Today, we're starting a new series called, "God Is,” where we are going to talk about who God is and what He is willing to do in our lives.
The world is full of hate and heartbreak and damage. I bet you have looked at it and wondered if someone was going to do anything about it. You have probably asked the question “Where is God in all of this?”
Maybe it’s not the whole world that you are worried about. Maybe it’s just your world.You go to school every day and you are terrified because you know that bully has made it their mission to make you miserable. Or maybe you have a teacher that doesn’t seem to care about you at all. Maybe you’re struggling at home because your parents are getting a divorce or you and your siblings are always fighting. You can’t break free from an addiction that is consuming your life. Maybe your friends are going through something really hard and you feel helpless because you can’t solve it.
None of us are strangers to the pain and injustice in the world and it can feel discouraging when you don’t know what to do with all of it.
In this series, we are looking at different character traits of God and who He is. If someone has ever told us something that we are unsure of about God, then we need to make sure to turn to God's Word.
Today we are going to look at the fact that God is Just. That is a fancy way of saying God cares about the injustices going on in the world. Those things in your life that you think aren’t right or fair. God cares about those things too.
We see this in the book of Amos. Amos was a prophet, which means he delivered messages from God to the people of Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam.
Jeroboam was an extremely wealthy king that didn’t care about the physical needs of his people. In fact, he did not care about their spiritual needs either. He overtaxed his people and allowed the poor in his country to be mistreated and abused. Things got so bad that God sent Amos to a large temple in Israel where he would preach and call out King Jeroboam and all the people of influence for the way they were treating the poor.
Amos 5:11-12 tells us how bad it was and how God felt about it. It says, “You trample the poor, stealing their grain through taxes and unfair rent. Therefore, though you build beautiful stone houses, you will never live in them. Though you plant lush vineyards, you will never drink wine from them. For I know the vast number of your sins and the depth of your rebellions. You oppress good people by taking bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.”
Here we have a king who only cares about getting himself richer and richer while the upper class is overcharging the poor for rent. Even their court systems were corrupt. If you were poor you were going to end up in jail because you didn’t have the money for a lawyer. To make matters worse, these same people who were essentially starving the poor were going to the temple and offering sacrifices and worshiping God. From the outside looking in, they looked so godly. But these people’s hearts were far from God. They cared more about themselves than they cared about others, and God was furious with them.
They were being hypocrites. They were claiming to love God and worship Him, but then completely ignored the injustices going on around them. Look at what God says a little later in chapter 5.
In Amos 5:21-24, it says, “I hate all your show and pretense— The hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice of peace offerings. Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. God was so mad at their hypocrisy. He said I know what you are doing and it has to stop. “I want to see a mighty flood of justice.”
The Hebrew word for justice here is “Mishpat” and it is referring to concrete actions to correct injustice. God is essentially saying I want you to change your ways and I want you to rearrange your life to make a difference in the lives of others. You are not to use people for your benefit, but help and care for others the same way I have cared for you.And then God said, “I want an endless river of righteous living.”The word for righteous here is the Hebrew word “Tsedaqah,” which essentially means God wants us to do the right thing before God and others. God loves all people equally and wants them to be treated with dignity, love, and respect. God saw how the wealthy were looking down on those who weren’t as rich as they were. He saw how they treated these people as less than and He said this has to end.
God wants us to reflect Him in everything we say and in everything we do. We can’t afford to come here and act like we love Jesus when we treat other people as less than. God knows our heart and he knows how we have or haven’t been leveraging our life to meet the needs of the people he has placed in our life.
The question is how does God want us to extend justice in the world that we live in? What can we do about it?
Now I want to be realistic. You are in middle or high school. I am not saying you need to sell all your possessions to the poor. No one expects you to personally solve world hunger. You probably can’t personally stop every bully or adopt every orphan in the world. But there are things you can do to stop the injustices that are around you. The first thing you can do is repent.
1. Repent
Let’s be honest. We have all been like the people in this story. We come to church and worship God and claim to love God so much but then we turn a blind eye to what’s going on around us. We see people who we think aren’t cool like us and rather than helping them we make fun of them or ignore them together.
We need to ask God to forgive us for ignoring the hurts and injustices of the people around us and we need to stop acting like what someone else is going through isn’t our problem.
2. Be Kind
Instead of just keeping your head down and ignoring everyone at your school, we need to see the hurt that is around us and offer our friendship and a listening ear to them. Here in our student ministry, some students are hurting and really going through some tough stuff.
What if you reached out to someone new each week? What if we made sure that every person who comes to our service feels loved and accepted? What if you paid attention to the needs that are around us and helped each of them through what they are facing? Living our life like that would truly reflect the heart of God. You could be that friend that changes someone's outlook on life.
3. Notice Hate
Tell a teacher or school counselor what is going on if someone is getting bullied or picked on. Stand up for the person being bullied. If you see someone who is alone, someone who is eating lunch alone, be their friend. Stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves. Pray for the person doing the bullying.
4.Serve Others
There are plenty of places where you can serve, even at your age, and make a huge difference in someone’s life. There are women's and children's shelters and soup kitchens and lots of other places where your time could make such a huge difference.Even here at the church, there are opportunities to volunteer all the time.You could serve at XCamp, in some of our children’s ministries, on guest services, community connect, and even here in Remix. Talk to your parents and see if you can dedicate one day a week to volunteering and making a difference.
5. Give
Now I know not a lot of you have extra money to donate, but some of you do. If you are working or maybe your parents let you earn an allowance, could you use that to help people? You can also donate to the Sagebrush Capital Campaign where we are raising money to help fund churches all over the world.
There are lots of great Christian organizations that help with poverty, homelessness, racism, and all kinds of things. If you have money and want to help that way, talk to your parents and ask them to help you find the best places to donate.
We have to remember that evil and suffering are not just an “out there” problem. First and foremost it’s an internal problem. It starts with us. We have to look inward before we can look outward. Evil and suffering are a result of sin, which is something we are all guilty of. We are all guilty of hurting others because of something we have said or done. So we need to repent of that.
God loves all people equally and wants them to be treated with dignity, love, and respect. We can’t come here to worship God and then refuse to reflect who God is and his concern for all people. God wants us to live righteously. He created you and me to bring love, care, life, and righteousness into a broken and hurting world.
I want to tell you a story. There’s a young woman named Andrea and she was originally a college student in Colorado. One summer she took a trip to Africa to study abroad. While she was there, she found an orphanage where the children were being neglected and abused. She said, “When I saw the kids and what was going on, I fell in love with the kids, their smiles, and personalities. I knew that God had a bigger plan for them and that they shouldn’t be trapped in this situation of neglect and abuse.”
Her heart broke for these kids so she called her dad and said, “I’m not coming home.” Her dad said, “you get on that plane right now and come home.” She said, “No. If I don’t do something, who will?” So she stayed there and bothered the local Ugandan government every day until they shut down that orphanage. When they shut down that orphanage they said, “here’s 40 kids, you figure out how to take care of them.”
Can you imagine being in her situation? She was only a couple of years older than you guys. You’re in Africa and you now have 40 kids to take care of. Andrea didn’t know what she was doing, but she did something. Now she has an orphanage in Uganda that houses over 120 children.
When she first moved the kids over to her orphanage she said this, “When we moved the kids over to the new orphanage they ran inside and found their name tags on their beds. They were so excited because this was the first time any of them had ever slept in a bed. I remember that first night I went around to each of them before bed and hugged them. I told them you’re home now, you’re safe. God loves you, I love you."
No matter who you are or what your situation is, you are capable of doing something. I want you to consider how broken our world is. Think about our city, our state, our country, our world; and all the news articles continually coming on social media or brought up in discussion of the hatred that is being spread. When you begin to take a good look at life, you see the true problems behind the circumstances. We see brokenness, pain, regret, loss, hatred, and division, and who's going to do something about it? There is only one answer: you.
I know you all see broken and hurting people every day in your schools. People around you have physical needs and spiritual needs. The question is, are you willing to do the hard work to bring the message of hope to the people that God has put in your life?
There are a lot of hurting people in the world and it can be tempting to assume that God doesn’t care. But we know God is just, which means not only does He care about what’s going on in the world, He is doing something about it. He created you and He gave you gifts and talents and time and wants to use all of that to make the world a better place. The question is, will you do something about it? Remember it starts right here where God has placed you.
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