The name of the Lord is our great
and high charge. We run to him trusting his infinite
power. Hallelujah, Christ is reigning. Praise Jehovah, our God. Sovereign Savior, we will praise
you. We trust you, our God. Our Savior, who died to atone
for our sins, is exalted on high, and He sovereignly reigns. Hallelujah, Christ is reigning. Praise to Abba, our God. Sovereign Savior, we will praise
you. We trust you, our God. Though tempted and tried, we
are not in despair. Our Savior is ruling, so why
should we fear? Alleluia! Christ is reigning! Praise, Jehovah,
our God! Sovereign Savior, we will praise
you, we trust you, our God! Yes, Satan may roar, but he cannot
devour, For Jesus has broken the serpent's dread power. Hallelujah! Christ is reigning! Praise Jehovah our God! Savior, we will praise you, we
trust you, our God. God's sovereign decree and his
covenant shall stand, and all who trust Jesus are safe in his
hand. Hallelujah, Christ is reigning. Praise Jehovah, our God. Sovereign Savior, we will praise
you. We trust you, our God. Be seated, please. Good morning. We're going to begin in Jeremiah
chapter 23 this morning, Jeremiah chapter 23. And I've titled this Bible study,
Christ, Our Righteousness. Christ, Our Righteousness. Let's go before the throne of
grace and ask the Lord to bless his word to our hearts. Our Heavenly
Father, we're coming before you, Lord, in the name of thy dear
son, believing that he is our righteousness before thee. We
would dare not speak of any other righteousness other than Him. We pray that you would send your
Holy Spirit in power, that you would reveal Him to us and cause
us, Lord, to believe Him, to rest in Him, to embrace Him,
to trust Him for all our salvation. We know that in the volume of
the book, it is written of him. And so, Lord, we pray that you
would bless your word by your spirit, shine the light of thy
grace on the face of thy dear son, that you would encourage
your people, that you would save us, Lord, cause us to find our
hope and to rejoice in Christ Jesus. For it's in his name we
pray. Amen. Look with me, if you will, to
Jeremiah chapter 23, verse 6, and in his days, Judah, that's
the church, that's spiritual Israel, that's all the people
of God, Judah shall be saved. You shall call his name Jesus,
for he shall save his people. The work that the Lord Jesus
Christ came to do was the salvation of Judah, of Israel, and he succeeded
in doing that. No attempt to save, no partial
salvation to be finished by man, he accomplished what he came
to do. When he cried on Calvary's cross,
it is finished. Everything necessary for the
salvation of God's people was accomplished in the sacrifice
that our Lord made of himself to the Father on Calvary's cross. And Israel shall dwell safely. It's the only safe place to be.
If the Lord Jesus Christ himself didn't do everything for us in
salvation, then we have reason to fear. There's no safe place.
There's nothing but fear and trepidation. We don't know if
we've done enough. We don't know if we've done it
right. My people shall dwell safely. They're going to find
their place of rest in Christ. And this is His name. This is
his name whereby he shall be called. This is the name that
God has given, one of the names, one of the many names that God
the Father has given to the Lord Jesus Christ. In his names we
learn, we learn things of his character, things of his work.
He reveals himself by his name. And this is one of the names
that God has given. The Lord our righteousness. That's his name. Now, the warning
for you and for me this morning is that we not separate the righteousness
of Christ from his person. There is a temptation to do that.
We talk about Christ's righteousness as if it's a robe that he wears
that's somehow separate from who he is. The truth is that
Christ's righteousness can no more be separated from his person
than your unrighteousness can be separated from you. We're not sinners because we
sin. We sin because we're sinners.
Sin is not what we do. Sin is what we are by nature. And so it is with the Lord Jesus
Christ. What's true in our unrighteousness
is true in His righteousness. Righteousness is who He is. It's his person. We're not interested
in believing a doctrine. You can have the doctrine of
imputed righteousness without having Christ. You can have the
doctrine of divine election without having Christ. You can believe
and place your faith in the sovereignty of God without having Christ. Now, if you have Christ, then
you're going to know that He is sovereign in every area. In creation, He's sovereign. In providence, He's sovereign.
And particularly in salvation, He is sovereign. He will have mercy upon whom
He will have mercy, so that it does not matter what whosoever runneth or whosoever
willeth, it doesn't matter. It's God that shows mercy. It
is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth. So, and
if you know Christ, you will know that he succeeded in saving
God's elect, particular redemption. Our faith, the point that I'm
trying to make is that our faith is not in a doctrine. You can learn these doctrines
intellectually. Our faith is in a person. You can have the doctrine without
having the person. If you have the person, the doctrine
will be consistent with who he is. And so as precious as these
doctrines are to us, we don't want to separate Christ from
his righteousness. Now, in order for us to have
any hope in the righteousness of Christ and Christ's righteousness,
we must come to believe that we have no righteousness, none
whatsoever. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
64, Isaiah chapter 64. Look at verse five. Thou meetest him that rejoiceth
and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways. Now, the scripture says that
the children of Israel in the wilderness knew the acts of God. They knew what God had done.
They saw it. They saw the dividing of the
Red Sea. They walked across on dry ground.
They woke up every morning to find their food lying on the
ground. They knew the Lord had sent that.
They saw the water coming from the rock. They saw the pillar
of fire and the pillar of smoke. They saw the mountain quake.
They saw these things. They knew the acts of God. But Moses knew his ways. Moses knew why God was doing
what he was doing and what this had to do with the character
of God So that on Isaiah chapter 55 the scripture says My ways
are not your ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts
So that as the heavens are high above the earth so are my thoughts
above yours and my ways above your ways So our hope here is
that the Lord would show us his ways his way is in the person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says here that he meets
them that rejoice and worketh righteousness, those that remember
thee and thy ways, behold, thou art wroth, for we have sinned. Lord, we have sinned and that
continually. You see that? There's never a
time when we're without sin. Why? Because we have no righteousness.
Our righteousnesses, as he's gonna go on to tell us, are as
filthy rags. Look what he says. We have sinned
in those is continuance. And aren't you glad for those
next few words? And, and we shall be saved. How are we gonna be saved? If
our sin is a continual thing, If we, every imagination of our
heart and our thought is only evil and that continually, if
we have no righteousness of our own, then how are we going to
be saved? Look what he says. But we are
all as an unclean thing. And all our righteousnesses... I was talking to somebody this
week and they said, you know, I read that verse for many years and
I thought, I read it and I knew the words, I heard the words,
I spoke the words. But he said, I thought that righteousnesses
here was the bad things that I did. The things that I was ashamed
of. Oh no! Man at his very best state is
altogether vanity. It's not the shameful things
that keep men from Christ. Men call out to God all the time
when they get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and
their problems cause great suffering. Their sin causes great suffering
in their lives. They call out to God. It's not
men's sin that keeps them from Christ, it's their righteousness.
And what he's saying here is we are all, as an unclean thing,
all our righteousnesses. The best thing you've ever done
before God are as filthy rags. So we have no righteousness.
God requires perfect, look what he says, and we all do fade as
a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. Scripture says that we have come
forth from the womb speaking lies. speaking lies. We drink iniquity,
Job said, like water. That's just what we are before
God. Now we, you know, I know we,
we, if the Lord, if the Lord doesn't stop us, we'll compare
ourselves to ourselves and think we're getting better. If he doesn't
stop us, we'll compare ourselves to other men and think that we
are better. But if he's pleased to show us the glory of his dear
son in his righteousness, we'll come to only one conclusion.
We have no righteousness. None whatsoever. And the things
that men pat us on the back for, God calls filthy rags. Filthy rags. So how are we going
to be saved? We sin continuously and we shall
be saved. My little children, I write these
things unto you that you sin not. But if any man sin, we have
an advocate with the Father. And that little preposition,
the if, would be better translated, most times since. I write these
things unto you that you sin not, but since you do sin continually,
know this, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ,
the righteous one. the righteous one. David said,
I will speak of thy righteousness and of thine only. The only righteousness we have
is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have an advocate
with the Father, Christ, the righteous one. We're not interested
in just convincing men that that imputed righteousness, that's
a doctrine, that's a precious doctrine. That God must charge
to our account the righteousness of another. That God must put
on him our sin. God made him who knew no sin
to be sin for us. And that's what happened on Calvary's
cross. He bore in his body all the sins, all the guilt, and
all the shame, and all the divine justice that was required to
put away all the sins of all of God's people of every generation.
What a glorious truth. But that's not just the imputation
of guilt on Christ. That's the Lord Jesus Christ,
the person of Christ, taking on our sin, that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him. And what did Paul say? Oh, I
must be found in Him. And that's not a matter of you
finding Him. That's you being found in Him. How are you gonna
be found in Him? Only if He finds you. If He finds
you, I must be found in Him, not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law. That's all the law, the law can
only condemn. The law is righteous, it's righteous,
it's holy, it's just, it's good. What'd the Lord Jesus Christ
come to do? He came to fulfill all righteousness. He said, I
did not come to destroy the law. I came to fulfill it. He's the
only one that satisfied the demands of God's law. And Paul goes on
to say that I might be found in him not having my own righteousness,
which is of the law, but that righteousness, which is by the
faith of Jesus Christ. There's my hope. My hope before
God is that my faith is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's my advocate before God and
he's all my righteousness. You there in Isaiah, turn with
me to Isaiah 42. Isaiah chapter 42. Oh, the world is filled with
men that have a zeal for God. They're very religious. But as
the scripture tells us in Romans, their religion is without knowledge. They go about trying to establish
their own righteousness, being ignorant of the righteousness
of God. For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. Isn't that our
nature? Our nature is to try to establish
our own righteousness. Christ himself is our righteousness. You have your Bibles open to
Isaiah 42. Let's begin reading in verse
18. Hear ye deaf. What does that mean? That means,
Lord, if you don't give me ears to hear, I won't be able to hear.
Let him that the Spirit giveth ears to hear hear. Lord, I'll
be deaf if you don't give me ears to hear. And look, ye blind,
that you may see. Look where? Look to Christ. Lord Moses, when those children
of Israel were stung by fiery serpents, a picture of our experience
in this world. We've been stung by the deadly
poison of sin. What did the Lord tell Moses?
He said, you make a brazen serpent a brazen serpent, put him up
on a pole and hold him up high and tell the people to look and
they shall live. And it didn't matter if you were
standing right under that serpent and had a perfect look at her,
you were all the way out on the edge of the camp and you could
barely see it. What if you were blind? Somebody would turn your
face towards that serpent. Look, he's over there. He's over
there. And if you looked, you lived. That serpent's a picture of Christ
hanging on Calvary's cross. He said, well, I thought serpent
was a picture of the devil and sin. Yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what happened
to the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. He bore our sins in his
body. Look, you blind. Hear, you deaf. The Lord accused the Pharisees
of being blind, and they were offended by it. We're blind? We know the Bible. We study the
Scriptures. We know God. What did our Lord
say to them? If you were blind, then you could
see. But because you see, therefore
your sins remain. Go and learn what that means.
You know what that means, don't you? If you would come before
God deaf and blind and dumb and dead and unable to do anything
for yourself, he'd give you everything you need. But you come before
him with something to offer, and your sins will remain. We
have no righteousness. So he says, hear ye deaf, and
look ye blind, that ye may see. Who is blind but my servant? Now what servant's he talking
about? He's talking about Christ. Now he's talking about us coming
as blind men in need to have sight, and now he's asking this
question. Who is blind as my servant? Or deaf as my messenger that
I sent? Behold, my servant, mine elect. This is talking about Christ,
and now he's asking this rhetorical question, who is as blind as
my servant? And who is as deaf as the one
that I sent? Who is blind as he that is perfect,
and blind as the Lord's servant? Say, what does that mean? What
does that mean? That means that when God gives
you faith to come to Christ, He said, I separate your sin
from you as far as the East is from the West, and I remember
them no more. I can't see them. Can't see them. That's why I need a God who is
perfectly righteous and blind to my sin. How's he gonna be
blind to my sin? Only if my sin is covered by
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when that happens, God becomes
blind to it. He can't see it anymore. Seeing many things. He's still
talking about Christ. Seeing many things, but thou
observest not. Opening the ears, But hearing
not. The truth is that if the Lord
heard any one of our prayers like they are spoken, he would
have to condemn us for our prayers. Don't forget, your righteousnesses
are as filthy rags. That means that the most sincere
prayer that you've ever offered to God is not acceptable to Him. That means that there's enough
sin in what you're doing right now, listening to the Gospel
preach, and there's enough sin in what I'm doing right now,
trying to preach the Gospel, to send us to hell. Do you believe that? That's why we need a righteous
one. Who is so blind as my servant? Who is so deaf as the one that
I've heard, that I sent? He sees many things, but he observes
not your unrighteousness. I need God to look not to me
for my righteousness, but to look to Christ. The Lord is well-pleased for
His righteousness' sake. This is my beloved Son. Here ye Him. In Him I am well-pleased. Christ is all. He's all. He's our righteousness before
God. And if He is, Then what more
could we ask for? What greater hope could we have?
If the Lord Jesus Christ is my righteousness before God, can
I change that? No. Can my sin change it? Can what I do or don't do have
any effect on it? No. Can Satan put it away? No. He's chained. He's being reserved for the day
of judgment to be cast into the pit of hell. He's no... He's
no foe to God. Can this world change what the
Lord Jesus Christ has done as my righteousness before God?
There's no condemnation, none, to them who are in Christ Jesus. If you're in Christ, you don't
have to fear the wrath of God. That fire's been put out. That
wrath has been put away. God's satisfied. You've got a
righteous advocate before God who stands in your stead and
presents himself on your behalf. And his righteousness is who
he is. This is the, our faith is not
in the righteousness of Christ. It's in Christ who is righteous. The Lord is well pleased for
his righteousness sake. Why? Because he will magnify
the law and make it honorable. You and I have never been able
to magnify one jot or tittle of God's law. The only thing
the law has ever done to us is condemn us. It's all it's ever
done. Matter of fact, it does, well
I say that's all it's ever done, it actually does more than that.
The law not only condemns us, the law incites more sin. The strength of sin is the law. You want your spouse to do something
or your child to do something? Tell them they can't. Tell them
they can't. Just put them under the law.
I forbid you to do this. That'll be the very thing that
they'll want to do more than anything else in their heart.
The same thing for you and me, isn't it? You put somebody under
the law and the strength of sin is the law. That's all the law
ever does. It just incites more sin. Christ fulfilled the law. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter
9. The Lord thy God giveth thee not this good land to possess
for thy righteousness, because thou art a stiff-necked people. Oh, Lord, my righteousness. None
of the blessings of God come because of our righteousness.
They come because of His righteousness. He's the only one that bent and
bowed to the will of God in everything. The law of God said to him, do
this, and he willingly did it from the heart. Turn with me to Romans chapter
3. Romans chapter 3. Verse 20, therefore, by the deeds
of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin. No flesh is gonna be justified
before God by the deeds of the law. Only thing the law does
is expose our sin for what it is and incite it to be even worse.
But now, But now the righteousness of God, and when it says without
the law, that's talking about without your obedience to the
law. Not without his obedience to the law. The righteousness
of God without the law is manifested being witnessed by the law and
the prophets. Everything in this book points
to Christ. It all points to him. The law,
the prophets in the volume of the book, it is written of me. Those self-righteous Pharisees
were very studious in the Bible. And the Lord said to them, you
search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal
life. You think the more you memorize
God's word and the more you try to keep God's word and the more
you impress others with your knowledge of God's word that
that's going to somehow give you eternal life. You search
the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life.
But these are they which testify of me. All of the word of God
points to Christ, points to Christ. The righteousness of God without
the law being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the
righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ. If you got a translation that
translates that any other way, it's wrong. It's wrong. The righteousness of God is not
by your faith in Jesus Christ, it is by the faith of Jesus Christ. It's his faithfulness before
God. Unto all, now here's the blessing
of that righteousness, it is unto all and upon all them that
believe. For there's no difference There's
no difference, it doesn't matter. Jew, Greek, Gentile, rich, poor,
male, female, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. For all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now I know you've
heard me say this before, but this is so glorious to me. You
want a good definition of sin? There it is right there. It's
the best one I know of. The only question you have to
ask yourself is this, what in my life, what in my thoughts,
what in my motives, what in my actions, what in my attitude,
what in my words fall short of the glory of God? If the Lord's shown you anything
of his glory, you know the answer, that's real clear. It's just
real simple, isn't it? Everything. Everything. God says it's sin. My best efforts
is sin before God. Being justified, how am I gonna
be justified before God if everything in me falls short of the glory
of God? How am I gonna be justified before
God? Freely. Freely. Not by works of righteousness,
which we have done. freely by His grace, through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. He's the one who's redeemed
us. He's the one who's offered Himself
to the Father, and the Father is pleased with Him, so that
God says, you are accepted before God in the Beloved, in the Beloved. whom God hath set forth to be
a propitiation through faith in his blood. And don't be intimidated
by that word propitiation. It means that God's wrath has
been appeased. That's what it means. It means
that there's no more anger in God. He satisfied his justice
in the sacrifice of his dear son. He's got nothing for his
people but love. nothing for them but redemption,
nothing for them but grace. God hath set forth to be a propitiation
through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for
the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance
of God, to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness,
that he might be just You see, God couldn't just forgive us
and put away his justice. He couldn't ignore the demands
of his righteousness. He had to establish his righteousness. The only hope we have of being
saved is that our God is immutable. He's immutable. He does not mutate. He never changes. He's the same
yesterday, today, and forever. And here again, we're not putting
our faith in the immutability of God. We're putting our faith
in a God who never mutates. He never changes. He said, I
change not. I am the Lord and I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Our God established
a covenant of grace, cannot be changed. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the propitiation for our sins, cannot be changed. Justice has
been satisfied. So now, he's satisfied his justice,
and now he's become justifier. Oh, how are we gonna be justified?
Be found in Christ. The justifier of him that, what? That believeth in Jesus, that
trusts in Christ, that relies upon him for all their righteousness. Lord, I have no righteousness.
The only way I can have my sin put away is that if you'll look
to Christ and what he did on Calvary's cross, if you'll look
to Christ for my righteousness, It's the only hope that I have.
That's all faith is. Where's boasting then? Where
is boasting? There is none. One of the worst
things about religious people is that they're always competing
with one another to see who's more righteous. It's so offensive. Once you get around that, you
just don't even want to be close to it. God's people are able
to esteem one another more highly than themselves because they
believe themselves to be the chief of all sinners. They believe
that. There's no boasting. There's
boasting. Every time we boast, we boast
in Christ, don't we? Boasting Christ. Where is boasting? It is excluded. By what law?
Of works? Nay, by the law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Without
the deeds of the law. When our Lord went to be baptized, which is our baptism. He did
everything necessary for our salvation. John said, I'm not
worthy to unlatch your sandals, much less baptize you. And the
Lord said, suffer to be so for now, John, that we might fulfill
all righteousness. My baptism is necessary for the
salvation of my people. Oh, that the Lord would enable
us to hunger and thirst after righteousness. Hunger and thirst
after Christ. Here's what the Lord said to
the harlots and the publicans. He said, unless your righteousness
exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees, and they were
outwardly righteous. Paul was a Pharisee. He said
concerning the law, I was blameless. There's not a person that knew
me that could accuse me of violating any one of God's laws. That's
what Paul said about himself. My outward behavior was blameless. And what'd the Lord say? Unless
your righteousness exceeds that righteousness, you shall never
enter into the kingdom of heaven. How's it gonna exceed that righteousness?
to be found in Christ, to have him as my righteousness before
God. All right, let's take a break. Thank you.