Good to see everyone. Be turning
in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 5. Today's message is going to
be the ninth in a series of messages that I've delivered from this
passage commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Some of
you may recall in the introductory message of this series, we saw
that the great theme of the Sermon on the Mount was the gospel of
the kingdom. And, of course, the nature of
the kingdom of heaven itself. We reviewed how this doesn't
necessarily speak of a kingdom with borders, with geographical
borders, but rather of a dominion or of a reign. And this reign
we saw was a reign of grace. There's a verse right there on
the front of your bullet in Romans 5.21 asserts, grace reigning
through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
So today's message is certainly in keeping with this overall
theme of the Sermon on the Mount, for it too speaks of a reign,
of a reign of a kingdom, of a kingdom that reigns how, that is established
how, that is entered into how, through righteousness. Grace
reigning through righteousness unto eternal life. And for any
who may not have heard those previous messages and who may
get this message, I don't want to assume anything. So I want
to review once more what's meant by this word righteousness that
you're going to hear me using a lot today. And for those of
you who are familiar with this, just bear with my repetition
for just a few moments. As we saw in verse 20 of Matthew
chapter 5, it, righteousness, it's the entrance requirement
for heaven itself. It's what you must have and I
must have, what we must possess if we're to enter into the kingdom
of heaven. And when the word righteousness,
when it appears in the Bible in that kind of context, referencing
that which is required for acceptance before a holy God. Then it refers
to the merit of what the Lord Jesus Christ came to do and what
he did do and accomplish in his life and in his death. So as
it said back in verse 17 of Matthew 5, the establishment of righteousness
is what he came to do. It says he came to fulfill the
law, every jot and tittle, that is, dotting every I and crossing
every T, and thereby He established righteousness as a substitute
for each and every sinner for whom he lived and died. So, too,
in today's message, that's the righteousness that I'm going
to be talking about. Perfect satisfaction. When you hear that
word, think satisfaction to God's law and justice, both perfect
obedience and the payment of the penalty. the sin debt that's
due unto God's justice for all to whom he will be reconciled.
It's a payment that must be of such value that it would satisfy
the debt CO to a holy God. And that is none other than the
precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ who paid the sin debt
on the cross of Calvary for all the sins that were laid upon
him. And thereby justice was satisfied. And those sins, they
were put away forever. The Lord Jesus Christ, see, and
He alone provided that double cure as a substitute and a representative. On behalf of all the objects
of God's everlasting love, He fulfilled, He completed all that
was required by what He accomplished in both His life and death, His
obedience even unto death, as the scripture puts it. He walked
here on this earth without sin, in complete and perfect obedience. in perfect conformity to the
will of God the Father. In other words, he satisfied
the precepts of the law by obeying it perfectly, both in thought
and deed. And secondly, he met the law's
penal demands. That is, sin demands death. And his death paid the debt in
full for all the sins that were laid upon him. Beginning today
now, we're going to begin a study of a section of the sermon that
describes for us the extent of the righteousness that's demanded
by God's holy law. We saw in verse 20 leading into
this section, Christ said, For I say unto you that except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven. Now here's the question. As defined,
does righteousness really speak of a perfect satisfaction? Is
it speaking here of a perfection that none can produce? How much
must your righteousness exceed that of the most outwardly moral
law-keeping group of folks perhaps who ever lived, the scribes and
Pharisees put together? How much must it exceed theirs
if you are to enter the kingdom of heaven? Well, in this section
of Christ's sermon, Verses 21 all the way through the end of
the chapter verse 48 he Christ elaborates extensively on the
extent of the law of Just what is required? So I plan to title
the messages that I take from this this section the righteousness
of the kingdom in the days So that's today's message the righteousness
of the kingdom part one. We won't get through all of those
verses. I Now, it's clear that Christ is speaking primarily
here in reference to God's requirement under the Old Covenant, under
the law of Moses given in the Old Testament. It's a covenant,
a law, that we just learned in the previous verses, that he
did not come to destroy. He didn't come to just cast it
aside. But rather, it's a covenant that
he did come to bring an end to, a law he came to put an end to
by way of fulfillment. As he said, every jot and tittle.
Well, for God to be reconciled to any of us who live in this
day and age, okay, must His law and justice be satisfied as it
pertains to me, to you, to us who aren't under the law of Moses? Well, consider what Christ says
in the New Testament when a lawyer among the Pharisees came to Him
with this question in Matthew 22, 36. He asked, Which is the great commandment
in the law? And Jesus said unto him, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment,
and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor
as thyself. Now he said on these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets. Now that describes what is required
if you're to establish a righteousness that will exceed the scribes
and the Pharisees, that will give you a right standing with
God so as to gain entrance into heaven. In the book of James,
chapter 2, verse 10, it reads, for whosoever shall keep the
whole law, if you approach God based on that, and yet offend
in one point, he is guilty of all. You too, then see, must
be in perfect compliance and conformity at all times to the
revealed will of God. If you think righteousness comes
by the law, by your compliance to the law, to his revealed will
by way of commandment. And as long as someone thinks
that salvation is conditioned in any way or to any degree on
something that proceeds from them, their faith, their decision,
their whatever, their religious endeavors, whatever they might
be, if they think that it's conditioned on that to any degree, that exposes
that they are banking upon their compliance. That is, they're
presuming that they can meet the requirement. And sadly, that
way of salvation, presumed way of salvation, is the way that
we all initially set out on. That way, though, as we tragically
see described later here in the Sermon on the Mount, is a way
that leads to destruction. Now, it's the way that is the
consensus of most religion. That's what the verse there says.
It's a broad way, and many thee that go in there at. And it is
a way that naturally seems right to us. The Bible says there's
a way that seems right to us, but its end is eternal death.
In Galatians 2.21, we read clearly that such thinking is in opposition
to God's way of grace. And it's to really scorn and
to place contempt, whether you know it or not. Most who do that
do so unwittingly, as we all once did. But it's to place scorn
and contempt upon the very work of Christ, see, including His
death on the cross to establish the only righteousness The only
satisfaction that the Bible says can reconcile sinners to God.
So whether one recognizes it or not, to think that salvation
is conditioned on the sinner to any degree is to view the
death of the son of glory as a vain work. Paul put it this
way. He said, I do not frustrate the grace of God for if righteousness
comes by the law, That is, by your meeting a requirement or
a condition, then Christ is dead in vain. So here's what this
means. If you don't continually have
your mind and affections always on God, loving Him with all of
your heart, soul, and mind constantly, every minute, every second of
the day, you fall short. The Bible tells us that our neighbor
includes our very worst enemy. So if you ever, from the cradle
all the way to the grave, harbor even the slightest ill will toward
your very worst enemy, then you too are guilty according to the
scripture. You see, holiness and righteousness
of God, they know nothing of degrees. God is holy and he cannot
and he will not commune where there's even one sin that's found.
And as the latter part of Galatians 3.10 reads, Cursed is everyone
that continueeth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law to do them. So let's just get this on the table here
up front before we get into these verses. How far must your righteousness
exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees? Well, let's do like
some people like to do when they're reading a book, flip over to
the end and see how it ends. Look at the last verse of the
chapter, verse 48 again, and Christ says, He sums it up and
says, Be ye therefore, based on all the things I've told you
up to here, be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect. He's summing up the preceding
verses, including the section that we're now about to consider.
And here in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ shows that in order
to produce the righteousness that is required to enter the
kingdom of heaven, we would have to love God perfectly. and love
our neighbors as ourselves, perfectly and continually." Now, it's also
important, I think, as we consider these verses, that we understand
that this holy standard that we're going to see set forth
here, this standard of character and of conduct, it's something
we should all strive towards. As we heard in the 10 o'clock
hour, we're to be followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we
should strive for it, but listen. We should never ever think that
any progress towards that end, or the fact that we're striving
in making an effort, that that measures up or contributes at
all to measuring up to this standard, God's strict standard of righteousness. To think otherwise is to miss
this, the very thing that Christ is going to be teaching here
in the verses we're about to look at. Remember, the New Testament
tells us the purpose of God's law. In Romans 5.20, it says,
moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. The
law's purpose is to expose our sin, our total inability to meet
its strict and its holy demands and to show us our need for pure,
unadulterated grace and mercy in Christ. You see, Galatians
3.24, it says, wherefore the law was our schoolmaster. To
teach us what? To bring us unto Christ. It's
through Christ, through His righteousness that grace reigns. His fulfillment
of the law is the righteousness of the kingdom. It's the righteousness
of this reign of grace. And I believe the clear and most
important message to be taken away from this section of his
sermon is this. It could be summarized this way,
I guess is the best way to put it. Christ is essentially saying,
you are in need of a righteousness that you cannot produce. And
he goes on to say, but there's good news, that's why I'm here.
Now, let me repeat that. I want you to keep that backdrop
in mind as we study verses 21 through 48. It's as if Christ
is saying in these verses, You are in need of a righteousness
that you cannot produce. You can't contribute to it. It's
outside of yourself. But there's good news. That's
why I'm here. It's what I came to do every
jot and tittle completely and fully. So with that backdrop,
let's consider our text for today. Verses 21 through 48 seem to
neatly divide into five subsections. And we're only going to get into
the first section this morning. But if you look at the first
verse of our text, verse 21, notice how it begins. It reads,
you have heard that it was said by them of old time. And then
in verse 22, Christ says, but I say unto you, that pattern,
you've heard it said by them of old, but I say unto you, it's
repeated in some form or another in each of the five subsections
of this passage we're looking at. So what's taking place here
is throughout these verses, Christ is exposing the sin that deceives
them. The sin, listen, that naturally
deceives us all. That is the sin of thinking that
their efforts to keep the law, of their meeting some requirement,
of their meeting some condition, could gain them favor before
God or contribute to the salvation that they presume to be their
own. Christ shows them the foolishness of this. by exposing their sinfulness,
showing them, and he does so by showing the extent of the
law, showing them how far short they come of the standard when
it's rightly understood. The Pharisees, see, had taught
them, not based just on the Old Testament Scriptures, but based
on certain oral traditions which they had regarded as being equal
in authority with the Scriptures. They had taught that sin was
in the outward act. And it is, but that's where they
stopped. They had contaminated the scriptures,
see, with their own oral traditions. And Christ came along here and
he's setting them straight. So each time when he says, you've
heard that it was said by them of old, it's he saying, look,
I know what their spin is. This is their spin, their take
on the law. But here's what I, the eternal
son of God, God incarnate, standing here before you in the flesh,
now this is what I have to say about it. In that original language,
that phrase, but I say unto you, it was a phrase that was commonly
used to refute a false notion. So when he used it, they heard
clearly what he was saying. He was telling them that their
perspective of the law and its extent, as had been handed down
and communicated to them, was perverted and it was in error.
And each time he responds this way, I want you to see two things
regarding the extent of the law. And they're very simple. But
they're here in each one of these five subsections. One, that sin,
the transgression of the law, that it lies in more than just
the outward act. For the law penetrates to the
heart, to the thoughts, to the motives, to the attitudes. And
two, that as such, none can meet the standard. That, as the Scripture
tells us, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That none are righteous, no,
not one. See, Christ is not just simply
teaching here a higher standard of morals and ethics. He's showing
them the reality of the Old Testament Scriptures in the light of the
Gospel. He's showing them why salvation has to be, can only
be by God's free and sovereign grace. That is, with no married
in the center. And at the same time, he is showing
them a higher standard of conduct and character. Now, the Pharisees,
as we've taught before, they were considered among the most
pious and the purest practitioners, perhaps, of the law. But even so, I think it's important
that you see how the traditions of men, including that of the
Pharisees, as highly esteemed as they were, you need to see
how they had actually come to promote very low thoughts of
both sin and of righteousness. They had taught the people, see,
that sin was in the outward act and not in the heart, not in
the thoughts, in the motives. They had also taught, as we'll
see not today but in verses that follow, clearly that the sin
problem, see, could be cured by religious practices and duties. as if to say these religious
exercises made up for or fulfilled a person's responsibility to
God's law. Fulfilled responsibility to God's
law, the law is summarized by love God perfectly and your neighbor
as yourself. Well, think about it. That's
not really much different from today's religion, is it? They
taught, see, that sin could be cancelled, offset, so to speak,
and that righteousness could be attained by something that
proceeded from them, some form of penance, of religious activity,
of reformations, of obedience, whatever, some condition or requirement
that they met. And how do you do that? you interpret
the law so that it can be met. And that's what they did. Christ
took this opportunity, see, to set forth the high standard of
righteousness that's required in God's kingdom. It's a righteousness
that no sinner can produce. We can't establish it, and it's
not based on anything that we're enabled to do, that it proceeds
from us in any way. It's a righteousness that must
come from God. It's the righteousness of God.
And it comes from God alone in Christ. They dared, see, to place
their efforts in a position of rivalry with what Christ said,
that's what I came to do. Okay? With the very thing that
he came to accomplish. And sadly, listen, that's what
all of us do when we first approach God for acceptance. Based on
something that proceeds from us. That's why, that's why, except
you repent, you'll perish, as the scripture says. That's the
way we all come. That's the way we all approach
God initially. See how that exposes our very own sin nature? Even
when we ponder, as I've told you before, that natural question
that first springs into our mind, whenever we start to give serious
consideration to spiritual things or to where we're going to spend
eternity, we wonder, what must I do to get into heaven? Well,
but those who are given spiritual life and its accompanying senses,
eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts and minds to understand
what Christ is teaching, even here in these verses, they learn
better as God the Holy Spirit teaches them through the gospel,
through God's Word of how He saves sinners. They discover
the folly of that, of that natural but sinful predisposition and
presumption that something we can do will procure or assist
in procuring our spiritual and our eternal well-being. We see
here that Christ begins to show part of the purpose of the law
towards sinners. That is to bring them in guilty,
to slay them from having any hope of salvation based on their
best efforts to keep the law. And he does this by showing the
extent of the law. I believe that the first subsection
here, this passage on the righteousness of the kingdom, should actually
include verses 21 all the way down through 26. Christ is dealing
in these verses with the law's demands as it pertains to murder
and anger, but also reconciliation, verses 23 through 26. And although
I believe that reconciliation passage there is very directly
related with what he has to say about murder and anger, because
of our time constraints, we're just going to examine verses
21 and 22 today, where he talks about murder and anger. So look
with me beginning in verse 21, where it reads, You have 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. But
I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without
a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall
say to his brother Rakeh shall be in danger of the council,
but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell
fire. The sixth commandment of the
law of Moses stated, Thou shalt not kill. And the people had
heard from their ancestors that anyone who murdered someone else,
that they would be subject to judgment. The threat of judgment
was part of the law of Moses. That was scriptural. murderers
under the Mosaic Law, they were to be judged and they were to
be punished with death. But the context here, the implication
shown here is that along with that, their ancestors also taught
that not committing the outward act of murder was part of the
righteousness required based upon which they could enter the
Kingdom of Heaven. It was like this, they were saying,
if I don't literally murder, as in kill another person, another
human being, then that's enough. I've kept the law in that area
and this will recommend me, at least in part, unto God and help
gain my entrance into his presence in heaven. Christ shows them
here that this issue of murder reaches all the way to the heart,
to the thoughts, to the motives, to the attitudes. He shows them
here that perfect compliance to the law of God requires more
than simply not committing the act of murder. Even compliance
with this part of the law. It requires, see, that I love
my enemies. If I'm to love my neighbor as
myself, and therefore it forbids even the thought of murder, Which
he tells us here would include anger, malice, hatred. He's showing
us that if we think that not committing the act of murder,
if we think it recommends us unto God and contributes to any
part of our salvation, then we're debtors to do the whole law.
Hear him say, be ye therefore perfect. Precept and penalty. And you have nothing to offer.
that will pay the debt owed to a holy God. It takes the precious
blood of Jesus Christ. You see, not committing the act
of murder does not make me righteous before God. I'm still a sinner
who falls short and whose need of a righteousness I cannot produce.
See, Christ shows this by exposing their anger and hatred and malice
that lies in the heart of every fallen sinner. The anger here
refers to that which is the result of who we are. It's sinners who
are full of self-love. We operate in our self-interest
when we operate consistent with the creatures that we are. It
has to do, see, with anger or temper or wrath or rage that
comes whenever we are personally offended or affronted. And such
anger, see, desires harm to another person in some way. It might
not be physical harm, but it causes us to think sometimes
even say things about others we wouldn't dare say about ourselves.
That's not loving our neighbors ourselves. Rekha here is an Aramaic
expression and it's an expression of abuse. It's spoken out of
anger and it means worthless or empty and that's what they
were saying. It was often used to suggest
that someone was empty-headed or stupid. And I was trying to
think of a parallel in our modern vernacular. Seems to me it may
have been equivalent to us calling someone an airhead, you know,
empty-headed. And that doesn't seem so terribly
bad. I do believe that Raka carried with it a stronger connotation
of contempt from what I was able to read about it. But similarly
here to call another person a fool in this context was also an expression
of contempt towards them. Now fool here does not mean the
same thing that we normally think about when we talk about someone
being a fool or foolish. Although in many places in scripture
it does have the very meaning you would expect but not here. It doesn't mean here being dull
minded or Lacking in understanding but rather word here was equivalent
really to calling someone corrupt or wicked It was to say they
deserved hell Some even say that I had some there was some controversy
on that I guess among different people read some even think it
means to call someone a reprobate But in short here Yet look, the
law does not forbid those words literally. You fool. We know
that because Christ himself, he used similar expressions in
describing those who lacked understanding as we might normally think of
the word. But what he is teaching here is that it is wrong to murder
a person's character and reputation out of danger. It's character
assassination. And that makes us guilty of the
sin of murder in God's sight. according to his law, the law
that requires us to love our neighbor now as ourselves. These
things were expressions of anger that the Jews just threw out
very flippantly. They were used very casually.
They thought nothing of them, just as we're apt to do when
we are crossed by someone or irritated by someone. Oh, there's
nothing to them, you know. Think of how lightly we consider
that offense. But Christ teaches here that
even those expressions of anger, that in that there's proof that
sinners do not love their neighbor as themselves. If I call somebody
an airhead, I don't go around and say, Randy, you airhead,
do I? I don't love my neighbor as myself
when I do that, when I say, oh, there's nothing to him. That
alone shows that we're guilty, see, all of us, of the sin of
murder in the heart. Now, you don't think of yourself
normally as murderers, do you? And I don't either. But that's
what Christ is teaching right here. We see in these two verses,
and we'll see in the verses that follow, the extent of God's law. That is, the conditions or requirements
according to which He judged, how far it goes. It requires
a perfection, see. And Christ teaches us that it
goes all the way to the heart and the motive. In light of that,
this inevitably prompts people like us, foolish people, to ask,
well, does that mean that if I think it, since I've already
blown it, might as well go ahead and do it? Well, that's foolish
reasoning. God's word never condones putting
our evil thoughts into action. It's sinful to think it, but
we tragically compound our sin when we bring our sinful thoughts
to fruition. And in acting out our sinful
thoughts, we subject ourselves to the greater consequences of
these sins and we cast shame on the gospel that we claim to
believe. Keep in view that Christ is showing
here how we are all sinners and in need of a righteousness we
cannot produce. He's showing that based on character
and conduct, that none of us are righteous or have the righteousness
that we need to enter into the kingdom of heaven. As Romans
3, 19 and 20 say, now we know that whatsoever, what things
soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law
that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty
before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the
law, by you meeting some condition, some requirement, by your best
efforts, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin." What the law teaches us
is that we cannot. That's how we know that. We should
all strive now to love our neighbors as ourselves. But it's imperative
that we derive no confidence from striving to do so. Rather,
that we flee to Christ and plead His righteousness as the only
ground of our salvation, as the soul and the complete basis upon
which I, a sinner, can be reconciled before a holy God. Look, a God
whose inflexible justice shall not clear the guilty. He said,
I will by no means clear the guilty. He's not going to pretend
you're not a sinner. You do need a righteousness.
You need a substitute, and I do too. And in this light, we should
repent of ever thinking that anything proceeding from ourselves
could save us or even contribute to any part of our salvation
when our efforts to comply with God's will, though they are commendable,
especially in this world, and they're highly esteemed in the
world of religion, particularly among religious folks. But when
or if we assign any merit whatsoever to those things, They fall into
the category of dead works of which we're commanded to repent.
And when God gives spiritual life to someone, that's exactly
what they do. They see the evil of having dared
to place something that proceeds from them in a place of rivalry
with what God, the God man, Jesus Christ, what he said he came
to do and what he did do and accomplish at the cross. Now
also we need to make a few distinctions here about anger. There's a righteous
anger which arises because of jealousy over God's glory. putting
God's glory first and foremost. Christ expressed that when he
drove the money changers out of the temple. Also, you have
to distinguish between the hatred and murder that's mentioned elsewhere. I believe it's in the book of
1 John where it talks about that which is true of those who remain
allied with Satan in opposition to Christ and his way of salvation. But here, this is what's important
for you to hear about what he's talking about here. The murder
that he exposes here on the Sermon on the Mount, that's something
of which we are all guilty. Believer and unbeliever. And
that's why we all need the blood of Christ to remove the guilt.
He's shown here in vivid detail how all of us who are born of
Adam, we need salvation by God's free and sovereign mercy and
grace. based on his righteousness alone.
Look, like David of old, we're to hate every false way. You
might want to read Psalm 119 when you get home. And David
talks about that. But we are also, while we hate
every false way, we're also to desire the eternal salvation
of every one of our neighbors, even our worst enemies. You see,
we know that if our enemies, those who would make us angry,
who would stand against us even in the gospel, If they ever come
to believe the gospel, they'll be our brethren in Christ. And
look, our brethren, they'll make us angry. But we need to remember
that they are precious in God's sight and they're righteous in
Christ. Look, their hope's the same as
yours. If they're your brethren, they're
equally righteous, equally blessed with all spiritual blessings
in Him. Well, I hope you see then, here's
what you had with the Pharisees. It was pretty convenient for
them to have confined the extent of God's law to a condition or
a requirement they could meet. In these two verses, by confining
the meaning of the law to the literal killing of another, murder,
they now have a law, a condition they can meet. Well, fast forward
to today and consider how things haven't changed very much, have
they? That's what most of religion is all about, and sadly, It's
also what most who operate under the so-called banner of Christianity
promote as well. You see, as long as we think
that something other than, or in addition to the righteousness
of God, the merit of Christ's obedience unto death, if we think
anything else contributes one iota, one jot or tittle, as we
heard previously, you think it contributes any to your acceptance
before God, then you too have conveniently set up a lesser
standard. One that you can meet by your
compliance, by your fulfillment of the condition, your faith,
your believing, your even believing right doctrine. You see, if you
think that appropriates this thing. Listen, if you hear, if
you ever see the extent of God's law, You're left with nothing
to plead but mercy. God better have mercy on you,
and you know it. Whatever you think, see, that you can deliver
that will seal up the deal, even if you think it's a little minor
part, but it contributes to your acceptance before God and gains
entrance into heaven, if it exists, you've set a lesser standard.
But if God is pleased to give you spiritual life and those
spiritual senses, So that you can hear and you can see and
understand even what is being taught right here, you'll discover
that like all of us, the God that you imagined would find
merit in your meager efforts, your sin-tainted efforts, your
best efforts at obedience. The God that would find acceptance
there is not the God of this Bible. He's a concoction. of our sinful, fallen imagination. He's an idol fashioned from our
depraved imagination. And he's not at all like the
God of this Bible. And if you see that, you'll flee
to Christ because there's nowhere else to go. As the disciple says,
where shall we go? You see, you'll rest in that
righteousness alone and you'll repent of your former, yeah,
idolatry. That's what it is. And dead works. You'll see all your hope wrapped
up in Him and you'll see it's sure and it's certain and it
cannot fail. If God be for us, who can be
against us? You know, we're talking about the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Why do I want to plead something
that comes from me when I can plead what He did? Well, that's
what happens, see, when the law in its extent enters. As I read
from Romans 5.20, when the law enters, when we understand the
law correctly, its extent, then the offense abounds. But let
me, let me read that in context. If you go back one verse and
start in Romans 5.19, it reads like this. For as by one man's
disobedience, many were made sinners. That is Adam's sin,
Adam the representative of the whole human race. It was imputed
or charged to the account of all He represented, all of mankind. We were made sinners in Adam. That's why we need a substitute.
That's why we're in this predicament. That's why I initially approached
God with, what can I do to be saved? Because it's what I am,
a sinner. But He says, many were made sinners,
but He says, so in the like manner, By the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous." Now there's the good news. All that
are represented by the one. Which one? The only one that
was obedient. Jesus Christ. His righteousness
shall be imputed, charged, reckoned to their account. And it goes
on and says in verse 20, moreover the law entered that the offense
might abound but Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. You see, that's what happens.
It's good news to be made low. Because when you're made low
like that, if you become convinced of sin, then you'll be satisfied
with nothing other than salvation by grace. You'll look to Christ
who met the conditions to the uttermost. Now, that as sin,
he goes on, he says, but that as sin hath reigned unto death,
you see, There is a reign or a dominion of sin, and its end
is death. But again, he says, even so,
here's the good news. Might grace reign through righteousness
unto eternal life? Whose righteousness? By Jesus
Christ, our Lord. That's the righteousness of the
kingdom. So today, I hope that all who
hear this message, I hope you're given an understanding to see
what Christ is teaching here. I pray you'll see the extent
of the law, the law that exposes the sin that would deceive us
all, what the Bible calls the deceivableness of unrighteousness. That is, the foolish notion that
all of us, all fallen sinners, are predisposed to whole. That
is, to think something other than his righteousness, unrighteousness. Some condition or requirement
that I presume to meet, see, could equate to any degree of
merit before the holy God of this Bible. A God so holy he
cannot even commune with one sin. Now how am I, a sinner then,
a murderer in the heart, to be accepted before him? Well, this
only magnifies our need for a righteousness found where totally outside of
ourselves. And the righteousness we need
is none other than that which Christ wrote out in his perfect
obedience unto death in complete and in full satisfaction to God's
justice on behalf of every single one that he represented for all
whose sins were in charge or imputed to him so that he redeemed
them at the cross. He paid the debt, put them away.
paid the debt that was owed for all their sins, including murder.
And in turn, what great news that God imputed, reckoned to
the account of every one of those he represented, the merit of
that very finished work, his perfect obedience unto death,
his righteousness, the righteousness of the kingdom.