What Does It Look Like To Right A Wrong As A Christian?

So you've decided to follow Jesus. You're spending time with him, spending time with other believers, serving his body, and giving generously. That's great, but following Jesus isn't just about growing as his disciple. It's also about going out into the world he loves. Following Jesus means becoming a missionary where you live, work, and play. Being a disciple means becoming a disciple maker. Join us as we discover some of the important ways followers of Jesus are called to go wherever he leads us.

Well, good morning everybody, and welcome to Preston Trail. This is a three Jim service, evidently. You have to have the name Jim to lead today. Makes me ask the question, can you get too much of a good thing? I don't know, when it comes to Jim. So we're glad you're here, whether you're watching online or here in the room with us. And listen, what I wanted to do is to let you know a little bit about what's going to take place in this message time. Normally, Paul and I, when we speak on Sundays, our mindset is to speak with you, never at you. And today's message is one of those that's kind of challenging, and it's going to make us think a lot, and I'm thinking a lot about it. I'm sitting down today because I really want to come across more as I'm with you in this, I'm still learning this, and it's going to challenge the way we think.

And so, at the end of the service, if you don't like what I said, just email your comments to [inaudible 00:01:54]@prestontrail.org, and you'll get an out of office reply, and it'll be good. Okay.

All right. I want to begin by sharing with you a brief little parable. You and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a river, and suddenly you hear shouting from the direction of the water. A child is drowning. Now without thinking, both of you dive in, swim to the child, and rescue the child in bringing it back to shore. But before you can recover, you hear another sound from the river, and there is another child drowning. So you both swim out again and you rescue this little girl and you bring her back. And much to your horror, you hear another, and then another child drifts by. And by the time you save the fourth one, you don't know how you're going to recover. And then all of a sudden, your friend starts wading out of the water like he's leaving, and you're going to demand, "Hey, where are you going? You can't leave me alone. Get back here."

And your friend says, "Hey, I'm not leaving you. I'm just going upstream to tackle the guy who's throwing all these kids in the river."

Now that is a great story that helps us understand that sometimes when we react to needs and issues and we're trying to help, well, it's really good to do that, but it's also good to think about the fact that there are some things upstream that are actually causing the issues that you're having to deal with.

Now, last week we talked about meeting a need, and sometimes we are called to meet a need. And we spoke about that last week, to see a need and to extend our hands and to do some things to make a difference. However, at other times we are called to right a wrong. Now there's a wonderful book by Dan Heath entitled Upstream, from which I got that story. And here's what he says about this story. "We are called to right a wrong, which is an upstream effort intended to prevent problems before they happen, or alternatively to systematically reduce the damage or the harm caused by these problems."

Now he also points out, I think, a reality that we all would agree with. It's a lot easier to meet a need because it's tangible. When you do, you feel good about it, and you can point to it, and you measure that. But if you go upstream to try to right a wrong or correct a situation or a structure, how do you measure the impact of that? That is, the results are often invisible to you, even though they may be very real.

So you might be asking then, well, why right a wrong? Well, last week we talked about the fact that meeting people's needs helped point people to God. But today, when we talk about righting wrongs, righting wrongs are going to reveal the character of God, the God to whom we are pointing people. In Psalm chapter 146, we read there a psalm that kind of reveals and speaks very clearly about the character of God. The psalmist writes, "He, being God, gives justice to the oppressed and food to the hungry. The Lord frees the prisoners. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are weighed down. The Lord loves the godly. The Lord protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked."

Now, when you begin to dive into the Old Testament, and the New Testament as well, here's what you're going to discover. That unlike all of the other gods of antiquity, the God of Israel identifies with the poor and the powerless. When you go back and look at the pagan religions in the time of the formation of Israel, all of those religions had and channeled the connection between the gods and the elite and the powerful and the wealthy. So then, to go against the leaders of that culture or that tribe was actually then to go against the gods.

But the God of Israel is exactly the opposite. Countless times it says, "And He defends the cause of the fatherless. He stands with the poor." In the Old and New Testament, we discover that God identifies most closely with those who are powerless and marginalized and vulnerable.

Here's the second thing. The sin of the oppressing and neglecting the poor and the powerless occurs in scripture more than any other sin other than idolatry. That is, there are 300 times in the Old and New Testament when the sin of injustice is mentioned, and that sin is mentioned more than any other, other than the sin of idolatry.

And here's what I started thinking this week. 300 verses in scripture about injustice. There are only six scriptures about homosexuality. And what would happen if we used the same energy and took the same time and gave the same attention to trying to figure out how we live this thing out with homosexuality in our culture. What if we put the same energy and time and attention to helping solve the issues of the poor and the downtrodden and the vulnerable among us? How would that change the way the world sees the church of Jesus Christ? It would revolutionize it.

Now injustice is an upstream 'wrong' which causes downs to dream suffering. And I love Gary Haugen's definition of injustice in his book, Just Courage. He is the founder of International Justice Mission, which is one of the most effective organizations to rescue women from sex trafficking and families from slavery. Do you know there are 40 million people in the world enslaved right now, and they're doing something about it. And here's his definition of injustice. "The sin of injustice is the abuse of power - taking from is the good things that God intended for them, namely their life, their liberty, their dignity, or the fruits of their love or their labor."

Now we all know this. Injustice can be an individual or a corporate thing, right? As individuals, we can perpetrate an injustice. When we slander someone on social media, we are robbing them of their reputation. If we murder someone, we are taking from their life. If we discriminate in a hiring practice against someone of a different color or sex, we are perpetrating an injustice. If we steal another person's spouse, or we create a sexually toxic work environment, if we bully someone, we are guilty of injustice.

But corporate bodies are also guilty of injustice. And by that, I mean companies and churches and schools, and even nation states. And we know that these upstream problems of injustice are happening all the time, and we see people floating stream because of them. And there is the corporate expression of injustice that comes in the forms of racism and sexism and ageism. It comes in sex trafficking and drug trafficking. It comes in leadership abuse and sexual abuse. It comes in mass incarceration, or ethnic cleansing at its very worst, and even genocide. These are corporate expressions of injustice that we all recognize, read about, and we know.

And here's the thing. God calls his people to champion justice for the powerless, the voiceless, and the vulnerable. Now, making wrong things right is the biblical definition of justice. And as you look through the Old and New Testaments, especially in the Old Testament, there are two words that translated into our English: just or justice.

The first one is mishpat, and it is a Hebrew word which means to treat people equitably. Now it is used over 200 times in the Old Testament, and there are two connotations that mishpat usually communicates. The first one is, is simply to make sure that everyone is treated equally under the law. And the other connotation is, is that everyone who deserves a right is given that right. Let me share with you a couple of passages of scripture. First Leviticus 24:22. This is a connotation of everyone being treated equally under the law. And here, the writer is talking about the new laws that God is instituting in Israel. "This same standard applies both to native born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord, your God." That is whether you are an immigrant or whether you are a native born Israeli, you are to be treated equally under God.

Then at Proverbs 31:8-9. "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and the needy." That is so justice is making sure that everyone who deserves these rights, or everyone who qualifies for these rights actually gets them.

Now, mishpat is used most often in reference to what is called the "quartet of the vulnerable." There's a passage in Zechariah that mentions four groups of people that we are to pay special attention to. And there are multiple texts in the Old Testament that talk about these four things. Zechariah 7:8-10 says this: "Then this message came to Zechariah from the Lord: 'This is what the Lord of heaven's army says: Judge fairly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor."

Those are the four groups of people: widows, orphans, foreigners, immigrants, and the poor who deserve special attention as you read through the Old Testament. Now, to that group in our world today, I would add another group of people or several other groups of people. First of all, the unborn. They have rights. They should be cared for. They are voiceless and the most vulnerable. We should care for them. But also, the refugee or migrant workers or homeless people, racial minorities as well deserve mishpat.

Now the other word in Hebrew is tzadeqah, and it means to be just or righteous. That is, when you read it in the Old Testament sometimes it's translated righteous, and it refers to someone who having been made right with God now actually seeks to live out all of their other relationships in life with fairness and generosity. In Deuteronomy 16, we read these words about tzadeqah. Here it is. "Let true justice prevail, so you may live and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you."

Now, here's the thing. These are Old Testament texts. And some of you are going, well, that's the Old Testament. What about the New? Well, here's what I do not want you to miss. Jesus not only carries God's call for justice forward; he frames his own ministry around it. In his coming out party, after he is baptized and has gone through the temptations, he goes back to his home in Nazareth. He goes to the synagogue, he is given a scroll. He unrolls it to Isaiah 61 and he reads verses one and two. And it's recorded for us in Luke chapter four. And this is what Jesus reads. "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come."

Jesus is saying that God wants to bring justice to all people. And fast forward to the end of Jesus ministry, in Matthew 25, when he is sharing with us the parable of the sheep and the goats, what Jesus says is this: at the end of time, at the judgment, God is going to separate the sheep from the goats and the sheep who are going to be with him in the kingdom are the kinds of people who had so much grace in their life, that the most natural thing for them to do was to feed the hungry and give a cup of water to the thirsty, and to clothe those who were naked and visit those who are in prison.

This is the nature and the character of God. So how then do we go about righting wrongs? How do we do that? Well, I want to lay some things out for you. I wish I had more time to spend on each one of these, but I'm going to give you some nuggets that I believe will help you as you begin to think about righting the wrongs in your life that God is nudging you to right. Here's the first one. Seek to understand others. Seek to understand what's the upstream problem and issue that's creating this situation or this problem. That is, be curious about the 'why' behind another person's troubled plight. Why do people become marginalized? Why do people seem to be stuck in poverty? Why are people vulnerable and without a voice? Well, believe it or not, the Bible gives us three reasons that I think are actually still present today.

First of all, there are systems of injustice structures in a culture that keep people pressed down. In Israel, there were judges who favored the rich and the powerful over those who were vulnerable. Also in Israel, there were people who loaned money at exorbitant interest. There were actually payday loan people back in the time of Israel. There were unjust, low wages. You can read about those in Jeremiah 22. There was a mistreatment of the immigrants who came along beside them. And when you read Amos, Ezekiel, Micah, and Isaiah, they clearly blame the wealthy for the gap between the poor and the rich. There are systems in place, structures that are truly upstream problems.

Here's another thing that causes people to be stuck. It's calamity or catastrophe. In Genesis chapter 47, verse 13, we read about the famine in Israel that all the food was eaten and they had no more food. And that's why Jacob sent some of his sons to go to Egypt, to try to buy food there. Earthquake, hurricane, all these kinds of things are natural calamities. I think about the country of Haiti right now. It is an absolute chaos and disarray, but one earthquake after another and hurricane, and it is incredibly difficult for them to ever have any kind of order to come out of that. They are really victims of calamity, among other things.

And here's a third reason why people get stuck in injustice and vulnerability and poverty. And here it is, it's their own personal irresponsibility. In Proverbs 6:6-7, people, some are lazy and slothful, some people are engaged in addictive behavior and they become addicted and it affects their ability to care for their own needs. There are people who have and experience moral failures, and there is the loss of reputation and the ruin that financially comes with that, and it even compromises their health.

Three things, oppress of structures, calamity, and personal responsibility. Those three things are still with us today. And if you really want to help right a wrong, be curious about why they are struggling still. Now, the next thing to do is to then try to understand the what of another person's story. Why is this person, what is going on in their life? And I remember when I first really got struck by having to ask this question. It was in 2015. I had just moved to McKinney, and that's when there was a pool party that got out of hand somewhere in McKinney, and a policeman tackled a 15 year old African American woman. It went viral. And so I was invited with a group of pastors to meet black pastors and white pastors in the city hall in McKinney. How can we work through this? How can we care for one another, and all this?

When that meeting was over, I happened to find myself in a conversation with two other McKinney pastors of smaller churches who had been pastors for 30 years. One of them was white. One was black. And in our conversation, the white pastor asked the black pastor, "In your 30 years here as a pastor in McKinney, how many times have you been pulled over?" And without a beat, he says 62.

He said, "I've lived here for 30 years. I've been pulled over twice and I deserved it both times." And I went, "Hmm."

I want to understand the 'what' of other people's plights. What's going on in this? And before I can really right a wrong, I have to understand the why. Then the next thing to do is then we simply start working for justice. We have to work at it. It's not just going to happen on its own. We have to be a part of the solution. And the first place you want to start is by working for justice in your own life. In Matthew chapter five, verse 23 and 24 Jesus says, "So if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the temple, and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifices to God."

What he's saying is if you are going to be righting wrongs, don't be looking at other people first. Look at your own life. How have you perpetrated injustice with your words and your actions and your behaviors? And make amends first. Then what you need to do, what I need to do, is to then work for justice with the right attitude. And this is incredibly important, especially in our day. Micah 6:8 is perhaps the best known text in all the Old Testament about doing justice. "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."

Now I can tell you right now in this divided cancel culture, there are a lot of people who are trying to promote justice. Right? Solutions. But there's not a lot of mercy in their heart and spirit. There's not a lot of evidence of them walking humbly with God, recognizing they might be wrong, or they might could learn something from other people as well. So when you and I, as followers of Jesus, start righting wrongs, and we want to do justice, we are to do it with the heart of mercy and humbly recognizing we may also be part of the problem too along the way.

Now here's something that I want you to be aware of. And this is what's coming back to me is this: is it how you and I work for justice, try to right a wrong in our life, is a window into our own souls and understanding of the grace of God in our own lives. Here's what I've learned. For those people in Jesus [inaudible 00:24:58], for those who are forgiven much and recognize how much they've needed God's grace in their own life, they're the ones who are most easily, the ones who most mercifully go and extend grace and help and justice to others.

So if you're not very merciful and you're not really all that interested in righting wrongs and dealing with upstream problems, it may be because you don't really understand how much grace God has given you, that you didn't deserve Christ's life. We didn't deserve his blessing. All that we have is grace. So when we look at someone stuck in poverty, we don't go, "They don't deserve it, man." No, I don't deserve mercy, but I've been given it.

So to do justice with the right attitude is incredibly important. And then we want to work for justice with the right weapons. And second Corinthians chapter 10: 3-4 we read these words: "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds."

Here's what I want you to know. You have three very powerful weapons at your disposal. Now the first one, I'm not [inaudible 00:26:32] you, I promise, is prayer. Okay? I know that's always the answer, right? But here's the thing. Gary Haugen and his book Just Courage, and I've heard him speak before. This past year, they rescued 8,671 women and families from slavery and sex trafficking around the world. They don't use guns. They don't have an office or any power. But every day at IJM, they begin the day with 30 minutes of silence, so they can reflect on their mission, what God is calling them to, how gracious he's been. Then they get to work. Then at 11 o'clock, they all gather again together and they pray for 30 minutes together. And Gary Haugen says, "The reason why we do that is that we're desperate. We have people around the world in the most dangerous of places, unarmed, except with the power of God. And so we pray." So if you want to right a wrong, prayer is one of your most powerful weapons.
And then simply to speak up, to use your voice. I already read Proverbs chapter 31:8-9. There is incredible power just when you and I step up and speak up. When someone at work is being treated unjustly or someone in the neighborhood or someone that you see on the street, whatever the case is, your voice has an incredible amount of power. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke up on a dream speech and it literally shifted the world tectonically. Your voice matters, and then your influence. You can call a friend and share with them your concern. You can speak and have a conversation with an elected official. You can vote. These are all ways that we can use our influence. But here's the thing. We have to work for justice with the spirit of courage and resolve.

Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
One of the most incredible stories of this kind of working for justice is in the story of William Wilberforce, who was the person primarily responsible for the abolition of slavery in Great Britain. In 1780, he became a member of Parliament. In 1785, he became a follower of Jesus. He didn't just pray a prayer so he could go to heaven and not hell. He followed Jesus. And by 1787, he started working to abolish slavery in Great Britain. He worked for 20 years, and in 1807 they passed the Slave Trade Act, outlawing slave trading. But he worked another 26 years before they finally passed the Slavery Abolition Act and outlawed slavery in Great Britain. A man who labored and did justice for 46 years. That's what it takes.

So how are we going to overcome? How are we going to right a wrong? We want to seek to understand, and then we want to work for justice. And here's the third thing. We want to do so, pursuing God's kingdom. God's kingdom is our north star. It is our primary loyalty. And what I mean by this, it means that we must pursue God's will and God's values above all other values. As we think about this, now we are living, have you all noticed, in a hyper politicized world, and it's very easy for Christians, me included, but a lot of us, to begin to bend our religious or our spiritual thinking around our political ideology, rather than shaping our political ideology around God's word and what God wants us to know and understand.

And here's something. Now I'm speaking of generalizations, and I know there it's always dangerous, but here's the deal. We have two forces in our country right now. We have the left and the right. Right? Now on the left, most often they're the ones who are talking about connecting with the structures of oppression or poverty or the marginalized or the minority, but when it comes to personal morality and sexuality, it's like no holds barred. I mean, it's all off. We don't have any of those values. On the right, we really tend to focus on traditional sexual values, but when it comes to the regulation of business and money and managing wealth, you go, "Hey, don't regulate that," forgetting that Paul even wrote, "do you not know that it is the love of money that is the root of all evil?"

So here's what I want you to realize. If you start following Jesus and you allow him to shape your thinking, you're going to have people on the left and the right who don't agree with you, and they're going to be upset with you, and they may even write something negative about you. Right? But the point is we have to let our understanding of God's word and God's character shape our political views, not the other way around. Now, there's a text in Amos 2:7. I want you to see it's on the screen. And Amos gets at both of these. He writes, speaking of Israel, "They trample helpless people in the dust and shove the oppressed out of the way. And both father and son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy name." And what Amos is saying. God wants us to have moral integrity personally, and also work alongside of him for justice in the world.

So, I hate to dive into politics, but that's kind of where we are today. And so some of you might be relieved to know that I am all for MAGA. I am all for Making America Great Again. However, how you define great is the issue. Who defines great for you? Is it a politician, or is it God's word and Jesus? If your idea of greatness is nothing but power and dominance and money and wealth, you might be missing what Jesus had to say. But if you understand, indeed, that greatness is letting justice roll down like a river, and that they're marginalized and the vulnerable and the voiceless are carried alongside and cared for and treated equitably and encouraged along the way, then we will be great.

And guess what? When we allow God to define greatness, we have a promise that God will be on our side. Maybe you've never thought about that. But in Isaiah 58:6-9, this is what he writes: "Free those who are wrongly imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them."

Now, listen to this. "Then your salvation will come down like the dawn, and your wounds will quickly heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then when you call, the Lord will answer. 'Yes, I am here. I will reply quickly.'"

If we want God to be on our side, we have to be on the side of the people on whose side he is. And then, we also have to understand to pursue God's kingdom means that we pursue God's kingdom above all other kingdoms. In Matthew 6:9-10 we have the Lord's prayer, and Jesus prays, "Our father in heaven, may your name be kept holy." Now, listen. "May your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." He didn't say, may your kingdom come, your will be done in Israel as it is in heaven. He said on earth.

And if you are a follower of Jesus, your primary citizenship is in heaven. You are a citizen of all the earth, and citizens of heaven don't play favorites with their own nation or their own tribe or their own people. They are just concerned about the needs of people around the world, because our prayer is that God's kingdom will come on all the earth as it does in heaven. And that's why I'm so excited for you to see this particular video of Ryan and Ashley Lee, who are part of our church, who have gone halfway around the world to right a wrong. Take a look.

We are Ryan and Ashley Lee, actually long distance members of the Preston Trail family from Chiang Mai, Thailand, 12 hours on the other side of the world. And in 2017, after 13 years of working corporate jobs and myself in demand planning and Ashley in project management, decided to move to Thailand after the Global Leadership Summit. After 18 months of discipleship training and fundraising, we moved from McKinney, Texas to Thailand to help girls caught in the sex trafficking industry.
Yeah, our hearts have always been with girls who are oppressed, and we know that, that's where God was calling us. Thailand is a sex capital for westerners, and we just knew that we wanted to come here and work with these women, specifically women the bars who felt stuck.

Yeah, underprivileged. Statistics actually show that Bangkok is the number one destination, prior to COVID, for travelers worldwide, surpassing London, Paris, Rome. 33 million visitors in 2016, making up about 20% of GDP, and much of this is for those who want to visit sex [inaudible 00:37:50].

So about a year ago, we started bringing food packages to one of the red light districts here in Chiang Mai, and just meeting that basic because of COVID shutdowns. But as we did that, we really got to know the women and started falling in love with them and developing relationships, just learning about their lives and about them, many of whom are single mothers, and they're just trying to make ends meet or trying to make money to send back to their families.

When you come to the bars here as a foreigner, you would see girls smiling and willing to meet whatever you need. However, when you know them, you find out they do not like what they do. They do not like being a number. They do not like lowering their self-esteem to let men touch them so they can sell more alcohol and make more money. We know the girls work out of a need to support themselves and their family, but are very open to opportunities outside the bars, if they can find them.

So here at the Illumin8 Community Center, we provide about 90 food packets every month to these women. The bars are still closed. So that's a great open door to start a relationship and keep a relationship. But also Ryan teaches personal finance and budgeting, and many women are interested in that, here at the center, and also other ministries where he's been invited to teach these classes. And then I teach English and baking. That's one of my passions, and that's been really fun to see the girls learning and kind of blossoming through the baking classes. And we both work to make disciples. Ryan works with men, and then I work with women, and we just want to follow that path of making a friend, meeting a need, a real need, and eventually making disciples who make disciples, because they find and fall in love with Jesus.

And everything we do, it's built on discipleship, which the foundation of which is friendship. It's not easy. We combat things like low self-esteem, drug and alcohol addiction, and we hear the girls say, "Why do you come for me? Why do you do this? Because I'm not a good person."

They want to know what drives us, but we want the girls to know they are loved without condition and without judgment. We are willing to walk with them towards a better life outside the bars. We see these girls as leaders of tomorrow, that general society overlooks today. But just is the great leaders of the Bible, God takes those who are sometimes pretty messed up to create the leaders of the church tomorrow.

So we just want to thank you at Preston Trail for being our family. Even so far away, we still consider you family, and we just really appreciate everyone who has supported us and prayed with us from the very beginning as we walked along this journey to get this community center up and running.

Pretty inspirational, huh? But here's the good news. You don't have to go halfway around the world to right a wrong. Where you live, work, and play there will be opportunities. And my hope and prayer for all of us, Lord is it will have the courage and the curiosity and the willingness to work however we need to, to right the wrong that you show us. Lord, that's our prayer today in Jesus name. Can't thank you guys enough for being here. If we can pray for any of you today, you're walking through some difficult you moments in your life, our prayer team will be over here at the cross.

And next week, come back. Paul will be here and he'll be sharing with us how, and when we go to be prepared to share our story, to tell the good news, and you don't want to miss that. And just remember, as we seek to grow more and more as followers of Jesus, we do so because we want to be equipped and prepared to go wherever he leads us. And so, we go in that spirit today. God bless each of you. See you next time.



Recorded in Frisco, Texas.