Turn with me now, if you would,
to Psalm 23. Psalm 23. On June the 10th of
this year, that was a Wednesday night, it was two and a half
months ago, I preached from Psalm 23. And then on July 12th of this
year, one month later, Brother Eric Floyd was here and he brought
a Bible study to you from Psalm 23. We quote it all the time. A few of you heard me mention
Psalm 23 verse one at our brother's funeral last Saturday in the
eulogy. And then when we got to the graveside
service, Brother Donnie Bell read Psalm 23. We referenced and we turned to
and we read half of Psalm 23 in the message Sunday morning. And with all of that being said,
we have to be in Psalm 23 tonight. We just have to be, I believe
with all of my heart, this is the message of the evening. I
pray that the Lord will bless us, greatly bless us by giving
us a clearer understanding of a glorious truth that is in this
text. Now let's begin by reading the
Psalm. Psalm 23, verse one says, the
Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. He leadeth me beside the still
waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou
art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely,
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. and
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. One line in
one of those verses is our message tonight. I'm gonna tell you which
one it is in just a moment. First, I wanna tell you some
events that happened that led me to an illustration that I
believe, I truly, honestly believe has brought a real clarity to
me on the subject that we're gonna look at tonight. I believe
I have just entered into this and enjoyed this like I never
have before. Our Lord preached in illustrations. That's how our Lord preached.
Sometimes his entire message was an illustration. I remember
whenever I first started preaching and I was you know, soul searching
on how, how do you preach? How should I preach? What do
you say? It dawned on me one time, well, how did the Lord
do it? Let's go read his messages. Our Lord preached in illustrations. The scripture calls them parables.
It says without a parable, without an illustration, he didn't preach
to the people. The common people heard him gladly
because they understood him. They understood what he was saying.
And that's what an illustration does for us. It, it helps us
clearly enter into something that we can relate to. It helps
us see what is being said through something we can relate to. I
believe this illustration has done just that for me. So let me give you some events
that led up to the illustration. That's where we're going to start.
Last Saturday, we had a funeral service for our dear brother,
Karen's dad, Bill Grisham. After the funeral service was
over, he was there in Crossville. After it was over, quite a few
of us lined up in our cars for a funeral procession to go to
the graveside service. Because I was talking to everybody
like I do, I ended up being the second to the last car in line. Tony and Rita were the last car
in line, because I was talking to them. But one of the funeral directors,
he came up to each of the cars and he said, he asked us all
to turn our flashing lights on. And when we were all ready, we
headed out. It was probably about a 20-minute
drive to the graveside service. I don't know for sure, but it
was a decent amount of time. And there were quite a few cars
in the procession. Now, I'm telling you this so
that you can understand my drive from my point of view. There
are quite a few cars in the procession, and it's a decent amount of time.
amount of time to get to the cemetery, and I was in the back. I believe the first intersection
that we came to, we came out of the funeral home and we turned
right, and I believe the first intersection we came to was a
four-way stop. And when we got to this four-way
stop, none of the other cars tried to go. They all let the whole procession
drive right through. And as I was driving through,
I was thinking in my mind, that's nice. That's honorable. I appreciate them doing that.
It was very, very honorable. That town, everybody stopped. Do you notice that? Everybody
stopped. And the whole time I was thinking,
that's nice. That is honorable. But then, after that four-way
stop, we got into downtown Crossville, and the first traffic light that
we came to was green when the beginning of the procession went
into it. But in the middle of the procession,
it turned to red. It went yellow, and then it went
red. And I saw this happen, and as I saw it, just in a split
second, I thought, oh no, we're gonna get separated. What are
we gonna do? Thankfully, I didn't have to
make that decision. There were a few cars in front of me, but
I was still worried about it. I just saw that, and you know
how it is, split second, and I thought, you know, we need
to make a decision. What are we gonna do here? I don't remember
how it was in Franklin, but living in Rocky Mountain for 10 years,
whenever they had a funeral service, the police officers went to all
the traffic lights and changed the traffic lights, and made
them red for everybody else and flashing yellow for the procession. So everybody knew we have the
right away, but it didn't happen that way
here. It went green for everybody else and it went red for us. And some people are considerate
of funeral processions, but some people are not. So in this brief moment, I just
didn't know what to do. I just didn't know what we were
going to do. A few cars in front of me, as I said, they went on
through the red light. So I followed them. I went on
through the red light. Brother Tony behind me went on
through the red light. And then the car behind him who
did not have his lights flashing and was not in the procession
stopped. All right. We went all the way
through downtown. We went on out of town where
all the restaurants are. And I'm sure this wasn't the
case, but to me, it seemed like every traffic light that I went
under was red. That's just what it felt like.
I was noticing these traffic lights as I went under them.
They were all red. On every one of them, I thought, this doesn't
feel right. I'm running a red light. I'm
not supposed to be doing this. I'm not allowed to do this. You
know that feeling every now and then when you accidentally, hopefully,
run a red light. You're like, oh, I just ran a
red light. Who saw? That's the first thing
you want to know. Who saw? Who saw? Who saw me do that? Am I about to get pulled over?
I'm about to get a ticket, right? With each one of them, we went
through stoplight after stoplight, red light after red light, and
all the other cars were stopped so we could do it. We did it. And as I kept going under these
red lights, the whole time I was thinking there has to be an illustration
in this. Normally I don't do that. Normally illustrations
come after the fact, but going through each one, I thought there
has to be an illustration in this. I didn't know what it was,
but in my mind I was just thinking this has to be an illustration
somehow. Well, when we got to the graveside service, Brother
Donnie read Psalm 23. And when he got to the end of
verse three, he read this line right here. He leadeth me in
the paths of righteousness for his name's sake, paths of righteousness. For his name's sake, when he
read that, this entire illustration came to my mind. The first thing I thought was,
I just drove through at least, I'm thinking, 10 red lights. And after every one of them,
it was said, no sin. After every one of them, no sin. No sin. I went under red light
after red light, justified. You are just and right. Righteousness. Righteousness. Righteousness. The paths of righteousness. And everybody around us stopped
in plain sight to witness that it was so. Who saw? Everybody. They stopped. They all pulled
over. It blessed my heart. One family was in a parking lot,
and as we were going by, they got out of their car and stood
there as we walked by, and I thought, honorable. All of them stopped
and witnessed that it was so. Now, let me tell you something
about our Lord. And then I want to apply what
we see concerning him to our illustration. Don't turn to these. Let me just quote them to you.
Psalm 71 verse 16 says, I will make mention of thy righteousness. That's what I'll talk about.
This is what I'm going to talk about. Christ's righteousness. Jeremiah 23, verse six says,
His name shall be called the Lord, our righteousness. First Corinthians 1.30 says,
Christ is made unto us righteousness. Now this entire word right here,
everywhere you turn, it says, we don't have a righteousness
of our own, a worthiness, a perfection, a goodness, a rightness before
God. We do not have our own righteousness. Not at all. Not at all. Don't even think about any righteousness
that we have being our own as though we earned it and did something
good and worked to earn our own righteousness. Nothing in us,
nothing by us, nothing because of us could ever earn our own
righteousness. We're just too sinful. We're
sinful, sinful, sinful. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. That means me. That means you.
Sinners, sinners, sinners. That's what this book says. Unrighteous,
unholy. That's what this book says. Romans 3 says, there is none
righteous in themselves. No, not one. You telling me that
there's not one person on this earth who is righteous and justified
and worthy to enter in? No, not one. Not one. Isaiah 64 verse six says, all
of our righteousnesses, that means every good deed that we
have piled up you know, that we think is gonna earn us something
before God, and he's gonna be happy with us. All of our righteousnesses
are filthy rags, all of them. His righteousness. His goodness, His perfection,
Christ's righteousness is the only righteousness that we have
because it is the only righteousness that there is. He himself said,
there is none good but God. That man came up to him and said,
good master. He said, why do you call me good?
Everybody thinks they're good. Everybody thinks there's a little
bit of good in everybody. Well, there's something in there
that we'll pass on through. He said, there is none good,
but God only. The only righteousness that there
is, is the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, Romans 10 verse four
says, Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness. Now may God let this sink in.
I've been praying for us. I've been praying that the Lord
would bless this to us like he's blessed it to me. Here's what
all this means. Everything that Christ does is
right. Everything that Christ does is
right, even in the way that He took our sin from us and bore
our judgment for us, the way that He shed His blood to pay
our debt for us in order to redeem us back to God. Everything He
did in that was right. It was yea and amen. in the righteous substitution
of Himself for His people, the way He took the place of His
people and allowed His people to take the place of Him. Because
He stood in our place, they stand in His. We stand in His. He put away all of our wrong,
all the wrong concerning his people. And he satisfied. This is what we say over and
over. Here's the gospel substitution and satisfaction before God.
That's the gospel, not how are you going to fix what you messed
up? That's not the gospel. It's the substitution of Christ
with his people and satisfying the judgment of God and satisfying
his father. He satisfied all of the judgment
against his people for their wrong. And he established their right. He satisfied all their wrong. And He established right for
them in its place. He took all that wrong away and
in its place, He put right. The scripture says He made them
to be holy, blameless, without blame, pure. The scripture says, this is what
the scripture says. It says, he perfected them forever. That's what he accomplished for
his people. They are right in him. They are right by Him. They are right through Him, not
because of what they do on their own, but because of what He did
for them. That's what His death accomplished for His people.
Righteousness for them, holiness for them, perfection for them. It satisfied and put away their
wrong and established their right. Only in Him. They are righteous
in Him. They're righteous because of
Him. In Him, God's people are only right because He is only
right. He leads them in the paths of
righteousness. That doesn't just mean that He
only stands for the right way. He'll only take them down the
right way. It doesn't just mean that. What it means is He is
the right way. He's the right way. He doesn't
do something because it's right. It's right because He does it. He is righteousness. Whatever
He does is righteousness. If He's doing it, it's righteousness.
Every path he takes is a path of righteousness. Psalm 1611
says his path is the path of life. Psalm 25 verse 10 says
all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth. Psalm 2711 says
his path is a plain path. That means a straight path of
justice, equity and uprightness. Proverbs two verse nine says
it's a good path. And let's read this last one
together. Hold your place right here and turn with me to Isaiah
chapter two. Isaiah two. Verse 3, And many people shall
go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the
Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us
of His ways, and we will walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth
the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. Let me repeat
and bring our attention to, we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth
the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. All right, now
let's apply all of this to our illustration. Back in Psalm 23,
the end of verse 3 says, He leadeth
me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Here is the fullness of the illustration.
This is everything that came into my mind. When we lined up in that procession
line, We lined up in a particular order
and this was the order. The front car, you remember what
the front car was? The front car was the police
officer. The law itself. Just behind him in the car right
behind that was our beloved. Just like when Boaz was gonna
redeem Ruth, this is what he said to her. He said, there is
a nearer kinsman to you that has to be satisfied first. That
nearer kinsman represents the law itself that we've sinned
against. That's the reason Christ our
Savior died. That's the whole reason. It was
so that the law against us could be satisfied. That's the whole
reason. Well, in the path of our procession,
the law was leading the way. As I was going under those red
lights, looking back on it now, I was just so As I was going through those
red lights, the law was leading the way. Not only was I not condemned
for every red light I went under, the law led the way. Think about
that. The law led me through it. I
was following him. The law said, I'm satisfied. No charge will be laid to your
account. And all those witnesses, they
stood still watching the whole thing. All of us go right through
there, and the whole time they were saying, honorable, honorable. You're justified in doing so.
They sat there and said, so be it, amen, after you. Now, why was everything saying
that? Why was the law saying that?
Honestly, why were we justified in doing that? One reason only. Bill Grisham. One reason only. It's only because
we were with him. That's the only reason. It was only because it was in
the name of him. Had I done that same thing outside
of Him, had I come back a few hours later and done that same
thing, taken that same path, gone under those same red lights,
outside of the name of Him, outside of being with Him, that exact
same law, I mean the very same car, That
exact same law would have arrested me and condemned me and locked
me up, wouldn't it? That same law would have cried
guilty, guilty, guilty, but for Bill's sake. It cried righteousness, righteousness,
righteousness, justified, no sin, no condemnation. That's exactly what the holy
law cries concerning us if we are God's people. for Christ's
sake. That's what the holy law cries
for Christ's sake. It cries, there is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. We're sitting
here crying, but don't you see what I've done? Didn't you just
see me do that? There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. All because of Christ's death,
and all because of His burial, He, in full agreement with the
law that He satisfied, leads us in the paths of righteousness
for His name's sake. We're just following Him. In
His name, in His righteousness. Every sinner that has been joined
together with Christ, every one of them, every sinner who pleads
the name and the love and the grace and the mercy, and the
death of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Him, it will only ever be
said, no sin. No sin. In Him is no sin. None whatsoever. Only paths of
righteousness, and it's all for His namesake. Now that's good
news. That's good news if you're a
sinner who's constantly saying, didn't you see what I just did?
That's the best news you'll ever hear. Pray the Lord will make
that a blessing to our heart. All right, Brother Eddie, you
come.