The Judge
Marc Jolicoeur · Tidal Church Moncton · December 10, 2023 · The God I Want series
Marc Jolicoeur teaches from Matthew 18:21-35 and Exodus 34 that God is a merciful judge. Justice is where we are going, but mercy is how we get there. Having received mercy in Christ, we are called to extend it to others.
More from Marc Jolicoeur · The The God I Want series
Topics: Grace, Forgiveness, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:51] So, we're in week three of our Advent series, The God I Want, where we explore the similarities and also maybe the gaps between the God that we might want or expect, and then the God that we find revealed to us through the incarnation, you know, through the coming of Jesus Christ. And each week we've been using a bit of a recurring illustration of saying, "Hey, there's also a bit of a difference, sometimes a gap between what we might want to find under the Christmas tree and then what we do end up unwrapping." So in a little bit here, I'll be unwrapping this gloriously wrapped present to reveal yet another painting that is an image of the God that I might or you might expect. But in week one, Jeremy talked to us about the God that we might want, who is the king, the ultimate king, the only authority that we need to follow.
[1:46] And yet we found that in Christ we are actually expected to be good citizens who have the opportunity and the responsibility to submit and to follow not only Him, but those that He's placed over us. And week two, Austin talked to us about the mighty conqueror. We might want a God who comes in with sword, just a-blazing, to cut down not only His enemies, but hopefully also our own enemies, right? And to leave no trouble in our way, but we found that in Christ suffering and trouble actually can be redeemed in a way that allows us to be bettered and allows His glory to shine through. And so this week, I have the opportunity to talk about the God that I might want, the God that you might want.
[2:33] Who is the God of... wait, for it, justice. The God of justice. That's nice. And as a parent of not one, not three, but two children, when we come to Christmas time and the concept of justice, I think that the balance scales maybe hit a little bit too close to home for me to be honest with you. I grew up as an only child. And so I was wildly unprepared for what is known as maybe fairness.
[3:19] And when it comes to gift giving, it's a bit of a minefield. It's a bit of a minefield. Now, I don't wanna give the impression in any way that my, kids are ungrateful. And to be honest with you, we have wonderful gift giving experiences with them. I would hazard that this is not only because of their own kind of innate goodness, but largely due to the tireless calculus efforts of my wife who goes well above and beyond to make sure that things are as close as possible to being fair. But I wonder how can, even in something like this, how can we quantify justice in gift giving? I mean, should we say, well, let's just buy them the same gifts? Well, that won't work, right? I mean, they're different ages, different genders, they have different interests.
[4:06] That's not fair. Should we say maybe we'll match the volume of their gifts? So is that the same number of gifts or the same size boxes? Probably the easiest thing to do is say, well, hey, we'll try to get the closest value, right, the cost. But does that mean manufacturer's suggested retail price or the actual hard cost of what you paid? Does that account for discounts, for coupons, for sales tax, for shipping? What about the batteries that need to go in there? Can you project future repair costs? Hey, can I monetize the labor that I had to take to put these presents together on December 24th and 25th? Come on. Now, this little foray into the neuroses of my mind is only to illustrate that something as simple as a family's Christmas morning is difficult to find and define as just how much more the complexities of this world.
[5:11] No wonder if the God that I want is a God of justice. Justice, right? Righteousness, equality, equity. The Hebrew word that we most often see is mishpat. The Greek word that we most often see is dikaiosyne. But whether it's in French or Portuguese or Spanish or Russian or Tagalog or any language whatsoever, we all cry out for justice. Hey, the people of the world do. But you know what? Creation itself cries out for justice. The Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the church in Rome, in his letter, chapter 8, verse 22, he says, "We know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now."
[5:58] Longing, groaning for a world made right. And why do we long? We know that we don't long for things that we see. The reason that we long for justice is because we live, my friends, in a very unjust world. And if I were to take a little time this morning to just rattle off a few of the injustices that we see, well, I could easily eat up the rest of our time, but I think you can fill in the blanks for yourself. The problem of injustice is anything but new. It's across cultures, it's across geography, it's across the ages we all experience. And here's the thing, we all participate in injustice.
[6:44] We all feel it and we all want a God who's gonna swoop in and who's gonna set the balance scales, right? The God that I want is a God of justice, but the God that I need is a God of mercy. The God I want is a God of justice, but the God I need is a God of mercy. There's a very popular idea, both inside the church and outside the church, but there are sort of kind of two different gods that are being described in the Bible. And this is not always, but often sort of mapped onto the idea that there are kind of two halves of the Bible, right? We have what we call the Old Testament and what Hebrew people would call the Hebrew Bible.
[7:30] And we have the New Testament. And some people would say that the God described here is a God of justice. And the God described here is a God of mercy. And some people go so far and have gone so far as to say they're almost two different gods. In fact, very early on in life of the church, within like the first generation or two of the New Testament being written, there was a man named Marcion. He said that since the Old Testament presented a vengeful and wrathful God, that it must be presenting a different God than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so what did Marcion say? He said, "Throw it out. Throw out the Old Testament. We don't need that old God anymore.
[8:15] Throw out the God of justice and embrace the God of mercy." And Marcion was very convincing. There were a number of people who were very influenced by his teaching early on. But ultimately the church at large decided that this was an un-Christian teaching. Rather than throwing out the Old Testament, throwing out the Bible that Jesus Himself would've known and loved, early Christian writers decided to fight, to read it very closely and deeply. And when they did that, they discovered a nuanced and complex picture of God. And one of the most notable of these early theologians is a man named Tertullian. And he took a deep dive into what was one of the most core passages of scripture from the Old Testament.
[9:03] And it seems that he shed some light on the true nature of God. So we're gonna take a look here at Exodus chapter 34. So if you don't know anything but Exodus, the second book of the Bible, Moses is a very key figure in this text. He has climbed to the top of Mount Sinai. He's meeting with God, which is crazy, and he says, "Hey, I would actually like to see You face to face." And, Moses, God says, "That's a bad idea. That will end poorly for you. But if you want, I can hide you in the crag of a rock and I will show you My back." So the next day we find ourselves here in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7, and it says, "The Lord passed in front of him." That's Moses. And He said, "The Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion and sin.
[10:09] But He will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the father's iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation." Now in his excellent and very helpful book on understanding the way that violence is portrayed in the Old Testament, Matthew J. Lynch summarizes for us Tertullian's advice based on this passage for all those who were disturbed by Marcion's claims. And he says this, "Tertullian urges us to weigh God's severity against His gentleness and to observe here an imbalance." He says, "God's character is wildly imbalanced.
[10:57] The coexistence of wrath and mercy is not that of equals. If we take the language of mercy versus wrath in Exodus 34 in strictly mathematical terms, so love to thousands of generations versus three to four generations of judgment, God's mercy outweighs by at least 500 to one. And if that's the case, so much so for the God of the Old Testament being unmerciful." But what about the corollary of that, the idea that the New Testament just describes a God who is only merciful? We're just gonna roll through three passages of scripture really quick, just to get you a bit of a flavor of how this might not be the case. So Matthew chapter 13, as the poisonous weeds are collected and burned with fire, this is Jesus talking, by the way.
[11:49] "So it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather from His kingdom everything that causes sin as well as lawbreakers. They'll throw them into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Or in Romans chapter 1, this time, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them." Or lastly, the book of Revelation chapter 20. This is all the way at the back of the book. "I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God's throne, and the books were opened, including the Book of Life, and the dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
[12:40] The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead, and all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death." And so we can see that all the way through the pages of the New Testament. So starting with the Gospels, moving on to the letters and really all the way to the apocalypse and all points in between, the witness of the New Testament gives us a complex picture of this same God, right? The God who is both loving and holy, a God who is both near and also other, a God who is both merciful but also just.
[13:33] But just because we see both mercy and judgment active in God at the same time, this does not mean that they are equally core to who God is. If we read again from Matthew Lynch, he says, "The Old Testament shows us that God's redemptive, relational and merciful character, they are the pegs on which all the rest of our thinking about God ought to hang. God's compassion and loving kindness occupy the center of our thinking about God's character. God's love is more central to His character than His judgment. Because judgment, hear this, judgment responds to sin, which will not endure.
[14:20] Judgment and justice play a very important, though secondary, role." Do you see? Do you see what he's saying? See, Christians believe that history is actually going somewhere. It's not just an endless cycle, but it is a spiral that we are moving towards the end of the story that God has written, that in the cross, death and sin have been defeated, and that the reality of this victory is only partially seen today, but it will someday be fully realized. And when there is no more sin to be judged, when all has been set right, when justice covers the world like water covers the ocean, then God's judgment, it won't be as visible to us as it may need to be now.
[15:10] But one thing that will always be visible to us, we will never not notice, it is God's love for His creation, His love that we experience now, both by His being gracious to us and His being merciful to us, by His giving and by His withholding. Because, church, justice is where we're going, but mercy is how we get there. Justice is where we are going, okay? But mercy is how we get there. When Jesus's earliest disciples asked Him, "Hey, can You teach us how to pray to this God, the one who is both merciful and just?" Do you know how He taught them to pray?
[15:57] Most of you have heard it: "Our Father who are in heaven," and He gets down to this part here, He says, "Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors." Different translations will put in the word trespasses rather than debts. Maybe you'll see the word sins, but regardless of how it shows up, this point is clear: Forgive as we have been forgiven, forgive us as we forgive others. Now here we're actually approaching the main scripture for today. So if you're the kind of people who like to take a look at it, I would encourage you, it's Matthew, Matthew chapter 18, Matthew 18:23-25.
[16:45] Just as we're looking that up, I'm gonna rewind us a couple of verses back in Matthew 18. I'm gonna start at verse 21. The apostle Peter, he approaches Jesus and he says, "Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother who sins against me?" And then he says, "As many as seven times?" And it seems as though Peter thinks that seven times is a lot of times. But Jesus replies to Peter and says something like this. He says, "Not seven times, but..." and some translations will say 77 times and others will say 70 times seven. And either way, that's a lot of times, right?
[17:30] That's a lot of times. The point is clear. Jesus illustrates for us that mercy is great, and He says, He goes on to illustrate for us through a parable just how that mercy plays itself out in the life of a Christian. So now we pick up at Matthew chapter 18, verse 23. Remember, not seven times but 70 times seven. "For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves." Now, some translations will use the word "servants," and that's fine. But this is not like a, this is not a servant relationship where they go, "Yeah, I'm not really liking working here. I might move on." This is a very, very close working relationship.
[18:18] We shall say, "He wanted to settle accounts with his slaves." "And as he began settling his accounts, a man who owed 10,000 talents was brought to him." 10,000 talents. Again, there's really no way to be clear exactly on how much money this would be in today's day and age, but by all estimates it's in the multimillions. For somebody who is in this slave's position, it is for all intents and purposes a completely unrepayable debt. It is out of the question. "Now because the slave was not able to repay it, the Lord ordered him to be sold along with his wife, children and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made." "And then the slave, he threw himself to the ground before him and he said, 'Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.' And the Lord had compassion on that slave and he released him." He forgave him the debt.
[19:19] "And after he went out, that same slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred silver coins." Now, that doesn't mean a hundred nickels or dimes. Again, we can't be clear, but best estimates say this could be somewhere on the order of about three months' wages for the average slave. This is not an insignificant amount of money, but it is incomparably lower to the debt that was just forgiven to him. "So the first slave grabbed the second slave by the throat and he started to choke him, and he was saying, 'Pay back what you owe me.' And then his fellow slave threw himself down." Does that sound familiar? He threw himself down "and he begged, 'Be patient with me and I will repay you.' But he refused, and instead he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt.
[20:15] And when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were very upset, and they went and they told their Lord everything that had taken place. And then his Lord called the first slave and he said to him, 'You evil slave, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave just as I showed it to you?' And in anger his Lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all that he owed. And so also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart."
[21:03] Now, there are a number of things that I do not pretend to fully understand about this parable, but I think the main points are actually quite clear and very easy to understand. And they go like this: God is a merciful judge. God has granted us mercy, and then God calls us to grant that mercy to others. God is a merciful judge. God has granted us mercy, and God calls us to grant that mercy to others. Verses 26 and 27, God is a merciful judge. Remember the slave? He says, "Be patient with me and I'll repay you."
[21:50] Impossible. It's an impossible thing to repay. He would never be able to get this together. The Lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and he forgave him the debt. He had compassion. He felt compassion for that slave. The master understands justice, and yet he granted mercy. Remember, God is both just and merciful. God, my friends, is a merciful judge. Number two, God has granted us mercy. Now, whenever you read the parables of Jesus, there are always questions. Who am I in the parable? Who is Christ in the parable? I would submit that in this particular parable, it seems clear to me that God wants us to identify, us, like me, you, the people who are the original hearers of this story and those who are to come, who wants us to identify with that first slave. Our debt to God, hear this, my debt to God is unpayable.
[22:59] No matter what I do, I'll never be able to get the kind of scratch together that's required to make myself right with God. And yet God, the merciful judge, has extended to me, and He extends to us all, mercy in Christ. God has granted us mercy, and God then calls us to grant mercy to others. Verses 32 to 35, these are hard words to hear. "Evil slave," He says, "I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave just as I showed it to you?"
[23:44] And in anger, remember the merciful judge, he, he shows judgment here. He says, "In anger his Lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he had repaid all he owed." And then Jesus says, "So also my heavenly Father will do to you if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart." So far be it for me to oversimplify things. I think most people who know me well would rarely accuse me of trying to simplify things. But I believe that this particular parable is quite clear and very direct. God is a merciful judge.
[24:31] God has granted us mercy, and then God calls us to grant mercy to others. So as I have tried my best to be as direct and clear as I can on what I'm saying, I would also love the opportunity to be clear about what I am not saying and what I don't believe that God is saying to us. So I'm not saying that we should affirm sin. God is not saying here, "Hey, you never owed me anything anyway, don't worry about it." That's not what shows up in these texts. God, and the Lord knows that the debt was very real and very legitimate, but He chose to forgive it anyway. Elsewhere in the Gospels, when Jesus spends all kinds of time with people who are described as sinners, He never seems to say, "Good job, keep it up.
[25:23] Make sure you keep doing the bad things." He radically and surprisingly spends time with them and extends mercy and grace. But then He's also gone on record as saying things like, "Go and sin no more." So I'm not saying that we should affirm sin, nor am I saying that we should allow harm and wrongdoing. I don't know, guys, if you've noticed this, but in our culture we tend to kind of be swinging back and forth between two poles, right? So one pole says that once someone has done the wrong thing or uttered the wrong words, they are anathema to us. They are dead to us. There's no coming back for those people. But on the other side, we tend to have a number of people who are trying to extend mercy and grace in ways that are not actually acknowledging the harm that the people have done.
[26:17] The harm has been suffered and they're not even really bringing into account the people who have been victims. And so this is a bit of a quagmire. It's a difficult place to live. But let me just say that mercy heals, it doesn't hurt. So I am not saying that we should allow harm and wrongdoing, nor am I saying that ultimately, hey, at the end of the day there are no consequences anyway, right? That is not what I'm saying. There are strains of religion that do say that, and there are strains of parenting that try that as well, that kind of say that at the end of the day, there's no mercy needed because there are no consequences. It all works out in the end. Let me just say from a Christian perspective, if there were no consequences, if there were no forgiveness required, then why would Christ have gone to the length that He did to offer us mercy?
[27:14] I'm not saying that ultimately there are no consequences. And lastly, I am not saying that we shouldn't fight for justice in the here and now. I think that could be what ends up being misheard by me if I say that justice is where we're going, but mercy is how we get there. People could be hearing me say that Christians aren't actually called to work for justice in the here and now. I'm not sure that anything could be further from the truth. There's a famous theological phrase that was coined about a century ago. Originally it was coined in German, but it's kind of made its way into English like this: already. And not yet. And not yet, in case you've forgotten, this is an Advent series.
[28:05] It's Christmas time, right? So in Christmas time we celebrate that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, that He grew, that He, He taught, that He learned, that He healed actually, that He suffered, that He died, that He was buried, that He raised new life and that He ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father. This together we often call His first coming. But Christians, we believe that there is another coming. The writer of the New Testament book that's known to us usually as Acts or the Acts of the Apostles, he records a scene that happens just moments after Christ's ascension. So as His disciples are still looking up to the sky, kind of in utter bewilderment, someone who seems like an angel appears to them and he says, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up into the sky?
[29:02] This same Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come back in the same way that you saw Him go." So, people, we live in the space between Christ's first coming and what must be known as His second coming or sometimes called His glorious appearing. This is that liminal space between the already and the not yet, the space between where we know that Christ is crowned King, but not everyone has got the memo. Yet justice is assured, and yet also in this space. So too is patience and suffering, which by the way have the same root word.
[29:50] 'Cause remember, justice is where we are going, but mercy is how we get there. If justice is where we're going, mercy is what greases the wheels and makes sure that we don't get bogged down, we don't get stuck, ground to a halt on our way to the kingdom coming. And here's where I would like to take just a few moments and speak particularly to those of you in the room who claim the name of Christ and want to be His followers. Okay? So we are invited, you might even say commanded, we are invited to partner with Christ in His preservation of the world. That is actually what's happening in this gap. Okay?
[30:37] This distance between the already and the not yet, we are partnering with Him as He, as He preserves the world, as Christ sustains the world, as He's patient with us, He allows us all more time and more opportunity to change, to repent, to come to Him in our own time and to receive the mercy that we all need. Romans chapter 2 again, it says here, "Do you think, whoever you are, that when you judge those who practice such things, such evil things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape God's judgment? Or do you have contempt for the wealth of His kindness, His forbearance and His patience?
[31:27] And yet do not know that God's kindness leads you to repentance, that God's kindness leads you to repentance?" God's preservation of the world, His patience, His kindness. These are what are keeping the world afloat, leading us to repentance. His followers must follow after Him in patience, in mercy and in helping to preserve the world. Now, we are either Atlantic Canadians in this room or we are visiting and that's the case, then welcome, Atlantic Canadians. We know that preserving food is very, very important.
[32:14] Whether that means for export or so that we can have things to consume during these cold winter months. And before, you know, freezing was really much of a viable option. Do you know what the number one way to preserve food was? You do know the answer. That's lovely. Salt. That's right. Glorious and potentially harmful if overly consumed salt. Matthew 5:13. Jesus says, "You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It's no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot."
[33:00] You see, salt here is not just about flavor, but it's about preservation. This preservational characteristic of Christianity is core to who we are. So much so that Christ seems to say that if we're no longer doing our job well, there might be some negative consequences for us. If we're not useful to this world around us, then we might not be the followers of Christ that He wants us to be. And I don't know about you, but I don't really want to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. Now there is a bit of a question of the chicken or the egg type scenario here, right? You've heard this before. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? So in Matthew 18, when we're reading about mercy, it seemed to me that the slave had received mercy before he was expected to extend mercy.
[33:52] And this makes sense to me because how can you give what you yourself don't have? But we just read a moment ago from the Sermon on the Mount, "You're the salt of the earth." Here's words that are just a few verses before that. Again, the words of Christ: "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." So which is it? Is it that we are to be merciful because we've received mercy? Or are we to be merciful in order to receive mercy? And I think the answer is yes.
[34:38] You know, whether chickens come from eggs and eggs come from chickens, and it doesn't actually matter which one comes first, 'cause as soon as you stop the flow, you stop the chickens. I was thinking about this this morning. Breathing is the same way, right? You have to exhale to be able to inhale, and you have to inhale to be able to exhale. And it doesn't actually matter which one comes first, because at the end of the day, as soon as you stop the flow, you stop what could amount to being your life. Mercy is like this. Whether we go first or we go second, we have to keep the flow moving, 'cause as soon as we stop the flow, we cut ourselves off from the life that God has for us.
[35:24] And what seems even more important, the life of the world. The God I want is a God of justice, but the God I need is a God of mercy. Normally at this point I would ask you to stand, but I'm actually gonna ask you to not. And just for the next few moments, I'm gonna lead you through a prayer. And we're gonna do this dance of the exhale and the inhale. We're gonna take some time to start by allowing God, for those of you who are willing, to fill you with His mercy. On the screen behind me, you're gonna notice a prayer. And I'm gonna invite you, if you're comfortable, to hold your hands out like this, just for the ability to receive what God might have for you.
[36:11] There's no magic in this, but it might help us focus a little bit, and we will read these words together. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry, and we humbly repent. For the sake of Your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. And forgive us, that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your name.
[36:58] And just as your hands remain in that posture, maybe even just for the next few moments, just close your eyes. And just as you said those words, you know, in honesty, sometimes maybe it was a little bit robotic. For some of you, it might've been sincere. For some of you, it might've been something that you want to be true at some point. But hear the heart of the Father for you in this moment and receive. The word of Christ speaking over you says that as far as the east is from the west, that's how far I have removed your sin from you.
[37:45] Christ says to you, and He says to me, "Child, you are forgiven. You have received mercy." And this is your inhale today. But what goes in must come out. And so I want to ask you to turn your hands palms down. And in these moments, Lord, I pray that You would bring to mind faces, names, situations, relationships, places of work, homes where mercy needs to be extended, where the salt and light of Your holy people needs to make a preservational difference.
[38:48] And may we, Lord, be quick to extend to others the mercy that we ourselves have received in You. If God is bringing people or places to mind, I just encourage you not to leave today without making a plan for how you might be a purveyor of mercy and grace. I'll invite you to stand as we enter into worship. We continue the prayer about a God who is merciful for us, a God who has extended to us mercy, even though He could have extended judgment.
[39:33] He is in every way a just and faithful, fair and true, and yet He places mercy and relationship with us ahead of those things. So let's pray together these words this morning. For some of us, we've carried a burden for far too long on our own.