Tag: Justice

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Widows, Orphans and Foreigners – Deuteronomy 10:18-19

We don’t ourselves have the same experience as Israel is pointed to here, but all of us have depended on others in the the past, even if just when we were infants. We have all been vulnerable in the past, like Israel, and like Israel as a faith communitand we are all called to demonstrate empathy for and actively advocate for the most vulnerable around us.

This passage comes just after the golden calf rebellion, when the people of Israel lost patience and created their own god target than waiting on the Lord. It comes as a piece of the covenant renewal, expanding the ritual purity into a broader doctrine of compassionate holiness, from ritual purity to justice and compassion. The response to divine mercy God asks for is ethical faithfulness.

This call to love the out group was radical in the ancient Near East, even more than in today’s society. The boundaries and borders of the world are real, but the first identity for them (and us) is as a child of God.

This message is a reminder that the ethnic identity – even for the chosen people of God – is a responsibility rather than a recognition of innate goodness. They literally just finished giving up their good jewelry to create a pagan idol. Likewise, if we today conflate our cultural, national or ethnic identity with our identity as children of God, we likewise make that mistake. When we see our political units and political players as anointed by God, we miss the point of what God truly cares about.

God shows us what He cares about when He orients Israel’s law to center on the dignity of marginalized.

Today, much of the church has lost this understanding. We have to make excuses to show compassion, we condemn empathy. We spend more time gatekeeping our communities and places of worship than welcoming in the stranger.

So as a community we are called to respond to God’s justice in the same way Israel was. We are called to welcome immigrants with radical, practical hospitality. We are called to support orphans, widows, and immigrants in their needs; to learn the stories of the marginalized; to use our places of privilege to advocate for justice in our communities; to build friendships across difference; to pray and worship with mercy in mind.

As a church we are a subversive community, living in the world, within particular political boundaries, but with a higher calling. Let us continually seek that calling and to live out the unconditional love God shows us.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, October 5, 2025

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Absolute Justice – Isaiah 32:1-8

One of the main themes of Isaiah is that God is a just God, one of a series of superlatives Isaiah ascribes to God. What is absolute justice?

We can learn some of this from the well known verse in Micah, to “do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” Justice is a combination of action, attitude and right relationships with others and God. God’s mercy invites us to act justly to make relationships right. If we are out of right relationship with God, then we are going to be falling down on the other two.

In order to make that relationship right, we must understand our own brokenness and dependence on God – and that brokenness itself impacts the world around us. We are to be poor in spirit, not, as Tim Keller puts it, “middle-class in spirit.” Being middle-class in spirit means we feel like we have earned or are owed our relationship with God and resulting blessings. We are more likely to look down on those in poverty, whether spiritual or material poverty.

But God sees and cares for the impoverished. Isaiah uses terms like “poor,” “needy,” “widows,” “fatherless.” Today, we may think of “homeless,” “refugees,” “victims of sex trafficking,” “victims of domestic violence,” “victims of racism and sexism.”

There are so many opportunities to work justice in the world around us, so if we are poor in spirit and open our eyes to the world, we will see those around us who need the presence of God in the Body of His Church – which is to say, us.

— Sermon Notes, Phil Assink, First V Reformed Church of Oak Harbor, WA, October 9, 2022