Justice Of God

Real life presents the Jack Kibs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Those of you who are not believers in your judges, you should read the Bible because I'm a judge. I don't need to read the Bible. You should read the Bible because the judge is going to tell you how it's going to go with judges on the day of judgment. That's what it's all. And the Bible tells us the person that goes around judging everybody gets judged the hardest by God. Justice. Justice is the exact distribution of what is perfectly right. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackkibs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Kibs. Justice of God. I'm going to try to control myself today, mentioning the word justice. I don't know about you. I'm pretty sick of it. If you ever, listen, you never have to put a word to qualify the word justice. I'm going to say this right now from the get-go. If you are a social justice campaigner, you've got some problems. First of all, you don't understand English. There's not portions that are justice. Justice also like goodness is something that relates to the nature of God. Ladies and gentlemen, shock or ruin, only God is just. Only God can be just. And when people begin to impose themselves into the place of being, the one who determines what justice is, we're flying blind. We are incapable. But we've got this justice and that justice and the other justice. There's only one justice, and it's the justice of God. And so we look at this at present in this world that we live in the concept of justice. Is it Judeo-Christian biblical argument? That ought to upset some of you that are here watching right now think of that? Justice, wait a minute. I'm a judge, and I don't believe in God. The Bible has a lot to say, by the way, about judges. Did you know that? Those of you who are not believers in your judges, you should read the Bible. Because I'm a judge, I don't need to read the Bible. You should read the Bible because the judge is going to tell you how it's going to go with judges on the day of judgment. That's what it's called. And the Bible tells us the person that goes around judging everybody gets judged the hardest by God. Justice, justice is the exact distribution of what is perfectly right. In our world, we do our best to exercise justice. We've all seen the statues of Lady Justice. Remember, she has scales in her hands, and she's blind. Why? Because she's supposed to be blind to influence her bias. She's supposed to make her decisions based upon perfection, but the problem is whenever there's a human involved, it's imperfect. And so man does the best he can, but not God. God is just, perfectly just. The Bible tells us in Isaiah 3, verse 10 and 11, tell the righteous that it shall be well with them. For they shall eat the fruit of their deeds, verse 11, but woe to the wicked. It shall be ill with him. That's the day of judgment. For what his hands have dealt out shall be dealt to him. This is the word of God, justice, justice, seemingly there's no justice. This weekend, in fact the officers and I were talking this morning were a little confused because there were two different shootings at two different train platforms in Los Angeles. One involved one guy and then one other involved three assailants. But one of the officers made mention that the video cameras showed the one guy getting shot, just boom, shot, boom, and people walking around the man shot laying on the platform. In the world in which you and I live in, men's hearts have grown cold. When God gets a hold of your heart, listen, you get concerned about justice and you ask yourself these questions and maybe that grieving family today is wondering where's the justice? In this world they may not get justice. Isn't that a sad thing to say? Listen according to God's Bible, there's a day of justice coming and the Bible tells us that when that day comes the scripture says it will be good. The God of all the earth will do right. See you and I have a hard time with that because when somebody does something wrong we want it paid for by them now. Of course, when I do something wrong I want God to forget about it. Just be honest. You get justice for everybody else but you know how that is. But look at verses five. I want you to check this out for a moment. Regarding God's justice, look at verses five, six and eleven. It is the righteous judgment of God's, is the Bible. I'm not asking you to believe it, I'm just asking you to read it. Verse six, he who will render to each one according to his deeds. Look at verse eleven, for there's no partiality with God. According to the God of the Bible, there's a day of judgment and he will have no favors. See Paul is writing to the Italians in Rome but there are a lot of Jews there. And the Jewish believers believed and struggled with having a special place with God because not only were they Jews but now they're born again Jews. So we have a special God says no. And then there's the Jews who are the Judaizers, those who are the Pharisees and the scribes, the ones that were so often against Jesus and the gospel. They would say that all the Gentiles have been created by God for fuel to burn an out. But they were special. By the way, many still believe that today, you don't see Jewish evangelists running around trying to convert people to Judaism, do you? They leave you alone. It's only us crazy Christians, us Jesus freaks who want to run around telling everybody about Jesus. Why? Because he died for all and he'll forgive all who will come to him. Someone has no partiality. Anyone who will come, he will accept. What an awesome God he is. But when he says here regarding this justice, we look at this in verse 5, it brings us to this point that we've been given new heart. I told you guys I was going to put a good spin on a strong word from the apostle. So verse 5, we learn this upfront, is that write it down please, that in light of the justice of God, who do we think we are? Well as believers, we know this, that we've been given a new heart. I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, I do that too often. But if you're a born again believer right now, you've been given a new heart. That's why you're born again. New heart pastor. What are you talking about? New heart? What does that mean? Well first let's just look at this. Verse 5 says, but in accordance with your hardness and your epitons heart, he's laying it out there. He's just speaking out the truth that there's a danger of having a hard heart. According to scripture, those of us who are believers, the Bible says God gives us a new heart. Now I do have a beef with the Bible, I say that with affection. I have a beef, the Bible says God gives us a new heart. Someday when I get to heaven I want to ask God, why didn't you give us a new mind at the exact same moment, right? The Bible says he gave us a new heart instantly, but our minds, it says, has to be renewed day by day. I don't like that. But honestly, I have concluded this. The battleground of your Christian life, is it not in the mind? Do you not have to battle constantly your thoughts? Isn't it true that temptations land on the porch of your mind? And how you deal with it here determines if it makes it into the house, it's part of God's great plan. By the way, if we had a new mind, apparently we wouldn't read the Bible. We need the Bible to renew our minds, but we were given a new heart, thank God for that. But he says here, in accordance with or two, the word in the Greek is this, that because of or the condition or diagnoses of your heart, the situation of one's heart. Because of the situation of your heart being hardened or impotent, we'll find out more about this in a moment. He's obviously church not talking about your heart. By the way, take your hand, take one hand, punch your fist. I'll be a little bit off on this, I won't be exact, come on, come on, pretend. So you can do it, I know you can. If you're 17, 18 years of age or over, your heart now is bigger than this, do you know that? Technically as an adult, if you put two fists together on the norm generally speaking, your heart is about that size, okay? And just to teach you about what not the Bible's talking about, your heart beats 100,000 times a day, that's amazing, by the way, think about the goodness of God. I don't think it'd go well for you if your heart only beats 50,000 times a day, it's 100,000 times a day. And about 35 million times a year your heart beats. 35 million times and during an average lifetime the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times. The aorta, the largest artery that supplies blood to your heart is nearly equal to the size of your garden hose, the diameter of your garden hose at home. That's amazing. By the way, the capillaries that are also involved in your heart, your capillaries on the other hand it says here that are so small that it takes 10 of them to equal the size, the thickness of a human hair. No wonder why the Bible says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Your body has about six quarts or about 5.6 liters of blood that circulate through your body three times every minute, that's a lot. Your blood travels, get this, 12,000 miles every 24 hours. That's two round trip flights from Los Angeles to New York, twice. Your heart pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during the average lifetime which is equal to more than three super tankers that transport oil around the world. What a remarkable thing. As remarkable as that, the Bible says you have a heart that is not muscle, that the real true part of who you are is this heart that he's referring to that will last forever. This is the part that is never going to stop beating if I can put it in that term. Your physical heart will start beating, but listen, your spiritual life will never end. Isn't that amazing? Your spiritual existence is contained in your body like a turtle lives in a shell. I've told you before you go out to the Mojave Desert and if you find a tortoise shell, the turtle is gone. The shell is there, but it's funny because very few people will say, look a turtle shell. Most people say, look a turtle. Well, not exactly. The turtle's gone, but it's a turtle shell. So if you're laying in your casket, don't let anybody say, hey, look, there's Joe. It's the shell of Joe. Joe's gone. But according to the Bible, Joe is very much alive, very much awake in heaven or hell. He's there. It's very important. We understand that. But look at the word hardness in your Bible, circle the word hardness. This is where we get, in fact, the Greek word you'll recognize immediately, sclerotes. Recognize that word, hardening of the arteries, hardening of the heart. A systematic layer by layer, hardening of the heart, the core, being that of man's thoughts, his attitudes, his emotions, summed up and being stubborn. The harder our heart gets, the more stubborn we become, hardening, which, listen, a heart left unchecked, listen, friend, if your heart is drifting, believer, if your heart is drifting because of bitterness, hurt, pain, it can harden and it can become not responsive, in a sense, you walk by someone who's just been murdered, there's no feeling anymore. You don't care. That's a dangerous place to be, listen. That also brings you to what is known is the place of contempt. You have a contempt for everybody. That's the world we live in today. There's a contempt for law. There's a contempt for our constitution. There's a contempt for what's good. There's a contempt for noncompliance. Think of it. And we see celebrated this week in our nation's capital, the great celebration because of their contempt for the unborn child's life. And now Nancy Pelosi and her actions have brought it to the point now where a baby unwanted. If the baby is unwanted, here's the amazing thing. If the baby is unwanted, the baby can be killed at birth. And you think law makes that right? Well you know they passed the law. The judge of the heaven and earth and all that there is looks down. He says, I will not hold you guiltless. It doesn't matter what laws people pass. Do those laws violate the will of God? And listen, what you and I do in life. We can say nobody sees, nobody cares, does God care if I were to ask you or if you were to ask me, do you think God cares about this? There's a justice that matters and that justice is God's justice. We have to watch out the Bible says, watch out, make sure we check our hearts that they're not hardening. And then impotent, not impotent like powerless, this is a different word. It means self-determined, self-excusing, self-governing, heart, an unrepentant heart, a heart that is incapable of changing because it can no longer feel. Do you remember when Jesus was preaching and inviting Israel to heaven to salvation? He had been arrested, he didn't defend himself, they plucked out his beard, they beat him till his back was opened up like a tin can. The Bible tells us that Jesus after being beaten could not be recognized as a human, Isaiah 23, and Pilate says to them, what do you have to say for yourselves, look at the man and they announced, we will not have this man to rule over us. Wow, listen, if Jesus came back today, think about what Jesus is for, Jesus is for personal individual freedoms, Jesus is for life, Jesus is for peace, okay, do you think Jesus approves of this week's beheadings, hangings, and amputations of Taliban in Kabul, he's against that. So what if he showed up again, what if Jesus came back today in the 21st century? People would say, we will not have this man tell us what to do, why is that the case? We don't think it'd be anything different because it's the human heart, and that's got to be changed, we've been given a new heart, in light of God's justice, hallelujah, because God is just, He gave us a new heart, the believer is given a new heart. This Jack Hibbs podcast as well as all the broadcast outreach opportunities are listener supported. Will you consider partnering with us through a special gift? Go to jackhibbs.com to learn more and stay connected.