prison, of being empowered, of turning lemons into lemonade, of seeing the different motives, of searching your own motives and meeting all kinds of like the complicated journey of your life.

Part of the process of walking through maturation.

The process of maturation happens when you take all your complexity and you keep giving it to God and you keep doing the best you can with it.

It starts to actually build out your empathy.

It helps you to understand.

And so at 17, all he saw was what they did.

And if we're not careful, if we think in an immature fashion, we just see what everyone does, and then we examine ourselves by our motives and then by their actions.

As we mature over time, we start to look and see the complications of what is going on in a person's mind.

And we start to become more gracious, we start to become more merciful.

You got to think that the 39-year-old Joseph probably took some time, like when he was 17 and he was hanging out at the house while his brothers were out doing the work, he didn't even know what that work consisted of.

But when you go through a process of working in Potiphar's house and you go through a process of being in prison, and you start, at some point he probably was in the middle of a rugged work day and thought, you know, my brothers did this every day while I was sleeping in bed, while I was hanging out with a coat of many colors.

Maybe he had processed that to where now their actions, although reprehensible, their actions, although inexcusable, their actions while still being wrong, he was able to give them mercy.

He was able to keep an open heart when they showed back up to think, just maybe in 22 years, they've had a change of heart.

Maybe they're a work in progress, maybe.

And then when they showed the character and they showed the development and they showed what had changed, he was willing to be redemptive.

I want to encourage you.

Take some time to think in a deeper way, take some time to consider in a broader way.

Come from a redemptive path, and in the middle of that, you gotta ask yourself is this a time for justice?

Is this a time for mercy?

So think about the three of these things together.

Walk humbly, love mercy, and act justly.

I'm gonna pray for you in just a moment, but I want to say this last thing.

When you think about love, mercy, it's a lot easier to love mercy when you love a person.

I don't tend to love mercy for people I don't love.

If I love you, mercy kind of follows.

Like, yeah, the people closest to us have the greatest potential to hurt us, but there are people when I really love you that I do want to give you mercy, that I do want this negative thing to be a breakthrough to a better person.

I am looking for redemption.

And when you think about the intersection of justice and mercy, the greatest place is the cross.

It's the place that justice was served, that God made He who had no sin to be sin for us, to take on the penalty of sin, of our sin, to bring justice, but to bring mercy simultaneously.

I think it's oftentimes when we have a fresh revelation of that justice and mercy, and it puts us in a humble headspace, and it causes us to look out with clearer eyes.

So let's take a moment right now.

Why don't you take a moment and take what we've talked about and lay it over your life?

Maybe you've got some relationships right now, maybe you have some conversations that need to be had, some decisions that need to be made, some situations that need to be addressed, and you're really asking yourself is this a time for justice?

Is it a time for mercy?

Why don't we take this to the Lord right now?