My name is Sherry Mudford. Today's scripture is reading from Isaiah 58 5
through 10, page 637 in the Bible's In the Back of the Peaks.
Will the fast I choose be like this, a day for a person to deny himself, to bow
his head like a reed, and to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a
fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? Isn't this the fast I choose to break
the chains of wickedness, to untie the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed
free, and to tear off every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
to bring the poor and homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see
him, and not ignore your own flesh and blood? Then your light will appear like
the dawn, and your recovery will come quickly. Your righteousness will go
before you, and the Lord's glory will be your rearguard. At that time when you
call, the Lord will answer. When you cry out, he will say, here I am. If you get
rid of the yoke among you, the finger pointing and malicious speaking, and if
you offer yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted one, then your
light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday. This is
God's word. Thank you. Did you guys know that half of all
births, of all panda births, a panda birth, yes, let's start that one over. Did you
know that all, half of all panda births result in twins? I didn't know this. I'm
getting some feedback. Lots of feedback in the room. Half of all panda births
result in twins, but did you also know that it is extremely unlikely for both
of the cubs to survive? Well why? Why is it extremely, well it's because pandas
almost always abandon one cub in favor of another one, so that they can pour
their resources and give all that they have to the one, and they leave the other
one to die. Or consider hyenas. We're talking animal kingdom this morning.
They're one of the only predator animals that don't kill their prey before they
start eating it. They will begin to eat their prey while it's still alive. Or how
many guys have heard of meerkats, right, from the movies, right? Cute, fluffy
little meerkats, right? Well roughly 20% of all meerkat deaths come at the hands
of other meerkats. They'll fight and they'll kill each other for dominance.
They'll kill each other, they'll kill if they're young to maintain that level of
dominance within their faction. Meerkats are also not above eating them one
another. The animal kingdom is wild, and if or sadly when humans do any of these
things, wouldn't we call it wrong or unjust? Well why would we call it
wrong or unjust? Why do we even care about something that might be right or
wrong? Have you ever thought that? Or why is something just or unjust? Why can't I
dominate, oppress, and destroy? Why shouldn't I if I can? Why do we care at
all? For the season of Lent we have been in a series called Ashes, the glory of
the gospel, and we have been examining some themes that help us to better
understand three particular things, and that is the gravity of the fallen human
condition, the goodness of the character of God, and the glory of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. In the first week we looked at death. What the Bible says is the great
enemy of humankind, but in Christ we can proclaim what? Oh death, where is your
sting? Last week we had the opportunity to receive a word from our brother Ben,
and he had us considering mankind. Why is God mindful of him? Why does God care for
us? And we saw that he made us. He didn't just say let there be, but it says let us
make mankind in our own image, in the image of God. Today we will be
considering Isaiah 58, and today's theme is the theme of justice. This passage in
Isaiah 58 is all about justice. You may have noticed the idea of fasting, which
is definitely connected in some ways to the season of Lent. Many traditions
observe Lent with fasting and abstaining from something, but underneath there's
something more to this passage. This passage is much more than just a religious
observance like fasting. Instead it's about justice, and it begins in verse 5
with, will the fast I choose be like this? A day for a person to deny himself, to
bow his head like a reed, and to spread out sat cloth and ashes. Will you call
this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord? He begins with this rhetorical
question. He's going to answer it, and he says something over the course of this
passage to the effect of, is this the God that you've come to know? Is this who
you think God is? Do you think that what pleases God most is a day of denying
yourself and hanging in your head and sitting and mourning? Is this what an
acceptable set apart life looks like? What are you mourning over? Why is your
head hanging low? But with any scripture, to get a little more context we have to
go a little bit before. I'm gonna go ahead and read this out, it's not on the
screen, but you could go, if you have your Bibles, go back to verse 1. Verse 1
begins with God speaking to the prophet, and he says this, he says, cry out loudly,
don't hold back, raise your voice like a ram's horn, tell my people their
transgression in the house of Jacob their sins. They seek me day after day
and delight to know my ways, like a nation that does what is right and does
not abandon the justice of their God. They ask me for righteous judgments, they
delight in the nearness of God. Then verse 3 begins with the people talking
to God and they say, why have we fasted but you have not seen? We've
denied ourselves but you haven't noticed. And then God speaking to the people,
look, you do as you please on the day of your fast and oppress all your workers.
You fast with contention and strife to strike viciously with your fists. You
cannot fast as you do today, hoping to make your voice heard on high. They seek
me day after day. They're going to the temple, they're saying their prayers,
they're worshiping, they're breathing, bringing their tithe, they're good. Day
after day they seem eager. They do worship, they do it passionately, they
raise their hands higher, they bow their face lower than anyone else. They delight
in the nearness of God. All that sounds really good, right? I mean that sounds
like great priorities, stellar morality. But verse 3 says that they say to
God, but why have we fasted? You haven't noticed us. Why have we denied ourselves
some really good things and you didn't see us? What gives God? What gives? Why
aren't you listening to us? What is the answer? Hasn't the answer already kind of
presented itself here? What is the fatal flaw in their religious behavior? It was
all for earning benefits from God. It was all done for show and not for love. It
was all done to be seen and noticed, not done in sincerity. And just look at the
results of their type of fasting. They do as they please, it says. This sacred day
for the employer is toilsome and painful day for their employee. In fact the same
verb for oppress there, they oppress their workers, is used of the task
masters in Egypt. When the people of Israel were slaves, they have become the
enslaved people, they have become the enslaver. They are now the task
master. They are the one who wants enslaved to them. God is accusing them.
And instead of being humbled by a day of fasting and seeking God, they top it off
with strife, with striking one another viciously. God says this will not do. Did
you know that it is possible to avoid God by hiding behind religious
observance? It is possible to avoid God or to avoid obedience by hiding behind
your religious observance. God says, instead let me tell you what it really
means to seek me. Verse 6, isn't this the fast I choose? Isn't this the
religious observance I choose? To break the chains of wickedness, to untie
the ropes of the yoke, to set the oppressed free, to tear off every yoke. Is
it not to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the poor and the
homeless into your house, to clothe the naked when you see him, and not to ignore
your own flesh and blood? Wait though, what about the five songs that we're
supposed to sing? Doesn't he want those too? Or what about the altar call? If we
could fill the altars, wouldn't he be happy? What about a skillfully crafted
sermon? Wouldn't that make him pleased? Well what does he say? He says, don't you
even know who I am? Don't you even know me? If you did, you would do as I do. You
would reflect who I am. And you might say, well wait a sec though, that list, man,
that sounds like one big like socialist program. Like that sounds
almost kind of liberal and maybe a little progressive and maybe very much
so political. Proverbs 14, 31 says, the one who oppresses the poor, the one who
oppresses the poor person insults his maker, but one who is kind to the needy
honors him. Proverbs 19, 17 says, kindness to the poor is a loan to the Lord and he
will give a reward to the lender. Kindness to the poor is a loan to the
Lord and he will give a reward to the lender. This is but a small sampling of
scriptures I could have pulled, but I would have gone over my word count. Look
at James. Look in the book of Job. Continue to look in Proverbs and see if
you can't find more and more scriptures. Look in Matthew chapter 25 which Ben
read last week, verses 31 through 46. It's called the sheep and the goats.
God says that on a judgment day, he's gonna put a group over here and he's
gonna put a group over there. One will be sheep, one will be goats, and do you know
what the determining factor is? What you did to the least, the hungry, the thirsty,
the naked, the homeless, the ones in prison, and the sick. What you did to them,
you did to me, either well done, good, and faithful, reflector of my goodness, or to
judgment, you're a goat. It's powerful. It's powerful and it's shocking, but it's
true. If you don't love the least of these, you do not love God. The way you
treat the poor speaks to the reality of how you view God. Do you actually see him?
When COVID, it's not so much a bad word after four years now or whatever. We used
to whisper it and we'd hide every single cough. When COVID was at its height,
some of the symptoms, I'm sure many of you experienced it, these flu-like
symptoms, but there was one that was kind of peculiar to COVID, a loss
of taste. Sometimes that could last for some time after having caught COVID.
Well, what is the symptom of a proper relationship with God? What is the symptom
of actually knowing God? How do you know if you've caught God? One symptom for
sure is that you will exhibit the utmost care and concern for those listed above,
the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the homeless, the prisoner, and the sick.
Isaiah chapter one, the very beginning of the book, verse 17, God speaking to Judah
and he's trying to tell them how to purify themselves in the face of their
wickedness and their sin. This is what he says to them. He says, learn to do what
is good. My friends, learn to do what is good. And he follows that. He connects
that with pursue justice, correct the oppressor, defend the rights of the
fatherless, plead the widow's case for her. Learn to do good, pursue justice.
Well, what does the Bible mean when it says justice? Today we're talking about
justice because I think we all would say that we live in a world where we want
justice, but we see injustice all the time, all the time around us. Well, let's
find out what the Bible has to say. And Dr. Tim Keller actually wrote a great
book on this called Generous Justice. And in that book, he talks about how the
background behind the idea of justice is the idea of peace or shalom in the Hebrew.
In ancient times, family was everything. And progress was weighed with your
family in sight. You didn't move beyond your family to have progress.
Progress was if your family advanced or progressed, this was good.
And if it didn't, it was not good. Blood was everything back then.
And here in these passages in Isaiah, God is coming to the people of Israel and
he's saying, race and blood are not everything. Where you grew up or who you
were a part of is not everything. In fact, you must care for the stranger.
You must care for the stranger because God has created the whole world to be
like a fabric, like a fabric which is interdependent, interdependent on all the
threads and strands within that fabric for its strength and its stability.
That's what makes it interdependent. Woven together and all the billions of
entities in this world were created to be interdependent upon one another,
woven together with one another. And when we are woven together, shalom, peace.
Think of the body. Some of you are young, probably, and healthy.
Some of you know every pain and ache. Like it hurts here, right here.
No, no, point. No, right here it hurts. We experience pain through the body.
And we know that if one part is off, lots of things are off.
The body is interdependent. And only when all of the parts are working together,
only then does the body experience shalom, peace, flourishing.
And this goes beyond just the physical part. When the mind, the spirit all work
according to how they were made, we can experience shalom.
But we don't experience that. We oftentimes experience rebellion within
our own bodies. My knees are against me. When people have resources,
when people have money, and dare I say, if it's not a bad word in here,
when some people have advantages, others people don't have.
When they take those money and resources and advantages and they plunge them into
human community, human communities oftentimes experience a level of peace
or shalom. We see this all the time with our collaborative
effort through government for roads and laws and ordinances,
the giving of money to nonprofits to help to address certain people's needs
and issues. When we come together and we interweave
our resources and our time and even the advantages we have in this life,
we can help to create at least partially, shalom.
But the opposite is true too. When you withhold something from the
community, when you hold a resource back or an advantage or money,
then you're withholding the ability for the community,
the interdependent community to experience peace as it's intended to
experience. So what is the ideal?
Isn't it that God, humankind, and all of creation is to exist together in shalom?
Isn't that His intended purpose at the beginning?
Don't we see that in the garden, that there was a shalom?
God walking with humanity, humanity doing the job it had been given,
the vocation it had been given to rule over in a good way.
We don't think of rule all the time as good because we live in a fallen sinful
world. Humanity was given the task to rule,
to do good to the world and all of creation for the sake of shalom so that
all things might flourish. So the biblical concept of shalom,
of peace, which as I said, Dr. Tim Keller talks about as the issue behind the issue
of justice. Well, shalom isn't some idea of individualism where it's all about
working to greater levels of individualism as you and I have probably
been raised here in the West. We think I have to grow up so I can leave
my family, so I can make my own way and I can establish my own name.
And everything we do drives us towards individualism.
Oh, you're out on your own. Good luck. But the biblical concept of shalom
it drives us to interdependence, to say no, we need one another.
We are like a woven tapestry. The Bible paints a picture like this.
The righteous one. How many of you guys want to be a righteous one?
That'd be a pretty cool title to get, right? Righteous one.
Jesus got it. Pretty cool that it was said of us.
The righteous one in the Old Testament, the Bible, is someone who is
disadvantaging themselves for the good of the community.
The righteous one is someone who disadvantages themselves.
We call this in the New Testament self-giving love.
The righteous one is someone who disadvantages themselves for the good of
the whole community. What's the wicked one?
Don't want to be called that. The wicked one is someone who thinks
only of themselves. The New Testament has even parables
that Jesus taught. I'm the one who's looking to accumulate
and to build up self. They are the wicked one.
Well, the Hebrew word that is behind the word justice is mishpat.
And it's the word that means justice. And the word mishpat is in its various
forms. It occurs over 200 times in the Hebrew Old Testament.
200 times this word mishpat, which we translate to justice, 200 times in the
Old Testament. And its most basic meaning is to treat
people fairly without partiality. And so Leviticus, chapter 24, verse 22,
warns Israel to have the same mishpat, the same rule of law,
the same justice for the foreigner as they have for the native.
Treat the foreigner the same way under the law as you have for the native born.
The same mishpat, the same justice. Mishpat means acquitting or punishing
every person on the merits of their case, regardless of race,
regardless of social status. Anyone who does the same wrong should be
given the same penalty, no favoritism, justice, mishpat.
But mishpat means more than just the punishment of wrongdoing.
It also has another meaning in the Old Testament.
And that other meaning is to give people their right, to give people what is owed
to them. In Deuteronomy, chapter 18, it directs
that the priests of the tabernacle should be supported by a certain percentage
of the people's income. And Deuteronomy 18 says that this support
that the people are to give to the priests is the priests' mishpat.
It's the priests' justice. It's owed.
It's due to them because God has commanded so.
It's their right. And so we read in Proverbs 31,
speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are
destitute. Speak up and judge fairly.
Defend the rights of the poor and needy.
To be just than is to give people what they are due, whether punishment or
protection or care or their rights. I believe in our understanding of justice,
we totally get the idea of punishment for wrongdoing, right?
In fact, we all think it's probably our right that if someone wrongs me,
they need to pay the just punishment for wronging me.
However, and that's not wrong at all. That definitely is part of the meaning of
justice and mishpat. But God also says that do we see that God
himself says that there are some, there are some in society,
some in our neighborhoods, some around this church who in his sight are due
special and unique attention from us. In his sight, they're due a certain right
from us, from you and me. Your act of care and concern for them
is God's ordained portion for them. The Bible tells us this is theirs.
Even Proverbs we just read. Now this is why if you look at every place
the word is used in the Old Testament, several classes of persons continually
come up. Over and over again, mishpat describes taking care of the cause
of the widows, the orphans, the immigrants, and the poor.
Widows, orphans, immigrants, poor. And these have been called the quartet
of the vulnerable. This is what the Lord Almighty says,
administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another.
Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the immigrant or the poor.
Zechariah chapter seven. So in pre-modern agrarian societies,
these four groups, they had no social power whatsoever.
The orphan, the widow, the immigrant, the poor.
They had no social power and so they lived at this sustenance level where
they were only a few days away from starvation. Only a few days away from
starvation. If a famine came, starvation was inevitable.
If an invasion of a foreign army came and cut off supplies, they were the first ones
to starve. If even a small minor social unrest broke out in the area that they
were, it could clog the lines of commerce and the goods and services that they
needed and they would be the first to suffer. And so today, you might expand
that quartet as you think about who else might fall into that same category.
Who else might be the first to suffer among us?
Elderly, fixed income, what happens if there's a market change, prices go up,
single parents trying to make it, homeless depending upon their situation
and where they're at and what access they have, depending upon what city they're in.
I mean, there's so many variables. The weather, the migrant worker,
the refugee, the mish-pat or the justness of a person or a group or a society,
according to the Bible, is evaluated in large part by how we treat those groups.
He said, oh, we treat fairly. If I ever came across anyone,
look at the way I treat my family, look at the way I treat my church family.
Yes. Good. The Bible highlights, draws out, and says, who are the first to suffer?
They're the first to be a president of mine and care. This is just.
This is their mish-pat. So what could make us a just people?
I don't know about you, but when I drive down the street or I see someone in need,
my first thought isn't always or hardly ever, what do I owe them?
You guys ever had someone you owed something to?
Like, you see them coming from afar and you run the other way.
It's like, oh, yeah, that's right. I owe that guy some money.
Like, I was about to embrace him, but now I'm like, oh, if I have it,
I'll pay it. If I don't, I'm running the other way, right?
Do we ever look out at the people around us, the people that God has highlighted,
the people who are most vulnerable, vulnerable in this world?
And do we say, God has said, I owe them. He has given me resources, time, talent,
treasure, and I owe them before the Lord. He has a portion set aside for them
that's coming out of my portion, which isn't mine to begin with.
This is what the people of God have been known for across history.
When, like the pandas, people would set their unwanted babies outside of the city,
who would rush in to save them? Who would save them from the garbage heaps?
Who would come to rescue the most vulnerable, the orphan?
Who had the first social program for widows? Who built the hospitals?
So those of the faithful who've come before, they understood the justice of God
meant giving people their just due. If I say I know God, do I know him?
Do I know his character, the goodness of his character to the point that it
changes the way that I act toward others? So what would make us do this?
Well, Jesus says that if you really have a love relationship with him,
you will be just to the poor. And there's a couple of ways you can do that,
though. And here's the rub, right? Because some of you may hear what I'm saying
today and what I believe the word of God is saying today, and you may hear it from
the point of fear. You may hear, oh crud, I have to do this, otherwise God's going
to be mad at me. And out of fear, you might walk out those doors and look for
opportunity to do just that. How do I care for these people?
What do I do? I don't even know where to start. Oh my gosh, God's coming down on me.
I'm afraid it won't last and it won't be good. Already, there's a lack of shalom,
even in the way you're processing it. It's anxiety, not peace. Fear is not the
place from which we can do it. Well, how about pride? Like, what if I just do it
so I feel really good about myself and I build myself up and I enjoy myself a
little bit more? Because I'm a really nice myself, right? I like myself. Sorry,
if you don't, Jim Gaffigan. Build your kingdom up. Do it for your own pride. Do
it to make yourself righteous. And all you're doing is you're taking that
interdependence that God has created and you're turning it inward to build
yourself up. You're like the people of Israel who did it for the wrong reasons.
I don't need you to bow your head. I don't need you to set aside a special
day. I don't need any of that, the Lord said to them. What do I need? You to know
who I am and for it to so change you that it affects the way that you treat
other people. You can do it out of fear or you can do it out of pride and I don't
think either of them last and none of them bring about the shalom and peace.
Because we, you know how I know that, we lie out of fear and we lie out of pride
all the time. These are not going to bring about the righteousness that God
is in pursuit of in us. Well, what will? I talked about Tim Keller's book earlier
and this is his proposition. The only thing that will is beauty. The
only thing that will melt your heart and move you to action is beauty. Only out of
delight, not as a means to an end, but it has an end to itself. Only when you see
God as most beautiful and you actually see who he is and you discover more and
more in waves of glory, the beauty and glory of who God is, only then can you
appropriately go out and live this out.
Beauty is something that is satisfying in and of itself. How do we get to the
place where we do justice for beauty's sake? Well, I think all of our problems
as we have kind of pinned it on is related to our seeing or understanding
the gospel. When we look to God, we see God in Christ in the most perfect way.
The revelation of who God is in the person, Jesus Christ. God identifies with
the poor throughout the Bible. I think the scripture is very clear and if you
love the poor, you love me. If you trample the poor, you trample God. Well, how far
did God go to identify with the poor? How far did he go? Do you know that Jesus as
a baby was laid in a feeding trough for animals? We dress it up by calling
it a manger. It was a feeding trough for animals. Did you know that when he went
to the temple to offer the sacrifice, his family, they offered the poor family's
sacrifice? They didn't offer the rich one. They didn't have the means. They offered
the poor family's sacrifice. When Jesus rode in on his triumphal entry, he rode
in on a borrowed donkey. He had no place to lay his head. When Jesus went on trial,
was that a legal trial? It was trumped up charges, fake witnesses. And Jesus died.
Did he go to some mausoleum, some gorgeous tomb? Borrowed. Jesus suffered
with us. He knew what it was like to be mobbed, lynched, lashed, and murdered. God
in Jesus Christ came under the yoke of oppression that's talked about in Isaiah
58. The idea of the yoke of oppression, you guys know what a yoke is, right? We
go over the animal, right? Yeah, so the yoke of oppression is when humankind
falls under oppression to the point that they're treated like animals. He took on
the yoke of oppression, treated like an animal, despised and rejected so that we,
we could be free and we could be freed to free others. He came and he was woven
into the garment of humanity in his incarnation and he was poor and he was
crushed and bruised. And it's the beauty of Christ and what he's done for us. It's
the beauty of the glory of the gospel, which is grace. That should move our
hearts to look and go, how do I reflect such glorious grace in this world? How do
I reflect it? By showing grace to the helpless, to the hurting, to the poor.
This isn't political, this isn't left and right, this is biblical, this is God's
heart poured out on the pages for us to read and to say, Lord, I've got to see
that grace in a greater measure because my hard heart doesn't want to move. My
hard heart's got 14,000 excuses why that doesn't apply or that hermeneutic was
terrible or whatever it is. Just let the full weight of Scripture weigh on you for
a moment. And then we look to Christ and we see the beauty of the gospel that he
took on flesh and he dwelt among us. He was mistreated. He went to the cross and
took on the greatest injustice of all. I am unabashedly pro-life, unabashedly, and
I believe that they are one of the classes of the most vulnerable people in
here and in fact in our modern day, I go so far as to say I think it is the
greatest current injustice there is on the planet based surely on the volume of
deaths, those who are murdered. But that's not the greatest injustice in all the
cosmos. The greatest injustice in all the cosmos is that there are people who do
not bend the knee and acknowledge that God is their creator and they are his
servants. They don't bow the knee to God and serve him only. That's the greatest
injustice in all history in all time and Jesus went to the cross and said I'll
take that injustice and all the penalties, the just penalty for that and
I'll put it on myself so that they could be free, so that they could be released,
so that they can go about loving the most hurt, oppressed, vulnerable people
and they can be free because they're freed from the greatest injustice ever
through Jesus Christ. To those people, while we were still enemies, to those
people Christ came and paid the just penalty for the treason himself. He
disadvantaged himself so that we might be made whole and only when we see the
beauty of grace will our heart ever be moved, not out of fear, not out of pride,
but out of love to see others the way God sees them in the way that he has
seen us.