greetings and to have you guys back with us again we're going to continue our study of the 21st century church this will be the uh a live session in that last class in that session uh then we're going to shift over and start teaching another subject matter so some exciting things it's good to have you back with us again uh we're excited about what god is continuing to do in our time in our nation and within the uh within the context of the church there's some exciting things going on that we're going to share in this particular lesson uh before we begin today we're just going to take a moment to pray i pray that all of you are doing well your family is healthy that you are enjoying yourself and join the quality of life that you uh that god has designed for all of us so i'm excited about that and i'm glad to have you a part of this particular lesson once again so let us pray father almighty god we thank you for the grace and the mercy that you have shown each and every one of us we can never say thank you enough we can never worship you enough sometimes my lord we find it kind of awkward because we don't even know what words to say to a mighty god to a person in the form of the holy spirit that lives within us constantly encouraging us and to the redemptive work of christ on calvary's cross all we can say is thank you from the depth of our heart for the love that you've shown us and the compassion you've given us my father our father thank you in jesus name amen uh we are going to continue our study of the 21st century church we have had five lessons in this series five lessons and this is the last lesson in this particular series uh then we're gonna shift over next week you'll be moving into the next level which is another four week series of lessons and the way these lessons are designed there's a theme there's a major theme like the 21st century so everything that we have discussed in the last five weeks is about the 21st century church that has been the focus we dealt with different aspects of the church we began that study with cultivating a positive culture that the church primarily needs at this stage of his existence need to really focus a little bit more attention on the culture of the church which means the behavior the values and the beliefs of the church so we did a deep dive on that so i won't repeat that you got the lesson you got the book so please do not just because we stopped studying it continue to study because it's a very important part of what god is doing here in our church and the church in america secondly we talked about the second let's focus on the marks of a healthy church got a lot of feedback about that that we have not always looked at the church as being healthy unhealthy we've not always looked at it from that perspective and the way that we have normally determined the healthy church is through you know budgets through size of buildings sides of the congregation but that does not necessarily mean that the church is healthy because we have a lost budget or we have multiple campuses god determines health by the spiritual awareness the spiritual activity the spiritual relationship that the people have their growth their discipleship so god has a different priority of determining whether or not a church is healthy but we looked at that as we looked at the healthy church then we went on and took a look at uh first impression we realized that people come to church every day and every sunday i share with you briefly that uh every sunday morning the holy spirit wakes up a whole group of people and they send them to your local church and when they come to that church how are they greeted how are they received how are they received as a guest within the body of christ the church always have to continue to work on its ability to be appealing and be open to new people that comes into our congregation from the parking lot to the greeters to the ushers always being sensitive of the fact that you have new people within your congregation that may not understand how to worship may not understand what's going on within the dynamics of your church so we have to be very sensitive that and make a good impression because if the impression is good then the people will return for a second visit so we want to make sure that we do that and last week ken talked about uh media social media you he went into a deep dive of all the available resources and let me make sure you understand something that church during this pandemic had to shift greatly to social media in the tools and the technology associated with social media whether it would be using a uh live streaming which is one of the examples that people use on a continual basis uh whether we'll be using television as a means for doing uh doing that a live streaming to communicate to the congregation telephone calls emails facebook uh all of these great tools god has made available to the church to you so even today when this pandemic has ended those tools must be still actively involved because they reach an element of people that we may not come to church on sunday in the beginning see we have to continue to look for creative ways and we're going to discuss that in this particular lesson to use those two to kind of create an environment of opening as a portal to the unsight unsafe world a portal so those twos have always got to be a part of what we do we saw that clearly and so ken did an excellent job on that so i hope that was a blessing to you this week we're going to talk about adopting to a changing world the world that we are living in today is changing rapidly uh and the church must change but the church can never compromise we can change but we don't compromise and i want to make sure you understand that we can change just like we have to do in the pandemic but we don't check compromise on the gospel for which we preach and in the lesson today we're going to take a lot a deep dive on making some adoption uh changes with with in adopting our behavior and our methodology on doing church as we move forward so today we're going to do that now in this lesson also which this is the last lesson we are going to be sending you a test uh this will be your test for the 21st century church uh it's about in a part of that test is a survey we want you to evaluate your church if you're here at epic church we want you to evaluate epic church to determine whether or not it is healthy because that's our goal and we want you to be use whatever resources the knowledge base that you may have in order to make that determination but the questions will ask you to rate our effectiveness in 20 questions on our church if you have another church you put that church name in there and you rate that and then there's a scoring at the end of the test and you're going to score your church and you're going to return it back to me so that we can see areas that we have to work on now be honest about the test if you take the test and if you're finding out that the scores are not good that is good in one sense but not good in another sense in the form of being good it means that those are areas that we need to work on okay so we have identified the areas of the ministry that we have to work on okay so it is always good that you kind of take the test and be totally transparent as you look at the test so i have a test here it's about it's then there's a whole bunch of additional questions in this particular test that i want you to take the time to go through and take the test and and really get it back to me in about two weeks two weeks that's what we're looking for two weeks okay have it back to me and uh so we can kind of grade that because i don't want you to get behind because we're beginning another series of lessons for which we're gonna have to have a test for also now let's get ready to go into our lesson today okay again you're gonna receive two documents you're gonna receive you're actually gonna receive three in this particular case you're gonna get your powerpoint presentation for which we're gonna discuss here today you're also gonna get a course outline okay a course outline so i'm gonna begin with the course outline and talk about uh adopting to a changing world that's our course in outline okay daily life for people worldwide has been altered due to national health emergency now we know that there's a national health emergency called covert 19 so people lives have really really changed social upheaval social upheaval pandemics and national disasters are hard realities of living into a fallen world so people say why are we why are we going through so many hurricanes why are we having so many forest fires why are we having such difficulty uh earthquakes and and storms you know this year with the highest storm rate ever uh why are all of these things we are living in a fallen world we are living in a world system that has turned it back its back on the almighty god so this is a result there's no excuse for it but there's a reality that we must come to grips with living in the fallen world these things happen the need for social visioning has also reshaped our human interactions uh and affected the church and business and corporations greatly uh all of you know that you know we were closed from march to june the the in order to cartel or restrict and keep the pandemic under control we had to go to social justice as a christian you know that that is something that is that is basically something that the bible doesn't talks about we should never disrespect ourselves from people but we should always be present with people so there's a whole bunch of things that we need to do this crisis would be it should be a teachable moment for us this crisis if we learn from this crisis we will grow stronger as individuals stronger as a church stronger as a nation and stronger as a world we have to let this become a teachable moment for us and if we do that we can be we can be we can get far ahead in the direction that we go what should happen we need to reflect reflect on what's important we need to calibrate recalibrate recalibrate our actions our behavior and we need to reset we're not finished yet so we need to reset and change a course of directions on a lot of things that the church is doing a lot of things that the world is doing a lot of things that individuals are doing we need to reflect recalibrate and we need to reset because of what's going on around us so in this course of study today we're going to talk a lot about those things okay how do we reflect recalibrate and reset number two course learning objectives students will understand the difference between biblical justice and social justice and we're going to talk a lot about biblical justice and social justice because this is what's happening within our world system today and we have to be aware of it we have to understand it and we have to address it fortunately the bible provides specific directions and definitions and clarification on all of these subject matters that we are going to be talking about today number two the students will be able to articulate church approach to solving critical social problems in our community the church has to maintain its position and the question has been and still is number three uh students will be able to identify some of the top social issues facing the church and our nation we're gonna be able to do that identify that number four students will understand some of the post pandemic church recommended changes so there are going to be some recommended changes that should be taking place as a result of the pandemic that we need to deal with so we're going to kind of go through that whole process number three on roman number number three course expectations to read all the scriptures as we've always done a required reading the measure of the healthy church i hope that book is a is a blessing to you it was to me to really kind of take a look at that and understand the the approach that was taken in that course outline we're going to do an introduction uh on your course outline which is number five the course uh a church sense a sense of justice given to us by god every one of us every person every individual has a sense of justice that was given to us by god the church care for people doing pandemic and how the churches has responded to natural disasters should the church be involved with social issues there's a there's a big divide we'll discuss a little bit later on between whether a church or whether the church of the lord jesus christ should even be involved with social justices and social issues that are confronting the nation today and it's about 50 50 so that discussion has been going on that debate has been going on for a long time and still going on today and i'm going to show you some things that as we go through the whole process of of whether or not a church should be involved with social issues okay i'm not going to let the cat cat out of the bag right now and tell you my opinion but uh and supported by scripture of course i'm not going to do that but i will before this class is over you will know that clearly number two pandemics and the church okay pandemics does not in pandemic outbreaks and the church the church has endured uh and we're gonna go in a lot of detail a lot of pandemics a lot of disasters and the church has always uh responded and a portion of the church has responded not the church as a whole as a body okay the difference between social gospel and social justice there's something called social gospel and social justice we're going to talk and discuss that also a biblical response to social issues that's the key important what should be our biblical response to social justice number three biblical justice let does the bible define biblical justice does the bible define justice yes the bible does and we're going to take a look at biblical biblical uh justice of biblical righteousness versus biblical justice the bible has a lot to say about that that was a theme throughout the scriptures where god stood on the area of justice the combination of righteous and justice as as as gods have dictated from inscription we're going to seek justice love mercy walk humbly before god and man we're going to kind of understand what that really means number four the post-pandemic church can god use a pandemic to bring about changes in the church yes he can he can't use it he doesn't cause it but he can't use it because and the key element here is we start listening to god when tragedy strike that's the sadness of our behavior but whenever there's a difficult time we are more susceptible and open ourselves to god and god takes full advantage of whatever they see whatever the devil meant for bad god will turn it around for our good okay churches must bring clarity and focus to its mission that's something that the church has to do uh post-pandemic church okay community outreach must become a high priority in the proposed pandemic church churches will need to maintain an online presence we the church community should never go offline okay because people are now uh coming back to church we should maintain that presence of an online because online we reach more people initially with the gospel they will sit at their television or their set of their devices and they will receive a message from the gospel god will use that as a seed to bring them into the church so we should always have an online churches must equip and release people for ministry the issue that happens big issue one of the things that weakness of the church and the pandemic kind of brought it out is that there was a lot of people in the body of christ that were not prepared to stay at home not prepared they they depended upon coming to church for worship they depended upon coming to church for for for for fellowship and those things are good they also depended upon coming to church for their spiritual growth and development and the church is not responsible for every individual spiritual growth and development god placed that responsibility upon the individual heart themselves the church is an aid the church helps the church preaches the church teaches but the at the end of the day the responsibility falls on the individuals so we're going to kind of discuss that as we go into our lesson outline today i hope that kind of brought you to speed of what this lesson is about and what our entire study on the 21st century church is really all about and how we deal with that i'm going to use the word and i want to define a word that that that we don't use too often but it has great clarity and purpose it's called upheaval upheaval u p h e a v a l upheaval now what is upheaval okay uh because that's where we find ourselves that's what the world finds itself today in a position of upheaval okay a major change and this is the definition of a major change or a period of change that causes a lot of conflict confusion and anger that's what upheaval represents a period of change or a change that causes conflict confusion and up evil i mean and anger that's where the church finds itself that's where the world finds itself with all the political things that's going on with the pandemic and force with the economy at stake there's a lot of confusion there's a lot of conflict and there's a lot of anger okay so we're gonna discuss that word in relationship to the subject matter that we're studying today about the church and the church community okay now let's go through let's get started on our lesson online today uh i hope you can read this you can follow along i'm not going to read every sentence in its entirety but i want you to get the picture as christ followers our sense of just justice is important to us by our creator god so every individual every person has a sense of right and wrong has a sense of justice our creator the almighty god imparted that within each and every one of us so we so you don't have to teach us right or wrong children babies know what's right or wrong because that was imparted to them by the by our loving kind and merciful father uh holy and just god so god gave every person the ability to understand right and wrong or justice that was important to us number two social upheaval now that's where we are today social people uh it's where we are today plagues pandemics phantoms and natural disasters are a hard realities of living in a fallen world that's where we are we are right here in this we have social upheavals going on we have plagues we have pandemics we have famine in the land we have natural disasters you go to california you see all the wildfires they classify those as national disasters that's a reality okay that's a reality uh of living in a fallen world today okay number three uh the church has a long history of addressing important social issues from slavery to civil rights to reducing poverty and caring for people doing plagues and disaster the church has a rich history because the body of christ is that institution that represents god on the earth so there can never be things that go on within this culture in our society that god has is not involved with so the idea of us not being involved with social issues is a mistake it's a it's not a clear it's not a good understanding of the the hope that god has in christ jesus through the church itself it is a critical element and we're going to go a lot more deeply in that as we discuss this this lesson watch this when the church influence is strong it is society it will positively positively affect all aspects of that culture the opposite is also true when when the church members or the congregation uh or the church voice in a cultural society is strong it becomes the salt in the light that the bible talks about in matthew okay and so when the church is strong it influences our society it influences our culture uh if the church is weak okay and there was a movement about you know 15 20 years ago came out of the church it didn't come from the world it came out of the church that church leaders should not be involved with politics okay that church leaders or church people should not be involved with politics this is one of the reasons why we have the rocks in politics that we have today is because we the salt and the light have withdrawn from that element of service within the nation so we need to re-engage back into the areas of different politics do a pastor have to do it no that's not what i'm saying pastor doesn't have to be the one that does that but the people in the congregation the members should be on the board of education the members of the church should be involved with social media the memories of the church because they are going to bring to that organization or that body a biblical strong position that uphold righteousness and justice from a god perspective without that then the man is left to do his own thing do his own will and begin to do his own thing that creates a movement against the very thing that god has established to be true so it's imperative that we engage ourselves in that so the church influence is must be strong within the community according to a pew research survey the number of americans who say churches contribute some or a great deal to solving important social problems has declined from 75 percent to 39 over the past eight years this was a research survey that the few uh they go out and do studies and they all were there poster kind of organizations and they asked a whole bunch of people certain questions and this is one of the questions they asked now this is not good people this is not it's going in the wrong direction 12 years ago 75 of the people thought the church was doing some or a great deal in sovereign communities ten years ago eight years ago they said it went from 75 percent to 39 is going in the wrong direction that's because the church is still debating within the context of the church should we be involved with social issues okay and that involved that debate has kind of neutralized us from our involvement within social issues which is not good for the for the advancement of the nation or the country uh because the word of god is clearly saying that we ought to be that salt in the light okay interesting question okay last but not least on this particular slide should the church be involved with social issues has been widely debated i talked about that earlier has been widely debated between churches some claim that getting involved in social issue is sinful coming from the church that is not coming from the world this is the body of christ with it with its denominational viewpoint its conservative viewpoints is liberal viewpoints this is what but is never from a biblical viewpoint okay god never declared that getting involved with social issues was a sin and that's what he did he encouraged us to do so okay so uh this is what's happening with this argument then it said while others argue that not being involved is the same so there's two spectrum two sides of the camp one says we should not be and it's sinful the other one inside says if we are not then that's a sin because we violated the laws and order of god okay so it's imperative that we the church be involved with these social issues now what are we talking about we talk about adapting to a changing world that's what this whole lesson is all about adapting to a changing world this world system is changing uh we we we must stay solid and we must stay biblically grounded doctrinally sound in our approach while the world around us continue to change in this lesson we will examine what the bible says about the importance this important subject so we're going to look at what the bible says pandemics and the church pandemics and the church corporate 19 is not the first pandemic that the church has had to face it is not the first and unfortunately living in the fallen world it probably will not be the last that we've had to face okay widespread pandemic is not unknown through the history of the history of christianity number two an outbreak of the great plague in 1913-14 uh that's one play there was that there was the london played in 1665 the spanish flew in 1918 and the ebola crisis in africa in 2014. okay just to name a few just to name a few now we can go on and we can go through history and we can see all of these pandemics these these these crisis uh health crisis uh disaster issues throughout the scriptures but this is not the first time that a pandemic or a natural disaster has happened and it has always been the church have had to respond that portion of the church that believed that they should and there's other portions of the church believe they should not okay have had to respond during the outbreak in economic and commerce commerce economic and commerce were disrupted so whenever there was an outbreak the economy was affected commerce was affected businesses closes transportation declined food was scarce the church buildings were what's empty these this is this is one of the response of most of these outbreaks this common thread that occurs throughout all of these pandemics outbreaks plagues flus would be the spanish flu ebola crisis uh during that outbreak the economy was affected commerce were affected it was disrupted businesses were closest transportation was declined food was scarce and the church building were closed is there a similarity to all of those outbreaks to covet 19 the one that we are currently experiencing if you would notice carefully everything in this category is happening once again it is happening once again is a part of dealing with these pandemics as a part of our culture and society number four on this list christians of the past and the present inspire us with demonstration of resilient faith and compassion to amidst crisis christians have gone through all of these crises but the world looked to christ or looked to the church for soundness and for leadership and we're going to see that in real time some churches open their doors during these crisis to serve as health clinics as hospitals would put the hospital adversity with scenes with patients and has often been the case many sacrifices that came out and healed and then for which they committed themselves to take care of the sick so the churches did respond to all of these pandemic in crisis in the past through opening their doors so that the church responded in a very christ-like god-like manner by opening their doors and being excited to serve and help people not just people within the congregation but people within their communities polls show that during times of crisis nearly 60 percent of americans uh say that their first they turned first to religious leaders for comfort and guidance during time of pandemics so 60 percent of this nation it used to be 80 now it's down to 60 percent 60 percent of the people within this nation within the united states of america say they turn to religious leaders for guidance they turn to religious people for support they they look toward the things of the people that represent god which we are representatives of god they look to us for guidance assistance and a sense of direction calm and leadership that must not ever we must increase this number from 60 back up to 80 percent okay because of our involvement within the local community so you see the the the the effects of a pandemic and you see the response times like these are opportunities for the body of christ on the earth to show what she is she believes and by exhibiting an unshakeable faith and hope in god while continue to do good and to show love toward others we must continue to do this even in the midst of pandemic in in the midst of crime disasters uh and pandemics as we look at that whole process so it's important for us to show our position on that let's talk about social justice this is this is something that uh within our country today with with all the things that's going on with our nation think about this since january since january there are about four things that has happened since january that has really become a major issue within our culture uh we have we have we have seen the killing unnecessarily uh black men and women uh by the police department a an act of unjustice we've also seen in that period of time we've seen a pandemic that hit our nation so we're living in a pandemic time of uh copenhagen crisis we see ourselves in a in a political battle uh that's going on at all all levels and they're drawing christians and non-christians to size we're trying to choose size people say okay you got to be on this side or you got to be on that side it is dividing the church now politics should never divide the church because whether you're republicans or whether you're democrats we as the body of christ are ambassadors of christ ambassadors of christ first so it should never be a dividing point because our voting process and i encourage everyone to vote our voting decision has got to be based on what thus saith the lord that's the dis that's the criteria not what thus saith the democrats not what thus said the republican but what thus saith the lord okay so that becomes the criteria but the cry for social justice in our nation is awesome it's awesome and this critical time of pandemic okay there is a growing awareness of social justice in our nation today with an increased concern for the human physical well-being worldwide not only in our nation but our is worldwide respect for the poor for the homeless for those into refugee camps for those that are enslaved through human trafficking for orphans for for children to care of children so many uh forms of human rights issues so we find ourselves right in the middle of this this this cry for social justice well let's take a look at two expressions of this cry for social justice two expressions and some of the benefits of that he said the church needs to recognize uh to recognize and understand the following social justice in the work and at work today okay so there are two two five two social justice movements you hear a lot of people talk about these kinds of things uh and then we're gonna take the next slide we're gonna take a look at what god says i'm going to tell you what what what what each one of these represent but then they want to tell you what god says okay about this whole matter of self social justice social justice a movement in america chiefly in the early parts of the 20th century stressing the social teachings of jesus and their apple ability to public life the central theme of the movement is what would jesus do many of us have heard that turn what would jesus do we were talking about social gospel now there's a whole group of people within the church community that do not agree with the idea in the concept of social gospel okay but it has produced a lot of good things now i'm gonna talk about that okay so this is social gospel okay a movement in america uh chiefly around the fact stressing the social teachings of jesus and and their applications to public life the essential thing was what would jesus do that's the central theme of that particular movement now let me give you a little note let me give you a little note okay and i think you may find this to be very interesting uh in my research in time of study i found this out to be very interesting i haven't gotten to the social justice yet i'm just talking about social gospel okay out of this social gospel it says the 20th century okay uh it talks about the 20th century that these things came as a result of the 20th century of the 19th century there are three organizations that we all know and love that i'm going to mention today that came out of this social gospel movement uh this social gospel the basis of what jesus taught about social gospel and being responsive to the people's needs within the community and and and their application of the idea of the social gospel or the message of christ from the scripture perspective uh in relationship to that now through organization first organization we're talking about came out of this is ymca ymca yeah the y the ymca now the term ymca means young men christians association young men christian association the ymca came out of or was giving birth out of the social gospel movement another organization salvation army salvation army for which we see every place in every community the whole idea of salvation army it came out of this social gospel movement then the third organization i'll tell you about is the red cross the red cross the royal red cross came out of the teachings of the social teachers of jesus okay so this movement has contributed to the establishment of hundreds of organizations that are affecting the culture and the society that we live in especially during times of disaster especially during times of disaster now that came out of what would jesus do the problem with those with those organizations good will love them they did a lot of great things they began to become they began to shift because naturally they began to establish people that were non-christian as leaders of these organizations so you kind of push down the christian value aspect or that's one issue that they have red cross did the same thing salvation did that ymca people that don't believe uh in the things of christ and the church and the church movement they began to put leaders in that had excellent leadership skills marketing abilities uh qualities of a good leader but they were not believers they were not committed to christ so they began to change the dynamics of the organization as they hadn't put those people in place okay that was one thing the second thing is when the christians were in charge they equated good works and salvation as synonymous now we know that they are not synonymous we are not in the clarification of that we are saved by grace through faith without doing a thing it is the mercy and it is the grace of god that brings us to a salvation when it comes to work because i am saved because i am a child of god and because i have been given so much mercy and so much grace and so much love and so much forgiveness i work okay i work from a position of salvation not a position to obtain or achieve salvation so that's where some of these organizations kind of veered off a little bit to the right or to the left whether their leadership was was non-christians or whether they're a central doctrine counter got confused in the process but what we cannot deny is the good will that they do and their purpose and the intent behind what they do okay so i want to make sure you bring that into the social social gospel now let's go into social justice social justice this is the concept of fear and just relationship between individuals and society as measured by distribution of wealth as measured by distribution of wealth opportunities for personal activities and social privileges to create a fair and equitable society in which all people's rights were recognized and protected most of your your your civil rights organization have have addressed uh most of the federal government the government of the united states government has has taken on this whole social justice movement there's a problem with this movement and i'll tell you right where it is it is defined in their term in in their definition okay now uh i know you're probably saying man he said these great things about these organizations but then he comes around and say there's a problem with him yeah there is there is there is but we have to be able to look at and not deny the good that they do but we also need to recognize the weaknesses that they have okay uh that's how we approach any of these things okay this is the concept of fair and just relationship between individuals and society right finger right thing this is where they kind of veer off a little bit as measured by the distribution of wealth as measured by the distribution of wealth now the distribution of wealth uh materialism becomes how they measure that whole process okay that is where they kind of veered off on when it comes to this because what they say here is and let me give you a simple term they thought they sometimes the government at act as those robin hood take from the from the rich and give to the poor or take from the from middle class and give to the poor uh do not require the poor's involvement within trying to provide for themselves see we can kind of go overboard with this piece here in a lot of cases we've done exactly that okay uh yeah we all want to help the poor we believe in helping the poor the church uh the social gospel believe in having the poor social justice people believing in helping the poor is how we do that is how we do that that is fair equitable uh and in a godly manner see now this is man's way of trying to achieve biblical justice or social justice okay this is man's way so let's go look at that now we can spend a lot of time on that but i wanted to bring it now the church what is the church doing the church is recognizing the fact that i have to make adjustments because this is a society that we live in let's go to the next slide let's talk about biblical justice now we're talking about the things of god i just explained to you people's application of the word of god now let's talk about it from god's perspective let's talk about it from god's perspective okay biblical justice okay because justice has become a number one top issue today biblical justice god raises up many god raised up a man named abraham and positioned him in him to start a new line of people with family rule by righteousness and justice so god began to see what was going on in the world and in advance and begin and raise up this man called abraham and say your family your people the nation of israel will be ruled by righteousness and justice righteousness and justice biblically throughout the scripture from the beginning of time until to present and into the future will be a prevailing theme that god will ensure takes place now righteousness let's define what righteousness is if we try to implement justice without righteous we put ourselves in a position of high degree of error because righteousness is a key element of justice so let's see what righteousness is righteousness refer to the state of moral good in which you treat those around you with decency fairness recognizing that all are made in the image of god if you notice those two other uh definitions especially areas social justice did not speak anything about the image of god so righteousness is the moral good that we treat every individual every person whether they be rich poor middle class or whatever the class of domination whatever the category of wealth is we don't especially we don't treat them and show them any more favor than anyone else but it's a state of moral good now who determined what is moral good well the only person that qualifies to determine moral goodness of what is morally good is no other no other than the creator himself the almighty god so god is going to as we study this course we are going to begin to determine god's uh criteria of what is moral good so righteousness is a part of biblical justice then we talk about justice what is justice can justice can be used when we talk about restrictive justice it is written in a person punished for the things that they're doing wrong retributive justice which is in a person's whether they punish if you steal something uh or or you you you should be punished for it or if you take something if you take someone's lives you should be punished for that there's a punishment associated with that god god teaches that the other part of that social justice uh of the biblical justice criteria is in addition to contributive justice we talk about restorative justice restorative justice what is restored in justice those who are unrighteously hurt from wrong or restored and giving back what was taken from them that's restorative justice so god definition of justice is far greater than the definition that man has created concerning justice so it's a crit and critical issue in these two components so when we talk about biblical justice we got to talk about righteousness and we thought about talking about justice as it relates to uh the bible using most of the time is distributed restore restorative justice the nation of israel um in egypt egypt took the israelites and put them in bondage and god through his intimate wisdom restored the nation of israel and that with the egypt the egyptians concerning their oppression of god's people okay now the only problem with the oh being people being oppressed when they move from the level of being oppressed now they become the oppressor and the nation of israel did that okay so god leaned uh corrected them and brought forth the prophets in order to establish justice and speak to the nation of israel i mean i mean in egypt in order to bring them back into a position and talk about how unjust they were to the nation of israel but when when when the israelites became in power they began to oppress others then god sent the prophets to bring corrections to them so we're going to see that as we go through the whole process okay because you will always find god on the side of justice justice is making things right that are unfair in our society righteousness is doing right by people especially the vulnerable justice is more about the legal and systematic process systemic problems righteousness is more about god's d good deeds acts of generosity toward those in need the combination of righteousness and justice that god dictates means a selfless way of life which the people do everything within their power to ensure the treatment of well-being of those that are treated unjustly okay this is god's definition take some time to rehearse this in your lesson to make sure that you get a good good good feeling i know i went through it quickly but you get a good sense of biblical justice knowing that it's righteousness knowing that it's justice knowing that it's a combination no one is a moral good knowing that this combination of righteousness and justice equal to what is classified as biblical justice let's go look at some scriptures as we relate to that okay in our next slide this is god's mantra when we look at our next slide biblical justice and is found in micah 6 8 micah 6 8 seek justice love mercy walk humbly before god and man that's the position of the church that's how we should handle ourselves to seek justice love mercy and walk humbly before our god and man are you understanding what we're talking about when it comes to justice and what god's position on this highly sensitive issue in the time frame for which we live and have our being so i wanted to kind of uh take a moment to close this out and because i have a whole new series i want to talk about biblical justice and give you some scriptural references in relationship to any of those and all of those and what god's position on that because we have to find ourselves in the scripture for which god has established to determine the the state of the world and the changes that we the church must make in order to be more effective to win souls to disciple believers and advance the cause of christ i'll see you in a few minutes