Let's turn to Jeremiah 23. Let me read the first six verses. Woe be unto the pastors that
destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord.
Therefore thus, saith the Lord God of Israel, against the pastors
that feed my people, ye have scattered my flock and driven
them away and have not visited them. Behold, I will visit upon
you the evil of your doings, saith the Lord. And I will gather
the remnant of my flock out of all the countries, whether I
have driven them, and I will bring them again to their folds.
And they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds
over them, which shall feed them, and they shall fear no more,
nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord.
Behold, the days come. Sayeth the Lord that I will raise
unto David a righteous branch and a king, shall reign and prosper
and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his
days, Judah shall be saved. Israel shall dwell safely. And
this is the name whereby he shall be called the Lord, our righteousness. That's what I want to look at
this morning. It's the Lord, our righteousness. It's not our righteousness. He's our righteousness, the Lord,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything he's done, his righteousness,
is bestowed, imputed. It's our propitiation, our covering. But he starts this chapter off with some words of warning and
judgment. He says, woe unto the pastors
that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture. There's men everywhere today
standing up. Most are not declaring the God
of this Bible. They're preaching a false prophet.
They're false prophets. They're preaching a false God.
They're telling men that God loves everybody. Psalm 7 there
told us that. He's angry with the wicked every
day. He doesn't love everybody. He loves everybody that's in
Christ. He loves the people that are his, that he's made righteous. And we're only righteous because
of him. In Matthew 7, turn there with
me, Matthew 7. This is our Lord Jesus Christ
speaking. In verse 15, he says, beware
of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
inwardly they are ravening wolves. You shall know them by their
fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns
or figs of thistles? Our Lord called them wolves. There's wolves in sheep's clothing
out there that are trying to portray a righteousness. Listen to this that pop the Apostle
Paul wrote in 1st 2nd Corinthians He called them Satan's ministers.
He said that they were Since 2nd Corinthians 11 Verse 13, he says, for such are
false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into
the apostles of Christ. And no moral, for Satan himself
is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no
great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers
of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works.
There again is a warning to those men that stand and declare a
false god. They're scattering his sheep. That's what he says in verse
two. He says, Therefore, thus saith
the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my sheep,
feed my people. We were all, most everybody in
here, I think we're at one time under some form of false religion.
There's all different kinds. There's the ones that flat out
deny that Christ is God. There's the ones that are claiming
that God loves everybody and He wouldn't have no harm on anybody,
which goes against everything taught in this Bible and what
God says. And then there's ones that actually
preach somewhat of grace, but they try to mix the law in with
it and claim that, yes, God saves by grace, but we have to do something. No, man can't do anything except
through the Lord. The Lord is our righteousness
for that. And God's angry with them. He
said, you've scattered my flock, driven them away, haven't visited
them. He said, I will visit the evil
of your doings. To stand here and declare and
teach the Lord Jesus Christ, it's a burden. I've had several
since the Lord has had me start teaching Sunday school class
or coming up here and teaching from the pulpit. They've told
me that they couldn't do it. They'd be afraid they'd say something
wrong. All of God's men are that way. We're all afraid of saying
something wrong up here. All we want is to preach Christ
crucified and declare His glory and His honor. If we're not doing
that, we need to step away, sit down, and listen. And it should be a burden. I liked in verse three, the Lord
had said that these men were doing it, and that they had scattered
his sheep. But then he says here, he says,
I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries,
whither I have driven them. The Lord did that. He scattered us. He said that
his sheep He said of his sheep that if one was lost, he'd leave
the ninety and nine to go find that one. Our Lord, all knowing,
He knows where we're at already. He knows exactly when He's going
to call us and reveal Himself to us. It's because of sin that
we won't call upon the Lord. We're told to seek the Lord,
but we will not call upon the Lord unless He first calls us. He first loved us. That's the
only way. I mean, as a sinner, we're dead. A dead man can do nothing. The
Lord, he came and healed the blind, lame, the hawk. He even raised the dead, which
is all pictures of what we are in sin. There's There's nothing
we can do for ourselves. We can't see if we're blind.
We can't see if we're dead. What does a dead man do? You
can go to the graveyard, there's full of dead people. A dead person
can't do anything. They can't get themselves out
of that pit. They can't take the first step. It has to be
his righteousness. It has to be of his choosing. It has to be of his hand that
he reaches down, which his arm is not too short. He reaches
way down. I know he had two from me. These
men that are out here claiming that God can't do anything except
what you let him do, or helping you, or you have to help God
do this or that. Man, those men, they're preaching
a false God. It's scary for him. But the Lord
has saved some of those men that were preaching stuff like that.
He has taken men like that, shown them the gospel, put them in
a pulpit, and declared the word through them. He did it with
the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul, he was yet
breathing blasphemies when the Lord stopped him, shined a light
on him, stopped him, showed him who he was, and he called on
him from that day forward. And then, verse 4, it says, I
will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them. They shall
have fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking,
saith the Lord. The true shepherds of the Lord,
they preach Christ and Him crucified. They preach His grace, His mercy,
and nothing else. Look at John, I mean Romans chapter
10 with me. starting with verse 13. The Lord
says, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall
be saved. But then it says, how shall they call on him whom they
have not believed? How shall they believe on him
whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without a
preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent? It is written, how beautiful
are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring
glad tidings of good tidings. A true man of God, the Lord says
that about him. He won't say that about himself.
He'll say that about God. But he won't say anything good
about himself, but he has to be sent by God in order to preach
the truth. And here, also in this, these
verses three and four, we see that God has an elect people. And he goes and finds those people.
He knows where they're at. He's been leading and guiding
their whole life. He knows exactly where they're
at. And he knows exactly where he's putting them to send them
to where his ministers are, his shepherds, that will teach them. And then we see in verse 5, this is such a picture of Christ.
It says, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise
unto David a righteous branch. It can be none other than the
Lord Jesus Christ. But Christ was of David's lineage,
as far as earthly speaking. He was God before time. But he chose to put himself in
a body made like a man, live like we have, know our affirmatives,
and he did it perfectly. He is the only one that has ever
kept the entire law. And through him and by him, he
caused salvation for his people. He caused us to be righteous
in Him and cover us by what He did. In Isaiah 4-2, let me just read
this to you about that righteous branch. It's declared other places. It says, in that day shall the
branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of
the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are
escaped of Israel. He's all our hope. He's all our
salvation. He covers us. He does it all. For our God to be just and justifier,
He's a just God. He's righteous. And he'll accept
nothing less than that perfect righteousness. And the only one
that could fulfill that was himself. Of himself. He had to be just
and the justifier. Men are out here claiming that
they should be, that God should Save everybody that, you know,
no man's going to hell. It's what he does on this earth
that causes him to go to hell. No, because of sin and Adam,
no man should be saved. His true believers understand
that it's only by his grace that we're accepted, that he's called
us, shown us these things. And then he says, and a king
shall reign and prosper and shall execute judgment and justice
in the earth. Again, he's king. He's Lord of
all. Man, this day and time, doesn't
understand what a true king is. A king sets a law and will accept
nothing less than the keeping of that law. Me and today call it a dictator.
Much true in a lot of senses in this world, but they're still
not kings that do. A king in this sense is capitalized
as God. It's a just God. Every law precept
he does is just. There is reasons behind it for
himself. For man to Seeing he sins against God and
you know and God are against God only that's what David said
in Psalm 51 said against thee and thee only have I seen it's
That's that's the sin that we We have to have an atonement
for that's the sin. We have to have a righteousness
for that be covered because We can't pay for it We could spend
an eternity, and it will not be paid for. Our Lord Jesus Christ
came to this earth and did it in a matter of a few hours. He
lived 33 years on this earth, spent three days crucified, in
the grave, and risen. And he's sitting at the right
hand of the Lord. He's the king. He's the prophet, priest, and
king. And then verse six, we get to
the Lord, our righteousness, his name, whereby he shall be
called the Lord, our righteousness. Something I noticed that I'm
not sure why they wrote it this way. I'm glad they wrote it this
way. In our day and time with computers
and everything and typewriters, anybody that capitalizes every
letter is supposed to be screaming at you. The Lord our righteousness
is capitalized. It's screaming it, that the Lord
is our righteousness. We only believe because he is
our righteousness. He does all things. He covers
us with this righteousness so that we don't see ourselves.
God doesn't see ourselves. That's the most important thing,
is that God will not see our sins. You know, the story of Esau and
Jacob, the firstborn was to get the birthright, but the Lord
had determined that Jacob would be the one to get the birthright.
And in order, humanly speaking, for the Lord, Jacob to get that
He had to be Esau He had to stand in the presence of Isaac to get
that blessing. He had to cover himself. Isaac
had to think he was Esau in order to get that blessing That's the
way our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. He's covered us
in his righteousness to show That It's Christ if we if we don't
stand in Christ and If our God sees any part of us, he will
send us to hell. And hell is real. Look at Psalm 1820 with me. And this has to be speaking,
this has to be Christ speaking. Because only through Christ can
we speak this way. The Lord rewarded me according
to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands
hath he recompensed me. We can only say that if Christ
is our righteousness. And Christ could say that because
he was righteousness. In 2 Corinthians 5, you know
what, turn there, I'll turn, read it, just to be sure I don't
misquote it. It says, for he hath made him
to be sin for us who know no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him. He had to be made sin. He had
to pay our sin debt. He had to cover us. You know, I brought a message
from Genesis 22. The Lord will provide himself
a lamb. And that's actually a good type
I didn't bring out at the time. But Isaac, when he was on that
altar, and the Lord stopped Abraham from slaying his own son, And
give him that ram. You know he grabbed that ram.
You know the Lord, that Abraham, he snatched that ram up as fast
as he could and got it to that altar as quick as he could. There's
one thing that it doesn't say there is that Isaac was loosed. He probably put that lamb right
on that altar and slid its throat. before he loosed Isaac from it,
which is the Lord's righteousness covering our sins and ourselves. I heard a story, not sure I can tell it correctly,
but I heard a story about an Indian tribe that was going through
a drought and their food store that they had set up in their
storehouses was running low. And, you know, they were struggling. And the chief, the food came
up, started coming up missing, and the chief made a declaration
that anyone caught stealing the food would be taken out and would
be given 20 lashes, would be tied and given 20 lashes for
the penalty for it. It's said that then shortly afterwards
that word went out to everybody that they had caught somebody
red-handed stealing from the food bank and they had went to,
they were all meeting that evening to see the punishment be delivered. When they got there, they found
out that it was the chief's mother. She was old and frail. These
beatings, there's no way she could survive 20 lashes. But
this chief, they wondered how he would be just in his declaration
of what he had declared, and how he would handle this. To
be the justifier, he walked over with his broad shoulders. He
wrapped his arms around his mother so that she could not be seen.
And he told them, he said, lash me. And he took those 20 lashes. That's what our Christ did for
us. He covered us. He wrapped us. We're not seen by God. Our sins
are put away as far as the east is from the west. And because he is our righteousness, he calls us righteous. I don't
understand that. But he does. Look at Hebrews. I saw this the other night when
our pastor was turning. Of course, his last three messages,
I saw righteousness in everything he was preaching because I was
studying this and the Lord was showing it to me. He said in verse four of Hebrews
11, he said, by faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice
than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God said that Abel was righteous.
And all he did was he brought a lamb, which is the only way
we can come to God. We better have a lamb as a sacrifice.
And Christ Jesus is that lamb, slain before the foundation of
the world. You know, he said in verse 5, he said, by faith
Enoch was translated that he should not see death and was
not found because God had translated him. For before his translation,
he had this testimony. He pleased God. That's the same
as him being found righteous. He pleased God. The only way
to please God is through that perfect righteousness. And then
he said of Noah in verse 7, by faith, Noah being warned of God,
of things not seen as yet moved with fear, he prepared an ark
for the saving of his house. For by the witch he condemned
the world and became heir of the righteousness, which is by
faith." We're heirs with Christ in that. Because of Christ, we're
heirs in that. It said Abraham, the Lord told
him that he would have his seed, when he was an old man, Isaac,
would be created into multiple nations and created a nation
for himself through Isaac. And it said that Abraham believed. And it was counted unto him for
righteousness. The Lord counted it for righteousness. Now you
say, well, all Abraham did was believe. Well, that's exactly,
that's all the Lord tells us to do is believe. Well, we can't
even do that unless he shows us that we can't do that. And
then we'll believe him. We'll put all our trust in him,
all our hope, everything will be in him. You know, the thief on the cross,
he was declared righteous. When Christ saved him and told
him that he would be in eternity with him, he was made righteous. He became righteous right then.
The blind man, the woman at the well, they were all made righteous. And when he revealed himself
to us and showed himself, Showed what He's done for us. He's made
us righteous. It's not our righteousness, though.
It's His righteousness. The Lord's our righteousness. And in Romans 8, our brothers
just read that. Romans 8, verse 1. He says,
there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Because of His righteousness,
because He made Himself our righteousness, we're not condemned anymore.
We have a sure salvation. Salvation is of the Lord. The Lord has had me sort of studying studying, and I've been looking
through the names of the Lord. In the list that I found, that
I originally started with, that gave me scriptures where they
were found, the Lord Our Righteousness is
the last one. But in studying this, I realized that because
He's Our Righteousness, He's all the other names. He's Jehovah
Jireh. The Lord will provide, or see
to it. He will provide. for every one of his elect. He's Jehovah Rapha. He's the
Lord that healeth. He may not heal our physical
infirmities on this earth. He may allow us to die with diseases,
but he will heal us from the disease of sin, which is the
disease that we need to be healed from. And we cannot be healed
on this earth. We will have to, once we pass
from this life to the next, we will be healed from this sin
and know it no more. He's Jehovah's Shama. He's the
Lord is there. He's the Lord is present. Because
he's our righteousness, he's always with us. He's always present. He may, he may let us go a little
bit. But he'll make us return to him,
like Jonah. Jonah tried to flee from his
presence. He won't let us do that. He won't let us get far
if we do. His hand is always there, and
his arm is not short. He's Jehovah Salom. He's the
Lord our peace. He makes us. He is a perfect
peace. He gives us rest in him. All assurances are in Christ. He's done it all. He started
it. He finishes it. The Lord heals. The Lord wounds. The Lord kills. He makes a life.
He does it all. He's Jehovah Neshe, the Lord
our banner. We raise that flag and lead the
charge. that he is our banner, and he
leads that charge. He's doing it by himself, and
he's doing it for every one of us that he saved. And then, I didn't even realize this was
in the names of the Lord at the time I brought the message. The
first message I brought up here was Psalm 23. The Lord is my
shepherd. Jehovah-rah. Because he's the
Lord our righteous. He's our Shepherd He does everything
for us The Shepherd has to take care of the sheep. They have
to go find the ones that wander off the Lord has to The Lord
has to do that with us The Shepherd has to watch and make sure they
don't eat the wrong thing the Lord hat The Shepherd has to
keep them from walking one of them wandering off a cliff because
the rest of them will follow him The Lord has to do all of
that for his people. We're all sheep. We're all counted
as sheep led to the slaughter. But it's all because the Lord
was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. And then I saw in our passage
there, in closing, verses 7 and 8, it says, therefore, The days
come, saith the Lord, that shall no more say, the Lord liveth,
which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of
Egypt. But the Lord liveth, which brought
up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the
north country and from all countries, whether I had driven them, and
they shall dwell in their own land. You know, all this and the stories
have always come down. The Lord led his people out of
Egypt, which was a sign and a type of what he does for his people
of leading us. But when he takes us into this
next life, we will remember that the Lord brought those people
up from Egypt. We're going to be declaring that
he brought us through the water and brought us into the Holy
Land, and that He did everything for us, that He saved us, He
made us willing in the day of His salvation, just sinners saved
by grace, nothing of ourselves, nothing in ourselves, but all
honor and all glory belong to the Lord, our righteousness. May the Lord bless that.