John 18:19-40 "Jesus Enters In To Injustice"

So we're gonna be in, we're gonna continue our series in John, John chapter 18, we are in verses 19 through 40.

John 18 · chapter mention

This um this has been one of the most challenging sermons to prepare like ever.

Um so it's either gonna it's either gonna go really well or it's gonna be obvious how difficult it was.

Um but let's pray for God's help before we begin.

God, as we turn to your word now, meet us here.

I pray that the the words would be so much more than mine, that by the Spirit this word would come to life, that we would, that we would experience you and what you've done for us in its pages.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

There was once a woman named Carrie Buck.

I have a picture of her here.

In 1927, Carrie Buck was forcibly sterilized against her will, that's forcible, and it was 100% legal.

How did that happen?

Because that seems crazy, doesn't it?

Well, you see, there were people who believed in what they were calling progress back then, uh, in the late 1900s or uh late 1800s and 1900s, that it was called the progressive movement, and these were people who meant well.

They wanted to do something about poverty, they wanted to help orphans, they wanted to reduce crime.

And a new discipline that was coming into its own, science, was offering a very powerful answer.

Why do we have poverty orphans in crime?

It's because of DNA that criminals and right, like poor people, it's in their DNA.

So their solution stopped them from reproducing.

I've you could have I brought a little pop propaganda poster from the time, so you could see kind of what their vibe was.

And so the way that they did this at first was through establishing colonies, what they called colonies for the feeble-minded.

Okay, and the idea was you would take people out of the general population who were who you didn't want reproducing until they were too old to have children, and then you'd let them back out.

But one, uh so Carrie Buck, she lived in one of these colonies, and the the reason is that she she was before that in foster care because her mother had been sent to a colony.

She was deemed, you know, unworthy to reproduce.

And then so while she was in foster care, uh Carrie got pregnant, no fault of her own, and then was they were like, well, obviously, this person has bad morals, you don't want those morals passed on anymore, so they put her in a colony.

And um it's not really fair to call her feeble-minded, just for the record.

She did well in school before the foster family pulled her out to basically become the housemaid.

Also, throughout her life, she she enjoyed reading the paper every day, discussing current events.

She was she was far from feeble-minded, and to give you an idea of the hysteria around this, they judged her daughter to be feeble-minded when she was just 13 months old.

It's like all 13 months old are feeble-minded, if you test them.

It's like, you know, tell me what this headline says.

That, that, that, that, that rule.

It's like, ah, clearly feeble-minded.

So they had an idea.

The director, the eugenicists, the director of this colony, and all these people, the progressives, they said, you know, instead of putting people away in colonies, which by the way was the blueprint for Dazi concentration camps, just thought I'd throw that in there.

Uh, they said, you know what, science can do something else now.

It can just, with a quick snip, harmless procedure, it can make them unable to have children, then we don't have to put them in the colonies.

But the thing is, we have to be able to force it on them.

So there was a new law passed in Virginia, and they wanted to test this law.

Okay, right, send it through the courts because they knew there would be constitutional challenges.

So the director of this colony chose Carrie to be the test case.

He wanted to forcibly sterilize her, and he wanted the courts to say that this was legal.

So she lost in the district court, she lost in the appeals court, and it went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Little extra thing here is that her defense attorney was himself with the progressives.

He was working with the prosecution, he was losing the cases on purpose, then appealing so that it would get to the Supreme Court and lose.

Because he wanted this law to be, you know, precedent and all that.

But this was the Supreme Court of the great Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great humanitarian and progressive justice, the hero of the progressive movement.

The court ruled eight to one against Kerry.

And Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the majority.

He said, three generations of imbeciles is enough.

Imbeciles was a technical term for feeble-minded to them, people you don't want reproducing.

And so Kerry was forcibly sterilized, and it opened the floodgates in our country and in other countries for literally tens of thousands of forced sterilizations.

All of poor and immigrant people.

Does that bother you?

What happened to Carrie?

What happened?

Why does it bother you?

They didn't kill her.

They didn't even hurt her, really.

They didn't take her money away.

Where's the injury?

I'll tell you why it bothers me and bothers you so much.

It was unjust.

They ignored her rights.

They treated her as a lesser human being, and she didn't even get a fair trial.

Right?

It was the strong using their power against the weak.

It's unjust.

For many of us, we care greatly about justice.

And when you hear a story like that, something in you says, that is not right.

That is not something that should be.

But the world is full of injustice, isn't it?

One can look throughout history at the ubiquity of the slave trade and slavery.

It's still with us just underground.

You can look at caste and class hierarchies that are all over the world and throughout history, still functioning in many countries, where people get, you know, power privilege or starvation and treated like dirt based on what station you're born in.

We could see in our own country how some systems work better for the rich and powerful.

You know, I mean the legal system, it's no secret.

We have a very good legal system by comparison, but it's well known.

The more lawyers you afford, the more justice you get.

For a lot of us who are listening to this, you care about this.

I don't have to get you here, you're already there.

This is something that matters to you, not only because it matters because you don't want it to happen to other people, but because injustice has happened to you.

What are God's people supposed to do about the injustice in the world?

Well, as always, a question like that, we need to turn to the word of God.

What we're gonna do is we're going to look at the text, and then we are going to talk about how it guides us.

And my notes are just going all crazy on me, so if I start, if I start going freestyle, just go with me.

Alright, let's take a look.

John chapter 18, starting at verse 19.

John 18 · chapter mention

It says the high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching.

Jesus answered him, I have spoken openly to the world.

I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together.

I have said nothing in secret.

Why do you ask me?

Ask those who have heard who have heard me what I said to them.

They know what I said.

When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, Is that how you answer the high priest?

Jesus answered him, What I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong.

But if what I said is right, why do you strike me?

Alas then sent him bound to Caiaphas, the high priest.

So this is the trial of Jesus.

Last time he was arrested, he volunteered to be arrested, and now he is going on trial.

But here's the thing.

What we aren't gonna see because we aren't ancient people, is the number of irregularities in this.

Okay, first of all, he's being tried for a capital offense at night.

That's not, that wasn't legal.

Okay?

Not only that, but we know that back in chapter 11, they already decided they were gonna kill him.

This is a sham trial.

This is not a fair trial.

And not only that, Jesus is actually calling attention to the fact that they're not following procedure.

The way it's supposed to work is that you first produce witnesses for the defense.

They're supposed to speak on his behalf, and then you have to establish his guilt through the next set of witnesses who speak against him.

They didn't do either.

They questioned him directly.

Okay, and Jesus calls attention to this.

He says, Why are you asking me about my teaching?

You want to condemn me for blasphemy?

Go get the witnesses, go establish my guilt through that.

And then him being struck again, that is a charge.

He's being punished for contempt of court.

He's like, that's a charge you have to prove as well.

These gatekeepers of justice, the priests, are being unjust to Jesus.

We're gonna skip down now to verse 28.

It says, Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters.

It was early morning.

They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover.

This is worth pausing here.

This is dripping with just gourmet hypocrisy.

Alright?

So these guys, the priests and the people around them, they go to the to the governor, the governor's house, Pilate, who is a Gentile.

He's a Roman, he's not a Jew.

Okay?

What does it say?

They didn't want to go inside his house.

Why?

They were worried about defiling, they were worried about becoming ceremonially unclean.

It's Passover after all.

We want to get down on that Passover meal.

Right?

Like, think about that for a second.

So, first off, nowhere in the Old Testament does it say that contact with a Gentile makes you unclean.

That's their own tradition.

So they are being supercilious about making sure we observe this.

Even in the Old Testament, the cleanliness laws are the least important.

Okay?

Like sometimes you get unclean, you have to wash, that's part of it.

What are they about to do?

They are condemning an innocent man who's God no less through an unfair trial, right?

Like they are going to do what?

They're gonna commit murder.

That's one of the Ten Commandments, not a little ticky-tack tradition.

So they're working real hard to not violate this little tiki-tac tradition, and they are completely, brazenly breaking the heart of God's law.

Verse 29.

Pilate went outside of them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man?

Now, pause real quick.

Pilate's well aware of the accusation.

Do you remember that there were Roman soldiers with the priests to arrest Jesus?

Like Pilate had to sign off and send those guys.

The priests did not command Roman soldiers.

Pilate was aware.

But Pilate wants two things right now.

He wants a quiet Judea.

Judea had a tendency to rise in rebellion, and Passover in any holiday was a time when things got real dicey.

That's why he's in town.

To keep Judea quiet.

The other thing he wanted to do is stick it to the priests.

He didn't like them.

You see from Pilate's career, he loved trolling the Jewish leaders.

Okay.

Verse 30.

So he he asked them, What accusations do you bring against this man?

Right?

He's saying, let's start a trial here.

They answered him, if this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.

What do you think of that answer?

What are the charges?

Trust us, this dude's guilty.

You need to kill him now.

They're not even answering what the charges are, much less the evidence that establishes his guilt for a capital crime.

Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.

The Jews said to him, It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.

Now, this is Pilate trolling them.

Three years before this, the Roman government had taken away the Sanhedrin's ability to execute people.

Pilate knows this.

Okay?

And he's like, Well, maybe you guys could go there and like, you know, we can't do that.

This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

So Pilate goes and starts a trial with Jesus himself.

Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews?

See, Pilate does know the charges.

The charges, according to what the priest told him, is that he's going to start a rebellion and make himself king of Judea.

Right?

He's going to try and overthrow Rome.

So that's what Pilate's asking.

Jesus answered, Do you say this of your own accord?

Or did others say it to you about me?

Pilate answered, Am I a Jew?

Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me.

What have you done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world.

Okay, so we're gonna get deeper into this verse later, but he gives a really good answer in his defense, saying, You guys think that I'm some zealot military leader.

Where are my military zealots?

Right?

They didn't even, like, we didn't even fight when I was getting arrested.

They should be knocking down the door right now.

It's a good answer.

It actually convinces Pilate.

Look at what happens next in verse 37.

Then Pilate said to him, So you are a king.

Jesus answered, You say I'm a king, not my words.

For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

Pilate said to him, What is truth?

After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him.

Okay, now follow this here.

Remember the two things that Pilate wants to do: Quiet Judea, troll the priests.

That's what he does right now.

He says to the crowd, he says, You have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover.

So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?

Now, think of this.

A few days before Jesus was being proclaimed as he entered the city.

He's like, the crowd loves this dude.

I don't know how they feel about the priests, but you know what?

I'm gonna go over the priest's head, I'm gonna put this right to the people.

They're gonna exonerate him, they're gonna say, release him.

I keep Judea happy, right?

That's the everything stays quiet.

The priests are so mad.

That's what he's trying to do.

It doesn't work.

Verse 40.

They cried out again, not this man, but Barabbas.

Now Barabbas was a robber.

Now that word robber, it's the Greek word least.

And it can be translated robber, but what he really was was a revolutionary zealot insurrectionist.

They made their living through robbing.

That's why they got called robbers.

Okay?

Barabbas is guilty of the charges of which Jesus is accused and innocent.

But who gets freed and who gets condemned?

Are you picking up the pattern here in this text?

Jesus, his whole trial, this whole thing is a prime example of the world's injustice, ending with the most unjust verdict possible.

That the innocent one is condemned and a guilty one goes free.

So how are we to enter in to injustice?

What are God's, how are we guided by God's word?

Well, it's to enter in as our Lord did, right?

We are followers of Jesus, not admirers of Jesus.

How did he enter in?

First, with presence with the kingdom and with mercy, with presence with the kingdom and with mercy.

You know, the the injustice in the world is a real struggle for a lot of people in terms of their faith.

I was listening to an interview with a very controversial writer named Tanahasi Coates.

He's a, you know, writes a lot about justice.

He was asked by the interviewer, you don't believe in God, why not?

And he said, Well, because the whole idea that the arc of the world bends towards justice, I just don't see it.

Therefore, there can't be a God in control.

Right?

All the injustice of the world makes him say, surely there's not a good and just God who reigns over this.

For a lot of people, that is what makes them doubt.

That is, for some of you even, there might be, that might be something that really sticks in your craw, of like, yeah, I believe it's true, but man, when I look at the amount of injustice throughout history, can I really believe that the hand of a merciful and just God and powerful God is at work?

But the thing is, there's a part of the story when we when we think like that, there's a huge part of the story that we leave out.

It's God did not leave this unanswered.

What did he do?

He showed up in person.

He himself, Jesus, enters into injustice with his own presence.

At the beginning of John, we're told the word was with God, the word was God.

A few verses later it said, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Right?

He enters in, and one of the things he enters into, the entire brokenness of the world, and what we just read about is he enters into injustice itself.

He's lined up on the side of Carrie Buck, right?

That is absolutely unprecedented.

There is not another explanation of the world, there is not another religion or whatever you want to call it, where God himself enters into the suffering of injustice and he does so willingly.

You can say you wish the world isn't as it is.

You wish we had a more just world.

What you can't say is that God is proven to be unconcerned, or God is proven to be distant, or done nothing about it.

How does this guide us?

Well, when there is injustice, the church should be there, should be present.

This has been true since the earliest days of the church.

You can look at how the early church was opposed to slavery in many cases, how the early church was opposed to infanticide.

You can look at the abolitionists who were fighting against the slave trade and slavery.

You can look at the confessing church under the Third Reich or the civil rights movement, and the list goes on and on, right?

The church shows up when there is injustice.

Now we are blessed to live in a much more responsive system than most systems in world history.

For us, we actually we actually can vote and change things.

We could actually use our voice, we could actually put our money behind something and help things change.

Some of us are even positioned in places of power and influence.

Right?

It is 100% appropriate.

What do we do about the injustice of the world?

It's to be present there first.

But a danger comes with it.

Showing up to address injustice, for those of us who care about such things, and it should be everyone who follows Jesus, it's that we would pursue justice by the patterns of the world.

You know, um, before the French Revolution, there was a lot of injustice in that society.

There really were a few ultra rich people sucking all the money and the food, right?

Like they have their own hunting grounds while other people are starving.

That really is unjust, and they couldn't care less about it.

But when you look at how that was addressed, you know, the revolutionaries are like, what do we do about this injustice?

Should we, you know, try and figure out how to feed the hungry or, you know, like job training or something like that?

Like, cut people's heads off.

Good idea.

Let's cut people's heads off in the tens of thousands.

That's wonderful.

Did that make a more just society?

No.

It came naturally to them, though, because what what what a lot of the time comes with the fight against injustice is you fall into the same patterns of the world that caused the injustice in the first place, right?

Like, like you, you can't you can't address injustice of the world with the patterns of the world.

Making sense?

But you see this, right?

It's been tried again and again.

Every Marxist revolution in world history, same thing.

It's like, this is unjust.

Let's get more injustice.

That'll solve it.

This'll be great.

I mean, in our own society right now, people are fighting injustice through physical violence or burning things or smashing things or doxing people or a huge favorite screaming on social media, piling on for cancels, and that sort of thing.

Right?

But if you seek to address the injustice of the world with more injustice of the world, right?

Is that how Jesus did it?

What did Jesus do differently?

Look at verse 36 with me.

Jesus addressed injustice with the kingdom, not with the patterns of the world, but with the kingdom.

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might might not be delivered over to the Jews.

But my kingdom is not from the world.

Now, real quick, for some of us, you may have heard this verse.

The explanation of it is the kingdom is not of the world, means it's not located here.

And therefore, really have nothing to do.

Like, like don't bother voting, don't bother advocating, right?

We're going somewhere else.

This thing's going to the dogs, to whatever in a handbasket, and don't bother with it, right?

It's it's well lost.

Like that is a common point of view.

And here's the thing I can sympathize with the heart behind it.

Because sometimes people will replace the gospel, right?

Let's not worry about Jesus dying for our sins.

Let's only focus on issues.

I would say that I'm there with them.

You don't want to lose the gospel to talk about issues.

But the thing is, this is not what Jesus is saying when he's saying, My kingdom is not of this world.

Real quick, guys.

What's getting translated there of in Greek, it has about a hundred different options.

I might exaggerate a little, but like Caleb, a genitive.

There's like 50 ways to take a genitive, right?

What we translate of.

It could be character, a man of immorality, right?

Could be talking about his character, not a man who's located in immorality.

It could be location, you know, Matt Morginsky of Denver, Colorado.

That's where I am.

Uh it could be content, a bag of rocks.

It could be origin, a cedar of Lebanon, right?

It could be uh association.

He is of the libertines or whatever.

You see what I'm saying?

There's a lot of different options, so the there's not really a great reason to read it as one of location.

In fact, if you look at the Greek, there's an extra little word there, and it's ek.

It's a preposition meaning coming out from.

Alright?

And it gives us guidance.

What Jesus is saying is his kingdom doesn't emerge from the world.

His kingdom is unlike, it's a different, it comes from a different place and it's of a different cat, uh a different character.

All right?

It's when he's saying, it's not gonna be like the kingdom of God set up next to the kingdom of Rome or whatever, right?

It's not like those kingdoms, it's completely other.

In fact, the reason we're not fighting physically is because that's not how it's established.

It's totally irrelevant to his kingdom.

Why do we need this?

Why is this so important that when we talk about entering into injustice, being present there, that we come with the kingdom?

If you are someone who's involved in any way, like you want to make a difference about injustice, perhaps in education or law, or politics, or your civic engagement, or you're showing up to protest, or whatever, right?

First off, if you don't have a vision of the kingdom, if you've got some sort of idea that this world is perfectible and you're not waiting for the coming of the kingdom, the in-breaking of the kingdom, you are gonna do one of two things.

You are either gonna become in total despair or you're gonna become an absolute cynic.

That is why violence breaks out.

It's when people reach despair.

They have no vision of the kingdom to give them hope.

And also, you have to ask, how does the kingdom come?

Jesus says, it's not through violence.

Well, guess what?

It's not through doxing, it's not through mean tweets, it's not through, right?

Like, it comes through prayer, it comes through worship, it comes through the proclamation of the gospel, it comes through God's people showing up in the midst of injustice.

We are not to conform to the patterns of the world.

We we are all about a different kingdom.

We don't use the patterns of the world to solve the injustice of the world, but the patterns of the kingdom.

But there's also a real danger within ourselves.

Whenever we're talking about being engaged in injustice and on behalf of justice, you know, when I've been accused of um wrongdoing in my life, it's usually fair.

But when it's been unfair, I I mean, I I guess we've all had an experience like this.

So during the pandemic, you all remember the pandemic, it was just a few years ago.

So as a pastor, it was an odd, odd time.

Right?

Everyone is trying to figure out are we all gonna be alive in a few years, or is this getting worse, or or what happens, right?

Are we headed for Mad Max right now and Thunderdome?

Um like we're all just trying to figure it out, we're all anxious, we're all worried, and and you're trying to figure out well, how do I how do we worship together and how do I lead when I can't even be in the same room with people?

And so we were we were when when the weather was too cold, we did online church.

Okay, it was pretty good too.

One of the real sticky questions was communion.

Do we just not do communion until this whole thing's over or or what?

And so I we had we had uh our temporary elders back then, and I consulted with them, and we said, okay, here's what we'll do is is you know, we'll we'll try it online and just ask people to get bread, make sure that they are going for something of grape, you know, not grape soda, but juice or wine, and we we do communion that way.

All right.

So this goes on for a little while.

And then one day I got an email from a guy, I had no idea who he was.

He lived on the other side of the country, but he was in my denomination, and he had sent a formal letter of complaint to my presbytery asking me to face charges.

Me! Charges! Can you imagine?

And and I didn't know him, and I looked at the letter, and it was signed by two guys that I knew from seminary, and I was furious.

How unfair! Get a life, guys! We're all just trying to figure things out.

It's a pandemic.

Football is canceled, for goodness sake! Football.

I actually read back my response to the guy.

I did better than I thought I had.

But then I had a phone conversation with one of them, and I didn't do as well.

Now, here's the thing when I was telling you that, what happened inside you?

You know what happens inside me.

I'd say, Oh, those no good rotten Presbyterian fellow brother ministers.

Right?

Did that happen for you?

Who's got my back here?

Come on! Now I know.

Do you feel what happens in your heart when you feel that you're in the right and they're in the wrong?

What happens?

Oh, you might talk to someone the way I talked to one of my former classmates, right?

You might have this, oh, I deserve better than that.

That's not fair.

Have you ever noticed?

Like, that's a very small example, let's be honest.

It's not, like, my my Presbytery completely ignored it, so la-da-da.

But you know, a lot of the time the people I hear shouting the loudest about injustice are merciless to those they are shouting against.

There's no grace in it because there's this understanding, they are the wicked, we are the righteous.

It is right to dox them, it is right to say ungracious things about them, it is right to do violence against them.

I mean, we do this on the micro level, don't we?

Someone ever really wronged you, you know, like with money involved or relationship involved.

How do you feel about that person?

Have you ever thought, I hope that they suffer badly?

I hope to.

Right?

We want, we want, uh, we want justice, but it's a very merciless justice.

Let me ask you.

What did Jesus deserve?

If Jesus got what he deserved, right?

A famous definition of justice is that everyone gets what they're owed.

What was Jesus owed?

Worship, glory, obedience.

They should have been just throwing money at him, right?

Here's money, Jesus.

A throne.

He should have gotten, you know, the kingdom, he should, the all of the earth should have recognized who he is and bowed down in worship and repentance.

That's what he deserved.

What did he get?

He got humiliation, he got rejection, he got condemnation.

And how did he respond when he was treated so unjustly in the midst of the greatest injustice in history?

What did Jesus do?

Look with me again at verse 37.

Pilate said to him, So you're a king.

Jesus answered, You say I'm a king.

For this purpose I was born, for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.

Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

What's he doing right there?

So let's talk about you, Pilate.

Are you on the side of the truth, right?

That's the implication.

This he knows what's about to happen, that this guy is gonna execute him.

And how does he respond to him?

To this one who is gonna treat him so unjustly.

He calls him to be his disciple, right?

How about it?

Will you want to be on the side of the truth?

To which Pilate, of course, responds, what is truth?

He's not being philosophical, he's being cynical.

But Jesus responds to injustice with mercy.

Look, at the very heart of the gospel is an injustice.

It's in micro here, right?

Jesus, the innocent one, is condemned.

Jesus who deserves the throne gets the cross, while Barabbas, the one who's guilty, goes free.

You catch that?

It's the same for us.

We who are guilty receive pardon, while he who is innocent and deserves glory gets the cross.

Anytime we are advocating for justice, we always must do so as those who need and have received mercy.

How do we enter into justice as Jesus did?

It's with presence, with the kingdom and mercy.

Wrapping up.

A few years ago, there was actually a really sad case.

I don't know, you guys probably remember this.

Do you guys remember the case of Amber Geiger?

She's a police officer, and uh she um was coming home from a shift and went into her apartment.

There was a guy in there, it's a black dude, and she panics and shoots him.

Except that she wasn't in her apartment, she was in his.

The amount of God's people that were in that courtroom is the the the younger brother of Botham Jean, his name was Brandt John, still is, he was giving his victim statement.

This is an 18-year-old guy, by the way.

He looked at her and he said, I want you to know that I forgive you.

If my brother were here, he would forgive you, and he would ask you to give your life to Jesus because that's what he would want for you.

And this is a guy, uh Brent John, he said after his brother was killed, he was full of rage.

He was punching his fist through doors every day.

He wanted to kill this person who had killed his brother.

But as he reflected more, he said, No, I want to show her mercy.

He he looks at the judge and he asked to go hug her.

This poor judge.

She was like, she knew she was gonna get in trouble for it, but she's like, fine.

And so he goes and hugs her.

So the trial ends, right?

And the judge is no longer the judge anymore.

And Judge Tammy Kemp, who's presiding over the case, like she goes and she hugs the entire uh Zhong family.

And as she finishes, Amber Geiger is still standing right there, and she asks the judge for a hug.

And so she hugged her.

And Amber Geiger starts saying to her, she starts, you know, talking about how guilty she feels and ashamed.

And and Judge Kemp starts saying, you know, Mr.

Jean has forgiven you.

You need to forgive yourself as well and move on with your life so that so that you know there can be a future for you.

And she said, Do you do you really think my life could still have purpose?

And she said, Yes, absolutely, I know it can.

She says, Do you think God can forgive me?

This put the judge in a tickler spot.

But she said, Yes.

And Amber Geiger was like, I don't, I don't think that's real.

I don't think that's possible.

She's like, I don't even have a Bible, I don't know where to begin.

Judge Kemp went over to her bench, she grabbed her own Bible that she keeps there and gave it to her.

And she starts to show her in the word and explain to her how God forgives her and say, giving her a whole bunch of verses, like, this is your job from now on.

How did they enter in?

Yes, justice had to be done, but they entered in with presence, with the kingdom in mind, and with mercy.

Please pray with me.

Jesus, that we would have a heart like yours, that we would care deeply for the injustice in the world like you do, and at the same time, that we would follow you in how you entered in to the injustice of the world.

We thank you for your mercy, God.

We thank you for your kingdom, and we thank you that you dwelt among us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.