We're all right. Still trying
to work to make everything sound good here in the auditorium and
do right by the live feed. Is this loud enough, the way
I'm talking? I'm going to go ahead and start
using this microphone. That way, if I move, it doesn't
affect how loud it is because the microphone moves with me. Would you open your Bibles to
Jeremiah chapter 23? Jeremiah chapter 23. Our Father, now that we have
opened Your Word, we pray that Your Spirit would be with us
to guide us into all truth. For we do not want to stray into
error. We don't want to dishonor Your
name by preaching that which is not true. We don't want to
falter in the path of faith by believing what is not true. So open our minds and hearts
to what You have said. In the name of Christ we pray,
Amen. Verse 5, Jeremiah chapter 23,
verse 5. The days are coming, declares
the Lord, when I will raise up to David a righteous branch,
a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right
in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved,
and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he
will be called, the Lord our righteousness." God made a promise to David that
there would be one of his lineage to sit upon the throne forever. And David, as he neared death,
recollected that particular promise from God, saying, is it not so
with my house? Has not the Lord made with me
an everlasting covenant? And is it not steadfast and sure? And is this not all my desire? But when we read the history
of what happened after David died, we find that eventually
the line of David dried up. They certainly dried up so far
as being worth anything, After David came Solomon, and during
Solomon's reign, the united nation of Israel, all 12 tribes, they
probably achieved as much power, wealth, and influence as they
ever had in the world. And Solomon was considered to
be a good king. But Solomon had a real problem.
In fact, he had about a thousand of them. He had 700 concubines and 300
wives. Not only is that a gross violation
of marriage as God has ordained it, but worse than all of that,
those 300 wives and 700 concubines mostly came
from other countries. I'm sure many of them never saw
his face. They were daughters given by
kings and whatnot as part of a treaty or whatever. But they
brought their false gods with them. And the very first king
after David, David who was called the man after God's own heart,
the very first king after David, His own son brought idolatry
into Israel. And when Solomon died, his sons
fought over who would be the next king. None of them were
worthy of the job. And there was a split in the
kingdom, and the ten tribes to the north went off, their kings, none of
them were any good at all. It seems as though everyone did
all they could to outdo the previous one in the amount of rebellion
against God that they would practice. They went so far as they set
up other mountains, two other mountains on which the Jews of
those tribes were to gather for worship. They didn't want them
going to Jerusalem to worship as the Lord had commanded. After
all, Jerusalem was a political rival now. So they set up a mountain
in the southern part of those tribes and one in the northern.
Made it convenient for everybody. And you could get to one or the
other. And they had priests at those places, and they even set
up calves, like they did at the foot of Mount Sinai. And they brought in Baal worship,
and Ashtoreth, and all manner of false gods. The southern tribes,
collectively called Judah, they scarcely did any better. There
were some kings who for a while followed faithfully, but it eventually became that
even among them there was not a righteous one to be found.
Isaiah said there is none righteous, no not one. There's none who
understand. They set up idols, even setting
up idols dared to set them up in the temple. So God eventually visited them
with judgment. Now, but he'd already sent the
southern tribe, excuse me, the northern tribes. I got to remember
to get my north and south right. Sent the northern tribes, they'd
already been taken into captivity. Man, it would be a hundred or
so years before the Lord's patience wore out with the southern tribes. And he sent in Nebuchadnezzar
to tear down the city of Jerusalem, tear down the temple, take away
all the articles of gold and silver and whatever was of value
out of the temple, and take away all the men of any wisdom and stature within
the country. Jeremiah lived during that time.
He prophesied to them beforehand of what was going to come. He
told them, don't make an alliance with Egypt, because they were
thinking not like those who believe the Lord and who would trust
the Lord for their deliverance in times of trouble. They looked
for allies among the ungodly, and Egypt offered help, and Jeremiah
said, don't, and that got him in trouble. And they even threw him in prison. And Jeremiah continued to prophesy,
and sure enough, his prophecy came true. Nebuchadnezzar and
his army came, destroyed the place, and took everyone, or
the major people, captive, leaving only the rural folk in place
to continue farming and that sort of thing. So you have a situation. where
those who are the chosen people of God, so far as a chosen nation
is concerned. This is not the election of grace
that we so often speak of, but it is kind of a symbol or illustration
of it. God chose the nation of Israel
and gave them blessings he did not give to other nations. He
blessed them in ways that He did not bless other nations.
He protected them from other nations. Though they were small,
they were powerful. But they rebelled. And they rebelled
very quickly after David's death. And they rebelled continually. There were none among them who
were righteous, none who did good. So God makes a promise through
Jeremiah. He says in verse 5, the days
are coming. Now promises are always regarding
the future, aren't they? I mean, you can't make a promise
about the past. Promises are always about the
future. It didn't look like they had a future. Israel has been destroyed for
all intents and purposes. All 12 tribes dispersed among
the nations. The capital city in ruins. Solomon's glorious temple, a
heap of rubble. But the Lord says the days are
coming. when I will raise up to David a righteous branch."
There had not been one. There were those who were righteous
the few of the kings of Judah who were righteous as believers,
just as it is written, Abraham believed God and it was imputed
to him for righteousness. So there were some of the kings
of Judah who did indeed believe God and they were righteous by
imputation. But there were none in the north
or the south who were righteous in character. They were all sinful. And therefore, God says, the
day's coming, I'll raise up to David a righteous branch. You know, as citizens of the
United States, we are not subject to the whims of a single man.
We don't have a king, not yet anyway. We've got our problems. But before
anything governmentally harmful happens, a whole lot of people
got to be convinced that that's the right way to go. In these
days, under a monarchy, under a king, however the king was,
determined how the nation would be. For the coronation of one
of the kings, I believe it was Solomon, It was written, in his
days, the righteous shall prosper. And they did. And it ought to be, shouldn't
it, among the governments of men, that they rule in such a
way that good and decent people do well. But for the most part, these
kings were unrighteous, and that meant that the people did not
do well. They did not do well simply because many of them would
tax the people to near starvation. They didn't do well because the
rebellions, the rebelliousness of the kings would cause God
to answer in anger and bring famine and bring in raiding bands
of enemies. People had it tough. But he says there is coming a
day. when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a king
who will reign wisely. In the Hebrew mind, wisdom and
righteousness were bound together. Wisdom wasn't just a matter of
knowing things. It was a matter of right living. A man can know what he ought
to do. A woman could know the path she
should walk. That doesn't mean he or she is
going to walk that path. And the Jews did not consider
you wise until you conducted yourselves according to wise
counsel. And so here of this righteous
branch for David, he is wise and he always does
what is just and right in the land. And what is the result
of this? This king that is promised to
come, it says in his days Judah will be saved and Israel will
live in safety. Now it is interesting that God
mentions both Judah and Israel because the northern tribes maintained
the name Israel. The southern two tribes took
the name Judah. There was never anything any
good about the northern ten tribes, and he sent them off into captivity
long before he sent Judah into captivity. But then Judah proves to be not
much better, if any better, than Israel, and God sends Israel
off into captivity. And yet, when the promise comes,
It's not as though, he says, I will show special favor to
Judah because once in a while they acted faithfully. Once in
a while they had a king that would tear down the idols. Once
in a while they had priests that served faithfully. Once in a
while there was a revival among the people, so I'm going to save
Judah when this righteous king comes. No, he says, when this
righteous branch arrives, Judah will be saved and Israel will
live in safety. You know I'm glad he added Israel
because I feel more like Israel than Judah. Judah wasn't much
but I don't even feel worthy to count myself among men. Israel. the first rebels, the
worst rebels, the most consistent rebels. Yet, when this righteous king
comes, Israel, as well as Judah, will be saved and live in safety. And this is the name by which
he not Israel, not Judah, this righteous branch. This is
the name by which he will be called the Lord, that is Jehovah,
our righteousness. Man's problem started with sin,
with a violation of righteousness. When Adam sinned, it plunged
our entire race into sin. It plunged all of us, made us
all guilty in the sight of God, gave us all a nature of sinfulness,
and all of us from the days of Adam forward, every one of us
has proven the truth for all sinned and fall short of the
glory of God. We hear the modern day secular
prophets talk about, you know, that people are essentially good.
They just got, they get taught to do evil. I see this especially, you know,
in your more sentimental type pronouncements like, for instance,
about racism and things like this. And they say, you know,
children aren't born hating. And I think whoever wrote that
didn't have children. You put you put two children
children they can't even talk yet. You put them in a room with
a room full of toys and one child picks up a toy. It won't matter that there's
another hundred toys to pick up. The other one is going to
want the toy that the first one picked up and they'll fight over
it. Children have to be taught to
lie. No they don't. David said I came forth from
the womb speaking lies. From the time we are conceived,
we are nothing but sin. And from the time we're capable
of making choices, we choose nothing but sin. And yet God has never changed,
not the least bit, in His demand for righteousness. He says, I
will by no means clear the guilty, and that puts us in a really
bad spot. because we are guilty over and over and over again.
For lack of righteousness, Israel and Judah were sent into captivity. And God's answer to that was
not, once those rebels learn to submit, I'll let them come
back. Once they clean up their act,
They can come back. He said, no. I'm going to raise
up a righteous king for them. And in his days, Judah will be
saved and Israel dwell in safety. And here's the name by which
he will be called the Lord, our righteousness. In other words,
God's promise was that there would be someone who would come
and be righteous for them. It does not say that He is the
Lord, our righteous King. That is true. It's true that
the one to whom this points, our Lord Jesus Christ, He is
a righteous King. And there'd be nothing wrong
with calling Him that. The Lord, our righteous King. But that's
not what he said. He said, this is the Lord, our
righteousness. Now the Lord there, of course,
is actually the name of the Lord,
his personal name, Jehovah, and it's been the practice And for
centuries, even before the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world,
that the Jews would not speak the name of their God, so they
always used the word that meant Lord. And so when they translated
the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, the translators started
putting it, they would put in the Greek words for the Lord,
rather than the name of the Lord. And that pattern continued on
into the New Testament. But we know when it says the
Lord here, it's not talking about God so much in his position as
Lord of all. It's simply their way of communicating
the name without saying it. But we don't need to be afraid
to say the name of the Lord. The law says don't take the name
of the Lord in vain. And we should never vainly, uselessly,
frivolously use the name of God. But his name is glorious. His
name has meaning and power and significance for us. His name
essentially means, well, it means I am. When Moses met him for
the first time, and he said, who are you? And God responded,
I am that I am, or I am who I am, or I am what I am. Little word
in the middle, it means a lot of different things, but the
point was he was saying that I am. He was showing himself to be
that eternal God, that God who lives outside time and space,
who's not affected by the things that go on in time and space. That's why he later made this
promise, I, Jehovah, do not change. Why? Because I am. It's not he was, it's he is. And it's always he is. And therefore it's saying here
that this king, Excuse me, this king, this righteous
branch, was going to be none other than
Jehovah himself. No wonder it is written, in his
days, the righteous will prosper. When we realize, you know, these
Old Testament statements made about men, they were made about
men when they were initially made, but God always had in mind
that they'd be understood, that their perfect fulfillment was
gonna find, or the perfection of their fulfillment was gonna
come by a single person. And Solomon was a pretty good
king, and those who were, you know, righteous as men can be,
they did well. But when this King comes, the
righteous will prosper. Jehovah requires righteousness,
and therefore what has He done? Since we cannot be righteous,
we cannot produce righteousness, what does our God do for us?
He comes, and He becomes our righteousness. Now that's just hard to get your
head wrapped around. If I said, show me your righteousness,
you might, if you were thinking along natural terms, you'd think,
well, I've got to come up with some kind of record for him to
look at. Of what I've done, and of course,
if we were going to make a record of our life to try to prove our
righteousness, we would scour through everything we've done
and find the two or three things that looked relatively good and
write them down and even kind of polish them a little bit and
say, see, I'm a righteous person. But here's something wonderful
being said, and like David said, such things are too wonderful
for me, they're high, I can't attain unto them. We can't attain
unto this either, but we can state it and we can draw from
it all the comfort that it brings. Our righteousness is not a bunch
of actions. Our righteousness is not a record
of doing the right thing. Our righteousness is the very
person of Him who is the personification of righteousness. Now we like to think in legal
terms. And that's okay, the Bible talks
about righteousness and whatnot quite often in legal terms. And we think of when righteousness
is imputed to us that a record of righteousness is imputed to
us. And it's fine to think of it
in those terms. Often when the scriptures are
trying to describe to us what God has done to save us, it does
the best it can. Because we cannot really enter
into the works of God. But once in a while, they'll
just go ahead and say things as they actually are. And while
it's beyond our ability to grasp intellectually, yet we see how
wonderful and glorious this truth is. My righteousness is not just
a set of righteous actions that are imputed to me as though I
did them. Our righteousness is a person. We have a living righteousness. He is the Lord, our righteousness. Oh, what a comforting, restful
word to sinners. I come up here and preach every
week and then spend the rest of the week proving how much
I need this truth. I prove every week the words
of the prophets and the apostles when they declare the total depravity
of man. We don't need a theology book
to teach us total depravity. We live it every day. We have
the testimony written in our own hearts, if we're honest.
But then most men don't want to read what's found in their
hearts. But God meets us at the very
point of our problem, and that's righteousness. We don't have
any. And he does not just deliver
us, as it were, some shipment of righteousness. He says, I
am your righteousness. Now we realize that any claim
to righteousness must be proven. It must be put to the test. Well, the very Lord, the very
God, Jehovah, who is the judge and puts righteousness to the
test, is the very one who is our righteousness, and He's not
going to reject Himself. Do you see how in the promises
of the gospel, this business of righteousness has been taken
out of our hands entirely? Thank God! Oh, we're so proud. Man is so
naturally proud. He wants to be able to claim
some righteousness. But the moment you try to claim
some righteousness, justice is going to require that you also
own up to all your sin. You can't pick and choose about
you. And the moment you lay claim to righteousness, anything you
point to about your character or your actions and say, that's
righteous, it's going to be examined because it must be perfectly
righteous to be accepted as righteous at all. Oh, we want that reputation.
We want to be regarded as righteous. But we have here a righteousness that can never be faulted. Our
God is our righteousness. And I am under no obligation
to produce any. Now, you say that kind of thing,
and people, some people, they get all up in air. You mean a
man shouldn't live righteously? Of course we should live righteously.
We don't. That's the problem. If there
is to be a way of salvation, it must be a way in which all
the righteousness necessary to satisfy the righteous God has
got to come from somewhere else besides us, because we can't
produce any of it. We must be removed from that
system that says do this and live. We must be removed from
that system that says curse it as everyone who does not continue
in every point of the law to do it. Because so long as we're
under those obligations, we are under condemnation. Because we
don't do those things. And all of us are cursed. because
we violate the law in every way. But one has come. Turn over to
1 Corinthians 1. In verse 30 it is written, it
is because of him, who's that? That's God, talking about God.
God who chose his people. It is because of him that you
are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God. Now the King James Version, the
way the translators handle it, it says, He has been made unto
us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, as though it's
four things. But actually, the way Paul wrote
it, it's like this. He has become for us wisdom from
God. That is, He is our righteousness,
our sanctification, and our redemption. The world looks for wisdom in
men. It looks for a different kind
of wisdom. It looks for a wisdom that talks about people being
righteous because of what they've done. Well, that's no wisdom
if you're going to go before God and claim to be righteous.
Because God really knows you. God knows what you've done. But
not only that, God can look way past anything on the outside.
He can look right into your heart and see you for the wretched,
wicked sinner that you are. And yet men think it's wisdom
when they set up religions, some of them even called Christianity,
where they have religious rituals to perform, where they have good
deeds to do. Read that article by Brother
Marvin Stoniker, where he found that tract that said, things
to do to get to heaven. I think it was something like
that. It was a list of nine things. to get to heaven. Not once did
that thing, did that little tract mention Christ or the blood or
anything like that. Pray, read the Bible, you know,
go to church. Those nine steps to heaven and
that's eight too many. Eight too many. Oh, men think
that's wise. But God has brought us His wisdom. He's made Christ to be wisdom
for us. And how is it wisdom? God has
made Christ to be our righteousness. He's taken the duty of righteousness
out of our hands because we've just messed it up. And He put
it into the hands of this righteous branch which He raised up to
David. This King who will rule wisely
and deal justly. This King who will bring salvation
to God's Israel, God's Judah, all of them. All that rebellious
lot. He brings it to them. because
the duty of righteousness was taken away from them and put
into the hands of Jesus Christ. He came, Jehovah God, as a man
of the lineage of David, a rightful king to sit upon the throne and
fulfill the promises to David and also be for us what we need
to be. It is good when we come to some
kind of understanding of our sinfulness, though we don't want
to make a sacrament out of confessing how sinful we are and going around
moaning and groaning about what wretched sinners we are. People
can do that with a great deal of pride. People do that thinking
that God will notice just how awful they feel about their sins. There are only Well, there's
nobody on earth, let me put it this way, there's nobody on earth
understands how sinful they are. And even the ones in hell don't
understand, because they keep rebelling and rejecting God's
judgment against them. There's only one person, only
one human being that knows how sinful we are, and that's the
Lord Jesus Christ. Because our sins were laid on
him, and he, the perfect one, felt them completely. The filth
of all of them was upon Him. We're like hogs, we don't even
know we're covered in filth. But you put an animal that's
used to being clean and throw him in a hog pen, they know what
filth is. And our Lord Jesus Christ was
thrown into the filth of our nature, into the filth of our
conduct, in all our rebellion against God, He bore it, He knows
how sinful we are. But to whatever degree, we do
come to recognize how sinful we are. To that degree, we will
stand in wonder with hearts full of rejoicing and thanksgiving
when we read, this is the name by which He will be called, the
Lord, our righteousness. He has been made for us righteousness. He was righteous in everything
he did, but it goes farther than that. His righteousness comes
to us not only as a matter of the kind of life he lived, but
the kind of death he died. And it comes to us because of
the kind of person he is, Jehovah God in the form of a man. Someday, everybody here will
stand before God and be judged. And yet we, who are of God's
Israel and God's Judah, when they say, show us your righteousness,
we can say, you see that fellow up there on the throne, rendering
judgment? He is my righteousness. When you can find fault with
him, then you can find fault with me. And seeing that it's
he that's doing the judging, he's not gonna be finding fault
in himself. Oh, God's got this locked up for us, doesn't he?
He's got it sealed up. Brother Bruce Crabtree, He was
talking about the gospel one time, and he said, it's un-messuppable. Un-messuppable. You ever think
you've messed things up? Well, you did. You've messed
everything up, but you haven't messed up God's gospel. You say, oh, but since the Lord
saved me, the awful things I've done. Yeah, well, I know. I've
done awful things, things I'm embarrassed to acknowledge to
myself and would be horrified to acknowledge them to you. But for all that sin, I didn't
mess it up. Because the gospel is unmessable. Because it's been taken out of
the hands of us who always mess up. and put into the hands of
Him who never messes anything up. He is our righteousness. Now let's look for just a moment
at Jeremiah 33. We were in Jeremiah 23, now let's
look at Jeremiah 33. Verse 15. We're going to recognize
some words here, but there's one word that changes. Which
if you're wearing socks, it's going to knock them off. In those days. And at that time
I will make a righteous branch sprout from David's line. He
will do what is just and right in the land. In those days, Judah
will be saved. And Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which
it, in our translation, made a little mistake there. The word is a feminine pronoun
or particle or whatever. This is the name by which she
will be called. Jehovah, our righteousness. Who is the she? Jerusalem, who
killed the prophets. Jerusalem, who'd been destroyed
and torn down and who represents God's people. She is called the
Lord, our righteousness. You say, why would we ever be
called that? Because Jehovah is our righteousness,
and so much so that we are subsumed within his person, and we are
seen to be like him. And we, his people, are not only
given his righteousness, were given his name. Now you ponder on that a little
bit. We understand how he, our Lord
Jesus, could be called Jehovah, our righteousness. How could
we ever be called that? Only because we're so closely
united to him, you can't tell the difference. In heaven's court, no difference
is seen between Jehovah and his people. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, Jehovah,
in human flesh, is our righteousness. And we are so covered up in it,
we look just like him. Now I know what you see in yourselves,
I know what I see in myself, sin. God sees none. You see in yourselves everything
that make God angry and reject you. God sees in you himself. Is that too bold? Is that going too far? If it
is, then there's no gospel. Because God will never accept
anything less than himself. And therefore, he makes us like
himself in matters of righteousness, such that we both have the same
name. When you sin, I mean notably
so that you notice it, And the sense of guilt begins
to invade your mind. And fears of condemnation begin
to creep up. Remember, you have the same name
as your Redeemer. Jehovah, our righteousness. And until unrighteousness can
be found in Jehovah, there will never be any unrighteousness
found in you. in the presence of God. Heavenly
Father, we don't want to presume, we don't want to go beyond, and
we confess that sometimes it's scary, the things we read in
the Scriptures. But what would we expect from
a God like you, other than wonderful things that are too high for
us to attain, too high for us to be able to wrap our minds
around Lord, you wrote, whosoever shall
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And we call upon
you in the name of the Lord, our righteousness. To put away our sin. And grant
us the status of a righteous person. Oh Jesus, you are our righteousness
and we claim no other. And we stand dumbstruck that
not only have you given us your righteousness, you've given us
your name. Blessed be your name, both now
and forevermore.