One of the most popular Disney movies of all time is probably 101 Dalmatians. It came out a really long time ago, but even those of you who weren't alive have probably seen 101 Dalmatians. And if you're familiar with the story, you know that the evil Cruella de Vil steals 15 Dalmatian puppies from one of her fashion designers that works for her for the purpose of making a coat from their fur. And as an audience, when we watch that kind of thing and we see that she's stolen from someone else, and what it is that she plans on using the puppies for, it's one of those things that just makes our blood boil. We cry out, that's not right, that is unjust. She can't do that. Everything in US longs for justice. We want to see her brought to justice. We want to see those puppies restored and reunited with their owners and good to work out in all of their lives. There's just this thing about us as human beings, when we see those kind of things happening in movies and in stories and especially in real life, where again, our blood begins to boil. We hate to see injustices, and we see it in movies and resonate with characters. Some of us have been picked on by bullies and others who were stronger and more powerful than us when we were growing up, or maybe even that are still involved in our lives today, or we see it happen in other people's lives, and it makes us angry. We do not like to see people who are weaker getting pushed around by those who are stronger and in power. It is not right.It is unjust,and we would do anything and everything that we could to bring justice to those situations, and to stand up for those people, put those evil people in their place, and make it right for those who were wronged. It's almost like it's a universal feeling. You can go anywhere in the world and people get fired up about that kind of thing. And there's a reason for that. There's a reason that that value is shared by most of us around the world, and that's because we're made in God's image. We're made in God's image, and God is a God of justice. All summer long, we've been talking, as Ashlyn alluded to the about the attributes of God and the specific attribute that we are going to talk about today is the attribute of justice that God is just now. What does that mean to say that God is a God of justice? Well, let's start with a definition. God's justice encompasses both his righteousness and His judgment. It's the attribute by which God acts in accordance with His perfect nature, upholding what is right and addressing what is wrong. God is always fair, righteous and impartial. His actions and decisions are perfectly aligned with his moral law and his holy character. When we talk about the justice of God, it is related to his righteousness and His Holiness, which we talked about last week. Well, where do we see this in Scripture? Let me highlight just a few of them for you this morning, first in Deuteronomy, 32 for the rock. We're talking about. God is the rock here, the rock his work is perfect for all His ways are just. The Scriptures declares a God of faithfulness and without, one that is without, in justice, righteousness and upright again, it's connected to God's righteousness. Is he the psalmist. In Psalm 89 says, righteousness and justice are what the foundation, the very foundation of your throne. This is who God is. It is one of his attributes. It is part of his character. It is part of his nature. God cannot be anything other than just. He is without injustice. Let's look at one that talks about how that plays out a little bit more specifically in people's lives. Sometimes says blessed are the those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. And now he begins to describe who this God is. He is the maker of heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them. He remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed. Us and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free. The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but frustrates the wayof the wicked.We see that God upholds the cause of the oppressed, those who are being oppressed by others, who are in power, those who are taking advantage of and bullying other people. In some way, God upholds the cause of the oppressed. Why? Because he's a just God. He is a God of justice. But not only does he stand up for them and provide for them, he also, as we're told here at the very end of it, frustrates the ways of the wicked. Some translations say brings ruin to the wicked. And honestly, I think when we see scriptures like this, we we love to see them. We love to see and know or be reminded of that God is just, that he will bring justice upon those who do evil, the people that bully and mistreat others, will not get away with it. They will be judged. They will be punished because he is a just God yes,so excited that he's going to be able to dothat to all those bad people out there.The problem with this,and the reason that some of you were kind of chuckling is that is because you know that there's a lot of times that when we talk about God being just and him judging and punishing those who are evil and mistreat others and all the above, we fail to see that that involves us. When we talk about God being a just God, and it's part of his nature to bring wrath upon evil and those who are wicked. We never put ourselves in that category. We're not the wicked. We're not the ones who deserve his wrath and His justice in our lives. That's the other people. That's the bullies that we see out in society, those who are taking advantage of other people. We certainly know that we're not perfect. We're not saying that we do everything right, but we never participate in the depth of evil that they do. We are not as bad as those people are. Bring justice upon them. And I mean, listen, God's a God of love, so he can just kind of overlook the little few mistakes and the things that you and I make, because they're not really that bad. I mean, again, they're they're not great, but they're certainly not bad. So certainly he can just kind of overlook those things, right? No, no, a God of justice cannot. It goes against his nature. If he is just, he must punish sin. He must punish evil. He must punish anyone that goes against him and his moral law in any way or he would not be just, and that goes even for you and me and those of us who try to categorize sin and the certain little mistakes that we make as no big deal, just kind of minor mistakes. This is, of course, related, as I've said earlier, to God's righteousness and to His Holiness. And so we began to even see this last week. Whenever we talk about standing in the presence of a holy God, we looked at Isaiah, and we talked about how he saw this vision, and he stood before the Lord, God Almighty. And there was this description of the angels flying around him who were describing him as Holy, holy, holy. And he was cowering before them, and he cries out, Woe to me, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty, Isaiah, didn't stand before this holy God and say, well, thank Goodness. I've only made a few minor mistakes, thank goodness that I've only messed up a few times. And God's a God of love, and he can kind of overlook those kinds of things. He said, Woe to me, I am ruined. God is a God who is holy, God Who is a God who is just. He must punish sin and evil, and I am evil, and therefore I deserve to be crushed. Woe to me. I am ruined. I don't have a chance. This, again, is the proper perspective. He realized that God is completely100% through and through, morally pure. I.God and that he was not and that applies to each and every single one of us as well. We're told this in Romans, chapter three, verse 23, very familiar verse, For all have sinned, all people have sinned, and all people have fallen short of the glory of God. We are not getting into degrees of sin here. He didn't say, yes, all people have sinned, and kind of, some have really sinned. I mean, really, really done wicked, evil sins, and therefore fallen short of the glory of God. And other people have just kind of made some mistakes. They've sinned, but not really fallen short of the glory of God, because they're just kind of minor things. He goes all of sin. There's no degrees here. We're not talking about the depth of evil or any of that. It's just all sin before a holy and a perfect and a righteous God is evil, and we fall short of His glory. And there's consequences for that. We're told about those consequences in a number of places, because a just God must punish sin, and therefore that's why we see what we do. For example, in Ephesians, two, one through three, where the apostle Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus and says, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit, who is now at work in the sons of the disobedient. Now watch this in verse three, he's talking about them. He's saying, You, you, you, you. And now watch what he does right here in verse three, all of us. Guess who that includes? Yeah. Includes Paul himself. Them. Us, everyone. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. And watch this by the rest we were, by nature, deserving of wrath. We do not like to talk about that. There are some really evil people in this world, and they deserve for a God of justice to put them in their place. They deserve his wrath. But this says we all deserve his wrath. Every single one of us are sinners before a holy and a righteous and a just God, and it must be punished Colossians 121 says we're enemies. We're enemies of God. If I've heard people say things sometimes, like when they're sharing their testimonies, you know, I, I grew up in church, and I I began to see who Jesus was, and I put my faith and trust in him when I was, like, eight or nine years old. And I mean, you know, honestly, I I was eight, I was nine, I hadn't really done anything that bad by that time, and so I really wasn't that bad of a kid. And then we hear other people who talk about how, man, I was a drug dealer, I was a member of a gang, and I did everything illegal that there possibly was. I've been thrown in jail as the worst person you could ever imagine. And I came to know Christ. And here's what it was like on the other side of those things. And we talk about it from these two different perspectives. And sometimes the person that's eight or nine is saying those kind of things in a way, okay, now there's some really evil people in the world, and God, boy, he does this radical work to transform and change them from being so evil and into it. And then there's some of us who were, I mean, we were just innocent little kids. We were eight, hadn't really done anything wrong, and, like, I wasn't perfect, but it's kind of like I just, I just needed God to give me a little nudge over the top here, just to get me over the top because I wasn't really that bad of a person, and we do not see that in Scripture. That's not the mentality when we share our testimonies like that, and we talk about it in that way, we do not have a proper understanding of the holiness of God and who we are in comparison to him, in the way that he must respond to us being sinners. We were by nature, by nature, by all the self help books that you want to in the world. And it's not going to deal with nature that's a problem. And by nature, we were deserving of God'swrath.So this is the situation, the reality of the situation that we are all in, no matter how bad or good you think you are. This is what we must see. We're talking about having a proper understanding of God, a biblical view of him. That's why we're going over the attributes. Who is God really? We can't just go, Well, this is what I think about him, and who he kind of is, and whatever we gotta go, Okay, what does the Bible really say? How does he reveal Himself to us? And one of the things that he reveals to us, he. Is a God of justice. He is holy. We are not. And he must judge sin. And so we as we talk about this attribute, we think about the attribute of God as we think about what I mentioned first in the beginning of the message, our love of bad people getting what they deserve. Stick it to them, God, they had it coming, right? We have got to have a proper understanding of not just that being evil in the world, but of ourselves again before a holy and a perfect God, we are the bad people. His wrath must be poured out on us as sinners. Now this is not the only attribute of God. We've talked about a number of them already. We talked about how God is good, right? We're going to talk about the attribute of love, that God is love, that he is mercy. And so all of these things are true about God at the same time, we even see that coming out in certain places of Scripture. Look at Exodus 34 this is where, where God is passing in front of of Moses and and what we read in Exodus 34 beginning in verse six, it says that he, referring to God, passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord, compassionate and gracious, God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to 1000 and forgiving, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. All of these things are true about God, but at the same time, right after saying all of these things, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. And so again, when we read that, our minds, most of the time, go, yeah, he's compassionate towards me, he's gracious towards me, he's bounding in love towards me, and forgiving and all of that stuff. But those people who are guilty, they are not going to go unpunished. Yes, all those bullies who picked on me in that day are going to finally have what was coming to them. But again, what we have to see and what seems like a contradiction if you look at this,because how in the worldcan a God who is just, if it is part of his nature, he cannot act in any other way than to pour His wrath out on sin, actually forgive it? How can He forgive wickedness and rebellion and sin? Noah? Noah didn't deserve to be the only one that didn't, you know, have to die in the flood. Noah deserved to die too. A just God would have killed him off as well. Abraham, as good of a guy as he was, he certainly sinned and messed up several times that we saw. If a just God was really just guess what should have happened to him. He should have died too. There's no way that a just God can just turn a blind eye to that and not execute His justice upon them. And it says it right here.But God, becauseHe is all of these things in being true and because of the attributes that we talked about before, of God being omniscient and knowing all things about him being all wise, and knowing how to use the knowledge that he has, and him being sovereign and powerful to be able to carry along a plan knows how to exercise all of those attributes of his compassion and graciousness and love, and all of these things in alignment with and along with being a God of justice. And so what we see as the Apostle Paul begins to explain in Romans, chapter three, we we read to you that that for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God earlier in Romans, chapter three, verse 23 will a couple of verses after that, we see he says that God put forward some say Display, he displayed Jesus as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. What does propitiation mean? It means a sacrifice that was given that satisfies justice and removes wrath, a sacrifice given that satisfies justice and removes wrath. John 316 says, For God so loved the world, his attribute of love, so loved the world, that He gave His one and only son. And we, we look at that and go, Oh, it's just such a pleasant verse. I love John 316 he's so loving. And he gave his son and and, ah, just the love of God, isn't it great for us? What did he give his son? Four What did he givehis son to? WhatHe gave His Son towas to be a propitiation tosatisfy the wrath of God. Well, how can you satisfy the wrath of God? The you have to take the punishment, the Wrath has to be poured out on him instead of us, the wrath that was demanded of God's justice to be poured out on you as a sinner was poured out on Jesus when you think about the cross, if you're if you're like me, a lot of times my mind, and I'm guessing your mind, too, goes to the place where, how much Jesus had to suffer. Gosh, I just hate to see that Jesus, I mean, was flogged. I mean nails driven through his hands and I mean almost beat to death and just hanging there and can't catch his breath and just hours of suffering physically. I mean, how much did that have to hurt? Oh, my gosh, the pain, the physical pain from that torture. Oh, it's hard to think about indescribable. No doubt it was awful for him, and he felt every minute of that. But my guess is that what he felt even more than the physical suffering from the pain that he was walking through, was the wrath of God being poured out on him in that moment. We're talking about the weight of sin, all the sins of the world, past, present and future that would have ever been committed were laid upon Jesus. I'll take them all, and God says, Okay, I will pour out my wrath as a just God on you. You will see the full fury of my wrath against all evil and all sin in this world on you. Can you imagine what he must have felt? It was probably the pain from the physical stuff. Was probably nothing compared to the wrath of God against evil and all judgment against that? Does that help you appreciate a little bit more what Jesus did and accomplished for you on the cross. It does me. Sin isn't that big of a deal. Well, the wrath of God had to be poured out on his son in order for you and I to not have to experience that and suffer ourselves, the apostle Paul goes on and says, this, this propitiation, this sacrifice, was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. What does that mean? Well, we talked about Noah, we talked about Abraham, we talked about all the Old Testament, people who had sinned. And as a God of justice, he had, he didn't have any other choice but to punish that sin. Why didn't he do it? Then? Because of his love, his his compassion, him being what Exodus 34 say slow to anger. So he was slow to anger so he could pass over those for now offer temporary recoveries, because he could look down into the future through the timeline and go it all points to Jesus. There is going to be a day coming where everything that those Old Testament saints deserved from the evil that they caused and were involved in was going to be poured out on my son. And so I can pass over them for now, not because I'm not a just God, and I can just turn the other way, but it will be satisfied. It will be poured out on him. And that's what actually happens. And then he goes on Lastly, and says, in Verse 26 it was to show again this propitiation, this sacrifice to satisfy the wrath of God, was to show His righteousness at the present time. So Is God really right? Is he really just, I mean, I just He doesn't look like he's offering justice to all of the evil in the world. Yes, it was on display. It showed it revealed that he was both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus, He is just and the justifier,Jesus, being on the cross was the display of the justice of God. Hehad overlooked things and was slow to anger,but it was all being poured out on his son as the God of justice. The really incredible thing about this is what we're told here. Not only is God just, but he's the justifier you and I, who stand guilty, who are charged as guilty before a holy and a perfect God had to be justified in some way, and if it was by our nature that we were deserving of wrath and evil. There's no amount of self help that will ever get you to the point where you're justified before a holy and a perfect God, because you can't fix nature. What does it mean to be him, to be the justifier? What does it mean for you to be justified? I could go over a number of ways. I just loved the way that that Jerry bridges and and Bob Beddington talked about this a little illustration here in their their book called The book ends of the Christian life, says, imagine there's a moral ledger recording every event of your entire life, all your thoughts, words, actions and even your motives. You you might think of it as a mixture of good and bad deeds with hopefully more good than bad. But the scriptures, however, tell us that even our righteous deeds are unclean in the sight of God. So Jesus has a perfectly righteous moral ledger, and we have a completely sinful one. However, God took our sins and charged them to Christ, leaving us with a clean slate. The word justified in Paul's usage, means to be counted righteous by God, even though, in ourselves, we're completely unrighteous. God counts us as righteous because he has appointed Christ to be our representative and our substitute. Therefore, when Christ lived a perfect life in God's sight, we lived a perfect life. When Christ died on the cross to pay for our sins, we died on the cross with him. There's an old play on the word justified, that means just as if I'd never sinned, but there's another way of saying it, just as if I'd always obeyed. Both are true. This is what it means to be justified before God that we were declared guilty as sinners who could not obey, and then through the satisfaction of God's wrath, as being a substitute being poured out on him for us, that when we put our faith, we receive what He accomplished for us on the cross, it is just as if we've never sinned, and just as If we'd always obeyed. That is the work of Christ that he does as a work of salvation in your life, that is a free gift that is offered to you and that is offered to me. And so what does that mean for us today, practically? And we talk about God being a God of justice, and all of these things that happen the just and the justifier? Well, obviously, if you're here today, you're watching online today, and you have never put your faith and trust in Jesus for salvation, then you are in the same place that we just read about in Ephesians. Two you are, by nature, deserving of His wrath. You stand guilty before a holy and a righteous God, and His wrath will be poured out on you. He can't not do it, even though he's accomplished everything that he could to remove it from you if you choose to not receive it as a just God, His wrath will be poured out on you and evil, but since he offers forgiveness, removal of that through what Jesus accomplished on the cross, you don't have to walk out of here in the same situation that you walked in here being in. If you'll put your faith and trust in Him to be your Lord and Savior, He will forgive you, and it will be just as if you never sinned, and just as if you've always obeyed, and you will walk out of here declared right and made right and made holy. And everything will change in your life from that period on. I'm not saying everything will be perfect, but everything will change from that moment on. Well, what if you put your faith and trust in Jesus? What if you've taken that step and you've been declared right before him, well, then how about we live as if those who have been declared right before God? That's a practical place for us to start. If we've been justified by God, then let's walk in our daily lives as people who have been justified, those who have been made right with God, because it's been my experience in my own life before, and what I see in many people is that even though we've been justified, we're still running around trying to justify ourselves before God. We don't feel like we're made right with God. We still see the mistakes that we've made, so we constantly try. To do better, and we do this, and we think, God, I've got to be getting a little bit more proud of me. Am I a little more justified now? Do I stand a little bit more right with you? Because I've made better progress in this area. I've done all of these kinds of things. And we're we're constantly trying to justify ourselves before God. We're trying to justify ourselves before other people. But if we've really been justified, if we've really been made, right if Jesus declared on the cross that it is finished, then you and I can actually live as if it's been finished. We can rest, we can enjoy. We don't have to look over our shoulders going, I'm a dirty, rotten sinner. And am I doing it right now? Am I doing it right now? Are we? Okay? You're not going to smite me, are you? We can go, I'm made right with him. I can enjoy my relation. It changes the way we relate to him. And then practically as we begin to walk with Him, as those who have been made right with Him, then, then as a God who is a just God in us being in union with Him now we can now act justly because we've been justified. What does that look like? What does that mean? Well, we're told in Micah 68 that he has shown you, O mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. This is written before Jesus. This is written to the old those who are under the Old Covenant. So what he's saying here, they couldn't do it was required. This was the heart of God. This is the way that he had created us to live as those who act justly, as those who love mercy, as those who walk humbly with him, but with sin in their lives and declare guilty before him they couldn't do it, but on the other side of the cross, as those who have been made right with God, those who are in union with the one who is just guess what we can do now. We can ask justly. We can love mercy. We can walk humbly with our God, and so practically speaking, we look for him to work through us in ways where he is expressing his justice through us. And when we look for that kind of activity, we're gonna find ourselves standing up for those who are being bullied. We're going to find ourselves standing up for those who are being taken advantage of. We're to find ourselves standing up for those who are being oppressed. Why? Because God is a just God, and we're in union with Him, and He expresses his life through us when we make ourselves available to Him as His instruments. So he's going to lead us in ways that are in alignment with his nature and who he is.In what ways is God leadingyou to stand up for those who are being bullied? Is he leading you to stand up for those who are being taken advantage of how is he leading you to stand up for those who are being oppressed by other people in certain situations? Guys, God will use you. He will use me. He will use us as a church to bring justice to those who are being treated unjustly. Let's pray