Watch/Listen
Justice For The Fatherless
Brian Mashburn
November 8, 2015
Audio Player
Justice For The Fatherless
Let us speak now of one of the most beautiful one-liners of Jesus. While short and simple, they are potent and compelling, touching the most tender and sensitive part of our hearts; that part where the horrors of insecurity, anxiety, and helplessness reside. Jesus speaks knowingly when he says, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18)
You don't know how much you need them until you do. But when you do, they permit you to feel safe, secured, loved, provided for, and accompanied.
In a word, you feel "fathered."
When Jesus said these words, he spoke with the weight of and consistent with how God had revealed Himself for centuries, as a "father to the fatherless," who "sets the lonely in families." (Psalm 68:5-6)
So, should it surprise us that He consistently calls His people to care for the fatherless as well? "Seek justice," He says, "defend the cause of the fatherless." (Is 1:17)
On the one hand, there is a huge orphan/at-risk children problem in the world (look globally or locally, it is there). And on the other hand, we have a God with a huge heart for the orphan/at-risk children. How is this "gap" to be bridged?
By the church. James (1:27) says, "religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress."
Today we will give you ideas on how to do justice for the fatherless. May what was said of God by the prophets be said of God's church by the world: "For in you the fatherless find compassion." (Hos 14:3)