The Christian and Injustice

Please turn to John's Gospel. John's Gospel in Chapter 18. John's Gospel in Chapter 18.

What I would like to share with you for a few minutes this afternoon is a consideration of Christians and the injustices in society around us and our response to that. And I suppose a little background is helpful here before we take a look at some of the scriptures that might guide us on this matter. That sometimes the response, I'm sure, is although sincere, is sometimes based on a confusion that results from an incorrect view of God's program for the ages.

And we've been hearing much reference to that today. And I think understanding somewhat of that is a great help for guiding us in relation to this particular issue. As simple as the difference between the nation of Israel versus the church.

And so what I would like to draw your attention to is the fact that I think that the disciples and those who were believers at the time of the Lord Jesus, they were struggling with that particular area of their lives. They were anticipating a Messiah who would come, who would right the wrongs in the world. They were expecting one who would fulfill the prophecies of a Messiah that would be powerful, that would deliver the nation of Israel from its adversaries, that would cause it to become the head of the nations instead of the tail.

And they were living under the heel of the Roman Empire. And so you can imagine the joy when the light of his birth was announced. And even in the words of Zechariah, as he is talking about the fulfillment of God's promises to redeem Israel.

And I'm sure what he was thinking was just exactly the hope that they would have in their hearts. And all through the time of the Lord Jesus, you can even see the consternation of John the Baptist when he is in prison. And he's asking, the very one that had introduced the Messiah, he's asking the question, aren't thou he that should come, or do we look for another? He was obviously crestfallen, and he was confused over why was there not coming to fulfillment, the realization of the full picture and promise of the Messiah.

You think of those two on the road to Emmaus as the Lord Jesus would approach them. You remember how they were confused and crestfallen as well after the crucifixion of the one upon whom they had placed their hopes. And they said that we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.

And even as late as Acts chapter 1, when the Lord Jesus, prior to his ascension, the disciples are asking him, will thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And because of some confusion in their minds, we're of course looking back. It's easy for us to understand. But they were looking forward to an unknown period, and that was the age of grace.

That was the dispensation or age of the spirit. That was the coming and the wonderful work of the church age as we are familiar with it. And there they were.

And under that, failing to see that valley between the mountains of prophecy as it's been aptly described for us, there they were struggling with just what was going on. And it brought confusion. And so this is what I would like to read with you now.

We'll take a little cue from the words of Christ first of all and see if he can help us to understand what should be the response of Christians to injustice and moral issues in the society around us. Notice what he says here in John 18 first of all. The Lord Jesus is being interrogated by Pilate, and in verse number 35, Pilate answers, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me.

What hast thou done? Now listen and look at the words that the Lord Jesus is going to speak to him and say. This verse 36, three times over he's going to say my kingdom in one verse. He answers, My kingdom is not of this world.

If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight? That would be their response to the current dilemma and state of affairs. Then would my servants fight? And what was the big miscarriage of justice that was about to happen? He says here that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But he says, now is my kingdom not from hence.

So the upshot of that conclusion is that the followers of the Lord Jesus innocently and sincerely were thinking of a Messiah who would bring about a political and national deliverance in the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies. And what the Lord Jesus is pointing out here, albeit to a man, Pilate, who was disinterested, is that his kingdom wasn't so much with here and now, but it was going to be with there and then. And until that particular time frame, here is a marker for us that is putting a pause and putting a hold upon the intervention of the Lord Jesus himself in all of the dysfunction of a world that has gone astray because of sin, because he has something else in mind.

In fact, that's what he even elaborates on in verse number 37. He says, Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. So he acknowledges, I am a king.

But he says, I'm not here to establish my kingdom on earth right now. I'm actually here to establish a spiritual kingdom. My first coming and my first mission is spiritual, not political.

It is spiritual. It is not national. It is spiritual and it is not physical or material.

It is heavenly and it is not earthly. And so he says, To this end was I born. And for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.

Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. It's very partisan. Pilate said unto him, and this is one of the cases that are so heartbreaking in the scriptures.

Pilate said unto him, What is truth? We would all have loved to have been there to see the expression on Pilate's face, to hear perhaps the tone of his voice, to understand just what is he actually expressing here. Is he expressing a despair that such a thing as truth is way too idealistic and couldn't possibly exist in the corrupt Roman Empire, in the world in which he was living. But the point is this, that the question, whatever it was expressing, was not backed by a sincere desire to know the truth.

And face to face with the very embodiment of the essence of truth, he who is the way, the truth, and the life, Pilate turned on his heels and left without waiting for the answer. That's not my point. That's not my... But it's just there.

And it is so sad. It is so sad because it is still being repeated today. There are people that are disinterested in the truth.

And it's not because there is a lack of it to present to them. It is a lack of interest. It is a lack of desire to know it.

So here is the words of the Lord Jesus to Pilate that are very instructive for us. The bottom line is this, that if the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ were of this world, then we all would need to fight for the cause of right and wrong. But since it's not of this world, then we have to follow his cue.

And it's interesting that he didn't instruct. I mean, who would have been more eminently qualified to head up and mobilize a revolutionary rising up of good quality people in a tremendous cause for truth and justice to overcome the social ill of the day, the malaise of the day, and to overthrow the dictatorship, the Roman Empire, and deliver the nation of Israel from its sufferings and from its oppression? Who would have been a more brilliant political strategist? Who would have been a more charismatic speaker? Who would have been more capable of rallying the troops? Who would have been more successful at lobbying for reform? But the Lord Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight? What's interesting too, of course, is that the Lord Jesus was born under the law, and he is in the context or framework of Israel as a nation.

And you can't read the history of the nation of Israel without discovering that they were a nation that was actually divinely called by God for the craft of warfare and were told about how many soldiers, how many foot soldiers left Egypt ready for war, how many were armed. They were going out, and they were going to be used in God's hand and in God's time and in God's way to invade the land of the Canaanites and overthrow what God no longer could tolerate in that evil, evil society. And though he was born into and under a regime like that, with that kind of a past heritage, he never trained any of his disciples in the craft of warfare.

He never equipped them to do battle. He never taught them how to deliver speeches, to persuade the public, and to lobby for a following. I suppose you could say he was apolitical, and I think we can learn something from his cue.

Now, we're going to look over here at another verse just to take a look in Luke's gospel for a moment, in Luke's gospel chapter 22. Luke chapter 22, it says here in verse number 47, And he that was called Judas, one of the twelve went before them and drew near to Jesus to kiss him. But Jesus said unto him, Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss? When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.

And notice the reaction of the Lord Jesus at this point. He says to the man whose ear was cut off, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear and healed him.

Now, it's very tempting because here's the case of a man that was getting a tremendous example of the goodness of God that should have led him to repentance. And it's like he never skipped a heartbeat. He just carried right on with his tactic and his trail and his plan along with the mob that day under mob justice to arrest the Prince of Life and deliver him to be crucified.

But in so doing that in front of Peter, the Lord Jesus was saying to Peter without words that he disagreed with what he did and he disapproved of it. And by supernatural power he reversed it and healed the man instantly. Now, that's an interesting thing.

But that's not all that the Lord Jesus did. Because if we go back to Matthew chapter 26 for a moment, if you want to come back there to Matthew chapter 26 and verse number 51, we have the same scene and Matthew just provides us with some more commentary on this. Behold, one of them which were with Jesus, Matthew 26 and 51.

Behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priest and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place. Stop what you're doing.

You might have a good intention. You might even have some moral justification. You're trying to defend me.

But I want you to stop what you're doing because you're trying to do a good thing in a wrong way at a wrong time. My kingdom is not from here and my kingdom is also not right now. It's there and it's then.

It's not here and it's not now. So just stop for a minute. Secondly, there's a personal risk.

Look at how many are in front of you right now. You are going to take out your sword? Remember, I've got plans for you, Peter. In less than a couple of months, I'm going to have you preaching in front of an audience in which 3,000 people are going to be saved and I'm going to call you and continue to use you and there is going to be a whole lot more people reached and saved as a result.

If you carry on with what you're about to do right now, you could lose your life tonight and God's plan for your life and a lost world would have to be put on hold or changed or altered or somebody else used to fulfill God's plan. So he's saying to him, there's something more important than writing a moral social injustice happening right in front of your eyes. You're not complicit with wrongdoing if you stand idly by.

That almost sounds contradictory, doesn't it? So you don't need to get involved in the protest. You don't need to get involved in the rally. You don't need to try to stop the wrongdoing that's going on in the world.

Doesn't that make you complicit with what's wrong? No, it doesn't. It makes you wise as to the fact that God's kingdom is not here and it's not now. It's then and it's there in the millennium.

We've heard about that. Furthermore, just while I'm on that note and so I don't forget it, God before, he rectifies a world that has gone wrong because of sin. You know what he's going to do? We already know it.

Hindsight is 20-20. We are at the tail end of nearly two millennia in which what God would do with Peter in Acts chapter 2 on the day of Pentecost is continuing up until this day. The point, God says, before I rectify the wrong in this world in which there is going to be unprecedented and unparalleled judgments that will fall upon a godless, unrepentant world, I want to give them the gospel so they can be saved.

And if that's not enough, I'm going to send out a supercharged group of 144,000 evangelists in the seven years of the tribulation. Stretch it or shorten it however, but it's that rough time frame. And in that short time frame, they're going to be taking this gospel of the kingdom and preach it to all nations before the end come in judgment God is remembering mercy.

So he's saying, don't fast-track the prophetic calendar of God. What I have in priority in my mind is the salvation of a lost world. We could take our cue from that.

True or false? False. So, there's personal risk. I have other plans for you.

Not only stop, but look. You know, stop, look, and listen. Look.

Look up. Peter, take a look around you. Look up.

Don't underestimate God's power. Don't try to do what only God can do. There's the potential of prayer.

I can pray to my father right now. He didn't. There's the father's power with all the angels.

Don't you think that I can now pray to my father and he'll presently give me more than 12 legions of angels. And a legion is 6,000 if I understand it correct. So that's 72,000.

If it's more, well, we'll put it at 13. So that would make it 78,000. And if 78,000 angels went to work in this world, Peter, put your sword back in its sheath.

He's well equipped. He doesn't need your help. It's okay.

Relax. We've got this all under control. You realize, like, back in the time of Sennacherib, remember one angel was sent out in one night? Wasn't it 185,000? You multiply that by 78,000 angels, if they could all do the same thing, each one, you've got like in excess of 14 billion people that would have lost their lives.

That's almost twice the population of the current world population. I don't know what the world population was in the time of Christ. I don't think it was that.

Peter, I've got enough with angels. I could wipe every living person off the face of the earth right now, even be quicker than the flood. Peter, put up your sword.

God doesn't need your help. And then thirdly, he says, listen to my words. Don't overlook the prophecy that must be fulfilled.

He says, in John's gospel, the cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? So the Lord says, I don't want to bypass the cross. I don't want to detour it. I don't want to avoid that cross.

Before my heart is a vision of a perishing world, and I'm interested in seeing them saved, the priority of the spiritual over the political, the priority of the spiritual over the material, the priority of the spiritual over the national, the priority of the salvation of souls, trumps the priority of fixing this old wreck of a world. So Peter's activism in the cause of justice clashed with God's plan personally for Peter, with God's powerful armies, with the prophecies that were needing to be fulfilled, and with the pardon about to be provided by way of the cup that Christ must drink. Further, if Christ had engaged in some kind of activism, social or moral or religious or political, to upend and overturn the status quo that was happening just then, would it not have lent credence to his accusation put over his head on the cross? What was his crime? That he tried to make himself a king.

This is Jesus of Nazareth, the king. Capital offense under Roman law. It was a false accusation.

Ironically, it stated the truth. He is the king. But he didn't try to make himself a king.

And so I think we can learn a cue from the Lord Jesus himself that trying to reform this world, socially, politically, religiously, morally, however way you want to look at it, whatever you and I might deem best and most appropriate at the time, if we try to do that, then what we are doing is we are acting as if Christ's kingdom were indeed of this world, here and now. So we can't force an interpretation of Christ's call for us to be light and salt, Matthew chapter 5, right? That is out of line with his own way of being light and salt in the world himself. So therefore, he calls us to a path.

I say unto you, you resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. If a man will sue thee at the law, take away thy coat, let him have thy coat also. Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

So what are we learning? The Lord Jesus had a whole different approach and a whole different concept to what was going on. And we can learn our lessons from him. But then I think not only of Christ's words, but I think of Paul's teachings.

Paul's teachings, and we won't turn to it because I've only got like three minutes left, so all I can say to you is this, it's not a cliche, and it's not some old tradition of somebody that they didn't really think through the issues, but he advised and exhorted in 1 Timothy 2, verses 1-4, the necessity of prayer for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority, even when Nero was the cruel Roman emperor in his days. So, prayer is a powerful tool. Romans 13, verse number 1-7, verses 1-7 is the most extensive treatment on the topic in the New Testament, in the scriptures, and it tells us to be subject to the powers that be.

The rationale that drives that exhortation is this, that it's what God has ordained. The powers that be are ordained of God. So I'm going to put in a little disclaimer here.

God's appointment of authority and different tiers of authority and government, whether they act right or wrong, the structure is actually ordained of God. The opposite would be anarchy. But his appointment is not necessarily his approval.

He doesn't approve of tyranny, of injustice, or of corruption. But some government is better than none. Anarchy ends up being the law of the mob, and that only results in wholesale destruction.

Believers can, one commentary said this, believers can live victoriously in a democracy, a constitutional monarchy, or even a totalitarian regime. The only ideal government is the beneficent monarchy with the Lord Jesus Christ as king, and that will be realized in his return to this earth. What is the outcome of not submitting to the powers that be? Well, it puts me at odds with God's order.

Whosoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God. I think Paul invokes God's name six times in that passage in Romans chapter 13. He's trying to up the ante and cause us to understand this whole situation in the light of a divine order and a divine ordination that God has as his objective when it comes to this world.

And it would put me at odds with government officials. They that resist shall receive to themselves judgment, for rulers are not a terror to good works but to the evil. Will thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.

So it affects my testimony. He is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain.

He is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. There's Peter's teaching. I don't have time for that.

But I will just return to this simple clarification, try to balance this out. There's much, much more could be said on this topic. But obviously my obligation to human government is limited and controlled by my obligation to God's government and his authority.

So if man's government asks me to do something that clashes with God's authority, then I have to defer to God, but I do so respectfully because I'm wanting to revere the fact that God has ordained a structure of government and law and order in our world. And I want to go back to Christ as our supreme example. It was prophesied of him in the 8th century before his birth that he shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

Can we take our cue from him? He was not a rabble-rouser. He was not a revolutionary. He was not a protester in the street.

He was not a lobbyist for political and social reform. You know what he was interested in doing? That first advent had to do with your salvation and mine. His second advent will have to do what is so concerning in our minds today in a world that is falling apart.

But in the meantime, may God help us to adjust our focus. While we are observing and are concerned and should earnestly pray for all injustices and intercede for all that are in authority, let us not lose sight of this fact that never in this world's history has there been such a large population in need of hearing the gospel as there is in our day. We need more, not less, gospel vision, passion, and action.

We need more, not fewer, gospel workers. I don't know of one field anywhere in the world in the Lord's work where anyone would say they have too many workers. And I don't think this state here is any exception.

And as far as I can understand, the number is not going up. They're going down. So with all that in mind, what is paramount, the other is certainly a very valid issue, a great concern, hats off and prayers for all who are trying to raise little children, teenagers, in this kind of world in which we are found.

But God help us to remember that our power is prayer before the throne. And our priority in the meantime is the same priority as the Lord Jesus had, and that is the salvation of a lost and perishing world. May God bless His Word.