Several years ago, I sold a used iPod online to an eager buyer in Nigeria. After receiving an email confirming the receipt of payment, I went to the post office and shipped it away. I even wrapped it with a bow because the buyer had said it was going to be a birthday gift. Unfortunately, in the days that followed, I learned that the payment had not, in fact, come through.
After sending several emails without reply, I finally admitted that I had been conned. I wrote one last email in which my closing line was: “I am a pastor and will be praying that God gives you mercy and blessing so that you will no longer need to steal.”
As I re-read those words today, however, I am pretty sure I did not actually mean them. Most likely, what I really meant was, “I can’t wait for God to bring justice upon you!”
All around the world (and in our own lives), countless injustices pile up daily, and most of them are far more serious than an internet scam and an old iPod. And so the cry for justice goes up from our hearts.
But let’s take a moment to think about our lives.
When do we yearn for justice?
What will God’s justice look like when it comes?
And, to borrow from the words of Amos, if justice were to “roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream,” how much of our own lives might be swept away in the current?
We will dig more deeply into how our lives and hearts can align with God’s heart for justice in the world today.
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Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: True
October 26, 2014
True Justice: Economics by Amos – Part 2
Amos 5
If you have your Bible, go ahead and open it to Amos 5. If you don’t have a Bible, slip up your hand. We’ll put a Bible in your hand. That hand in the air will also get you access to a notes sheet if you need to give us some information or a prayer request or take some notes on the sermon or whatever you might need there.
It has been a rich weekend. I know Dave was talking about the Fall Festival and the Car Show that occurred yesterday, and it was a record-breaking day in so many ways. More cars than we’ve ever had. We had tons of people. The weather was perfect. We did the raffle for the Camaro. It was toward the end of the day. We were pulling the name out of the big tumbler, and it was a pretty drama-filled moment.
We pulled it out, read off of it the name, and in my mind I was expecting it to be this The-Price-Is-Right moment, where it was like you read the name and someone is kind of yelling, “Come on down! A new car!” but the guy wasn’t even there. But Robert Miller was the winner. He and his family are part of Grace New Hope and just a great guy and a great winner.
But one of the things Buddy said yesterday about the whole Car Show and especially with the raffle and the Camaro I thought was very poignant. He said, “Yes, we’ve had one winner of the car, but really everyone who participated in this event, who made it happen, who donated, who gave time is a winner, because long after this Camaro turns to dust and is beyond restoration, in eternity, because we have invested in the lives of kids, there will be people who know Jesus and who are with the Lord with us in heaven forever.”
That really is the big goal, making those disciples, investing in the next generation, building the Scripture, hiding the Scripture in their hearts. So I just want to say sincerely to everyone who was involved, and I know even some of the key mobilizers, the people who made the whole thing happen, are in here… I just want to say from the church’s part thank you for all you did with that.
Even in the midst of that, it was a great day, but we did have one pretty serious crisis. One of the main judges of the cars at the Car Show, Jack, actually collapsed. We’re not sure exactly what happened. We think it was something related to his heart. Our team here worked with him. The EMTs came and picked him up.
He’s at the hospital now, but he’s still in a coma, and he’s really fighting for his life. What we want to do is just take a second together to pray for him. It was good even yesterday as awful as that kind of crisis is that we were able to stop and all the people gathered together here at Grace were able to pray for him, and we’re continuing to pray for him. So let’s just pray for him right now.
Lord, we know you are more powerful than any heart failure. You’re more powerful than any coma. You’re the one whose breath gives life. So Lord, we lift up Jack now to you and we ask that you would breathe life upon him and you’d breathe peace and you would be just speaking with him, communing with him. Lord, we entrust this whole situation into your hands, but we ask, God, in the name of Jesus that you would bring healing and wholeness to his body. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. Amen.
Amos 5. We’ve been journeying through these Minor Prophets. Not minor because their messages are minor but rather because their messages are rather short and they’re focused. The Major Prophets have much longer books…Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah. These Minor Prophets just get right to the point.
We saw in Hosea true love, God’s heart for relationship with his people. Now as we’ve been going through the book of Amos, we’re seeing true justice. What is God’s heart for justice? Last week, we saw the example as Amos was calling out a people who had grown comfortable and complacent, a people who were just awash in money and prosperity, and they had lost track of the poor and the powerless.
He called them out, and especially he called out families and specifically the women in the wealthy region. Now he gets to the men in chapter 6, but in chapter 4 he says, “You cows of Bashan,” which literally means, “You fat heifers.” He’s telling them, “Your spending is fueling suffering. Your consumption is creating oppression.” It’s true. They were making money, demanding money, making sure all their needs were met, piling up lavish item upon lavish item, food and all the rest, and it was all coming upon the backs of the poor, at the expense of the poor.
Now Amos really talked about how the important thing in that situation is that those people, those women, those families had no idea what their consumption, their spending, was creating. Amos was really calling them and through his words challenging us to follow the money. Follow our own money. What happens when we spend, when we invest?
Furthermore, what happens when we give? Because in Amos 4 there’s this great example of the people and their even financial gifts, their offerings, their tithes to propagate a system of injustice. So he’s saying follow the money and you will find out who you follow. Track it down. We can say all day, “Well, we do this and this and this and this, and we love God, and we follow all the rest.” If you follow the money, you really find out where your values are and who you follow.
Then in Amos 5, it picks up the same theme again, and this one… Have you ever just wondered how you know that you know God? It’s not just how you know God. I mean, that’s one conversation. How do you know God? How do you get to know God? But how do you know that you know God?
I remember sitting as a young guy (I think I was like in middle school) and I was in a gathering. I had trusted Jesus with my heart and the preacher was talking like, “Really make sure you know Jesus,” and presenting the gospel, but I was like feeling it. I was like, “I’m pretty sure I’m a believer, but how do I know that I know God?”
He’s saying, “If you really want to be certain, slip up your hand.” So I’m sitting there, and I’m like, “I’m pretty sure I’m a believer, but…[raising hand]. Okay, good, I’m glad I got that worked out. Are we good, God? Okay, great. Cool.” I think sometimes we have that feeling in our lives. How do we know that we know God?
Some of us have the, “Well, it’s a conviction,” but there are times when maybe that wavers a little bit. One of the things Amos brings out is the link between knowing God and doing justice, because according to Amos, and really the rest of the Scripture, the way to see if we really know God is by looking at the flow of godly justice and righteousness out of our lives.
So think of it this way. At the very heart of the gospel is a story, a true story, in which God in heaven looks and sees people who are totally impoverished spiritually. He looks and he sees people who are slaves to sin. He sees this earth full of oppressed human beings, and rather than looking and saying, “Well, they got themselves into that mess. If they start helping themselves I’ll help them, but if not, they’re on their own,” God himself stoops.
He forsakes all that glory, all that privilege, all the divine realities of heaven. He takes on flesh, Jesus walking the earth, and then he lays down his life. So at the very core of the gospel message is this theme of justice, of those who have, or the One who does have all righteousness, all power, all glory, the One who has laying it down for the sake of those who have naught.
Throughout the Bible, especially when we read Amos here in a second, what we see is the way you know that you know God is the extent to which that heart of God’s love and justice doesn’t just lodge in our hearts but flows through us into the world around us. If there’s none of that flowing, we really don’t know the God whose heart is justice. We don’t really get the gospel until the gospel is getting out of us and into the world…if that makes sense.
It’s possible to be a generous person and not really know God. We’ve met people like that, but it is impossible to truly know God and not be a generous person. Think about that. It’s like a Chinese finger trap for your brain. In Amos 5, we get to really the crescendo of the cry for justice. It’s that great passage, verse 24, crying out, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” this cry for justice to flood the land.
When we read Amos and we think about knowing God and the relationship to justice and economy and money and all these issues and true justice, I mean, it raises questions for us. This has been a conversation in the church and outside of the church for quite some time. There is a political view of what true justice really looks like. There are economic views of about what true justice really looks like. There are social visions. What does justice really look like? There are even religious visions, opinions. What does justice really look like?
What we want to do this morning is maybe dig in a little bit. What is God’s vision for true justice? What’s his heart for justice? As we read Amos 5, we’re going to see three big things. First, why should we seek justice? Second, where do we seek justice? Third, how do we seek justice? So let’s dig into this text with these things in our mind a little bit. I’m going to read the whole chapter. It’s kind of a long chapter, but you have to see it all in one glance and then we’ll unpack it together.
It begins with this shocking statement. Amos actually is giving like an obituary for the people of Israel, which you can imagine for the people of Israel, they’re living the high life. They’re doing great. They’ve got lots of money for the most part, except for those poor people, but all the rest, the leaders and the wealthy are feeling good about stuff. So for Amos to begin with this obituary is kind of a shock. “What? We feel like we’re at the apex of life,” and Amos is saying, “No, you’re dead.”
Verse 1: “Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel: ‘Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel; forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.’ For thus says the Lord God: ‘The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.'” (Amos 5:1-3) He’s speaking of the defeat of the army. Ninety percent of the army was going to be decimated.
“For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: ‘Seek me and live; but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.’ Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel, O you who turn justice to wormwood…” The wormwood tree produced fruit, but it was very bitter, bitter fruit. “…and cast down righteousness to the earth!
He who made the Pleiades and Orion…” These constellations in the sky. “…and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name; who makes destruction flash forth against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress.” (Amos 5:4-9) Now Amos is beginning to diagnose what’s wrong with the society.
He says, “They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth. Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone…” It was exorbitantly expensive to build a house out of hewn stone. “…but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: ‘In all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say, “Alas! Alas!” They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation, and in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through your midst,’ says the Lord.” (Amos 5:10-17) That phrase echoing the story of the Passover where the Lord passed through on the tenth plague, saying, “This time you will not be protected from my presence.”
Verse 18: “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light, as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
‘I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.'” (Amos 5:18-24) The crescendo of the cry for justice, from Amos 5.
The first question that’s important to settle in our hearts is…Why should we seek justice? If you notice in this section, there are three big seek words Amos speaks to the people, or really the Lord through Amos. In verse 4, there it says, “Seek me and live.” Then you get down to verse 6, “Seek the Lord and live.” Then in verse 14, “Seek good and not evil.”
What we’re seeing is that the call of the Scripture is to seek God because when we seek God we discover a God of justice. As we seek God, we will discover a road to justice, a stream, a flowing of justice. There’s this connection between seeking God and seeking good that runs together. They’re really inseparable in many ways.
So why would we seek justice? Well, because it’s God’s heart. When we get to know God, we discover his heart for the powerless, his heart for those who are downtrodden. A few weeks ago, it was interesting. I was asked by one of our summer interns to go out to a college ministry in Athens. This guy was leading it, and he said, “Would you come out and speak?” So I went this Thursday.
Before I went out, he sent me an email, and he said, “Would you just send me a couple of things so I can introduce you well?” So I had to sit down. I was like, “Okay, how do I want to be introduced?” You think, “Well, maybe put some playful jokes,” and then you read them and you think, “Those aren’t very funny.” Delete it. Like, “What’s my title? Pastor. Okay, yeah, that’s cool. Okay, we’ll keep that. I’m married to Amy. That’s good.”
So I ended up with like a one-and-a-half line sentence. It was pretty brief, but it was the essential facts. I thought, “What do people need to know? Just that much. That’ll be my introduction.” So I sent that along, and he introduced me, and we had a great time in Athens Thursday night. It was good.
But did you know that frequently in the Bible the way God has inspired the writers of Scripture to introduce him is pretty unique. Psalm 68 is a great example of this. The psalmist says in verse 4, “Sing to God, sing praises to his name; lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him!” Now here’s like the introduction line, “Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.” (Psalm 68:4-5)
Father of the fatherless, protector of widows. It’s almost as though if God were saying, “Okay, what do I want them to know in my introduction? If I’m going to be introduced at a place, okay, let’s put this right up front. Father of the fatherless, protector of the widows.” A lot of times we say, “Yeah, God’s great. God’s generous.” He is all of those things. How does God introduce himself? Pretty frequently as the one who has a heart for justice.
Now in addition, it’s not just that we should seek justice because it’s God’s heart, but also for the sake of those who are downtrodden. I mean, throughout the Scripture there is this incredible value placed on humans. Not because of what they do but simply because of the fact God has made them and God loves them.
He says throughout the Scriptures to honor people and to lift up their dignity, to help them maintain their basic rights and their survival, living, all of these things. So one of the reasons we should seek justice is for the sake of those who are suffering from injustice. I love the example, the definition of injustice used by the International Justice Mission. It’s at the bottom of your sheets there.
It says, “Injustice is what happens when someone uses their power to take from someone else the good things God intended them to have: their life, their liberty, their dignity, or the fruit of their love or their labor.” This phrase, this definition of injustice, we’re called to seek justice for the sake of those who have been denied the good things God intended them to have.
But then there’s a third reason I hadn’t really seen a whole lot until I was reading this passage this week, and that’s really that it doesn’t just reflect God’s heart, it doesn’t just serve or work for the people who are suffering injustice; it also has a huge impact on us. In a way, you could almost say it saves us, or it saves the people of God. Not in a salvation sense as though if we just do justice then God justifies us. That’s not exactly what I’m talking about.
But quite literally here in this passage, the phrases say, “Seek me and live. Seek the Lord and live. Seek good and not evil (in verse 14) that you may live.” This people are on the brink of being judged. God says, “If you will not uphold justice, I will bring judgment, and my judgment will be violent.” Here Scripture says, “Seek God. Seek God (there in verse 15). It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. Seek this justice. Seek this good for your sake that you might be saved.”
Another example of this appears earlier in the book of Genesis. Throughout Amos, those words justice and righteousness really go together. It shows up in verse 7, “You turn justice to wormwood; righteousness cast down to the earth.” The first place those two words appear together is in the book of Genesis, chapter 18. There it’s the story of Abraham bargaining with God for the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Remember, God says, “I’m going to destroy these cities because of their wickedness. I’m going to bring judgment on these cities.” Abraham, who knows his kinsman Lot lives in these cities, says, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! What if you find a righteous guy there?” The Lord says, “Well, I’ll do justly.” So they have this conversation back and forth, and finally it comes down to the point where it’s like, “If you can find 10 righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah, we will spare it.” Of course, God does not find the righteous there, and so the cities are destroyed.
But here’s something to chew on…Why did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah? Think for a moment. Think even what you’ve heard, maybe what you’ve heard preached from church, or maybe it was just in your mind. What do you associate with Sodom and Gomorrah? Why did God wipe out those cities? Quite clearly Ezekiel 16 tells us. I know most of you were probably doing devotions from Ezekiel 16 earlier this week, so this is going to be review for you. But Ezekiel 16, the Lord is speaking.
In verse 49, he said, “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.” (Exodus 16:49-50) It’s interesting, isn’t it? The fate of Sodom and Gomorrah hinged on their neglect of the poor.
Here Amos is saying, “Seek God. Seek justice for your own sake as well.” There is a life that comes when we seek justice. Jesus says it this way. He says, “What good is it if you gain the whole world but you lose your soul?” No, seek justice. That’s where we discover life. “Seek me. Seek good. Establish justice and live.” That’s what the Scriptures say.
Now, the second question in this passage is…Where do we seek justice? We worked through a bit of why we would seek justice, but where should we seek justice? It’s interesting to notice that Amos clearly says, “Don’t seek justice so much in the worship places.” Over in verse 21, he says, “I hate, I despise, your feasts. I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” Verse 23: “Take away from me the noise of your songs; the melody of your harps I will not listen.”
It’s quite curious because sometimes we think justice is something the church should do and we think the way we’re establishing justice or seeking good or seeking justice is by going to church and by worshiping. But God says no actually. I mean, these guys in Israel at this time, this community, were really great at getting to the gatherings, and they were super generous in their offerings.
I mean, they were making sacrifices. They’re bringing excess. They’re all pretty wealthy, so they’re just piling it in. They’re thinking, “Yeah, we’re living in a pretty just and righteous society, and God says, “No, that’s actually not how it’s supposed to work. Here’s where I want you to seek justice (it appears a couple of times in verse 10, also in verse 15): in the gates.” Not so much in the worship gatherings, but in the gates.
We’ve talked about this here before at Grace, that in the ancient world the gates of a city were the place where pretty much everything went down. That was where commerce happened, the marketplaces and things like that. Business deals would’ve occurred there at the gates. It was the place where legal decisions would’ve been made. If there were disputes or debates, it was like kind of the equivalent of the ancient courtroom. The elders would sit there and make legal decisions.
If there were political announcements about the direction of the country, they would go to the gates, and that was the place where they would proclaim what was going to be happening in the country. If there were social issues relating between rich and poor… I mean, it even says here, “You’re neglecting the needy in the gate.” The social issues, everything is concentrated right there at the gate.
Amos says the place where we’re called to establish justice is in the gates. It’s to establish justice in the place where legal decisions are made, economic decisions are made, social decisions are made, political decisions are made. Out there. This is where God wants to see justice flowing, in these spheres, in these arenas.
Now the church in our day certainly has a powerful role to play in spreading and encouraging and establishing justice, but as we read the Scriptures, what we see is the gathering and the community of the church, its focus is in many ways discipling the people of God so that the people of God, who are also the church dispersed into the community are acting out justice. The communities of God’s people are living out justice, announcing that reign and rule of God. So the question has come up. Where do we establish justice? In the gates.
The modern-day equivalents of the gates would be like the workplace. Think about it. How does justice operate in your workplace? If you’re a manager, do you manage your people with justice? The hours people work, the hours people keep, their compensation. Is this just? Or if you’re a salesperson, what is it that you sell? Does your product, whatever it may be, enhance justice or does it detract from justice?
The way that goods are produced, are they produced justly or unjustly? How does this all fit together? If you’re in the legal profession, if you’re a lawyer or judge or somehow associated with that whole world, how do you uphold godly justice in the midst of that? Or if you’re in the political world, how do you pursue godly justice there?
This is what Amos is calling the people to do. He’s saying, “Establish the justice in the gates.” Don’t just all get together and sing nice songs about justice, though that’s good. It’s meaningful. It’s important to learn about God’s heart for justice. All this stuff we’re doing here is good, but if it fails to translate into real justice out there, then what happens here just is a stench to God.
In the political world, how do we establish justice? It’s political season right now. Elections are going on, and these questions of justice are pretty relevant. I think you have the spectrum that has consistently arisen between how we earn money. It’s all about the economy. It’s just focused on that. So is it something where the government needs to be bigger or smaller? Do people need to have more choice in their earning and their spending or less choice? Taxes, all these other issues come up. What does justice look like there?
I heard it quoted. David Watson said the trouble with capitalism is that man exploits man, whereas in socialism it’s the other way around. Both sides of the spectrum are lived out by broken humans. We have to be careful not to simply baptize one approach to the economy or one viewpoint because it seems expedient to us but that we’re constantly evaluating the policies, the ways of life, the political viewpoints from the perspective of Scripture.
But all this actually becomes kind of complicated, doesn’t it? Because, “How do I vote for this person because I feel like biblically all of these things line up, but then over here I don’t know what to do with that?” Or even in the workplace. “Okay, well, I’m earning income. I’m providing for my family. That’s important, but then there are these other issues that seem unjust, and how do I mediate all of these issues?”
As soon as you start talking about justice, the question of how really bubbles up. I know I feel this personally all the time. All week! I was eating dinner with Amy last night and I was saying, “I don’t know how to preach this thing because it’s important. I know it’s hugely important, but I get a little bit overwhelmed with it.”
You think about your own life, and that’s complicated enough, and then you start thinking about the needs of the community here. Certainly, we have a community that has poverty. Even if we don’t all realize it, there is a great deal of poverty in our neighborhood. Homelessness in the city of Atlanta and even out here in Gwinnett County. And then many other complicated issues like how land is used and how neighborhoods are developed. That’s a big conversation.
This week, I was down in the city, and I had lunch in one of these newer developments. It’s pretty recent actually. It has been turned into a lot of high-end shops, really nice restaurants. I’ve been in Atlanta now about 11 years, so I can even remember when this neighborhood was not like that. It used to be a much lower income neighborhood, and it was frankly not even that pleasant of a place to be.
So we were at lunch, and finished up eating lunch, and we came out, and the guys I was with were just commenting. They said, “Isn’t this great? I love seeing this happen here in the city.” I was like, “Yeah, it is really beautiful, and that was a great pastrami sandwich I had for lunch, and all of that stuff, but you know, sometimes you have to think about what happens here, because from our perspective this is beautiful, but the people who used to live here can’t afford it anymore.
They used to live and rent right around here, and now they don’t have money for an $11 pastrami sandwich much less money to pay rent for square footage here. So what happens to them?” It was kind of a downer on the conversation actually. I even thought to myself, “Ah! I just became the gentrification guy. Rats!” But these are real issues.
Sometimes the stuff we think is so wonderful is indeed wonderful, but at what cost? Is it possible to redevelop a neighborhood in such a way that the poor are not necessarily just excluded or cast out into some other neighborhood where they’re supposed to live for a bit, but as a neighborhood is redeveloped, the whole neighborhood together is raised up? Is it possible? This is the sort of stuff, but it’s complicated.
Then you get outside of just our local community. You start thinking about global issues and the injustice of our world, and that’s even more overwhelming still. The current statistics on poverty show that still 12.5 percent of the world’s population deals with hunger on a daily basis. That’s about 870 million people. Around 25,000 people a day still die for hunger-related causes, and 16,000 of those are children.
But at a certain point, it just seems like the need in the world is so great and so overwhelming and we get to a point of compassion fatigue, and it’s almost like, “I don’t know what to do with that.” Or what about the issues of global debt? This is a big one, because what you have through the twentieth century especially is corrupt leaders of third world countries who were lent massive sums of money, and they misspent the money.
But then even after those leaders became out of power and even some of the countries that have made dramatic steps toward freedom and democracy even within their nation, they’re still saddled with this huge debt that they were lent years before to some corrupt leader who misspent it. So now, these poor nations who are trying to make ends meet, make life work, are paying enormous amounts of money to creditors who are largely in the West.
Now it’s easy for us to point the finger at the corrupt leaders who squandered the money, but someone lent them the money. Perhaps lending needs as much scrutiny as what happens to the money once it’s lent. So now there’s this cycle where huge portions of the world, lots and lots and lots of people are held in poverty because of debts from previous generations.
You can imagine. It’d be like if someone in your family, your uncle, had died, and you found out that your uncle died with a debt of $500,000, and then suddenly you were the one responsible to pay it. It doesn’t feel just, does it? What do we do with that? Is it possible to declare Jubilee? It there a possibility of canceling debts? Individuals can declare bankruptcy, but can nations?
N.T. Wright, one of the really excellent New Testament scholars writing these days, talked about this issue, and he said global debt is the number-one moral issue of our day. Whatever it takes, we much change this situation or stand condemned by subsequent history alongside those who supported slavery two centuries ago.
Or human trafficking. What about human trafficking? If you notice, all of these injustices are relating back, linking in to money, economic issues. Now human trafficking. If you’ve been at Grace for some time, you know we’ve talked about how even Atlanta has become one of the top handful of cities, a hub for human trafficking. Steps have been taken in the previous seven or eight years to help fight human trafficking, but it’s still an issue.
Then you hear globally that currently there are 27 million people who are in slavery. In 1860, during the height of the abolition movement, there were 25 million. So have we made progress? Well, there are still a lot of slaves in the world, and that is horribly unjust. Amos here is talking to a society that has become saturated in injustice. What do we do with that? It can be overwhelming.
I remember for me, it really hit home on a very personal level when we as a church first started getting engaged in the fight against human sex trafficking. We had a group of college students, and we went down to a neighborhood on a Friday night that was known for being a place of a lot of activity, prostitution and all the rest.
So we had about 25 or 30 of us, and it was a rainy night, and it’s a rougher neighborhood. We got out of the car. It was maybe midnight, 12:30 or something, and we just started walking the streets. We were talking to pimps and to johns and to prostitutes. I was leading a little group of like three or four people, and since I was a couple of years older at the time (I was probably like 22, and they were all 19…so real wise), and they were all looking at me and expecting I know what to do.
We walked past a motel that was known as a place where you could get hourly rooms, and a minivan pulled up right by the drive right next to us. I looked in the window, and there was a man and then there was a woman in the passenger seat, and she would not make eye contact at all. She was pretty clearly a prostitute, and he was taking her back out to the street to drop her off.
On the top of the minivan it said taxi. He said, “Hey man, do you need a ride?” We’re like looking around, and I looked in the van, and he has a huge can of beer. Like, I just froze. Everything about this situation, just all my circuits were totally overwhelmed by this whole… I’m looking at a microcosm of injustice and I can’t even process it, let alone 870 million hungry people in the world.
He goes, “Do you need a ride?” I was looking, and this is what I said. I said, “No actually. I don’t really feel comfortable riding with you while you’re drinking a beer.” He looked down at his beer and he goes, “Oh yeah, I understand.” Then he goes, “What are you guys doing out here?” because we’re obviously suburban kids at like 12:30 in the morning in a rough neighborhood in the rain just walking around.
So what I said was, “We’re just walking around.” He gives us this look like, “Really?” At this point, Drew, who was also… I think the rest of the group was in shock because I was so frozen. I just didn’t know what to do, and they’re all like, “This is our leader? This is the guy? We’re down here to do this, and he says we’re just walking around? Really?”
So at that point, Drew McClure (he’s on staff down at Grace Midtown now) piped up and he said, “Actually, we’re down here to serve the community. We’re here in the name of Jesus.” Then he started talking to the woman who was in the passenger seat. It was really beautiful. He just said, “Hey, ma’am, do you have any needs? Are there any things we can do to help you, to serve you?”
She looked up, and it turned out she had a little child at home and everything else. We were partnering with another organization that was able to follow up with them. So Drew just said to her, “Why don’t you just get out of the car. We’ll walk you down and we can give you some food. We’ll take care of you a little bit. Would that be all right?” She began to nod a little bit. Really, it was a sweet moment that Drew announced the kingdom. I was just there.
But that moment! We know what that’s like, right? We know what it’s like. We know what it’s like when we’re on the on-ramp or the off-ramp waiting at a traffic light and there’s a poor person coming down knocking on widows, and you feel that tension in your heart. “Should I give them money? Should I not give them money? Should I roll down my window? What’s going to happen?” You start feeling that, and then suddenly, “I know God’s heart is for justice.” How do you handle all this? It can be pretty overwhelming. So how do we do this?
Very, very briefly, first, just do what’s in front of you. We all have a life. We can work out justice in our own lives. Before we tackle all the global hunger, what about your work? What about your family? What about your relationships? Start with your life. Then find a community of people to do it with because for all the great movements of justice in history… Sometimes we associate them with one person, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or William Wilberforce fighting slavery in nineteenth-century Britain.
But what we know is true is behind those individuals was a whole community of people. The thing that separates a moment of justice from a movement of justice is a community of people who are mobilized with a whole variety of gifts and talents. Find a community. Seek justice together with some people. I think this place here at Grace, this community, is a wonderful community with whom to seek justice. I am honored to be with you guys, and I love the projects we do and the stuff we do together to get connected, moving forward.
The final thing is to cry out for justice. Sometimes we don’t know what to do. Sometimes we’re standing at the door of the minivan and we’re totally frozen, and at that moment Amos’ words, “Let justice roll down like waters. Let righteousness flow like an ever-flowing stream.” Sometimes all we know to do is just cry out for justice. We can’t figure it out. The Scripture says seek God. Seek God. Seek good. Seek God. Cry out for justice. “Lord, help me here. I don’t know what to do, but we cry out for it because we know it’s your heart.”
So our challenge this morning, and as I worked on this passage I had been praying about it and everything, I just feel like the challenge from the Lord this morning is really about that word just. In our everyday language, we use the word just as a throwaway. “What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m just watching some TV.”
“What are you up to?”
“Oh, I’m just doing some homework.”
Sometimes we use it as an apology or to qualify statements. Even we use it in our prayer. “God, we just ask you to do this.” Like don’t do anything else, just do that one thing. “Lord, we just, we just, we just, we just, we just.” It’s kind of a throwaway word. It’s a word that can spring up as we talk about this issue from Amos as well.
It’s, “What can I do? I’m just one person, or we’re just one family, or we’re just one church.” As I prayed this week, what I felt like the Lord was saying is, “Just flip those words.” Rather than thinking, “Oh, I’m just one person,” the Lord I feel like is saying, “Hey, become one just person. Become one just family. Become one just church. Follow me. Cry out to me. Seek to me. Become one just community.” Nobody is just one person, but everybody has the potential to become one just person.