God's Justice

Order of Service

• Welcome and Announcements
• Prelude
• Call to Worship — Revelation 5:11-12
• Hymn — O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing
• Prayer of Invocation
• Prayer of Confession (corporate and silent)
• Assurance of Pardon — 2 Corinthians 5:21
• Scripture Reading — Luke 11:1-13
• Hymn — The Lord's Prayer (sung)
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering (with Offertory Prayer)
• Hymn of Preparation — O Father, You Are Sovereign
• Prayer of Illumination
• Scripture Reading — Genesis 18:16-33
• Sermon
• Closing Prayer
• Hymn of Dedication — Amazing Grace
• Benediction
• Gloria Patri

Sermon Title: God's Justice

Scripture: Genesis 18:16-33

Introduction

• A. The passage is about the justice of God and God's invitation to Abraham to share in it.
  1. Abraham was chosen so that he might command his household to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice (Genesis 18:19).
  2. The exchange with the Lord is a lesson in what God's justice looks like.
• B. God's justice is not merely retributive.
  1. Retribution (eye for an eye, the penalty fitting the crime) is one real aspect of God's justice.
  2. Job's three friends wrongly reduced God's justice to retribution alone, and God said they had spoken wrongly of him.
  3. Heresy flows from finite man shrinking God's infinite attributes down to size.
  4. God's justice is dynamic and multifaceted. Retribution will come on Sodom and Gomorrah, but first Abraham learns other facets.

I. God's Justice Is Shared with His Friends

• A. God treats Abraham as his friend and covenant partner.
  1. "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" (Genesis 18:17).
  2. Abraham is called God's friend in Isaiah 41:8 and James 2:23.
  3. In verse 19 "I have chosen him" is literally "I have known him," the language of intimate friendship, as in John 15:15.
• B. Friends of God intercede.
  1. Moses interceded for Israel after the golden calf (Exodus 32:12), and Abraham interceded for Sodom.
  2. Christ interceded on the cross and now intercedes at the Father's right hand for those he has made his friends by his blood.
  3. C. S. Lewis observed that friendship love is purposeful, as the friend moves toward the other to befriend him. This is the love God has for those he brings into fellowship with himself.
• C. Their intercession is jealous for God's character.
  1. They do not say "be nice, Lord." They appeal to his holy and righteous character: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?" (Genesis 18:25).
  2. Prayer is more than a wish list. God wants persistent petitions that appeal to his revealed character, as in Luke 11.
  3. To approach God as a friend, you must know him. A weak prayer life may come from not knowing God enough, so start by knowing him more through his Word.

II. God's Justice Is Slow to Anger

• A. Unbelievers often reject the God of the Old Testament as a vindictive, fire-breathing dragon, as the New Atheists argued. Genesis 18 refutes that picture.
• B. God already knows the state of Sodom (Genesis 18:21), yet he enters this exchange with Abraham.
  1. This is God accommodating himself to us in human terms (anthropomorphism, or "baby talk" in Calvin's phrase).
  2. The purpose is that Abraham would know God's justice in its fullness, which is merciful and slow to anger.
• C. "Slow to anger" is literally "long in the nostrils."
  1. It takes a long time for the Lord's nostrils to flare. He is a grace-and-mercy-breathing Lord.
  2. "He does not afflict from his heart" (Lamentations 3:33). The Puritans called wrath God's strange and foreign work.
  3. God made the world good to display his love, not his wrath. Like a parent forced to discipline a child, he does not afflict willingly.
  4. He is patient, not wishing any to perish (2 Peter 3:9). He made us in his image and wants to lavish his love on us.

III. God's Justice Is Satisfied with Righteousness

• A. Abraham's friendship is reverent and fearful.
  1. He humbles himself as "dust and ashes" and pleads from 50 down to 10 (Genesis 18:22-33).
  2. The Lord agrees each time: "For the sake of 10, I will not destroy it" (Genesis 18:32).
• B. The key principle is representative justice.
  1. "I will spare the whole place for their sake" (Genesis 18:26). A righteous minority shelters the wicked majority.
  2. The same principle appears in Noah and his family, and in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15. Through one man's sin the many die, and through one man's righteousness the many are made righteous.
• C. This explains God's longsuffering.
  1. It explains why Adam and Eve were not crushed immediately, why Noah was spared, and why the rainbow remains.
  2. In his divine forbearance God passed over former sins to show his righteousness, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25).
• D. Application: the gospel.
  1. Sodom was not spared because not even 10 righteous were found.
  2. We can be saved because there is one righteous man, Jesus Christ, and we hide ourselves in his righteousness, not our own filthy rags.