All right, brethren, that will
be our text, Matthew chapter 5. This message that our Lord preached, beginning in Matthew 5.1 and
it ends in Matthew 7.29, is commonly referred to as the Lord's Sermon
on the Mount. But every time the gospel is
preached by one that Christ sends to preach the gospel, It's the
Lord's sermon on the mount. Every single time the Lord sends
one of his messengers to preach. What do I mean by that? It says
there in verse 1, he went up into a mountain and when he was
set, his disciples came unto him and he opened his mouth and
he taught them. When our Lord Jesus had by himself
purged the sin of his people, he went up into the mount, to
the mount of God, and he sat down at God's right hand. And
right now, from his throne in glory, every time that he sends
his messenger, he fills his earthen vessel with the message, and
he sends him to preach, and he assembles his people, he gathers
his people, and when the word goes forth, it's coming from
the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ to his people. He's doing the
preaching. And I do pray the Lord would
give us the heart to hear every message just that way, as Christ
speaking to me, Christ preaching to me, just like he did that
day in that mount. Listen to this. Actually, let's
go look at this, Isaiah 2, Isaiah 2, Isaiah 2 and verse 2, look
at this. This is what the scripture said
would be in these last days. You know, when Christ came, the
Hebrew writer said it, the last days began. And he ascended to
the mount. And this is what it said would
come to pass in Hebrews 2.2. It should come to pass, I mean
Isaiah 2.2. It should come to pass in the
last days that the mountain of the Lord's house should be established
in the top of the mountains. This is talking about Christ
at God's right hand, Mount Zion. and shall be exalted above the
hills, and all nations shall flow unto it, all his people
from every nation. And many people shall go and
say, come ye, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to
the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us his ways,
and we will walk in his paths. We walk by faith, trusting his
ways to be our righteousness. We walk by faith, looking to
Christ, trusting he is our righteousness. Here's why we do this, for out
of Zion, that is in glory where he is, shall go forth the law,
this gospel, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, from
heavenly Jerusalem. And he, Christ, shall judge among
the nations. It's through the preaching of
this gospel to us right here. where he's doing this in all
his churches in this world, that he's judging among the nations.
He's judging, he's calling out them that make up the members
of his holy nation, and he's manifesting them that are of
the nations of this world. He's doing that through this
gospel. And here's what the effect of
it is. It says, and he shall rebuke many people, and here's
the effect, they'll seek peace. They shall beat their swords
into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war
anymore. O house of Jacob, come ye, let us walk in the light
of the Lord. And I pray the Lord give us grace
to hear Christ speak tonight, and that he work this peace in
our hearts, just like he promises. Now let's go to our text, back
in Matthew 5. And our Lord Jesus is declaring
here, he is the righteousness of God that God has provided
for his people. He is the righteousness of God
who makes us accepted before holy God. He says here in verse
17, think not that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets.
I'm not come to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto
you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in
no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Whosoever,
therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and
shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom
of heaven. But whosoever shall do and teach,
the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For
I say unto you that except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, the way that most
people preach from the Sermon on the Mount, the majority who
preach from this Sermon on the Mount, they preach it as though
Christ is seated in Mount Sinai. They preach it as saying that
Christ now. It's worked in you who believe
and now you're under a greater obligation and you have to strive
much harder to keep the law of God so that you can have a righteousness
that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees.
That's how most people teach this. They say, see here now,
our Lord declared he did not come to destroy the law of the
prophets. So the law is still binding on
you who believe. And so they say you must keep
the law better than the scribes and the Pharisees so that you
have a righteousness that exceeds theirs. Now brethren, if that's
what our Lord is saying, if that's what he's saying, then the prophets
also remain. They remain. And yet I've never
heard one person say, I've never heard anybody say that the prophets
still remain So you have to fulfill the prophets. Well, preacher,
that'd be absurd. All men know we can't fulfill
the prophets. That's why the Lord included
the prophets here, because we can't fulfill the law either.
We cannot fulfill the law either. What did the Lord say he came
to do here? He said he came to fulfill the
law and the prophets. He came to fill full the law
and the prophets. He came to give the law and the
prophets everything that they spoke about. Everything the law requires and
everything the prophets declared he would do. And truly, what
the prophets all declared is Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believe it. All the prophets
declared that we are sinners and we need Christ to deliver
us. All through the Old Testament,
you see Israel, the children of Israel, the natural children
of Israel, they were given the law. They were told that if you
keep this, I will bless you. Now, all the blessings were given
to them were carnal earthly blessings. God still gave them those carnal
earthly blessings, delivering them into Canaan, but the children
of Israel never did keep the law. Never. Never. And what you see in all the law
and the prophets and the Psalms is constantly declaring over
and over that you and I as sinners cannot keep the law of God and
make ourselves righteous. That's the very thing that the
Pharisees were preaching. Christ said here, you need a
righteousness that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees. They were declaring that sinners can come to God
by the law. by your law obedience. You can't
come to God that way. Nobody can come to God that way.
Christ alone is the righteousness we must have, and his righteousness
is ours, not by our works, but only through faith in him. He's the only doer of the law.
Christ is the only doer of the law, and Christ is the only one
who effectually teaches the law in the heart. Look here in verse
19. Whosoever therefore shall break
one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whosoever shall
do and teach, the same shall be called great in the kingdom
of heaven. By teaching sinners that they
could keep the law to make ourselves righteous, the Pharisees broke
the law and they taught others to break the law. By telling
sinners that they could keep the law, that they had the ability
to keep the law of God, they broke the law and they taught
other sinners to break the law. In his sermon, Christ is teaching
his people that the law declares us guilty. That's what he's declaring
here in this sermon. And he's teaching us the only
way that we establish the law is through faith in him. through
faith in Him, and that faith's given to us of God. And we're
trusting, faith is trusting Christ's doing as our righteousness. This is what Paul meant when
he said in Romans 3.21, do we then make void the law through
faith? That's why they were accusing
Christ of destroying the law. They were saying, you're making
void the law. Why? Because Christ called the Pharisees
hypocrites. He told the Pharisees, you are
claiming you have kept the law of God and outwardly you appear
righteous, outwardly you appear holy, but you've never kept the
law. That's what a hypocrite is, somebody
that claims to have kept the law of God and has never kept
it. Rather, we've never kept the
law of God. And that's what Christ was declaring to them, and so
they called him, they said he's an antinomian, he's against the
law. They accused Christ of that,
they accused Apostle Paul of that, they accuse us of that
today. Paul said, do we then make void
the law through faith? God forbid. The law's got to
be fulfilled. Christ said every jot and tittle
of this law and of these prophets must be fulfilled. This world
won't pass away till all has been fulfilled. We don't make
void the law through faith. Actually, God's people, taught
of God, are the only ones who really see how the law is wholly just and
good and how it must be honored. But we have been made to know
that we can't honor it and we can't give it the righteousness
it demands. We can't put away our own sins.
But Christ has. And it's through faith in Christ
that we establish the whole law of God. Just like Abraham did
when he believed God and God imputed to him the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Paul said in Romans
3. Through faith we establish the law. We trust Christ's doing.
Now, it's the Lord who teaches He's redeemed what the law says
of us, and he makes us hear the law declare us guilty even in
our very thoughts, right down to our nature, the thoughts and
intents of our heart, of our sin. He makes you hear the law
is spiritual. Christ declares we're guilty
of murder. This is how he began in Matthew 521. He said, you've
heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not kill. And whosoever shall kill shall
be in danger of the judgment. The false teachers lowered the
law down to just the outward and said that as long as you
don't commit murder in the outward act, you're not a murderer. That's
what Christ is declaring here. Verse 22, but I say unto you,
that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall
be in danger of the judgment. The Pharisees taught whosoever
shall say to his brother Rekha, that is, stupid, fool, reprobate
moron, he'll be in danger of the council. He'll be in danger
of being brought before the Sanhedrin, before the Pharisees, and being
judged. But Christ says, whosoever shall
say thou fool shall be in danger of hellfire. He said it's far
worse. So is there anybody here so deceived
as to be able to claim that we're not guilty of murder? Was anybody here so deceived
that you would say, oh, is that what the law of murder? Well,
then I'm not guilty. If anybody can say that you've
never been angry in your heart at somebody else unjustly, without
a cause, you're deceived. Can't we all? Isn't that the
truth? We have to say guilty. Then it
declares we're all guilty of adultery. Look here at verse
27. Matthew 5, 27. He said, you've
heard it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit
adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever
looketh on a woman, that's the false teachers made it only the
act. But he said, whosoever looks
upon a woman and lusts after her, has committed adultery with
her already in his heart. Of course, this goes for man
too. Man, woman lusting upon a man. or anything else. Christ is declaring here, brethren,
that the heart's corrupt. He's saying out of the heart
proceeds sin. The sin is in our nature. And
out of the hearts where the sin comes from, we're guilty in thought. We're guilty by our very nature
being conceived of Adam. Now this is so with all the law.
You could go through all the law. The Lord declares we're
liars by nature. He said in verse 33, You've heard
it's been said by them of old time, thou shalt not forswear
thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oath. The false
teachers would say, now if you made an oath, then you have to
be true to that. But that's the only time you
have to be true. Now if you've made, if you hadn't made an oath,
you can lie and get away with it. And the Lord says, swear
not at all. neither by heaven, for it's God's
throne, nor by the earth, for it's his footstool, neither by
Jerusalem, for it's the city of the great king, neither shalt
thou swear by thy head, because you can't make one hair white
or black, but let your communication be yes, yes, and no, no, for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. Have you ever
thought this, brethren, when, you know, if you're Renting a
car or whatever you're doing and you have to sign a document. It's basically a contract you
have to sign. It says you're obligated this
or that or whatever. Have you ever thought about this
that the reason you have to do that is because we're sinners
and we're liars by nature. We don't trust each other and
we shouldn't. That's why we have to do it.
That's why in this world you have to sign contracts and everything
else is because we have lied and cheated one another and stolen
from one another so much that we have to have a document to
prove that we said we'd do this or that. And our Lord is here
telling us that we're liars by nature. We're liars by nature. Let God be true, Paul said, but
every man a liar. He that believeth on the Son
of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath
what? He's made him a liar. He called
God a liar. We're the liar. We're the liar
by nature. That's all our sin nature is.
Then Christ teaches his child, we're guilty of not loving as
we ought. Not only are we guilty of these
sins we committed, we're guilty of not loving as we ought. He
says in verse 38, You've heard that it's been said,
an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you,
resist not evil. But whosoever shall smite thee
on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. If any man will
sue thee at the law, take away thy coat, let him have your cloak
also. Whosoever shall compel thee to
go a mile, go with him too. Give to him that asketh thee,
and from him that would borrow thee, and turn not thou away.
You've heard that it's been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor,
and hate thy enemy. This is what the false teachers
taught. They taught, love the Jews, but
hate the Gentiles. And this is what the Lord said,
I say unto you, love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. I hear that. Bless them that
curse you. Do good to them that hate you.
Pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that
you may be children of your Father which is in heaven. For he makes
his Son to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on
the just and on the unjust. For if you love them which love
you, what reward have you? Do not even the publicans the
same? If you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others?
Do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even
as your Father which is in heaven perfect. Is there anybody, after
reading that, is there anybody here that would honestly say,
well, I just need to try harder and harder and harder so I can
do that in the righteousness God requires so I'd come and
stand before God one day and be righteous. Anybody give you
a good cussing lately? And you just felt so loving toward
them when they cussed you. Cussed you, mama. Have you loved them that curse
you? That hate you? That spit in your face? That
persecute you? We should. That's what our Lord's
saying. We should. We should. And God's people do have a willingness
in our new heart that we would love our enemies. We do. But to come to God and to say
that you just need to strive harder so that your righteousness
will be better than the Pharisees? No. Those that Christ teaches
in the heart, He makes us to hear the law, and He makes us
to hear these words declaring us guilty in our flesh, so that
we see that in us is nothing good, not in our flesh. We're
sinners by nature. The Lord seeth not as man seeth. Man looks on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looks on the heart. He looks on the inward, what
the motive is, what's really there where nobody else can see. That's what he looks on. And
knowing that, brethren, that does two things for God's sake.
One, it makes me say, I'm not gonna pretend that I've done
these things God has said. I'm not gonna pretend it, because
God knows it's not true, and he's the one that matters. And
two, it makes you say, I'm so thankful God looks on the heart
because he knows the heart he's given. He knows where he's created
a new heart and given faith to trust Christ. He knows it. Even
when you're in unbelief and doubt and your old man is warring against
your new man and overcoming you, he still knows them that are
his. Now, when Christ teaches us our
guilt, He then teaches his child that he alone is our righteousness.
And he keeps doing this. Why do we come here to the gospel?
We don't have a new message. It's not like we're coming to
hear something new. Christ didn't preach anything new. He wasn't
trying to preach something novel. He said, my words are not my
own. They're my fathers. I'm just saying what my father
gave me to say. We're just saying what Christ
taught us to say. We're not looking for something
new. We need to hear constantly, we are the sinner and Christ
is our righteousness. Because this is how Christ keeps
us walking through this earth, walking by faith, constrained
by him. to somewhat better do the things
he commands us to do than we would if we didn't know him.
If we didn't know him and we're trying to do these things on
our own, and we think we've done these things on our own, you
see the result of that in religious folks all around and how puffed
up they'll be towards you. But he keeps you humble, he keeps
you knowing he's your righteousness. And that's what we need to hear
over and over. I'm the sinner, he's my righteousness. So look
back here at verse 23. He said, therefore, seeing that
we're the guilty, we're the murderer, we're the liar, we're the adulterer,
if you bring your gift to the altar. And he's speaking in this
language because he hadn't gone to the cross yet and done away
with the ceremonial law at this point. And so he's using this
kind of language. He says, if you bring your gift
to the altar and there you remember that your brother has ought against
you. Leave there thy gift before the
altar, and go thy way. First be reconciled to thy brother,
and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly
whilst thou art in the way with him, lest at any time the adversary
deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the
officer, and thou be cast into prison. Verily I say unto thee,
thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the
uttermost farthing. Now, if I'm trying to come to
God by the law, if you're trying to come to God by the law, and
you think so lightly of God's law, and think so lightly of
God's wisdom, and his omniscience, and him being able to know your
heart, you think so lightly of God, so lightly of his law, that
you actually think you can come to God by the works that you
do. Who's the brother you're offending? Who's the brother that has ought
against you? It's Christ Jesus, the elder
brother. It's Christ Jesus, the firstborn
among many brethren. First and foremost. First and
foremost. If we're looking to our obedience
rather than Christ, that's committing murder in the heart against Christ.
He said if you say Rekha, if you say thou fool, what does
the gospel say? The preaching of the cross. The
preaching that declares Christ is our only righteousness is
to them that perish. What? Foolishness. They say that's
the fool. He that believeth not God hath
made him what? A liar. Christ said to the Pharisees,
I know you're Abraham's seed. He said, I know you're natural
children of Abraham, but you seek what? To kill me. They didn't
appear that way outwardly. And they denied that. Oh, we're
not trying to kill you. We love you. We love you. He said, you're seeking to kill
me because my word has no place in you. a man that's told you
the truth, which I've heard of God. Christ makes us see that
by looking to ourselves and trusting our own obedience, our own law-keeping,
our self-denying sacrifices, our mortifying of our flesh,
that we begin to really think we're offering something to God. and he shows us it's adultery. That's adultery against Christ
our husband. We break both tables of the law
when we attempt to come to God by our law keeping. We break
both tables of the law, not to mention we've already broken
the law in Adam, but if we're trying to come to God by our
law keeping, we're breaking both tables of the law. Listen to
this. Remember when the Lord gave the parable of the Pharisee
and the publican? And the scripture says, he was
speaking to them that trusted in themselves that they were
righteous and despised others. That's both tables of the law
right there. When you trust in yourself that you're righteous,
You've broken the first commandment. Your idol is yourself. You're
trusting yourself. You broke the first table right
there. You got another God besides God.
And they go together. Anybody that trusts in themselves
that they're righteous always despises others. And when you
despise others, there's the second table against your neighbor. You see, when we try to come
to God by our law keeping, we're breaking the whole law of God.
We're using the law unlawfully. This is adultery against Christ
our husband. Now, Christ declared fornication
is the only reason a man could give his wife a bill of divorcement. The only reason was fornication. Adultery, that's the only reason.
And that's so very important to know if you would hear the
gospel. Look there at verse 32. He said, I say unto you, whosoever
shall put away his wife. They would say, for any cause
whatsoever. Whatever she does that offends
you, you can go to a judge and file for divorce and put her
away. He said, whosoever shall put
away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication. causeth
her to commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced
committeth adultery. That saving for the cause of
means with this one exception, if she's committed adultery,
if she's committed fornication. You know what? God chose his
people freely by grace, not based on anything in us. And Christ
loves his elect with an everlasting love. And you know what you and
me did? We committed adultery. We played
the harlot. But Christ didn't put us away.
He did not put us away. He didn't write us a bill of
divorcement. Listen to this from Isaiah 50 in verse 1. Thus saith
the Lord, where's the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom
I have put away? Or which of my creditors is it
to whom I've sold you? That was another practice that
if you were in debt, you'd sell a member of your family to pay
off your creditors. He said, behold, for your iniquities,
you've sold your sins. Your transgressions is your mother
put away. God, he said, I didn't put her
away. She separated herself. Listen to this. Listen to this
now from Jeremiah 3.1. They say, if a man put away his
wife and she go from him, this is the Lord speaking, and become
another man's, shall he return to her again? Shall not that
land be greatly polluted? But thou hast played the harlot
with many lovers, yet return again to me, saith the Lord." I'm going to tell you now, that
would be hard for you and me. If somebody betrayed your trust
and you don't think you can trust them anymore, people will say,
I'm going to separate from them. I'm putting myself away from
them. Christ didn't do that for you. You that are His, He didn't
do that to you. Had every right to. The law said
He was just to do so, but He didn't. He didn't. How can I
come to God when I've sinned so against Him? I see now my
sin. I'm seeing it. Christ is showing
me this, my sin. How then can I come to God when
I've sinned so against Him? Christ makes you behold. He's
the altar who sanctifies His people and sanctifies everything,
every gift you offer to God, He sanctifies it. Hebrews 13.10,
He said there, you leave off your sacrificing. You be reconciled
to your brother. Christ is the elder brother and
He's the altar. That's not an altar. There is
no altar in this earth. If you have an altar in this
earth, you don't have an altar in heaven. And if you have an
altar in heaven, you don't have an altar in this earth. Christ
is our altar. He's our altar. He's the one
the altar typified throughout the Old Testament. We have an
altar where they have no right to eat what served the tabernacle.
Those that are trying to come to God by their works and their
law-keeping, they don't have a right to this altar. It's only
when Christ has brought us to see we're guilty of breaking
the law. And it's not a one-time thing. He keeps you seeing this
so that He keeps drawing you to Christ, our altar. And he said this, Christ said,
whether it's greater the gift that's put on the altar or the
altar that sanctifies the gift. You see, we're not sanctifying
the altar. We're not doing something for
Christ. Christ is making us holy and he's making us accepted to
God. When you pray, when I pray, it is nothing but sin coming
from us. That is all it is. I don't care
if you had a righteousness that exceeded the righteousness of
the scribes and Pharisees, and men looked at you and said you
was the best, whitest sepulcher there is. Without Christ, all
our prayers are sin. And you and me that believe Him
right now, all our prayers, as they leave us, are sin. It's
Christ our offer that makes him accepted of God. And that goes
for anything we do. Anything we do. It is sin. It is Christ who sanctifies it.
It is Christ who makes it accepted of God. I'm talking about your
very best deeds. It's Christ who makes them sinless
and perfect and accepted of God. But God's law required an innocent
sacrifice to be on that altar. Remember that? You couldn't just
come to the altar. There had to be a slain, innocent
lamb slain, or a turtle dove, or a pigeon. Blood had to be
shed, because without shedding of blood, there's no putting
away of the sins. So you had to have a sacrifice.
What about my sacrifice? Christ is also the sacrifice.
Matthew 5, look at verse 29. He said, If thou write I offend
thee, pluck it out. cast it from thee. It's profitable
for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy
whole body should be cast into hell. And you know there's people
who heard this message of you've got to have a righteousness that
exceeds the Pharisees and they were told that you need to work
harder and you need to deny yourself more and there's been people
that have actually plucked out their eye and chopped off their
hand. You could chop off every member
you got till you don't have another member and you still got it right
in here. You still got the sin right here.
But there is one member. Christ said, I'm the head and
you're members of my body. He's the one member. of the whole
body and willingly gave himself to be cut off in place of his
people so that the whole body wouldn't perish. And because
he did that, brethren, because our Lord did that, he gave the
law of God the justice it demanded on behalf of his people. He said,
you've heard it said, the law said, an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth. That's what the law said. And that's what
Christ gave it. He gave it an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth. He gave the law the justice it
demanded. He bore it in his own body on
a tree. When the Pharisees smote him
on the right cheek, he had to do it in perfect faithfulness.
He had to do it in holiness. He had to do it in perfection,
in righteousness, because God won't receive anything else.
He said, when your enemy smites you, turn the other cheek to
him. You know what he did? He said, I gave my cheek to them
that plucked off the hair. I gave my back to the spiders.
He did it in perfect faith without one flare up of anger or sin
or any such thing. Every chosen child of God considered
him our enemy. We treated him as our enemy.
and he loved his own, and he did good to us. We cursed him,
but he blessed us. We hated him, yet he loved us
and did good to us. That's what he said there. Bless
them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you.
Do good to them that persecute you. That's us that did the hating
and the cursing and the persecuting, and it's him that did the good.
You see that? He delivered Himself to the judge.
He said, you go and you be reconciled to Him that has aught against
you, lest He deliver you to the judge. Christ delivered Himself
to the judge. And He paid the uttermost farthing
for His people. And in Him and His perfect obedience,
He made His people perfect, even as He is perfect. He put away all our sin for being
murderers and adulterers and liars and everything that we
did and all our sin for not loving as we ought. He put it all away
while he did it all that we should do. in perfection. Loving with
a perfect love. God his Father and his people
and fulfilled all the righteousness of the law and doing so he fulfilled
the prophets because that's what the prophets said he would do.
He gave us his cloak to cover our nakedness. He went the extra mile for us,
didn't he? And He's the great King of the
great city. He said, you can't swear by Jerusalem. That's the city of God. You can't
swear by the throne. It's His throne. He's the great
King who sits in the great city. And now He says to you and me,
you don't have to let your word be anything but yes, yes, and
no, no. Because all the promises of God
to you in Christ are yes and they're amen. They're all sure
in our Lord Jesus. Now, what we've heard here is,
first of all, Christ is declaring that you and I don't have a righteousness. We're murderers. We're adulterers.
We're guilty in ourselves. That's all our flesh is. And
we see here, he's the perfection. He's the righteousness. He said
plainly, I came to fulfill the law. That's what he did. I've used this illustration many
times. That glass is not full, is it? When will it be fulfilled? When you can't put another drop
in it. That's what Christ did for his people to the law of
God. That's how, that's what God demanded. It had to be honored that way
and that's how he honored it. Now what does that make you want
to do? When you hear this, that you're a sinner in yourself,
number one, it won't let me look to myself and try to trust myself
as being able to come to God in anything I do. But you know
what that does? That makes me look at my brother
the same way. I'm not looking at my brother
and expecting from him something he can't provide, because I see
what I can't provide. But it makes me also want to
obey the Lord from my heart. I want to do everything He says
in this Sermon on the Mount. You know what it does also? It
makes me know that about my brother. He feels the same way. It makes me know my righteousness
is Christ and I'm perfect in Him. You know what it makes me
know? That soul of my brother. You know what it makes me do?
I want my enemies to hear of this one. I want them to hear
of him. I want them to know him. And so it makes me want to put
off judgment. It makes me want to show mercy.
It makes me want to be forgiving, just like God has done to me
for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know how the Lord
ended this sermon? He summed it all up, and He said,
Whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do ye also
to them. And He summed up everything He
said in this psalm. And it's just what Paul said
when he said, and the Lord ended, he said, whatsoever you men would
do to you, do you also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Paul said, this is the law and
the prophets. Love your neighbor as yourself.
These are the things I want my brethren to do for me. I want
them to love me, considering themselves to be the chief of
sinners. And I want to love them considering
myself to be the chief of sinner. I want them to do whatever they
do toward me considering Christ is my only righteousness and
I'm perfect in Him. And I want to do everything I
do to them considering Christ is their righteousness and they're
perfect in Him. So that whatever we do for one
another, we do it in mercy and forgiveness and we're just not
too strict on each other because we know what we are and we know
Christ is our righteousness. I pray the Lord bless that message,
brethren. All right, Brother Greg.