IT’S NOT FAIR !!!!! It’s just not fair! We see such dreadful things on the television and read them in the newspapers every day. Terrible things happen to our neighbours and friends. Things can even happen to us. People make up lies about each other. People betray each other and hurt each other and even kill each other. Evil people lie and steal their way to the top and good people are crushed under their feet. Innocent people suffer while guilty people get away with murder. Let’s face it – this world just isn’t a fair place!!!
Jesus said “the rain falls upon the just and the unjust alike.” The snow also falls upon the just and the unjust alike, after which the just slips up and breaks his leg on the snow which the unjust hasn’t bothered to clear away! That’s the kind of world we live in.
And that’s the kind of world God became man to redeem. Jesus knows all about injustice because He has experienced it first hand! Nowhere did Jesus experience the injustice, the essential unfairness of this world as much as at His trials – first before the Jewish Council of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin, and then before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.
Jesus experienced FALSE ACCUSATIONS
Mt 26:59 The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward.
CONDEMNED FOR SPEAKING THE TRUTH
Matt 26:63b The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”
64 “Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
65 Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, now you have heard the blasphemy.
Film “A few good men” Jack Nicholson -“You don’t want the truth! You couldnt handle the truth!” All most people really want is the comfortable lie!”
RIGGED TRIALS
Matthew 27: 1. Early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death.
UNJUST IMPRISONMENT
27: 2 They bound him, led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the governor.
He was bound that we might go free.
MISUNDERSTANDING
27: 11. Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied.
JEALOUSY ABOUNDS!
27: 15 Now it was the governor’s custom at the Feast to release a prisoner chosen by the crowd. 16 At that time they had a notorious prisoner, called Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” 18 For he knew it was out of envy that they had handed Jesus over to him.
THE INNOCENT DIE and the GUILTY GET OFF FREE
27: 20 But the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus executed. 21 “Which of the two do you want me to release to you?” asked the governor. “Barabbas,” they answered. 22 “What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?” Pilate asked. They all answered, “Crucify him!” 23 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate. But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
GOOD MEN DOING NOTHING
27: 24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
“All it needs for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” Edmund Burke c18
Martin Niemoller, German pastor, victim of Nazi concentration camp:-
“In Germany, they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me – and by that time no one was left to speak up.” –
IT’S NOT FAIR! The world is not a fair place. False accusations. Condemnation for speaking the truth. Rigged trials. Unjust imprisonment. Misunderstanding. Victims of jealousy. The innocent dying while the guilty get off free. So often, good men doing nothing – so evil triumphs!
HOW DO WE COPE WITH SUCH AN UNFAIR WORLD ?
1 – TRUST IN THE GOD WHO HAS BEEN HERE !!!
Jesus has faced all this injustice. HE WALKED WHERE I WALK!
And God still IS here – suffering with us!!
HOW DO WE COPE WITH SUCH AN UNFAIR WORLD?
2 – TRUST IN THE GOD WHO ONE DAY WILL PUT RIGHT ALL WRONGS
There will come one day a personal and direct touch from God when every tear and perplexity, every oppression and distress, every suffering and pain, and wrong and injustice will have a complete and ample and overwhelming explanation. Oswald Chambers (1874–1917)
Psalms 37: 1. Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; 2 for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.
7. Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.
12 The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them; 13 but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.
14 The wicked draw the sword and bend the bow to bring down the poor and needy, to slay those whose ways are upright. 15 But their swords will pierce their own hearts, and their bows will be broken.
REMEMBER – often justice may take a long time in coming, but it isn’t over until God says its over! (x2)
27: 25 All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”
The rulers, the priests, and the people united in accepting responsibility for the death of Christ While Pilate could not be absolved from responsibility for this miscarriage of justice, the nation itself accepted responsibility for Christ’s death. Justice DID come – but not for many years.
Judas died in a loathsome suicide, the house of Annas was destroyed some years later, Caiaphas was deposed a year after the crucifixion, and Pilate was soon after banished to Gaul and there died in suicide.
Thirty years later, on this very spot, judgment was pronounced against some of the best citizens of Jerusalem. Of the 3,600 victims of the governor’s fury, not a few were scourged and crucified! When Jerusalem fell, her wretched citizens were crucified around her walls until, in the historian’s grim language, “space was wanting for the crosses, and crosses for the bodies.” The horrors of the siege of Jerusalem are unparalleled in history. “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”
HOW DO WE COPE WITH SUCH AN UNFAIR WORLD?
3 – TRUST IN GOD’S GRACE
When world seems to be winning it’s easy to feel that God has abandoned us, that God has let us down, that God doesnt love us any more! We need to trust that God is still with us, even when the whole world is against us!!!
Trust that God can bring good despite evil. Trust that God can work out His purposes DESPITE the unfairness of the world.
Lewis B. Smedes, How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is Wrong? :-
“Grace does not make everything right. Grace’s trick is to show us that it is right for us to live; that it is truly good, wonderful even, for us to be breathing and feeling at the same time that everything clustering around us is wholly wretched. … Grace is not a potion to charm life to our liking …. Grace does not cure all our cancers, transform all our kids into winners, or send us all soaring into the high skies of sex and success. Grace is rather an amazing power to look earthy reality full in the face, see its sad and tragic edges, feel its cruel cuts, join in the primeval chorus against its outrageous unfairness, and yet feel in your deepest being that it is good and right for you to be alive on God’s good earth. Grace is power, I say, to see life very clearly, admit it is sometimes all wrong, and still know that somehow, in the center of your life, “It’s all right.”
The world is not a fair place. False accusations. Condemnation for speaking the truth. Rigged trials. Unjust imprisonment. Misunderstanding. Jealousy. The innocent dying while the guilty get off free. So often, good men doing nothing! IT’S NOT FAIR!!! But that’s the world Jesus has lived in! That’s the world Jesus came to save. May God give us the grace to know that deep down, even when everything is wrong, “It IS all right”, and the grace to show God’s kind of love in it!!!
