Justice of God

A man and a woman in Tennessee were arrested when they attempted to sell stolen goods at a pawn shop. 30-year-old Jeremy Watts and 24-year-old Jessica Heady tried to sell two PlayStation systems along with controllers, video games, and DVDs. The only problem with their plan was that the goods happened to be from the house of the pawnshop owner.

The owner, Edward Dial, said that he recognized the items and when he went home to check, saw that his home had indeed been burglarized. Watts and Heady were arrested and charged with aggravated burglary.

Possible Preaching Angle: Sin can be a tempting choice when the victim is faceless and nameless. But in reality, that's never the case. Sin always has a victim, as David says in Psalm 51:4 "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight."

In June 2022, 97-year-old William Kellerman finally got the medal the army failed to give him 80 years earlier. Mr. Kellerman was 18 years old when he was drafted late in 1943. On June 6, 1944, he and thousands of other soldiers huddled on war ships as the first wave of Allied troops launched themselves into the shores of Normandy. Five days later, it was his turn to dodge German fire while running up Utah Beach.

German troops captured Kellerman. They moved him to a building that held about 80 prisoners of war. One night, Kellerman escaped. After a French family gave him new clothes, he walked and biked nearly 600 miles, picking up food where he could from French farmers, Army records show. Back home, his mother and sister feared the worst. They had received a hand-delivered letter from the U.S. Army telling them he was listed as missing as of July 22, 1944.

But instead of sending him home, his captain put him back into combat. He was part of the force that took Chames, France, and in April 1945 was hit by sniper fire in the hand and the leg. Mr. Kellerman was being treated for his wounds in an Army hospital when the war officially ended. He served until 1946, the Army said.

But despite all his incredible adventures, Kellerman never got recognized by the army—until recently. In June 2022 he received the Prisoner of War Medal and the Purple Heart long denied him. An Army spokesman said, “The Army is conducting this ceremony now to correct this unfortunate oversight.”

For Mr. Kellerman, the late-in-life recognition is an unexpected gift. “I feel like I’m coming out of the shadows and into the sunlight,” he said.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Justice; Hope; Heaven; Reward —Sometimes our good deeds are not recognized for a long time, or even in this life, but God will reward our faithfulness.

An article in the Wall Street Journal makes the following claim: “America’s turn toward lawlessness is nowhere more evident than at retail stores, where these days even toothpaste is often under lock and key. Now Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target Corp., has put a number on the cost of “inventory shrinkage,” which is mostly theft: $500 million in lower profits this year (2023).

Cornell says, “The unfortunate fact is violent incidents are increasing at our stores and across the entire retail industry. And when products are stolen, simply put, they are no longer available for guests who depend on them.”

The National Retail Federation calls it ORC or organized retail crime. In a recent report they warned of the increasing endorsement and even celebration of theft. The report stated, “Videos tagged with terms related to shoplifting have accumulated millions of views on social media platforms such as TikTok, and broader social acceptance of retail theft or indifference about purchasing stolen goods suggests ORC perpetrators could face relatively less public shame than other criminals if ORC practices gain greater cultural resonance.” In other words, stealing is now cool.

A man from Georgia found himself in shock after being handed a speeding ticket totaling a staggering $1.4 million. Connor Cato was pulled over in September for driving at 90 mph in a 55-mph zone, resulting in the citation.

Cato says he knew he would be paying a hefty fine for driving so fast, but even taking that into account, the amount seemed excessive. “‘$1.4 million,’ the lady told me on the phone. I said, ‘This might be a typo’ and she said, ‘No sir, you either pay the amount on the ticket or you come to court on Dec. 21 at 1:30 p.m.’”

Eventually, city officials clarified that the amount was not the actual fine but rather a placeholder generated by the e-citation software used by the local court. The official statement from the City of Savannah stated, “The programmers who designed the software used the largest number possible because super speeder tickets are a mandatory court appearance and do not have a fine amount attached to them when issued by police.”

Savannah city spokesperson Joshua Peacock told the Associated Press that the citation’s value was not meant to intimidate or coerce individuals into appearing in court, explaining that the actual fine is subject to a cap of $1,000, along with additional state-mandated costs. Furthermore, Peacock assured the public that the court is actively working on revising the placeholder language to prevent any further confusion or misunderstanding regarding the nature of the citation.

Still, Cato was not the only person riled up by the big-ticket citation. In a recent editorial, The New York Post called it a metaphor for “the absolute state of the social contract we make with our elected officials and their administrative henchmen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

People don’t always understand the eternal consequences of their behavior, but there is a shocking day of judgment coming. At that time many will face the consequences of violating God’s laws and there will be no mercy. However, God is merciful “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). At the present time, God uses consequences to awaken people to the penalty of disobedience (Heb. 12:4-12).

Claude Vincent Griffin, 33, was arrested in early June after being identified in security footage of a burglary at a phone repair shop. Griffin was seen breaking the glass of a display case and pocketing several items. His feeble attempt at avoiding identification was foiled when the cardboard box he was wearing on his head tipped over and fell off.

Once Jeremias Berganza, the owner of Irepair Tech, saw Griffin’s face on the security footage, he immediately began asking around the shopping plaza if anyone had seen the man. Griffin was spotted shortly thereafter drinking with friends outside a nearby liquor store.

Police responded to Berganza’s call and arrested Griffin, charging him with grand theft, burglary, criminal mischief, cocaine possession, and resisting an officer without violence. According to Berganza, Griffin stole 19 iPhones and about $8,000 in cash, totaling about $15,000 in losses.

Possible Preaching Angle:

A thief might think that their disguise will protect them. But eventually, all masks will be stripped off and all deeds will be revealed before God’s throne of justice.

For most people, a drive home from a day out is rather uneventful, but most people are not Christopher Young. Young was spotted by Portland police officers driving a gray Audi without a license plate, and one of them thought the Oregon DMV Trip Permit in the window looked a little fishy. After running the number and determining it was fake, officers followed Young in traffic, and eventually decided to pull him over. This prompted Young to flee. Police then began a high-speed pursuit in which Young “drove into oncoming traffic, ran multiple red lights, nearly collided with multiple motorists and at one point drove onto a sidewalk,” according to court documents.

Police eventually apprehended Young at his home. Upon securing a warrant for the property, they discovered the VIN on the Audi had been painted over, there were several other stolen cars on the property, and that Young was in possession of firearms, at least one fake ID, and tools associated with car theft.

Young currently faces 51 counts of criminal charges, including identity theft, forgery, possession of a stolen vehicle, and reckless driving.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There's no way to outrun justice or the truth; God's desire for righteousness in the earth is so unrelenting there's no point for anyone trying to lie, cheat, or steal their way to prosperity. It won't work ultimately.

Federal law enforcement officers were dispatched to the Gold Coast Airport in Queensland, Australia after a drunk, disorderly woman refused to follow the crew’s instructions. Jetstar Airlines explained the situation in a brief statement afterward. “The safety of our customers and crew is our number one priority and we have zero tolerance for disruptive behavior.”

The woman, who one TikTok user referred to as a “drunk Karen,” clearly wore out her welcome among the nearby passengers who had to endure her belligerent behavior. On the posted TikTok video, police can be seen entering the plane and forcibly removing her from the aircraft, while onlookers began chanting the chorus to a 1969 hit from the band Steam. “Na na nahhh na, na na nahh na, hey hey hey … goodbye.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the words of the ancient African American proverb: “God don't like ugly.” While we're not to seek vengeance because it belongs to God, it's natural to be relieved when wrongdoers experience the consequences of their actions.

In a novel by the British mystery writer P.D. James, a detective shares a common sentiment, saying, “I don’t go for all this emphasis on sin, suffering, and judgment. If I had a God, I’d like him to be intelligent, cheerful, and amusing.” In response, her Jewish colleague says, “I doubt whether you would find him much of a comfort when they herded you into the gas chambers. You might prefer a God of vengeance.”

Theologian J. Todd Billings comments on this quote:

A God without wrath is a God who whitewashes evil and is deaf to the cries of the powerless. A student of mine who grew up in a gang culture and had many whom he loved taken from him by violence told me with profound honesty that “If God will not avenge, I am tempted to avenge.” Precisely because God is a God of love, he is also a God of holy wrath.

In the town of Merced, which is named after the Spanish word for “mercy,” a bumbling robbery attempt was quickly brought to a merciful end. According to authorities, Stephan Stanley began breaking the glass in the jewelry department of a JC Penney store in Merced Mall. He was grabbed by two nearby men in the store, who attempted to hold him down to prevent him from getting away with any merchandise. Angered at their intervention, Stanley tried to use pepper spray against his sudden captors, but instead he sprayed himself.

Temporarily incapacitated by his own pepper spray, Stanley was easily subdued, and was eventually arrested on suspicion of robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug charges. He was subsequently booked into Merced County Jail, where he is unlikely to receive much in the way of mercy.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Justice will come to those who break God’s law, some sooner than is expected. “He that digs a hole will fall into it” (Ecc. 10:8).

Akron police officers, acting on a tip, responded to a location and made an arrest related to a previous theft that took place in a public park. By itself, the occasion was not particularly noteworthy, except for the item targeted in the theft--a 58-foot-long bridge.

Police arrested David Bramley at his property and recovered the composite-material span, which had been partially disassembled. Authorities say it was stolen from a field in Akron, where it had been in use until the early 2000s when it was removed for a wetlands project. Local officials had planned to reuse the bridge for another different project, but were shocked when they went to retrieve it. Initially, the treated deck boards had been removed; the following week, the entire span was gone.

Detectives allege that Bramley paid a local trucking company to crane-lift the bridge on and off a vehicle, which was subsequently driven to his property. Bramley’s arrest for felony theft was accompanied by the following statement:

Members of the Akron Police Department work tirelessly every day, to foster and strengthen relationships, while enhancing public trust throughout the community. Utilizing the spirit of those partnerships, detectives were able to help locate the stolen bridge and bring this investigation to a close.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Thieves harm not only the target of the theft, but society at large. Everyone in the community loses trust when a robbery occurs. But in the end, law enforcement ensures that justice prevails.

In the spring of 2018, Charles Battle II had no idea that he would become the focal point of his local community’s struggle to reform the way police interact with its citizens. But now he’s as engaged in the struggle as he’s ever been.

Police detained Battle as a suspect for a robbery he had not committed, all because an eyewitness identified him as having been involved minutes prior. However, Battle was not wearing any apparel that matched witness testimony, and the witness at the time was not wearing her glasses. The only thing Battle had in common with the suspect description is that he was young and Black. Nevertheless, he was arrested and kept in police custody. It wasn’t until six months later that the Denver District Attorney’s Office dropped the charges for lack of evidence. His mother said, “He’s been traumatized. He says, ‘Mom, any day I leave I could not come home.’”

The police technique used to identify Charles is informally known as a “showup.” Unlike the traditional technique of having witnesses pick the suspect out of a lineup of several potential suspects (or to pick from a photo array, which uses the same principle), police bring witnesses in person to the area of the crime to identify a potential suspect without being shown any other alternatives.

As a result of her son’s arrest, Sharon Battle collaborated with Together Colorado, a multifaith advocacy group, who spent years advocating for changes in the way law enforcement conducts witness identifications. The resulting bill has gotten bipartisan support in the Colorado legislature, and it prohibits the use of showups except in situations where lineups and photo arrays are not possible, but the potential suspect is detained “within minutes of the commission of the crime and near the location of the crime.”

Rep. Jennifer Bacon, the bill’s sponsor said, “Everyone deserves to have the right person be held accountable for these actions. You shouldn’t just be Black on the street and be thrown into the system because we can’t identify people properly.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

All of us, and especially those of us in positions of leadership, have a responsibility to behave as honorably as possible to promote justice. If our behavior injures or offends others, we have a responsibility to correct those behaviors and make things right with those who were wronged.

The arrest of a 94-year-old man living for so many decades on a quiet street in Oak Ridge, Tennessee was a wakeup call for the man's neighbors. They said they could not have imagined that he was an active collaborator in one of the worst instances of the second World War.

Federal prosecutors convinced the court that Mr. Berger was part of the SS machinery of oppression that kept concentration camp prisoners in atrocious conditions of confinement. This led not only to the injury and emaciation of many of those prisoners, but to their deaths.

This man at age 94 must have imagined that he had gotten away with it, and that he would die in peace in that ranch house. But something happened that he could not have envisioned. The SS cards identifying him, along with other prison camp guards, had been on a boat that was sunk by the Allies. These cards were discovered in 1950 but they had disintegrated. But modern technology meant that these cards could be reassembled, and thus the names and all the information on those SS cards could now be fully understood. This led to a 94-year-old man living in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Devora Fish, the director of education for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, said this: “Every time that somebody is brought to justice, even from 50 years ago or longer, that is a message to the world because we're not going to stop until everybody is brought to justice. Even if it’s something you did years ago, it will catch up to you.”

The neighbors of this man did not see a Nazi war criminal. They just saw an elderly man living in the United States who had come from Germany. But what we cannot see, God sees. On that, we can absolutely depend.

Timothy Keller writes “In A Reason for God”:

In Christianity God is both a God of love and of justice. Many people struggle with this. They believe that a loving God can't be a judging God. Like most other Christian ministers in our society, I have been asked literally thousands of times, "How can a God of love be also a God of filled with wrath and anger? If he is loving and perfect, he should forgive and accept everyone. He shouldn't get angry."

I always start my response by pointing out that all loving persons are sometimes filled with wrath, not just despite of but because of their love. If you love a person and you see someone ruining them—even they themselves—you get angry. As Becky Pippert puts it in her book Hope Has Its Reasons:

Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it. . . . Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference. . . . God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer . . . which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.

The Bible says that God's wrath flows from his love and delight in his creation. He is angry at evil and injustice because it is destroying its peace and integrity.

President Mobutu reigned as the dictator and President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1997. But after global political changes, Mobutu was forced out of power and the country collapsed and descended into conflict and chaos. British pastor Mark Meynell tells the story of his good friend Emma, who witnessed many atrocities committed against his friends and family members. He and his wife and three daughters fled east on foot. Weeks later they arrived in Uganda as refugees, with nothing. After a few months of a miserable existence, he walked past a local seminary and sensed that the Lord was calling him to ministry. The family had been living in one room, without water or electricity, and enough to pay for one meal every two days.

Meynell said that one evening they met in the seminary's tiny library and started talking. As Emma opened his heart and shared the story of the violence and injustice he had witnessed, he started to openly weep, despite the fact that African men never cry in public. Then Emma said these sobering words, "You know Mark, I could never believe the gospel if it were not for the judgment of God. Because I will never get justice in this world. But I couldn't cope if I was NEVER going to see justice done."

Meynell commented, "We in the West often recoil from God's justice for a very simple reason: We've hardly had to suffer injustice. But most people around the globe recognize that God's justice is praiseworthy and great. Of course his mercy and redemption are even greater, but we need his perfect justice as well."

Nevest Coleman resumed his job as a groundskeeper for the Chicago White Sox after an unexpected hiatus left him unavailable to work-for 23 years. In 1994, Coleman was charged and convicted of rape and murder. He spent the next two decades behind bars until prosecutors vacated his conviction after considering DNA evidence that should've ruled him out as a suspect. Several months later, a Cook County judge granted Coleman a certificate of innocence, which officially cleared his name of all related charges.

While maintaining a steadfast belief in his innocence, Coleman always looked back fondly on the time he spent working with the team, which felt very much like a family. After his release, friends and family members reached out to the White Sox organization, delighted by an official invite to come and reapply for his old job. After re-hiring him, the team issued an official statement:

"We're grateful that after more than two decades, justice has been carried out for Nevest," the team said in a statement. "It has been a long time, but we're thrilled that we have the opportunity to welcome him back to the White Sox family. We're looking forward to having Nevest back on Opening Day at home in our ballpark."

On Coleman's first day back at work, he was flanked by two of his former coworkers, and was warmly greeted by the team's head groundskeeper, Roger "The Sodfather" Bossard.

"I saved your spot for you," Bossard said. "I knew you'd be back."

Preaching angles: (1) God's justice—This is such a heartwarming story, but we all know that many times injustice still reigns. We long for the day when God will judge the earth with perfect justice, restoring what was lost, making all things right and just. (2) Justice—As followers of Christ we are also called to fight for justice on earth as it will be in heaven.

In his book A Selfish Plan to Change the World Justin Dillon relates the courage of a missionary couple who stood up against corruption:

In the late 1800s, Leopold II, the King of Belgium, started colonizing the Congo, a land rich with natural resources, such as rubber. At the same time, the demand for bicycle and car rubber was starting to spike. Within a few years' time, Leopold was enslaving millions of men, women, and children through brutal armed force to do the labor-intensive work of harvesting the rubber.

The pressure to fulfill the impossible rubber quotas fell on a brutal police force—the Force Publique. To prove that the bullets Leopold provided were being used to kill unproductive slave workers, Leopold required a severed hand or foot for every victim. So the soldiers stockpiled baskets of hands and feet to account for the bullets.

It was a barbaric situation, but no one dared to rebel, except a mild-mannered British missionary couple named John and Alice. Both felt a divine calling to this place to bring the love of Christ. But they also could not ignore the violence against people they loved. So Alice had a brilliant idea—she grabbed her Kodak Brownie camera and started taking pictures, documenting the atrocities. She captured images of right hands cut off by Force Publique sentries. She documented mass graves. She filmed tribesmen shackled together.

This young woman with no professional photography skills started collecting images in order to topple an evil king she had never met. Alice and John had no plan, strategy, certainty, or guarantee of success. In fact, her actions increased her chances of dying in the Congo. But news about the atrocities started to reach Europe.

Churches. Town halls. University lecture halls. Parlors. Halls of government. There wasn't a room that Alice wasn't willing to bring her magic lantern show to. The people who came to witness her images and stories were moved by this fearless woman. Her story spread quickly, making its way into the writings of Mark Twain. Political and social pressure started to build against the mad king's maniacal exploits. King Leopold II would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of close to ten million people, but his stranglehold on the people of Congo came to an end. And it all started with an unknown missionary and her cheap camera and a lot of courage.

In 1971, the Afghan government gave a fledgling band of Christians permission to plant a church in Kabul. It was the only Christian church building permitted on neutral soil in Afghanistan. The Afghan government permitted this place of worship only for use among the foreign community; it was never to be used by the Afghan people.

One Sunday morning, only three years after the sanctuary's dedication, soldiers arrived and began to hack away at the wall between the street and the church building. One gentleman in the congregation went to Kabul's mayor and prophetically warned, "lf your government touches that house of God, God will overthrow your government!" The mayor responded by ordering the congregation to turn over their church for destruction, thereby eliminating the need for the Afghan government to pay compensation.

"This building does not belong to us but to God," the people of the church replied. "We can't turn it over for destruction." And they proceeded to serve tea and cookies to the soldiers who were destroying their place of worship.

On Tuesday, July 17, 1973, the Afghan soldiers completed their destruction of the church building. That very night, King Mohammed Zahir Shah, who had ruled for forty years, was overthrown in a coup, and the 227-year-old monarchy in Afghanistan came to an end forever. The rest of that story is told in the history books.

Editor's Note: This story is relayed from eyewitness accounts in a short biography of that church's pastor, a missionary and then a seminary professor named J. Christy Wilson.

On September 2, 1990, a murder occurred in New York City that horrified the nation. The Watkins family from Provo, Utah, a father and mother with their two barely grown sons, had come joyfully to the city for a long-anticipated trip to attend the US Open tennis matches. While waiting on the subway platform for the train to Flushing Meadows, the family was assaulted by a band of four youths. The older of the two sons went to his mother's rescue as she was being kicked in the face, and he was killed in the attempt. The judge, Edwin Torres, sentenced all four attackers to life without parole, the toughest sentence possible in New York at that time, and in doing so issued a striking statement expressing grave alarm for a society in which "a band of marauders can surround, pounce upon, and kill a boy in front of his parents [and then] stride up the block to Roseland and dance until 4 a.m. as if they had stepped on an insect. [These acts were] a visitation that the devil himself would hesitate to conjure up. That cannot go unpunished."

It makes many people queasy nowadays to talk about the wrath of God, but there can be no turning away from this prominent biblical theme … If we are resistant to the idea of the wrath of God, we might pause to reflect the next time we are outraged about something [much smaller than a murder but still worthy of our anger]—about our property values being threatened, or our children's educational opportunities being limited, or our tax breaks being eliminated. All of us are capable of anger about something. God's anger, however, is pure … The wrath of God is not an emotion that flares up from time to time, as though God has temper tantrums. It is a way of describing his absolute enmity against all wrong and his coming to set matters right.

Tim Keller says:

In one of my after-service discussions a woman told me that the very idea of a judging God was offensive. I said, "Why aren't you offended by the idea of a forgiving God?" She looked puzzled. I continued, "I respectfully urge you to consider your cultural location when you find the Christian teaching about hell offensive." I went on to point out that secular Westerners get upset by the Christian doctrines of hell, but they find Biblical teaching about turning the other cheek and forgiving enemies appealing.

I then asked her to consider how someone from a very different culture sees Christianity. In traditional societies the teaching about "turning the other cheek" makes absolutely no sense. It offends people's deepest instincts about what is right. For them the doctrine of a God of judgment, however, is no problem at all. That society is repulsed by aspects of Christianity that Western people enjoy, and are attracted by the aspects that secular Westerners can't stand.

Why, I concluded, should Western cultural sensibilities be the final court in which to judge whether Christianity is valid? I asked the woman gently whet her she thought her culture superior to nonWestern ones. She immediately answered "no." "Well then," I asked, "why should your culture's objections to Christianity trump theirs?"