In his sermon 'Biblical Justice vs. Social Justice', Craig Greatman explores the distinction between biblical and social justice using Isaiah 11 as a foundation. He emphasizes that biblical justice is rooted in the character of a spirit-anointed messianic king, unlike social justice which is often program-driven and based on human reason and political structures. The sermon highlights the role of the church in upholding biblical justice by living out the gospel and demonstrating restorative justice within the community. Greatman discusses how biblical justice involves both restoration and retribution, focusing on equity rather than partiality. He underscores the transformative potential of the gospel, not only for individual lives but for creation as a whole, envisioning a harmonious world under Christ's reign. The ultimate source of true justice, according to the speaker, is the expansion of the knowledge of God through the gospel, transcending political and social systems.

Reading from the scriptures of Isaiah chapter 11, verses 1 through 10. This is the word of the Lord. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, and the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, Or decide disputes by what his ears hear.

But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the whole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples of him, shall the nations inquire, and His resting place shall be glorious. Thus saith the Lord. Lord, thank you for this opportunity to strengthen and to edify your people.

May your word go forth and may your spirit speak to the hearts of those who have ears to hear and Lord may you increase the hearing for those who may be wanting at this time. May the words of my own mouth and the meditations of my own heart be acceptable to you, Father God, as you are my rock and my redeemer. Amen. Please be seated. It is a great grace that I stand before you this morning for various reasons, not the least of which is that your pastor, Pastor Allison, is much smarter than I am.

And so for me to preach the Word in His presence, I'm comfortable knowing that in a few months or weeks or whenever you get to chapter 11 of Isaiah, He will ensure that anything that I've skipped over or mistakenly exegeted will be corrected and preached better. So with that being said, I am coming to this particular passage by way of witness testimony to my own experiences in life, as well as to the work that I currently do as a chaplain in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. And so with that, I've broken this particular passage, not with specific emphasis on exegeting line by line, but I have seen it in movements for this particular occasion. I've chosen five movements to designate throughout this passage for us to sort of get a glimpse of a comparison between biblical justice and social justice, the justice that we commonly see if we watch the news, God help you if you do, or if you are involved on the internet in any way sometimes you see all a lot about what people call restorative justice, or excuse me, social justice, which is not really justice at all. Chapter 11, by this time Isaiah has told Israel that God's sovereign use of Assyria, a pagan nation, is meant to discipline a corrupted people.

And he has promised an inevitable judgment of Assyria itself. Assyria being prideful because they are gaining power and God will certainly take care of them as well. So amidst this destruction, God promises to preserve a remnant from which a spirit-empowered, righteous, Davidic messiah will arise to establish an enduring and peaceful kingdom. Now, getting there, you'll have fun doing that, but in some ways it reminds me of being a father and having to say something like, this is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you. When I have to give my child, I haven't done so in many years, praise be to God, but I have to give my child a spanking for correction.

I think God has done the same for Israel to a degree. Now, what I want to do as we go through this, I'm gonna mention these threads once again that I've woven into this particular message. There are again two for me. One is that my family and I have been moving around the country for years planting churches and replanting churches and in that planting and replanting of churches and looking at the state that we're in. I am always so doggone hopeful that the conservative state that I have moving to, hailing originally from California, is going to be much better than California in terms of the justice system or in terms of the political climate that oh gosh it's going to be so much better and especially then coming from California to Texas I was really excited and I was thinking golly I'm sure Texas is getting it right politically.

And been a bit disappointed to say the least. And Pastor Allison has helped me with that to a degree, reminding me of some things about what is true in terms of being a Christian, what is important about seeing incremental progress in a kingdom that is progressing ultimately so that we will all see God's rule and reign through Jesus Christ one day. Additionally, so I have that political stream woven in a bit. I'm not gonna get real political though. Just wanted to make sure that that's clear.

And then I actually see the working, the inner working of the justice system, and I've seen behind the curtain, I've seen how the sausage is made a little bit, and it's really tragic and very scary in many ways. I believe that God's word, and we're gonna see that here, shows us what true biblical justice ought to look like, what it can look like, and what we as gospel, influenced gospel, sort of saved by the gospel individuals, what we can do, I think, in terms of seeing the landscape that we're in, how we personally can administer and see to biblical justice in our own homes, in our marriages, within the church. And God forbid for any of us, it would go beyond the church to justice in the system that is our criminal justice system in this country and in this state, I would hate for that to happen to anybody in many ways. I work with people as a counselor and people in recovery, people on the other, just on the other side. I've worked with them for many years.

And if we would allow people to repent and be restored and reconciled to the body of Christ, that would be to the glory of God, I firmly believe. So that framing, and you will hear some things working into this message as I go along. I want you to think about the stream. I believe politics is downstream from culture. I believe that culture should be downstream from the church, and I believe that the church, by God's glory, should be just downstream and in the stream of the gospel.

And if we were in the stream of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we would see that this inverted social justice system, this inverted pipeline is sadly often mistaken. So let's look at this first wave, this first sort of movement in the passage here, Isaiah 11 verses 1 & 2. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. I would describe this this framework as the first movement of this passage, the movement of the person of the King.

Isaiah reminds God's people of the person of the King right here, his lowly yet royal origin, his Davidic covenantal identity. It is the Spirit resting upon him as the ground of all that follows in this passage. The Israelites knew the almost mythological proportions of King David. They still do, many of them to this day. They wanted a king, as we saw, hopefully many of you know, in 1 Samuel 8, they wanted a king like the nations around them, visible, militarily, mighty, powerful.

And rather than trust the God of the universe, whose omnipotence could not be seen with temporal eyes, they sought a leader who would go out before us and fight our battles. God granted the request of the people of Israel, but he did indeed warn them. A human king would seize their children for service. A human king would take their land and impose taxes upon them. Those warnings are as true today as they were 3, 000 years ago.

So out of that failure, even though God's people failed then and often fail now, God works his promise. And his promise here is the shoot from the stump of Jesse. A suffering servant image before is a triumphant king image. Remember this as we recall the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we recall the lowly life of Jesus and his servant image, and we often forget that he today is a triumphant king. This work in Isaiah, Isaiah is reminding us of the same thing, and we see the hope of the triumphant king in this passage.

There's the king shooting from the stump of Jesse. Now There's a temptation, I personally fall for it sometimes, that particular political alignment, a particular cultural moment represents something that is more durable than this truth that we see here in Isaiah 11. We hope oftentimes in a political party and a candidate and a policy and every human arrangement that does not draw its breath from the branch that is Jesus Christ will eventually be cut down. The church in California where we are hailing from at this particular season mistakes or has mistaken this particular idea because it has become the chaplain to a progressive political project. The danger I see in Texas is that the church in Texas may become a chaplain, if you will, to a more conservative but still a human project.

There are many people. You can see them with their posters of just coming down, some of them are still out there, where we just want to believe that this person who, hey, I heard that they're a Christian, and I want them to be the mayor or the judge or whatever position they're vying for. And I have been caught myself putting my hope in such a place rather than in the branch that is the branch that shoots from Jesse, the branch being Jesus Christ, the branch whose roots are bearing fruit even now. So Isaiah 11 to grounds justice in the spirit of God, not in the momentum of a movement, the intelligence of a policy, or the leverage of a coalition. The manifold anointing of the Messiah, the wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and fear of the Lord is precisely why this king's justice will not fail, where all others do fail and have failed.

This to me is the reformed epistemological point of the past, is justice is not defined by the majority, by the movement, or by the moment. It is defined by the spirit-anointed king. Our culture's expanding trust in human reason, in political efficacy and technological advance, has produced a justice system that is increasingly impotent to constrain the consequences it generates. There is no sustainable justice in human reason or political power structures alone. Isaiah 2 reminds us of this and establishes the alternative, excuse me, 11-2, not a better political program, but a different king with a different source of authority.

After we see verses one and two, we move into the second movement of this passage, I think, can be described and explained as the character of Messianic justice, And we see this in verses 3 through 5. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. His delight, the... The shoot's delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear.

But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins." This is where we see the king's manner of judgment, not by appearances of human testimony, but by righteous discernment. He vindicates the poor and the meek. He strikes down the wicked.

Righteousness and faithfulness are his character, not his programs. There's no partiality in our King with righteousness. He shall judge the poor and decide with equity. This is not partiality towards the poor. This is equity.

And the Old Covenant restitution laws illuminate this distinction precisely. I think it's important for us to understand this distinction because we often think in terms of retribution and restoration as two separate things that don't come together, but in the Bible they come together very clearly for us. In Leviticus chapter 6, if you don't mind, I'm going to go there for a moment, and Leviticus chapter 6 verses 1 through 7. The Lord spoke to Moses saying, If anyone sins and commits a breach of faith against the Lord by deceiving his neighbor in a matter of deposit or security or through robbery or if he has oppressed his neighbor or has found something lost and lied about it, swearing falsely, in any of all the things that people do and sin thereby. If he has sinned and has realized his guilt and will restore what he took by robbery or what he got by oppression or the deposit that was committed to him or the lost thing that he found or anything about which he has sworn falsely.

He will restore it in full and shall add a fifth to it and give it to him to whom it belongs on the day he realizes his guilt. He shall bring to the priest as his compensation to the Lord a ram without blemish out of the flock or its equivalent for a guilt offering. And the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord, and he shall be forgiven of any of the things that one may do and thereby become guilty." That looks much different than a 25 year sentence for stealing from a store. It looks much different than all kinds of the many ways in which we practice justice. So there's no partiality.

You restore, you make amends, you do what the Lord has said to do, and you acknowledge your guilt, give back. In Exodus 22, 1 we're reminded similarly, Whoever steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters it or sells it must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep. These laws restore the victim. They up, they hold the offender proportionally accountable and maintain community integrity. Without showing partiality in either direction, social justice by contrast tends to make poverty itself a grounds for leniency and wealth a grounds for guilt.

Isaiah 4 corrects this. The messianic king judges the poor with righteousness, not with favoritism. Biblical justice for the poor is not redistribution. It's not giving you a break just because of your circumstances. It's holding you to account because all of us are equal in the eyes of God.

I've seen this play out in concrete ways, both in the prison system and in people in recovery. The restitution principle is almost entirely theoretical, unfortunately. We have people in prisons getting jobs in prisons to make things in prison for the state, but not to repay victims, not to come face to face with their accuser and repent and ask for forgiveness. So offenders are processed, they're sentenced, they're warehoused, they're released without genuine accountability to the community they harmed. What the law of God prescribed in Leviticus 6 is actually more humane than what we do today, precisely because it takes both the victim and the offender seriously as God's image bearers, who stand in relationship to a community.

The church should be able to say this without apology. The law's restitution framework is not primitive. It is the inverse of what we have now. What strips justice of both restoration and retribution, what strips both of those things away without any integrity simultaneously is this idea of social justice. This idea that we don't have to face our accusers anymore.

We don't have to go and make amends anymore. We don't have to answer to a higher authority anymore. In fact, one of the things that's very scary to me is that all too often the people in power or who legislate don't understand that they're not the highest authority. If you believe as a judge or even as a jurist that there is no authority over you, that there's no authority over us, that God Almighty is not the ultimate authority, then you believe that you are the ultimate authority. And that can be quite unsettling, to say the least.

In the New Testament, we have a beautiful picture, I think, of this restorative justice in human relationships as we see in verses four and five if you look at the book, the letter that Paul wrote to Philemon. Philemon is the New Testament's, I believe, clearest narrative illustrating restorative justice. Restitution is offered Paul. The apostle pays a debt for Onesimus. The offender is received back and the relationship is elevated beyond its previous state.

Slave and slave owner are now dear brothers, at least according to Paul's letter. This is the kind of social transformation that Isaiah anticipates through Isaiah 11, 4, and 5 here under Messianic rule. Under Messianic rule, when we all acknowledge Christ as King, we then can allow each other to be forgiven and to ask for forgiveness and to repay accordingly. Philemon 1.16, no longer as a slave, but better than a slave as a dear brother. Philemon 1.18, if he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge that to my account.

I will pay it back. Then in verse four, we see again the rod of his mouth. This puts both justices, retributive and restorative, together. We shall not think that if you are wicked, nothing will happen. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Retributive justice belongs to the Messianic king's reign as fully as equity for the poor does. In Romans chapter 12, beginning in verse 19, the Lord says this, Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

For by doing so, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And let the state and the state's authority do the work that God has given to the state to crush evil, to arrest evil, to protect the innocent from evil, to bear the sword. This is, I think for me as a father of two daughters, one of the most difficult aspects of the Lord's justice to contend with, because I would certainly have to do a lot of praying if anybody were to hurt my family in any way, and it would be very difficult, I am certain. I thank you Lord that thus far I have not had to concern myself with that sort of retributive justice.

But I, no matter what happens, have to remember what the Lord God Almighty says with regard to his vengeance and his taking care of the wicked. Nobody is getting a pass. Nobody is getting a pass. As the laws restore the victim and hold the offender proportionally accountable, the Lord asks us, calls us to maintain this community integrity and demands that we hold not only hold each other accountable but hold the state accountable as well. The authority that is in the state that we vote for and sometimes the people that are appointed, we ought to be a people who call that authority to stay in their lane, as it were.

Sometimes they're doing things that are just not in their jurisdiction. And we as the people of God are entitled to at least, as Pastor Allison was saying earlier, we have the authority to speak God's Word into such places and to at least call into question authority that is not given to those who say they have it in inappropriate ways. I think you probably had to deal with some of this a few years back and they had this thing called COVID. I'm not sure how it impacted y'all, but I do certainly know that from my position, and I do not want to cause any wailing and gnashing of teeth several years later, but the state has no duty to call on the church to do X, Y, or Z in particular contexts. We have authority.

The leaders that God has appointed in the church, the elders, the pastors have authority in the church. The government doesn't have authority. That was just one way we saw in the world recently the authority misappropriated where the church ought to have a voice and say, hey, The Lord is our shepherd. So we see this restorative justice, we see this retributive justice, we see that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord resting on our Messianic kingdom, King, will bring forth justice and in doing so, he does so with righteousness. And his character, it's again not programmed, but righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loin.

We look at belts and we think about belts as additional clothing, something that we add to us. The belt in this particular case is something that is descriptive of the character of a person. Righteousness and faithfulness are character traits of our King. The belt metaphor is vital. Righteousness and faithfulness are not policies the King adopts.

They are integral to who our King is. Social justice is program-driven. It requires legislation. It requires enforcement and political will, but biblical justice under messianic rule flows from the character of God, the character of the Spirit-anointed King, reproduced by the Spirit in the King's people. Remember Ephesians 4 verses 31 and 32, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. That is our disposition as citizens of the kingdom. That is our character because the Spirit of God is living in us. We've been given a new nature. We do battle, many of us, with our old nature.

We often don't concede to what God has done in us, giving us a new heart. We want to fight from that heart of stone, that heart that is not renewed, not redeemed, not transformed. And that is, at least for me, y'all may not be a sinner like me. For you, many of you may not have to deal with such a reality, but my hope is in the fact that when I am demonstrating forgiveness and tenderheartedness and hope and the character of Christ, That is the reality that the Spirit of God is working in me. That is my litmus test that I am a saved person, that the Spirit is working in and through me to act like my King.

Now, verse 5, righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins is probably the critique, the most strong critique in this passage of conservative political Christianity and where it lands in a pretty self-implicating way. We rightly identify social justice as program-driven rather than gospel-driven. But as conservatives, if you are among us, conservative political projects can be just as program driven. Elect the right people, pass the right legislation, appoint the right judges. The structural logic is identical to the progressive project.

Only the preferred outcomes are really different. So the belt metaphor in the ancient world describing what a man is or was, not what he wore is essential for us. You cannot legislate a belt. You cannot elect righteousness. Character, our character, is formed by the Spirit of God living in us through the gospel, in communities of the Word and sacrament.

That is what the church exists to produce. When it outsources that formation to political culture, it loses the very thing it was designed to generate, and no political victory will recover it. It is a return to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Word that brings us back to the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of our King. Movement 3 in this passage, verses 6 through 8 in Isaiah 11, I would call that the transformation of creation. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and the little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the wean child shall put his hand on the adder's den." This is obviously animal imagery, and it depicts creation harmony. And this is a comprehensive scope of Christ's reign, not merely individual souls. This is what the world is set to look like as Christ continues to put enemies under his feet. As the full restoration of the created order is something that we look forward to.

It is accomplished and being accomplished progressively through the spread of the gospel and the knowledge of God. And now there can be an imbalance here. I believe, and I'm not sure, I might be treading on some sacred ground here, I have a post- millennial view of eschatology. And so I believe that this is something that is progressing right now, that though there is much not yet, that every conversion that is genuine, every act of biblical restoration, every reconciled relationship is a down payment upon this reality, this progressive reality that Christ is King even now. And that we can see we get these little foretastes, these little glimpses of Christ on His throne, and we ought not just pooh-pooh those things.

When we see, we ought to rejoice at the expansion of God's kingdom on our street, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our churches. Every time someone is saved, it's a down payment on the restoration of the entire world. Community restoration is not merely individual forgiveness. The goal of restorative justice with the King of Kings, the Messianic Kingdom expanding in our midst is not simply the individual's pardon, but the repair of all the breaches that we see in the community of God. Relationships between natural enemies are transformed into shalom.

Not that I would have my daughter play over the whole of a cobra today, but this is the ultimate horizon of Isaiah's chapter 11 vision. One day, it will be fully realized. Christ will restore relationships, bodies, and the earth itself. In fact, in Revelation 21, we are reminded, and I saw no temple in the city, for the temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. By its light, the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, but nothing unclean will ever enter it." That is paraphrasing several verses together.

But that is the hope of Christ in his kingdom. That is his work. We have other visions or other foretastes of such shalom in the New Testament and the Old. Zacchaeus, in my view, is a miniature picture of the wolf dwelling with the lamb. A predator becomes a provider.

His spontaneous fourfold restitution is not coerced by law or government in his story. It flows from a changed heart. He has come to Christ and in his coming to Christ under the reign of the Messiah in his own life who has come to seek and save the lost in Luke 19 10 Zacchaeus voluntarily agrees to repay all that he has stolen and more so to the people of Israel as a tax collector that he once was, the wolf. Now in the Old Testament, Leviticus 25, I don't want to take the time to read that right now, but the year of Jubilee is explained in Leviticus 25. And it similarly envisions a social order shaped by the knowledge that the land belongs to God and all people stand equally before him.

There will be a year. The Jews sadly never obeyed God with a year of Jubilee, But it's something we ought to look forward to in His kingdom. I wish they would do that right now with taxes. But Zacchaeus is not an abstract image. People come to Christ and are converted in the penitentiary.

People come to Christ are converted, they're changed as drug addicts, as criminals of various sorts. I've seen that with my own eyes. In fact, been a long time now. Many, I pray, my daughters don't know the man that I might explain a little bit about to you today. They don't know the person who was homeless on the streets of San Francisco some 30 years ago.

But by the power of Christ, not legislation, not programs, the power of Christ changed a man's heart. And he does so every day, somewhere in this world. There's not a therapy program, an early release incentive, there is nothing in this world from the man's perspective that can bring this sort of fuller taste of Shalom, except the power of Christ and his gospel in our hearts. The gospel, That's the only thing that I've witnessed in every system that I've had opportunities to see that actually changes a person at the level that this text is describing. In movement four of this passage, the ground of it all, Isaiah 11, 9, they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." This is somewhat of a theological climax.

It is the vision of verses 6 through 8. It's the foundation that this vision is resting upon, and once again it is not political transformation. Although I am all for any political transformation that we can see and help to induce, the spread of the knowledge of God through the gospel is what makes messianic justice possible and even inevitable. Verse 9 is explicit. It exists because the shalom, the peace, exists because the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord.

This is the reformed answer to both social justice and conservative political Christianity. The solution to injustice is not the redistribution of wealth or power. It is not the elect, the election of a better leader. It is the expansion of the knowledge of God through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Isaiah 32-17, he will say later, and the effect of righteousness will be peace and the result of righteousness quietness and trust forever.

Social justice says change the structures and justice will follow. Conservative political Christianity says electorate leaders and justice will follow. Isaiah 11 9 says, fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord and Shalom will follow. The church's mission, once again, is not primarily though it's not sinful necessarily, the church's mission is not primarily political advocacy in either direction. It is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that produces the knowledge of God that produces the justice of God.

This is the theological verdict on the California I left and the Texas that I live in now. This is the theological and ecclesiological truth that I hope to find everywhere I go and have to remember comes only through the gospel and the truth of the Spirit of God. I'd say this, I'm not cynical. I haven't abandoned civic life altogether, probably in much more of a political animal than I'm inclined to admit, but the church that largely accommodates progressive political theology, It also accommodates what's neither true justice or gospel witness. It becomes indistinguishable from the culture when it decides to behave in a way that is all for just social justice.

And the temptation I've seen here in Texas is a mirror image. Accommodate the conservative political ideology, wrap it in the language of biblical values and call it faithfulness. But the pipeline only runs in one direction when you think that way. The church does not draw its mission from the political culture. The political culture at its best draws its orderly impulse from a church that has faithfully proclaimed the gospel and produced people whose character has been formed by it.

I love seeing so many young people in here. You're being formed by the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I know, and many of you who are probably homeschoolers know just as well, that should we leave their formation to anyone else, we are leaving them in a very precarious position. So it's wonderful to see here that we have a family-integrated church here, which is one of our favorite things to see, allowing children to be formed by the truth of God's Word, your character under the light and heat and love of the Spirit of our King. I want to show you one more thing with regard to this idea of restorative justice and community that comes from Matthew 18, a principle that we can see in Matthew 18.

As the knowledge of the Lord fills the earth, it first fills the church. And the church becomes the community where the justice of the King is practiced before it's proclaimed outside our walls. Matthew 18's process of redemptive church discipline is the present tense expression of verse 9's promise. A community shaped by the knowledge of the Lord pursues restoration, not merely punishment. Matthew 18.15 says, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. And of course, there is incremental stages there that you can look at yourself. But all that I'm trying to express with this is to understand that it is in the church first. If there's any squabbles or disagreements among us, We have to be the ones who first practice and exemplify this truth, that the Spirit of God living in us allows us to come to our brothers and our sisters and say, that wounded me, that offended me. I want to give you room to be forgiven, and I want to forgive you.

How have I hurt you? Explain that to me. How have I sinned against you?" And when the church practices that internally, you then gain momentum and some inertia to work that out beyond the church with other churches to start with, with other Christian people. And then you start separating the goats and the sheep. People who don't want that, who want to go run to the courthouse steps and sue and allow attorneys.

Gosh, there are so many attorneys in the world. Some of them are okay, too. But I don't want to besmirch anybody, but if we could practice justice in God's terms, we would do well to then show the culture how things ought to be done and how Christ is working in us to practice such things. That is restorative justice and community. Movement five, the last movement of this passage, verse 10, in that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples of him shall the nations inquire and his resting place shall be glorious.

The universal reign of the root of Jesse. The vision closes with the nations. The root of Jesse is not a banner for one political tradition or one nation state. He is a signal for the people's Catholic and cosmic in scope. All nations will inquire of him someday.

And the nations in the ethics of the kingdom we see that in Matthew 5, if you were taking notes it's a good place to look from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 38 through 48, and in Romans 12 where we just were, 17 through 21, the nations that inquire of the root of Jesse come not as conquerors, but as seekers. This is the posture that Jesus preaches in the Sermon on the Mount and Romans 12 produces in the King's people non-retaliation, love of enemy, overcoming evil with good. These are not a political program once again or a national foreign policy. They are the character of citizens of the kingdom formed by the gospel whose transformed lives are what draw the nations toward the glorious resting place of the root. I want to be careful because I understand that there is personal relationship with Jesus and individual and corporate worship and the ways in which God transforms us and changes us individually is different than what our political rulers and leaders ought to be doing.

And these are different contexts. But would that we would elect people who are in love with Jesus Christ, How would they look upon and talk to the enemies of other nations? Would that the President of the United States was so in love with Jesus that he would have a gospel conversation with any other world leader? I mean, it seems like maybe it's a little naive, but I don't think so. Not necessarily.

We as the church, beginning in our seats Here, we allow God, we work with God, we lean into God to be transformed. We look for others who are people of peace to strengthen us, to remind us of who we are, who they are in Christ. And the gospel spreads. The gospel goes to the nations, its ethics spreads, and the nations are drawn. That is What I think is the post-millennial hope of Isaiah 11 and what it announces in chapter 10, or in June verse 10, it does not require a Christian nation state once again to accomplish it.

It requires a faithful, gospel-saturated church. And I'm thankful to Pastor Ellison, who wants to drench you in the Word of God. So this morning, as we think about these things, as we think about justice, I've come to you as a pastor, as a father, as a chaplain, not as a political commentator, but it is kind of obvious the world that we live in these days. And I want you to know from my witness from where I stand as a newbie to Texas, as a person who's been around several of these United States, this text is not theory. I've seen from two different angles what happens when the pipeline runs backwards.

It always runs backwards the same way. It produces disillusionment, fragmentation, and a church that has spent its credibility on political projects and cannot bear the weight is never designed to carry. The shoot from the stump of Jesse is not a metaphor for the right political moment. He is the anointed one, our anointed one, upon whom the Spirit of God rests without measure, who judges with equity and strikes the wicked with the rod of his mouth, and who will not cease to reign until the earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. That is our hope.

He is our hope. Not to be naive, it is grounded in the atonement of Christ, secured by the blood of Jesus Christ, carried forward by His Spirit through the preaching of the gospel. It is not passive. It demands faithful proclamation, biblical community, and the practice of restorative justice beginning in the church and radiating outward from us. I want to encourage you to continue to be ambassadors of that kingdom, proclaim the gospel, pursue that justice, the real kind, the kind that restores the victim and holds the offender accountable and transform the community through the knowledge of the Lord.

I trust the branch that has come from the stump to bring completion to what he has already purchased. And I hope that I share, I believe I do share that trust with all of you. May the Lord bless you this morning as we continue in His worship through the singing of Psalm 30 as you move forward this morning.