9/18/22
Pastor Rusty Milton
"Justice for the Gentiles"
Judges 1:4-10 ESV

How important is justice to the church? It ought to be very important since Jesus, in his first public preaching, reads from Isaiah to explain that he has come to set the captives free and minister to the downtrodden. We see more of God's concern for justice played out in Judges 1:4-10, where an evil king, Adonai-Bezek gets the justice he deserves, mingled with restraint required by God's law. For Christians, saved by grace through faith, we are to walk with God and do justice out of a merciful heart.

Judges 1:4-10 ESV
4Then Judah went up and the LORD gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, and they defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek. 5They found Adoni-bezek at Bezek and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. 6Adoni-bezek fled, but they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. 7And Adoni-bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me.” And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.

8And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. 9And afterward the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country, in the Negeb, and in the lowland. 10And Judah went against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron (now the name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath-arba), and they defeated Sheshai and Ahiman and Talmai.