Once again, Habakkuk chapter 1 and verses 1-4. Let us now hear the words of God. O Lord, how long shall I cry and you will not hear? Even cry out to you violence and you will not save. Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me. There is strife and contention arises. Therefore, the law is powerless and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous. Therefore, perverse judgment proceeds. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your holy word this evening. We give you praise and thanks for revealing yourself and having that revelation written down so that we can be instructed, encouraged, and comforted by your truth. And we ask, Lord, that your truth would have its proper place in our minds and our hearts. We ask for grace to put aside our own preconceived notions of right and wrong and true and false and make sure that we are looking to your word as the absolute, as the ultimate standard for all things. We ask, Lord, that in this church, the word of God would be the standard, the ultimate and final authority. on all things that we are to believe and practice. So, Father, we bring ourselves to Your Word tonight. We humble ourselves under Your revelation in Holy Scripture and ask that You would teach us by Your Spirit. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. We've begun our study of Habakkuk, and we are here in verses 1 through 4. What is Habakkuk concerned about? Habakkuk is concerned about justice. He is complaining to the Lord about the lack of it, about injustice in the land, and how it's been perverted and twisted. And so look at the language of justice and injustice as Habakkuk uses it here. He says, O Lord, how long shall I cry and you will not hear, even cry out to you violence and you will not save? Why do you show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me. So you see Habakkuk used that word violence there twice that we've talked about before. This idea, hamas in Hebrew, of oppression and even physical violence toward other people, although it doesn't always mean that. It can simply mean wrongs being done by one person to another, some form of oppression. So you can see Habakkuk concerned about violence. He goes on, verse 4, Therefore the law, the Torah, is powerless, it's impotent, it's numb, it's not being respected and applied in the way that it was meant to be. The law of God was to be the standard upheld in Israel and applied, put into force. be executed and its dictates and its legislation applied to the people of Israel and Habakkuk is concerned that this is not happening. Therefore the law is powerless and justice, mishpat, never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous, they encircle them, we might say. Therefore, perverse judgment, mishpat, proceeds. Justice and judgment, they've been twisted and perverted, and that's what's going on in the land of Israel at this particular time. So you can see that Habakkuk's concern here in the opening portion of the book is the fact that he looks around him and he sees injustice in the land of Canaan, in the promised land, the land that belongs to the people of God, where the law of God should have ruled, it is now powerless. So we are taking an excursus, that's a fancy word for a detour, to think about justice and injustice according to the Bible. Why are we doing this? We're doing this for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is there's a lot of talk about this today. And you've heard it in the news, you see it all over the place, and people talking about justice as it relates to this issue and that issue. And so there's a lot of talk about these things, and it's important that we think properly and rightly about justice. We want to make sure that we get our concept of justice from the Bible, and not from the culture around us. And there are lots of people in danger And maybe I should go further and say they have already given in to society's idea of justice, and that's what they're following rather than the law of God. But as Christians, we must make sure we go back to the Scriptures and understand what true justice is from the Word of God, because God is concerned about justice. God is a God of justice and we cited Isaiah last time where God tells His people that He's a God of justice and He wants them to seek justice. But it's so important today that we understand that the justice that Habakkuk is concerned with here is biblical justice. It's the justice that comes from the law of God. Because what some people will do today is they will see things going on in our society, they'll hear all this talk about justice, and then they'll go back to a book like Habakkuk and impose their own ideas of justice on the Word of God. And so people who have concerns, values, and priorities that are opposite our own, They are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum in relation to these issues that we're going to talk about tonight. They will try and use the same Bible, the same prophets to demonstrate that they are right, that their concerns are God's concerns. How do we know the difference? The only way we're going to know the difference is for us to take a step back and understand how the Bible defines justice. What is the law of God, the Torah, that Habakkuk is concerned about in verse 4, what does it say about justice? And we want to apply that to some of these contemporary issues that I know you guys hear so much about. So last time, we started to look at some of these illustrations of the difference between the concept of justice in our world today and the justice that the Bible teaches. And it often goes under the heading of social justice. You'll hear people talking about that a lot. Now, I should say at the outset that if someone in our society is talking about justice, we have to figure out what they're talking about first. Now, thankfully, we live in a society in which not everything is broken down into chaos. Praise God for that. You say, it kind of looks like it is. I know. But there are people who are still prosecuted for theft. or prosecuted for various and sundry crimes. And we can give thanks for that. So we're not saying that all of the concerns of justice in our world today are completely opposite to the Bible. But what we are saying is there are many of them that are contrary to what the scriptures teach. And we want to point some of those out so that we think clearly about biblical justice versus that which is put forward as justice today in our society. The first one that we started with was this general attitude of rushing to judgment. Something happens in our society and people are so quick to jump on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, hold a press conference, whatever the case may be, and proclaim or make a judgment about the situation before all the evidence is in. Now hopefully you have recognized this and you realize that this often goes on. And unfortunately it happens on the conservative side sometimes as well. But we have to make sure that as Christians we are concerned with the evidence, with the facts of the matter. Why is that? Leviticus 19, 15. You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. That is our responsibility. It's our responsibility. It's the society's responsibility to make sure that righteousness is done. And righteousness cannot be done if people are turning a blind eye to all the evidence and they are rushing to judgment. They are quick to make snap judgments about what the situation is and what must be done because there's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of pressure on people to come out and make an immediate statement for or against condemning or exonerating or whatever the case may be. But we have to put the brakes on. Say, hang on. We've got evidence to gather, witnesses to call, all of these things that must be done so that righteous judgment takes place. We talked about issues related to racism. So there is a general tendency now in our society to make these snap judgments, to rush to judgment based upon the skin color of the people involved. And the example that unfortunately keeps happening in our society today is the white police officer who is on the scene trying to arrest a black man and immediately the judgment is passed. What is that judgment? That this is due to oppression, this is due to racism, this is a matter of injustice. Why can we not do that? We cannot do that because we do not judge by appearances. Right? So we cited Jesus in John 7. Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment. So you see, Jesus teaches us there that in order to do righteous judgment, you can't just do it with the sight of your eyes, with what you see just purely with your eyes. And looking at someone's skin color and making conclusions based solely on that is wrong. is unbiblical. Now, it may be the case that the white officer hated the black man for the color of his skin. That's entirely possible, is it not? And it could be that he was motivated by that malice, by that hatred, and he did what he did based upon that. We shouldn't rule that out either, should we? Again, you see, the point is we consider the truth, and we get at all of the evidence, and we think about what's really going on. So we used here the example of George Floyd. Now I hope I didn't give you the impression last week that the police officers involved in the George Floyd incident did everything right. That was not my point last week. My point last week was to say that there were a lot of assumptions being made about the situation. There were a lot of snap judgments being made. Here's a picture of a white officer kneeling on a black man's neck and everybody is quick to run off and start screaming about injustice and racism and oppression without knowing whether the officer did what he did out of malice toward the man's skin color. No one was interested in that. Nobody had any patience for that to find that out or to gather all the facts. In addition to that, people were very impatient and did not want to listen to anything related to, for example, the man's criminal record. Now the man's criminal record doesn't make the situation right. Hopefully we can acknowledge that. Okay, the fact that the man was a criminal or had a criminal record doesn't mean the police officer gets to kneel on his neck until he dies. I hope we understand that. But to say we are not going to listen to that, consider that at all, that's got absolutely nothing to do with this is a way of subverting true justice. Got to consider all the facts and all the evidence. Now, after you do that, you may then dismiss it and say, OK, that's not material to what's going on here. But just to dismiss it before it is ever considered is wrong. We also talked about riots and looting. What's the difference between a riot and a protest? Well, CNN apparently doesn't know. Or MSNBC or so many other news outlets. So there's a lot of lying. I was getting ready to say confusion. But it's actually lying, is what it is. It's dishonesty. And so we talked about that, we talked about, you shall not follow a multitude to do evil. That's the law of God. But the news media says, no, this is about justice, so it's okay for the mob to do evil. And we heard them say that explicitly on the news time and time and time again. So you see we have a conflict between social justice and biblical justice. We also talked about, in association with that, riots, these riots, looting. as well. And I'm sure you saw the news footage and things on the internet of people breaking windows and going into stores and stealing things. And there was a general attitude of, that's okay, or we're going to turn a blind eye to that. Because what? because this is a matter of racial justice. So it's okay. It's alright for them to do that. What does the law of God say? Well, we looked at the law of God and what it has to say about the thief, and what should be done with the thief. And we noted that among other things, restitution must take place. But you don't just say, well, this man is of a certain skin color, therefore he's of an oppressed group, and it's okay for him to loot. It's okay for him to be a thief and steal. God's law will not countenance that. All right, so let's move on tonight to another example. This one's, I suppose they're all a little bit dated. This one's a little bit dated, but this is the Me Too movement. So the Me Too movement from a year or two ago, or however long ago it's been, So what is this about? This was about women coming forward to say, I've been abused as well, and I've been abused by a man sexually. And so there was a movement of people coming out often on social media to talk about how they had been abused by someone in the past and things like that. Now, let's see what the law of God has to say about this matter, or let's look at an example here, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 22. Deuteronomy 22 and beginning in verse 25. There is in the young woman no sin deserving of death, for just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so is this matter. For he found her in the countryside and the betrothed young woman cried out, but there was no one to save her." Is God concerned about things like this? You better believe He is. Is God's wrath aroused when men harm women in this way? You better believe His wrath is aroused. Well, the law of God deals with things like this and condemns sins like this. So when we talk about justice for women who have been abused, We are not saying that a woman who has legitimately been harmed in this way, that she ought to just be dismissed, that she ought not be listened to, that justice ought not be pursued. No, we must absolutely pursue justice for this woman and make sure that what is right is done by her. Where do we get that from? Among other places, we get that from Deuteronomy chapter 22. But the Me Too movement went further, didn't it? How did it go further? I'll give you an opportunity to chime in now. What was the next step that they took that we can't take and must not take? Dave? That's right. Yeah, that is the fatal misstep right there. When we take that step and the woman comes forward and says, I'm a victim of abuse, This man has harmed me in some way. And the response of our society to that is to say, she must be believed. Period. End of story. Why can we not do that as biblical Christians? Well, first of all, let's go a couple of chapters back here in Deuteronomy to chapter 19. And we want to remind ourselves of a very important principle in the law Deuteronomy chapter 19 and verse 15. One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established. Why does the law of God require more than one witness? Anybody? Yes, there are liars. We'll get to that here in just a minute. There is such a thing as a false witness that must be taken into account. There must be independent corroborating testimony so as to protect the accused because there's the possibility that an accusation has been made that is false and that has to be taken into account. All right, so let's keep going here, Deuteronomy 19. If a false witness, verse 16, if a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, then both men in the controversy shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who serve in those days. And the judges shall make careful inquiry. And indeed, if the witness is a false witness who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother. So you shall put away the evil from among you." So you see how the law of God, very wisely in its perfect wisdom, because it comes from God, takes into account the fact that there will be people who bring false witness. Now why would anybody do that? What might motivate someone to bring false witness in this matter? You've seen it before. For example, you might see it in sports. You might see a woman who's involved with a sports player, and she might want some money out of this particular man, and the way to get at him is to make an accusation of this variety. Now let's be very clear in our thinking here. And the clarity we want is, we do not rush to judgment either way. We're not making a decision up front whether the woman is right or the man is right. And that's so very important. What do we have to do? We've got to gather those two to three witnesses. We've got to gather the evidence. We've got to do all that we have to do to make sure that we're seeking the truth and that we're not believing the woman because she's a woman. and that we're not believing the man because he's a man. But we're looking for what's true, what really happened in this particular situation. So biblical justice requires not believing the woman, but doing your due diligence, finding the evidence, gathering witnesses, and not simply taking one person's word for the matter. All right, let's move on to our next example here, and that is all things LGBT+. You will hear, obviously, you will hear a lot about this plus this, right? That this, LGBT+, and this are connected. They're joined at the hip, that this is a matter of this. And that is a lie. Let's just put it plainly. That is a lie. It is a means of trying to normalize and get our society to approve of sinful and perverted unnatural behaviors. And it's a way of bringing those things in under the heading of this. But if we go back to the law of God, we find out that these two things are not connected to one another. Not in the way our society wants to connect them today. Alright, so let's look now at the book of Leviticus. So just go back a couple of books in the Torah to Leviticus chapter 18. Leviticus 18, verse 22. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. It's clear. It's a clear statement from God to His people. Why would God have to say that to Israel? Because these were the practices of the Canaanites. These were the things the Canaanites engaged in, and God forbids His people from engaging in those same practices. Now let's see the penalty. Chapter 20. And verse 13. If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. Now, if you wanted to be If you wanted to be well-liked in our society today, you could just share that text with someone. Now, there are many Christians, unfortunately, church-going, nice, lawn-mowing Christians today who are embarrassed by that text, who are ashamed of it. You and I must not be. Why? This is God's law. This is God's Word. Where did it come from? It came from the God who is just, who is righteous. If He says you put the Sodomites to death, then guess what you do? That's what you do. Now obviously that would be tremendously controversial, and that would not reserve a spot for me on the city council. I understand that. But we again cannot be concerned with our society's ideas of right and wrong, of justice. We've got to be concerned with what God's law says concerning justice. And here again, you see the difference. I hope you can see the stark difference between what our world says is just, which is accept all of this, embrace all of this, promote it, celebrate it. And what we just read from God's law, which requires the death penalty. Now, let's move right on here to the death penalty. We'll use a different example here. What does our society today think about the death penalty? Now, our society is hypocritical in this regard, really, because they will bad mouth people who uphold the death penalty all day long and extra on Sundays. for believing in this barbarity of the death penalty until something really bad happens and some guy sets off a bomb in some public place. And then they change their tune sometimes a little bit or they might change their tune when it hits close to home for them. But be that as it may, generally speaking, you talk to the man on the street and he's going to tell you this is terrible. To put people to death for a crime, that's a terrible thing. That's what the man on the street is typically going to tell you. Well, let's compare. Our world says death penalty bad, barbaric, out of date, some barbaric piece of ancient legislation. Okay, well, let's see what the law of God has to say about it. You're here in Leviticus. Let's go back to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 19. Before we read Deuteronomy 19, let me read Genesis 9.6 first. What is it that undergirds the death penalty, which the Bible teaches? It's the fact that man is made in the image of God. You murder and shed the blood of a man made in the image of God. It requires in turn, according to God's justice, it requires the death of the one who committed the murder. Okay, so let's see an example of this here in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 19 and verse 11. beginning at verse 11, But if anyone hates his neighbor, lies in wait for him, rises against him, and strikes him mortally, so that he dies, and he flees to one of these cities, then the elders of his city shall send him, bring him from there, and shall deliver him over to the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die. Your eye shall not pity him, but you shall put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with you. So here in this chapter, we're dealing with the cities of refuge and how God provided a place for what we might call involuntary manslaughter for someone to go to a safe place until judgment could be made and evidence could be gathered. Witnesses could be called and justice could be done to find out, hey, this man did not intentionally murder this other man. It was an accident or something like that. Now, The law of God, again, in its perfect wisdom, because it comes from God, understands, God knows, that people were going to abuse that. That some people were going to commit murder, flee to the cities of refuge, and claim innocence. Right? And seek to be protected there. But here, provision is made for that, and this man, when it is found out that he did commit murder, in cold blood we might say, He is to be delivered over to death. He is to be executed. Now it is said by many today that the kind, loving, and compassionate thing to do is imprison and rehabilitate. That's the basic standard of justice in our society, so called. But I want you to see the difference again between our society's concept of justice and God's concept of justice. Now if you think about it a little bit further and you get beyond kind of the mushy language of imprison and rehabilitate, and you get down to the crux of the matter, what about the victim? What about the man who's murdered? Or the woman? Or the child? Or whoever it may be? What about their family? What about justice in the society at large and what we are saying to everyone else by not prosecuting this person according to God's law? What are we doing to the taxpayer? Because guess what happens? And for a long time I didn't think about this and I'm thankful to other people for bringing it to my attention. Someone murders someone, what do we do in America? We imprison them and we seek to rehabilitate them. And what happens? Food, clothing, shelter, medical care for this criminal, who pays for that? Who foots the bill? The criminal? No. The government? No, you, me, the American taxpayer, foots the bill. And now we hear that if a criminal in prison decides that he's a different gender, well, guess what? You're to pay for that, too. Well, I hope you see that for what it is. That's injustice. That's the opposite of justice. It's masquerading in our society as justice, but it is anything but. Let's note one final thing here tonight, and that is the deterrence factor of God's law. Now, one of the things that you've probably heard for a long time and I've heard from people is that it's ridiculous to think that the law is going to deter anybody from doing wrong. The only problem with that is the Bible, right? What does God's law say about the deterring factor of the law? We're just going to look at one example, but it's repeated in a number of different places in scripture. You're here in Deuteronomy 19. Let's see it here. All right, so this goes back to the false witness, right? That we read about a minute ago. Verse 18, And the judges shall make careful inquiry. And indeed, if the witness is a false witness who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother. Why? So you shall put away the evil from among you. And, verse 20, those who remain shall hear and fear. What is that? It's that. Right? They shall hear and fear and hereafter they shall not again commit such evil among you. So where did we get that idea that the law is a teacher? that the law is meant to deter, among other things, but the law is meant to deter people. It's to cause, when the law's sanctions are brought to bear on someone, the penalties are brought to bear on someone, other people are to look at that and say, I don't want that to be me. I'm not gonna murder. someone because I don't want to be the one who's in the place of execution. Where did we get that from? We got that from the law of God. You can see this as it relates to abortion, right? So one of the arguments against the criminalization of abortion is that the law won't change anything. It won't make a difference. People have said that to me before. If you say the law of God demands that murder be considered as what it is, as murder, and be criminalized, that's just, that's justice. If you say that to someone, undoubtedly, many of them are gonna say, well, that's not gonna keep anybody from doing it. Abortions are still gonna happen. People are still gonna go into back alleys and shady doctors and all that sort of thing, and so therefore, They make the leap from there to it ought to be completely legal, promoted, celebrated, and the whole nine yards. But all along, the law of God said, you do this, you put into effect this penalty so that others may hear and fear. so that others may see and do differently. Now, of course, we're not saying that the execution of the law's penalties makes 100 percent, you know, that nobody ever commits a crime ever again. Obviously, that's not the case. But generally speaking, the law has that deterring power. Where did that come from? It came from God. Thus, I hope that you will be committed to true biblical justice. that you won't stop talking about justice. It's one temptation, right? Everybody in the world's talking about it. I don't want to sound like them. No, justice is biblical language. And we have to retain that language and use that language. We just have to make sure we know what we're talking about, what kind of justice we're referring to. But we want to be committed to biblical justice because that's God's justice.