"Covenantal Justice: Guarding the Gates " Part 4

Let's go to Lord in prayer. Father, I thank you for the time you've given us, and I want to thank you for the hope that we have in Christ, and for the instruction that we have, that we've been following even this morning, that we are to not look upon things here on earth, but to fix our gaze upon Christ, who even now is at the right hand of the Father, who is enthroned, who is a name above every name in all authority, and I thank you that the hope that we have is that by fixing our attention on Him, all of the challenges and the difficulties of this world are put into their proper light, and you give us clarity on the direction we are to go.

And this is what we ask for this morning as we look at your word, that you would clarify for us who Christ is, and that in this, that you would show us how now we will live. We thank you for your grace that is so abundant, and ask that you would just help us today to worship, for we do not do this on our own, but we are dependent upon you.

We pray these things for Christ's sake. Amen. Well, I invite you to open your Bibles with me and turn to the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 22, and we're looking at verses 1 through 9 again, at the theme of covenantal justice.

The temptation is that when we read a passage in the Bible that says do justice and do righteousness, and a passage in the Bible that says look at the stranger, in some of your translations we'll say refugee, look at the alien, the foreigner, to look at the widow and the orphan, to consider the blood of the innocent, and to consider the rights of the poor.

The temptation is in our time, in our country right now, is to immediately read into these verses what we hear on the news, to read into these verses what we have maybe have discussed around the dinner table, or what we have seen posted by our friends.

And that temptation we must resist because this is a word, this is the word of God, the perfect, true, sufficient, infallible, inerrant word of God, and this word is all about one person, and his name is Jesus Christ.

This is about Christ, and by extension, everything that matters in the whole history of the world, including you and I. So when we read this passage, it's not about today's newspaper, it's about who Christ is and what he has to say about today's newspaper, and you may think that's semantics, but it's everything.

It's absolutely everything. And so as we read this passage again, our challenge is to put our attention upon the true son of David, who sits upon the throne, and to hear what he has to say. I invite you to give reverence to Christ and stand with me as we read Jeremiah 22, verses 1 -9.

Thus says the Lord, Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and there speak this word and say, Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, who sits on David's throne, you and your servants and your people who enter these gates.

Thus says the Lord, Do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Also, do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.

For if you men will indeed perform this thing, then kings will enter the gates of this house sitting in David's place on his throne, riding in chariots and on horses, even the king himself and his servants and his people.

But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house will become a desolation. For thus says the Lord concerning the house of the king of Judah, You are like Gilead to me, like the summit of Lebanon.

Yet most assuredly I will make you like a wilderness, like cities which are not inhabited. For I will set apart destroyers against you, each with his weapons, and they will cut down your choicest cedars and throw them on the fire.

Many nations will pass by this city, and they will say to one another, Why has the Lord done thus to this great city? Then they will answer, Because they forsook the covenant of the Lord their God, and bowed down to other gods and served them.

And this is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. About three months ago, I was at a traffic light. I was about to cross I -40 on the bridge, western. I was about to cross over, and there's all these traffic lights everywhere, and so you have to sit there quite a while to make it through.

It's a popular place for beggars. If you take that route, generally, you're going to see the regulars, and you know who's who. You might come up with names for them, but they all seem to have their own little spiel, their own little way to get your attention, and hope that you will give them something.

It's kind of a sad thing to look at, and you wonder about who they really are and what they really actually need, but I have to confess I have a really hard time telling who is actually in need, and then if I actually find somebody in need, what to actually do about it.

Maybe you have the same experience. Actually assessing who is in need, and then what action do you possibly take that will truly help? Nothing was so emphasized that to me as I was sitting at this traffic light, and I was looking around, and there was this one grizzled man layered in his possessions, and he had the traditional cardboard sign, and on one side of it it said, anything helps, God bless, and then the other side said, saving up for a hooker.

Well, I've got to tell you, it's hard for me to assess who is really in need, and then if I find out what their needs are, what actions do I take that actually helps? I'm beside myself. Why do I care about this?

Why do we care about this? It's because God says some things about that, and I want us to know what he says. I have trouble having a balanced biblical response. Everything from guilt feelings and cynicism keep the pendulum swinging back and forth.

If I have guilt feelings on that particular day, I might try to solve that guilty feeling in my heart by the measure of cheap grace. I'm just going to fund their folly. I'm going to give something to them, and I'll feel better about myself, or if the pendulum is on the cynicism side, I'm just going to leave them in my exhaust.

Surely there's a better way. Surely there's a more biblical way to live, a Christian way to live, following Christ would look different somehow. And that's why it's so important that we pay attention to what is said here in Jeremiah 22 and in other places of scripture.

I'm so thankful for my savior, my shepherd, Jesus Christ. He is our trailblazing captain through suffering to glory. He is the author of our faith and the king who saves us for God and brings us to glory.

Last week we confessed that only where Jesus reigns will justice rise. Only where Jesus reigns will justice rise. It is absolutely impossible for there to be true good and true justice. It's impossible for us to love others rightly unless Jesus reigns over us.

Only the justified do justice. Well, this morning as we continue our look at verse 3 of our text, as we conclude our consideration of the task of kings, what is it that God tells the king to do? I think we find this.

That a righteous king, a righteous king sees the needy and saves the oppressed. I think that's what our passage says. That a righteous king sees the needy and saves the oppressed. And to be more specific, Christ, our king, sees the needy, saves the oppressed.

Verses 1 through 5 puts our attention upon the gates. The gates are important because the gates were the places of justice. The gates were where court decisions were made. From the king's gate, which was the highest court in the land, to all the other courts, to all the other gates in Jerusalem, and to the gates of the villages and the cities outside of Jerusalem, it mattered what happened in those gates because that's where cases were heard and judgments were rendered.

And so our attention is placed there as the word comes from God's throne to David's throne, from the gate of the temple to the gate of the king's house, and God says to the king, you need to do justice and you need to do righteousness, you and everybody with you, because if you do not have justice in your gates, then there will be judgment upon your house.

And so the task of the king then is to mediate the authority of God. The king does not rule by his own authority. The king doesn't rule by his own wisdom. He must rule according to the authority of God.

And we see that in four ways. He has to reign by the covenant as the king of Judah on the throne of David. His job is to ensure that he and the whole nation are in conformity to the covenant God made with them at Sinai.

Also, he is to represent the people because of his massive influence, because of his role as an intercessor between the people and God. He must represent them well. And now we're to the third way in which kings are to mediate the authority of God, and that is to rescue the oppressed.

So look at verse 3 with me. Verse 3 of Jeremiah 22. Thus says the Lord, do justice and righteousness, and deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor. Do justice and do righteousness.

Not only is the king to stand in the place of his people, but he is actually to stand up for his people. When he sees that there is one who is under the power of an oppressor, it is the king's job to deliver them, to do the right thing, to do the just thing, and actively deliver the one who is being oppressed.

This is the concern of a righteous king. Proverbs 29 .7 says this. The righteous is concerned for the needs or for the rights of the poor. The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor. The wicked does not understand such concern.

Why is the righteous concerned for the rights of the poor? Not because they're poor, but because of what is right. And if you love righteousness, you love it thoroughly to the nth degree, no matter where it is.

But the wicked do not understand such concern. And we have wicked kings reigning on the throne of David in Jerusalem. Those who follow Josiah. Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiakin, and Zedekiah were all wicked kings who didn't care about what was right.

So God's word to the house of Judah is that they would do justice and do righteousness. To follow through on the instructions that God has given the king in verse 3 requires that we understand two thefts.

There are two thefts as part of verse 3. The first theft is that of extortion. If you look in verse 3, look at the word oppressor and the word robbed. Perhaps you have a different translation, but the New American Standard says, Thus says the Lord, do justice and righteousness and deliver the one who has been robbed.

He's been robbed, deliver him from the power of his oppressor, the one oppressing him. The word robbed and the word oppressor both have this idea, extortion. Extortion. That's the theft, the first theft we need to understand.

What would that look like? Jeremiah the prophet is bringing the word of the Lord to the king and he's saying, Look, O king, look, there's a man who is trapped. Bad situation. Anyway, he fell on hard times and he had to sell his plow to a neighbor.

Now his neighbor oppresses him. He lets him use the plow, but then he takes most of the harvest. They could have had a fairer arrangement, but no. This man is desperate and so that's how it works. Look, O king, there's a woman who's in the bonds of oppression.

Her husband divorced her for another woman. She has no income, no way to support herself and her children. And so she cooks and she gardens and she cleans for her neighbor, who gives her hardly enough to even feed herself and her family.

And he just doesn't care. Look, O king, there are the children who have no parents and they live in the hollows of the valley of Ben-Hinnom. They live in Topheth and they wander into Jerusalem through the dung gate and they smell like it too.

And they beg and they scrounge for anything they can get, but no one cares about them except those who might employ them to carry out their own dung. And they don't give them anything hardly at all. They just don't care.

Look, O king, there's a stranger who came from Edom and his donkey died on the trade route and he needed help to get back home to his family. And so he worked as a vine dresser for one of your nobles, O king, but he didn't pay him for a whole month.

And when the man pressed the issue, well, even now his blood cries out from the ground behind the vineyard. Those are the kinds of situations that the king is turning a blind eye to and doesn't care about.

And the prophet is saying, hey, God cares about this kind of thing. You need to pay attention. So theft number two, thus says the Lord, do justice and righteousness and deliver. See the word deliver? Deliver the one who has been robbed from the power of his oppressor.

That word is in the Hebrew, it is the word for stripping the enemy of his armor, his weapons, his prisoners, and his treasures. The word for plunder. When the Amalekites raided Ziklag and took the wives and children possessions of David and all of his mighty men, they gave chase to them.

And in the middle of the Amalekite victory party, David fell upon the oppressors with fierce wrath and skillful blade, and he slaughtered them from one dusk to the next. And verse 18 of 1 Samuel 30 says this.

So David recovered, same word. He recovered all that the Amalekites had taken and rescued, same word, his two wives. He plundered them. He stole back from the enemy those who had been taken. And that's what the king is supposed to do.

The righteous king is to look at the one who is in the bonds of an extortioner, of an oppressor, and the righteous king is to go and steal from the oppressor what was not rightfully his and deliver the oppressed.

That's what the job of the king is. And so that's what the prophet is saying. Look, O king. Look, O king of Judah, who sits on David's throne. See the man held by the throat, the woman drugged by the hair, the children kicked along, the widow and orphans mourning the man they knew as husband and father.

See their extortioners. See their oppressors. Fall upon them as they eat, drink, and dance in their unjust gains and take away from them those they have taken. Do justice, do righteousness, O king of Judah, on David's throne.

And so it's rather a shock that when the king, who would sit eternally on David's throne, the son of David, it's a shock that when he came, he did not exactly fit this description. The shouts rolled in a wave.

There he was, the king of Zion, David's heir, the Messiah. He rode the royal prophetic donkey towards the royal prophetic city. And so the people laid down their coats in front of him like a new conquering Jehu.

They waved the palm branches in honor of him, this new delivering Judas Maccabeus. They sang Psalm 118 verse 26 in praise to him, the one they felt sure would give to them the kingdom, this restoring new David.

After all, the Jesus who could repel demons could repel Romans. And the Jesus who could free beggars from diseases and deformities could liberate poor Israel from her overlords. And wasn't Israel greatly oppressed, horribly oppressed by the Romans and unjust, self-serving racist governments.

But in all of their fervor, they forgot what Christ had consistently taught and they ignored what Christ had come to do. Christ our King sees the needy and he saves the oppressed, but they had made the signs of the gospel, the gospel itself.

When he delivered them from their diseases and their demons, they clamored for more. But then Jesus said, let us go somewhere else so that I may preach there also for that is what I came to do. When he gave them bread, filling their hungry bellies, they all plan to make him king by force.

But Jesus withdrew from them to be by himself alone. John six says. See, they had equated their felt need with their oppression. And that's how they sought salvation from Jesus Christ. On those terms, they looked at Jesus Christ.

They said, Hey, you're the king, right? You're the king of Judah. You're David's heir. And what is the king to do? A king is to do justice and righteousness. A king is to deliver those oppressed from their oppressors.

So it's time. But Jesus Christ did not come to live and die and be raised and ascended as the perfect God, man, to save us from our needs or to save us from our felt oppression or even to save us from our, or any actual sociopolitical economic oppression.

He came to save us from our sins. That's why he came. She will bear a son and you shall call his name. Jesus Yeshua, for he shall save his people from their sins. Their sins. First Timothy one 15 says it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ.

Jesus has come into the world to save sinners came to liberate us from the clutches of Satan, the oppression of the devil. According to Luke 11, Christ bound the strong man, meaning the enemy meeting Satan.

He bound the strong man and plundered from him. Those he had taken captive, the likes of you and I, he is a righteous king. He does see the needy and he does deliver us from our oppression. And he does care that justice and righteousness would be done among those people he has created.

But let us remember why Christ came the first time to save us from our sins. And there will come a day when righteousness dwells only. And there will be no more tears and no more sighing and no more pain and no more crime and no more extortion and no more oppression.

And Christ will bring that too. But we need to define oppression biblically. I don't want us to make the same critical devastating doctrinal error as those Hosanna howlers because they turned into crucify criers just days later.

They said Hosanna one day and they said crucify him the next because they conflated the signs of the gospel with the gospel itself. Let us not think that Christ came to save us from our needs. Let us not think that the presence of need means the presence of oppression.

Just because a need exists in your life doesn't mean that someone is oppressing you. Let us not think that if we have less than someone else down the road that we are oppressed. That is the exact lie Satan told Eve in the garden.

Satan convinced Eve that because she had less than God, because she had less wisdom than God, less knowledge than God, and that God had one more tree than she did, that somehow God was in the wrong. That he must not be good.

He must be the oppressor. And she must have full liberation. Let us not think that the presence of needs means the absence of justice. God himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. We need to define oppression biblically.

It is absolutely true that we live in a world full of sin. And we live in a world that is cursed. And we live in a world that is full of both spiritual and secular and personal oppression. And there are all sorts of people being sinned against in awful ways.

This is the facts. This is why God sent his son to save us from our sins. These are the facts. But let's define the oppression biblically. That it's a sin problem and Christ came to save us from our sins.

And thus we need to counter oppression biblically. When we look at Christ as he goes about, we find him to be a powerful and compassionate gospel preacher. And that he is compassionate to the lame and to the blind and to the demon possessed and the bereaved.

And he is compassionate over and over and over again. And he never stops with the compassion. But compassion for Jesus Christ as he looks at people, those who are made in God's image, the likes of whom he came to save and he shows them compassion.

He then says, repent and believe in the gospel. And he will not be detained on compassion centered missions if it means keeping him from preaching the gospel. That's what he came to do, he said. And we need to have that priority in our lives.

So we're trying to clarify how it is that we're to be compassionate and we're to help those in need. Let's be clear that the needs of anyone we meet primarily are going to be the needs that come from sin.

The need for a savior, the need for new life. And that compassion is not the replacement for evangelism, but the platform of evangelism. If I see someone who is hungry or thirsty or naked and I give them food and water and clothing, it is because I love Christ and Christ loves me and I love this person by his grace.

But if I really love them and if I really care about them and not just my guilty conscience, then I'm going to preach the scriptures to them, preach the gospel to them. Because that's what they really need.

If I've been awakened in Christ and I know oppression when I see it, I see spiritual oppression and I see the devil oppressing and I see sin oppressing, and that's what people need deliverance from. And I should care about that above everything else.

Why? If we feed all the hungry and clothe all the naked, house all the homeless, hire every beggar. If we mend every marriage, train every parent, save every addict and heal every city. If we free every slave and love every bum and own every need and right every wrong, we still go to hell and so do they.

So we have to be very careful about any Christian mission that seeks the flourishing of man incessantly and the saving of people occasionally. It's only where Jesus reigns that justice will rise. And only those in Christ will love others rightly.

And we need to right injustices. Christ certainly aimed to fulfill all righteousness. And Christ as king will certainly right every injustice as he will preside over the judgment of all mankind. And he's the one we follow, so we ought to care about injustices.

And if we actually care, then we need to see the people before we solve the problem. We need to see the people. How can we love people rightly if we see people wrongly? And very often we don't want to look at people who are in need.

Let's just be honest. Jeremiah 22 .3 takes us around the four-point compass of human need. Let's hear it again. Also, do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan, or the widow. And do not shed innocent blood in this place.

These people receive special attention in God's word. Not just this verse but in many, many other places in the Old Testament. And in the life of Christ as he ministers to this person and this person and the next.

These folks get special attention in God's word precisely because these are the kinds of folks that instinctively we don't want to look at. We just don't want to look at them. We would feel a lot better if we didn't have to see them at all.

Consider the stranger. The word means a sojourner, an alien, a foreigner, an immigrant. It sounds kind of strange but when my family moved to Tennessee, and we lived just above the Mississippi border, people were friendly enough as the South is known for but we were outsiders and treated as such in many occasions.

I got to tell you, if Tennesseans just by instinct treat Oklahomans far different than their own kin, it's not so much of a stretch for it to say that we've all treated people from afar not as they deserve to be treated if they're made in the image of God.

Let's just be honest. There's great concern about refugees and about immigrants and I understand why. But what happens when you individually see someone who is a sojourner, a stranger, an alien, a foreigner?

Do we see them as merely troublemakers in need of punishment if they're here illegally? Maybe they do need prosecution. But maybe they don't. And maybe if we would look at them as made in the image of God, we would treat them a little bit differently.

Not as an issue but as a person. I don't want to be treated as an issue. So when Christ tells us to love others rightly, we should not treat people like issues but as people. We have that privilege. We have that opportunity to love others, to see them.

We have to see them first. What about orphans? Now while we see strangers and aliens and foreigners and immigrants all over the place, we often don't see orphans, do we? Orphans are usually out of our sight and I think they're probably out of the sight of kings in general cases.

Orphans are generally gathered up in care facilities and funneled through a system designed for paperwork and not people. I don't know about you but it's hard to look at children who are suffering the effects of the abuse from their meth-addicted parents.

It's hard to be around kids like that. It's hard to try to find a way to help them. It's hard to be around orphans who have social problems. And many have sacrificed and put their own marriages on the line to try to care for orphans.

What about the widow? There is the younger widow who's left with her children or perhaps without. Maybe her husband served our country in the military and died in combat or maybe he died from suicide.

What about her? Maybe her husband left her for another woman. And who dares to look upon her pain and show her compassion to love her though she is full of flashing anger and roiling bitterness? What a difficult thing to do.

There's another widow whose husband has been with Christ a long time and she has remained and she needs companionship. She needs a little help and a lot of comfort. Do we see that widow? Do we look past her?

What about the innocent? The blood of the innocent. The innocent are those who have done nothing to merit their death but in our cynicism often we will see all sufferers as guilty, deserving what you get.

Many millions of other times the innocent live and die, their precious lives and spilt blood entirely covered by the treacherous womb in the sociopath's office called an abortion clinic. And they are hidden from the sight of the righteous but we must care about them and do justice.

In all these things why would we be concerned about the sojourner, the stranger, the orphan, the widow, the innocent? Because God is. Because God is concerned about it. Does it help us? Does it convenience us?

Is it about bringing a warm feeling to our hearts? It's about worshiping the God who made us. And God sees these people so we should see them. He cares about them so we should care about them and treat them in the way that God would have us to treat them.

Let's remember that Christ looked upon Lo-Ruhamah and Lo-Ami and he said I will have compassion and you are my people. So we must see the people, these needy outsiders and the hated helpless and then stop the problem.

He says to the king do not mistreat or do violence to the needy. And the king could do both of those. He could do both of those. He could mistreat them. The idea is that he could mistreat them with his nobles or subdue them with his power.

He could force them into doing something that would be wrong. He could generally just exercise tyranny over them. He could also do them violence. He could expose them to danger. He could just flat out harm them.

And in this do not mistreat or do violence, the first word has to do with the king's power of the whole nation, his social power, and the second his personal power. Should the king be unjust with his verdicts in the gate of his own house, then he would be guilty of shedding innocent blood.

And he would side with the rich and the powerful and the noble, the attractive, the complimentary, and the condemned to death, the scapegoat, immigrant, the thieving orphan, and the questionable widow.

These are the sinful tendencies that we have, but it's a sin problem. Christ came to save us from our sins and give us a new heart so that we would love others rightly. Christ our king sees the needy and he saves the oppressed.

Just how difficult would it be for a king to rule justly and to get it right? What a tall task for one person. And yet Christ has. Proverbs 29 .14 says, If a king judges the poor with truth, his throne will be established forever.

Now if a king manipulates the poor with lies, his throne will not last. But if a king judges the poor with truth, his throne will be established forever. Helping people in need is exceptionally challenging.

It's hard to see who's really in need and then trying to figure out what action do you take. It's very difficult, but it comes down to us following Christ. If I'm following Jesus, if it's his character that's being formed in me, when I meet someone by what the Holy Spirit has forged in my heart through the word of God, by God's grace, I can love that person rightly.

I can see them. I can look them in the eye. I can give them a warm and friendly face at the very least. I can hear who they are. And I can be able to love them in a right way. Not in a way that because I'm trying to solve my guilt feelings and not ignore them because I think they're all scum, but I would actually see people as made in the image of God and because I'm following Christ and filled with the love of Christ, I can love that person rightly.

I can love that person rightly. And it comes down to those individual moments in your life. Remember, they're not issues. They're people. They're persons that God in his sovereignty has come across our path from day to day.

Loving others rightly. There's a psalm, Psalm 72, that I'm going to conclude with because it's a psalm of praise unto Christ. And it reminds us who Jesus Christ is as our king. And it reminds us of who he is and what he does for the needy.

And I'm counting myself among the needy. I'm counting myself among the poor in spirit, those who have great needs and in need of salvation, those who have nothing to contribute and nothing to earn salvation by.

But this is Christ our king, beginning in verse 2 of Psalm 72. Christ our king sees the needy and he saves the oppressed. May he judge your people with righteousness and your afflicted with justice. Let the mountains bring peace to the people and the hills and righteousness.

May he vindicate the afflicted of the people. Save the children of the needy and crush the oppressor. Let them fear you while the sun endures and as long as the moon throughout all generations. May he come down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.

In his days may the righteous flourish and abundance of peace to the moon is no more. May he also rule from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. The nomads of the desert bow before him and his enemies lick the dust.

The kings of Tarshish and of the islands bring presents. The kings of Sheba and Saba offer gifts and that all the kings bow down before him. All nations serve him for he will deliver the needy when he cries for help.

The afflicted also and him who has no helper. He will have compassion on the poor and needy and the lives of the needy he will save. He will rescue their life from oppression and violence and their blood will be precious in his sight.

So may he live and may the gold of Sheba be given to him and let them pray for him continually. Let them bless him all day long. May there be abundance of grain in the earth and the top of the mountains.

Its fruit will wave like the cedars of Lebanon. And may those from the city flourish like vegetation of the earth. May his name endure forever. May his name increase as long as the sun shines. And let men bless themselves by him.

Let all nations call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God the God of Israel who alone works wonders. And blessed be his glorious name forever. And may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen.

Father we come before you this morning. Confess that our hope in the righteous king is our hope in Jesus Christ. He cares about the needy and he cares about the afflicted. And we know what he has done in our behalf to save us from our sins.

And I pray, I pray that you would give us the heart of Christ. Not the heart of man. Not the passions of politics. Not the agenda of some philosophical point of view. But you would give us the heart of Christ.

That we would love others rightly. And we would not look past the needy but look right at them. And recognize their greatest need is for Christ. That we would show compassion. That we would tell them truth.

That we would not fear man but we would fear you. We fear all these things trusting only in Christ. Amen.