Well, good morning, everybody. It’s lovely to be together this morning and a welcome to those joining us online. I hope that you can hear and join in with everything that’s happening here. If you’re here for the first time, we’re having two sermons last week in this, which are a bit more topical than we usually have. So last week, Hugh preached on humanity in a world lived online. And this morning we’re thinking about righteousness in a world that demands justice. So we will look at those two passages that sue has just read for us, but we won’t be going through them verse by verse as we normally would. But we’re going to ask for the Lord’s help at the start of our sermon. So why don’t we pray together? Lord Jesus, you are the righteous one. We’ve just read of you in that Isaiah reading, the righteous servant. We pray that you would shine your light onto this issue of injustice and into our thinking and into our hearts. We pray your Holy Spirit would be our teacher today. And we ask this for your namesake. Amen. Amen. Well, earlier this year, Rishi Sunak, then prime minister, stood at the dispatch box in the House of Commons and described the post office scandal as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in british history. And at around the same time, the report of the infected blood inquiry was published, describing, I quote, systemic, collective and individual failures to deal ethically, appropriately and quickly with the risk of infection from contaminated blood. It’s estimated that over the years, more than 20,000 patients on the NHS were directly affected and hundreds of thousands in their families were affected. And the compensation scheme is expected to run to 20 billion. Injustice on this scale is mercifully rare in our country, protected as it still is by its heritage of christian values. The fact that miscarriages of justice like this make the headlines only underlines how rare they are. But that is not true for many parts of the world. We might think of the imprisonment of the Uyghur Muslims in northwest China, or the wide scale murder of Christians in northern Nigeria. Or the fact that, according to the World Health Organisation, one in three people on this planet does not have access to clean drinking water. We live in a world that is not just, that is not fair, that is not as God intended it to be. And here we are. However, whatever our circumstances, we live in the west, in the top 1% of the wealthiest in the world, and yet every one of us, I’m sure, has experienced injustice of one kind or another, albeit on a different scale. But we’ve not received always what we deserved. Maybe we’ve been passed over for promotion at work because of office politics, or we’ve been cheated financially or cheated on in a relationship, or have suffered manipulative or abusive behaviour of one kind or another. Who here has never been lied against or lied about or deliberately misrepresented by somebody else? Or suffered discrimination of one kind or another? Or been silenced or ignored? Why is the world unfair? And what’s the answer? Well, in recent years, a powerful secular ideology has made deep inroads into western culture and into much of the church, and it has attempted to answer those questions to those who support it. It is called the social justice ideology, social justice movement, and it’s a powerful ideology that has sucked up lots of other causes. So now we talk about racial justice, climate justice, reproductive justice. Issues that previous generations campaigned on are intensified when the word justice is added to them. Income equality, food security, LGBTQ rights, cybersecurity, privacy. The list goes on and on. These are now understood and presented as issues of justice. Now, this morning, we’re going to think about. There we are. Thank you, Glenn. One problem. That’s it. Injustice. Two explanations and our response. One problem. And we have to start by saying that the social justice ideology has indeed identified that has identified something that is wrong with our world. As christians, we can agree with that. There is injustice in our world. And the Bible is shockingly realistic. As Hugh reminded us, it doesn’t present a whiter than white religious make believe account of our world. Sue, read to us from ecclesiastes, chapter four. I saw the tears of the oppressed, and they have no comforter. Power was on the side of the oppressor, and they have no comforters. This was written 3000 years ago by Solomon, king of Israel. It describes what he calls life under the sun, a life in a world that has airbrushed God out of the picture. A world of injustice. And social justice campaigners feel passionately about it. Gen Z, those born in the nineties and the early two thousands are politically active in a way that my generation certainly hasn’t been. Their strength of feeling about injustice ought to challenge me and many western christians who don’t often feel the Bible’s passion for justice and righteousness. As we’ll see, these social justice issues are all things that christians, too, should feel passionate about. We, too should talk about righteousness and justice. But it’s no good using the same vocabulary if we’re using different dictionaries. So for the rest of the sermon, I’d like us to compare two accounts, two explanations, two understandings of injustice, the explanation of the social justice movement and the explanation of the Bible of the gospel. We’re going to do that by looking at three who am I? What’s the problem with the world? And what’s the solution? Who am I? What’s the problem with the world? What’s the solution? Let’s start with the first who am I? In the social justice movement, group is everything. My identity is entirely defined by what group I belong to. And those groups are almost entirely based on my race, my sex and my gender identity, personal history, life experience, choices, my beliefs. They don’t really count for very much. The only thing that really matters in defining who I am is what group I belong to, my affiliations. So, for example, my sexuality is not about my behaviour, what I do, it’s about my identity, who I am. And if you don’t affirm that, then you are denying my humanity and there’s no forgiveness. Now, the consequence of that, it’s very serious. Rather than celebrating diversity as the social justice ideology claims to do, my identity is defined by a very few categories. Individuals are reduced to being mouthpieces of the groups they belong to. But if you belong to a group but don’t share the beliefs of that group, then you are considered to be a traitor and you must be quiet. So these are the words of Ayanna Pressley, a black female congresswoman from Michigan. She said in a speech in 2019. Her words, we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice, we don’t need any more black faces that don’t want to be a black voice, we don’t need any more muslims that don’t want to be a muslim voice, we don’t need any queers that don’t want to be a queer voice. In other words, what she’s saying is if you look like you belong to a group, but you don’t share that group’s beliefs, we don’t want to hear from you. Your voice isn’t welcome. Is that a celebration of diversity? It looks to me a lot like oppressive conformity, by contrast. Is there a better way? Well, the Bible says that whoever we are, however we identify ourselves, whatever our ethnicity or age or sex or gender, we are infinitely valuable and loved by goddess. We belong to different groups and for sure they shape us, but they dont define us. Our identity is freely and lovingly given to us by the God who made us. We are fearfully and wonderfully made in his image, whoever we are, so precious to him, each one of us, that he would send his son into this world to die on a cross, to reconcile us to himself, to forgive us our sins through his blood, to bring us back into fellowship with him and with one another. The christian faith, you see, affirms that despite all the differences that there might be between us, underneath what unites us as a race is greater and stronger. The ideology of social justice can only divide us because it has no basis for unity. The good news of Jesus is uniquely able to affirm our unity while celebrating our diversity. So that’s who am I? The first question answered by social justice, answered by the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s look at our second question. What’s the problem with the world? What’s the fundamental problem? In the ideology of social justice? The answer can be expressed in one oppression. In this worldview, evil doesn’t originate from our human hearts at all. There’s no doctrine of the fall or human depravity. Rather, evil and sin is found outside of us, in the systems of this world. Oppressive structures and institutions and cultural norms that perpetuate the inequalities and privileges that some have enjoyed over others. Where there are differences between groups, the ideology of social justice assumes that the cause must lie with institutional oppression. One example recently, if 80% of Google’s software engineers are male, this must be because of systemic male privilege and sexism. But is that right? Could men and women have different psychologies, different life experiences, different interests? These are dangerous questions even to ask in our culture, even in church. The cultural narrative in the west is increasingly that over the centuries, straight white males have established and maintained power structures to oppress and subjugate women, people of colour, sexual minorities. One influential american essayist, Ta Nehisi Coates, for example, claims that our fundamental human problem is whiteness, which he describes as an existential danger to the world. The power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief of being white, and without it, white people would cease to exist for want of reasons. Now, I don’t know how you respond to this kind of thing. This is what your children and grandchildren are growing up with and what we hear every day through the media. Silicon Valley tech millionaire, billionaire, and LGBTQ activist Tim Gillenhezen sources evil to the judeo christian sexual ethic. He’s using his enormous wealth to advance his moral agenda. Describing it this we are going into the hardest states in the country. We are going to punish the wicked. And who are the wicked? Those who uphold traditional understandings of sexuality and marriage, they are wicked. In his view, social justice does not believe that I can love you even if I disagree with you. Dividing the world into oppressors and victims can only lead to division and hatred. By definition, victims are morally innocent and should be heard. Oppressors are guilty and should be silenced. Ideologies that draw that good versus evil line between different groups are not just wrong, but they’re dangerous. If this group is good and that group is evil, then it’s very easy for me to dehumanise the evil group. And despite the best intentions of the social ideology, followers, and many of them have very good intentions. The ideology itself cannot help undermining civility in our country, replacing it with hatred and division and tribalism. It becomes very hard to discuss complicated issues. Discussion is stifled. If I don’t support what to you is clearly a matter of justice, then I must be being deliberately unjust. It’s no wonder that public debate feels angrier and our society more divided than it has for a very long time. Well, that is the social justice ideology answer to what’s wrong with our world. What does the Bible have to say? What is the good news of Jesus? Well, first we have to say, despite those who try to weaponize the Bible in a culture war, we have to say the social justice movement is onto something. The Bible shows that, yes, individuals and institutions are prone to abuse their power and perpetuate privilege. There are oppressive structures that need exposing and reforming. But the gospel says that all that, as awful as it is, is just a symptom. And the root cause is far deeper and far wider than social justice ideologues understand. The problem lies in our hearts. Consider these words from the Bible, psalm 51 five. Surely, David says, I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Guilt isn’t confined to a few narrow groups like straight white males. Paul’s letter to the Romans that we’ve been reading over recent weeks says, there is no one righteous, not even one. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You may remember the name Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who was exiled and finally expelled from the Soviet Union, who famously wrote, the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart. He’s echoing the Bible. Our rebellion against God has resulted in broken relationships, an enmity and injustice of every kind, between the sexes, between the generations, between ethnic groups, between humanity and the world we live in between God and the human race. Injustice and exploitation are real. They are the fruit of the sin that lies in the hearts of every one of us on this planet. So we’re comparing two worldviews, two accounts of injustice, that in the ideology of the social justice movement and that in the gospel. And we’re looking at those questions, who am I? What’s the problem? Number three, as we come to an end, what’s the solution? What’s the solution? Well, social justice says in terms of individuals, victims are innocent, they don’t need saving. Oppressors must be cancelled, but they can never be forgiven or pardoned. There is no atonement. There is no pardon. Nothing is ever enough to atone for present sins or the sins of previous generations. In terms of structures, if the fundamental problem is oppression, the fundamental answer is revolution. Victims and their allies must unite and unmask and overthrow oppressive systems and structures. And at the heart of this is the traditional family structure which delivers unfair advantages to those brought up in it. So it is claimed. So two professors, Adam Swift from Warwick and Harry Brighthouse from Wisconsin, write, if the family is the source of unfairness in society, then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family, there would be a more level playing field. Black Lives Matter was not alone four years ago in having, as one of its explicit aims on its website to disrupt the western prescribed nuclear family. There is no live and let live tolerance. No place for forgiveness, no grace, no love your enemy. In the social justice movement, there is only division, condemnation, cancelling, tearing down. It’s often been said that those who have tried to bring heaven down to earth have only succeeded in bringing hell up from below. But what does the Bible say? Is there a better way? Well, the Bible says revolution is needed, but it is a revolution of the heart. In terms of institutions, yes, there are oppressive systems that need changing. In terms of individuals, the gospel announces that every one of us is guilty and unrighteous, and God will bring justice one day. Isaiah 42, we read it together. God the Father points to his son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and says, here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. In faithfulness, he will bring forth justice. He will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. There will be justice, but only one man can really bring it, the Lord Jesus Christ, the man who has the spirit of God. Without measure, God has seen and will bring into judgement every injustice, every abuse, every exploitation, everyone who thought they got away with it in this world, they will stand before him. We will all stand before him. Justice will be done. Two, Peter 313 says that Christ is coming back and will usher in a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. But compared with that perfect righteousness, every one of us here this morning, left to ourselves, falls short. We are unrighteous by nature, we are guilty. But on the cross, God himself, in the person of his son, carried our sins and took that just punishment that we deserved. And he did it so that he could rescue us from his wrath and make us right with him, or in the Bible’s language, justify us. And more than that, his death and resurrection have opened the way in this life for relationships to be reconciled. The cross is God’s answer to injustice. I was reading about the history of the church in Uganda recently and the appointment years ago, 1966, of the first black archbishop there, Erica Sabiti. Maybe it’s a name that is familiar to some of you. He was consecrated archbishop at a time when the church was threatened with disunity and the whole nation indeed was divided along tribal and political lines. And in his first sermon as archbishop, he pointed to the cross as the answer to all the problems. This is what he said. He said all our unhappy divisions, political, denominational, tribal and racial, disappear at the foot of the cross, where we meet as sinners before a saviour, where we allow the Lord Jesus to rule our lives. There we grow together as a family. We are one in him. We are called by God to serve all his children of all tribes and races, to bring them to Christ and to become living stones in his church. Only the cross is big enough to unite us. Dallas Willard, there on the screen, american philosopher who died recently, repeated the revolution of Jesus is a revolution of the human heart. He said, it doesn’t proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, but by changing people from the inside. So this morning we thought about one issue in justice. We thought about two explanations that provided by the social justice movement and that offered to us in the gospel. And we’ve seen that while the social justice movement is right in recognising the evil of injustice and is passionate in its commitment to right wrongs, and it’s a challenge to many of us, yet it doesn’t come close to understanding how big the problem really is, and therefore what the answer is. The cross of Christ. So how should we respond as christians today? Should we be involved in issues of social justice? Should they matter to us, or should we see them as a distraction from our priority of sharing the message of Christ? Years ago, I attended a meeting of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, which is the umbrella organisation of christian unions all around the world. And there in the room there were delegates from Europe and North America who spoke passionately about the need to share the message of the gospel in a secular world. And also on the platform, there were delegates from Latin America and Asia who spoke equally passionately about the importance of being involved in matters of social justice. Drugs, corruption, human trafficking. The relationship between evangelism and social action have been discussed for years by christians. I find John Stott’s explanation of how the two fit together very helpful. He said, faith leads to love and love leads to service. So social activity, which is the loving service of the needy, should be the inevitable result of saving faith. That’s not always the case. Social action isn’t all done by christians, and not all christians get involved in social action. But, he went on, evangelism is the major instrument of social change, for the gospel changes people and changed people can change society. Well, how about this from Lord Griffiths? Brian Griffiths writing 40 years ago. He was one of Margaret Thatcher’s economic advisers and he wrote this in a book about Christianity and economics. Christianity starts with faith in Christ and finishes with service to the world. Obedience to Christ demands change. The world becomes his world. We see it differently. The poor, the weak, the suffering become men and women and children created in his image. Injustice is an affront to his creation. Despair, indifference and aimlessness are replaced by hope, responsibility and purpose. And above all, selfishness is transformed by love. Well, I’m delighted that here at All Saints, not only with our giving do we support overtly and explicitly word based evangelism mission agencies, but we also support, as we’ve prayed for them, the Kamino Felix Orphanage in Romania, Tier Fund, the Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund, the Haven Crisis Pregnancy Centre in Burgess Hill, Anne at Christmas Crawley, open house, family support, work and others. This week, if you’ve read in All Saints news, work begins on the tiger building. We want to use that building more to meet the needs of our village and local area in the name of Christ, creating what we might call gospel pathways for people to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and his love and forgiveness. Evangelism is a logical priority. The gospel changes people and changed people change society. Should we be involved? Yes. As Christians, we should be involved in issues of social justice, but we don’t share the ideology of the social justice movement. What is needed the revolution that is needed is what George Werwer, founder of Operation Mobilisation, called the revolution of love. So shall we pray and ask that the Lord would change our hearts where they need to be changed. Fill our hearts with love and with a passion for his justice in this world and give us courage to trust him, to hold fast to his gospel and his answer to the needs of this world. Let’s pray.