Here at Open Your Bible, it's
in Matthew chapter 5. That's where our lesson will be from
this morning. Matthew chapter 5. Before we
begin, let's bow together in prayer. Our Father, how we thank
You for yet another day that You've given us that we can meet
together with Your people and to open Your Word and to worship
You. Father, I pray that this morning
You would Give us a time of true worship, that we not just go
through the form and motions of religion, but Father, that
you give us an hour where we can worship you in spirit and
in truth. Open your word to our hearts.
Speak to us through your word. And Father, we pray for a believing
heart, a receptive mind that would be enabled by your spirit
to hear and to understand and rejoice in things of our Lord
Jesus Christ that we hear this morning. Father, what we ask
for ourselves here in this class, we ask for our children's classes,
we ask for the same blessing on your people wherever they
meet today. Father, bless in a mighty and
special way by revealing your power, your mercy and grace to
your sinners in our Lord Jesus Christ. It's in his blessed name
we pray and give thanks. Right? Matthew chapter five.
I titled the message this morning, doing and teaching righteousness.
I took the title from what our Lord says in verse 19, whosoever
therefore shall break one of these least commandments and
shall teach men. So he should be called the least
in the kingdom of heaven, but whosoever shall do and teach
them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now, if we're going to look at
doing and teaching righteousness, first thing we got to know is
what righteousness is. Makes sense? And a better question
would be, who is righteousness? And I think everybody here has
been here long enough to have at least heard me say, righteousness
is a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who righteousness is.
Now, verse 17, this is what our Lord says. Think not that I am
come to destroy the law of the prophets. I'm not come to destroy. but to fulfill. Christ came to
abolish the law. But when we say Christ came to
abolish the law, that didn't mean he came to set the law aside. He didn't come to save his people
by doing an end around the law, just ignoring the law. He didn't
come to say the law doesn't matter. He didn't come to say we don't
have to keep the law. Christ came to abolish the law
by abolishing the law's hold upon his people. by keeping the
law for them, by satisfying the law for them. He came to destroy
the law's ability to damn his people by both keeping the law
and dying for the sin of his people. And people understood
what he was preaching. I mean, it's not that they didn't
understand. The problem was they wouldn't believe it. He came
preaching the kingdom of heaven. He says, not meat and drink.
The kingdom of heaven is not do's and don'ts. Salvation is
not had by man's obedience to the law and the ceremonies. He
showed us, they taught, they showed us that salvation is in
him. Well, now that turned the way of the religion of the scribes
and Pharisees upside down and just upside down and shook it.
And they didn't like that. To preach salvation by grace
in Christ Jesus, well, that took away all their power over people. They took away their power to
tell people what to do and what not to do to control the lives
of people. So they said, well, this man
Jesus, he's an ancient omen. He doesn't care anything about
the law of Moses, but he's a wine bipper. He's a drunkard. He's
kind of devil. The man's mad. They'd say anything
they could to discredit him because they didn't want their way of
life turned upside down. They didn't. They, they said,
we've got everything set between me and God. And they didn't want
somebody coming in and telling the truth and upsetting that
they didn't want their, their confidence shaken. And the savior
is telling us here. That's not why I came at all.
I didn't come to destroy the law. I came to tell you that
the law has got to be kept. The question is who's going to
keep it. That's the question. Christ came to save His people
through the law, by Him keeping it for them, not us having to
keep it. The Savior said, I've come to
say, salvation can only be kept by the law, or salvation can
only be had by the law being kept perfectly, perfectly. Not just outwardly, but inwardly,
in the heart. He came to tell us salvation
is not in the best effort man can put forth to keep the law.
The law has got to be kept perfectly. That's what he says in verse
18. The law, the power of the law has not been set aside. The
demands of the law has not been set aside. 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. Now, God's
not going to save anybody unless they keep the law perfectly in
every jot, in every tittle, in every just little minute mark
of punctuation, like a comma or an apostrophe. It's all got
to be kept and it's got to be kept perfectly because God will
never lower the requirements of the law. You know why God
will never lower the requirements of the law? Because God's holy.
He can't lower the requirements of his character. So the law's
got to be kept perfectly. But the only person who ever
could keep that law is the Lord Jesus Christ. And he did. He
obeyed every commandment of God's law, both outwardly and inwardly. He didn't just keep the law because
he had to. He kept the law because he loved He loved righteousness. He loved holiness. He honored
and magnified God's law. The Lord Jesus Christ is righteousness
personified because he kept the law. He fulfilled every commandment
of the law. But here he's talking about the
law and the prophets. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
all of the scriptures. We talk about the law. We're
talking about those first five books of the Bible, the Mosaic
law. Christ kept it all, that law
of commandments. But he also fulfilled all of
the prophets, all of them. Look at Luke chapter 25. Now
it's important for us to understand this, to see that the Lord Jesus
Christ is the savior that God promised from all of eternity
throughout all of the scriptures. Christ did not come as plan B.
He is the eternal purpose of God in redemption. In Luke 24,
verse 25, this is him talking to these disciples on the road
to Emmaus after his crucifixion and his resurrection. They just
didn't know he'd been resurrected yet. Then he said unto them,
O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets
have spoken. Ought not Christ have suffered
these things and to enter into his glory and beginning at Moses,
the law. and all the prophets, all the
Old Testament scriptures. He expounded unto them in all
the scriptures the things concerning himself, showing how he fulfilled
all these prophecies. And you and I will never, just
like these disciples, will never understand the scriptures, ever,
until we see that every last verse of scripture refers and
points to the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at verse 44. This is when
the Lord appeared to his disciples. He said unto them, these are
the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you,
that all things must be fulfilled, which are written in the law
of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning
me. Then opened he their understanding. When is it that they understood
the scriptures? When they understood that all the scriptures speak
of Christ. Then opened he their understanding
that they might understand the scriptures. And he said unto
them, thus it is written. And thus it behooved Christ to
suffer and to rise from the dead the third day. And that repentance
and remission of sins should be preached in his name among
all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you're witnesses of these
things. See, they understood the scriptures
and they had something to go into all the world and witness
when they understood that all of the scriptures speak of Christ. Nowhere in the scripture will
you find not one verse of scripture whose primary purpose is to tell
you how to live. Not one. The primary purpose of every
single verse of scripture is to point us to Christ, to see
salvation in Him. The law tells us we're sinners. The law reveals our sin, doesn't
it? You better look to Christ who kept it. And the same thing's
true of every other verse of scripture. Jesus of Nazareth
is the fulfillment of every Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah.
Christ is the seed of woman, born from the seed of woman,
not born from the seed of man. So he didn't take part in Adam's
sin. Christ is the lamb slain to cover the nakedness of his
people, just like that animals that God slew to cover the nakedness
of Adam and Eve. Christ is the fulfillment of
Abel's lamb. The only way sinners like you and me can ever come
to God and be accepted is through Christ. The Lamb of God sacrificed
as a substitute for His people to put away their sin. Christ
is the fulfillment of the ark that Noah built. That ark was
built to provide a shelter from God's wrath that was coming.
Now hide in that ark. Well, that is a picture of us
telling us, hide in Christ. That's the only place of refuge
from God's wrath. Christ is the fulfillment of
that ram Abraham offered up in the stead of his son Isaac. Christ
is our substitute. Christ is the fulfillment of
every piece of furniture, every stitch you find in the tabernacle
in the wilderness. The Lord Jesus Christ is both
God and man, pictured in that incorruptible wood and gold.
Christ is the holy man, God and man, pictured in the badger skin,
man. and the white linen covering,
holiness, the holiness of God. Christ is the one way to God,
pictured by the one gate and the one door. Christ is the altar
and he's the sacrifice. That's pictured by the brazen
altar. Christ is the way of cleansing, pictured by the brazen labor.
Christ is the light of the world, pictured by that golden candlestick.
Christ is the bread of life, pictured by the show bread. Christ
is the intercessor, pictured by that golden altar of incense
and the smoke that would go up from it. Christ is our intercessor. Christ is the ark that holds
the law of God, that holds, contains all the purpose of God in that
ark of the covenant. Christ is the propitiation for
our sin, pictured by the golden lid over top of the mercy seat,
or the mercy seat that was over top of the ark. The Lord Jesus
even fulfilled prophecies that no man could have read the scriptures
and then set out to try to fulfill them, to try to prove, try to
fool people into thinking he's the Messiah. Christ was born
in Bethlehem. Now, any mere man couldn't have
just come up and say, well, I'm the Messiah. He couldn't have
chosen where he's born, would he? Nobody can except the Lord.
It was no coincidence that the Lord was born in Bethlehem, because
humanly speaking, He had no control over it all. So why was he born
in Bethlehem? That the scriptures might be
fulfilled. So we know this is the Savior. Now look to him.
This is God's eternal way of salvation. When Christ died,
he hung his head and gave up the ghost and there was a lifeless
body on the tree. Not one bone of him was broken.
It's a fulfilled picture of the Passover lamb. That Roman soldier
came and didn't break his legs. Now he broke the legs of the
two thieves, but he didn't break his legs. And I reckon why he did
that. I mean, Jesus, that body had no control over it. He couldn't
tell that soldier don't break my leg. He did. The soldier didn't
break his leg that the scriptures might be fulfilled to show us
this is the Messiah. This is God's Savior. There hung righteousness in a
bottle. The only righteousness you and
I can have, the only salvation we could ever find is in the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he showed us that by fulfilling
all of the scriptures. He kept all of the law and he
fulfilled all the prophecies of the Messiah. This is the Savior. This is our righteousness, the
Lord Jesus Christ. All right. He is our righteousness.
Here's my second question. What is it to do righteousness? What is it to do righteousness?
Was to believe. Doing righteousness is believing
on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's trusting him to be all of
our righteousness. We cannot earn a righteousness
by the law. The very best man can do is not
good enough. Our Lord tells us that in verse
20. 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 scribes and
the Pharisees were the most straight, most moral people on earth. The scribes, they knew the scriptures
better than anybody. I mean, their job was to sit
and hand write the scriptures, to copy the scriptures. They
wrote the scriptures. They knew the scriptures better
than anybody. But more than just transcribing,
The job of the scribe was to interpret the scriptures, to
tell the people this is what these scriptures mean. Now we'll
get to what they taught more in just a minute, but the point
here is the scribes knew the scriptures better than anybody. And our Lord says, the Lord,
the judge says that their obedience, their morality, all their religious
activity was not good enough. Please come. Let's just be honest. If a scribe can't please God,
I know I can't. I mean, you know, you think that
you take up your time of your life, you know, around around
the gospel, around scripture, around spiritual things. You
know, we live in the Bible Belt. This is what people do, right?
I mean, the scribe spent 24-7 in the scriptures, in this morality,
in this religion. It wasn't good enough for you. Well, then certainly I can't.
And the Pharisees, the Pharisees were the people who did what
the scribe said better than anybody else. I mean, they strove, they
make it the goal of their life to be good enough to commune
with God based upon their obedience to the law. The Pharisees were
so religious. They were so pious. They separated
themselves from the common people. I mean, they didn't want to get
around the common people because those common people, even common
people coming into the temple, they didn't want to be around
them. They might defile me. I mean, they were so concerned
about that. The Pharisees were holier than
thou, and they outwardly, they were, they were holier than you
and me. Our Lord says they're not holy
enough to please God. Gotta be better than that. The old Jews
used to say if just two people go to heaven, if just two people
go to heaven, one of them is going to be a Pharisee and the
other one is going to be a Sadducee. And our Lord says neither one
of them is good enough to enter into the kingdom of heaven. We
cannot please God by our obedience to the law. The one and only
way a sinner can be made righteous is through faith in Christ. The
only way we can obey the commandment of God is to believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. And by faith in Christ, we have
union with Christ. Now, union with Christ means
I did everything that Christ did. I did everything the Lord
Jesus Christ did. This is surely as I did what
Adam did because I was in him. This is surely as I was made
unrighteous by Adam's disobedience, I was made righteous by Christ's
obedience because I was in him. Now, it's easy to see how we're
one with Adam. We're born from his seed. We
were in him. By our natural birth, we're in
Adam. Well, how are we made one with
Christ? By faith. By believing him. By believing
that the Lord Jesus Christ is all it takes to save me. We're
made righteous through faith in Christ. I can show you that
in Romans chapter 4. Nobody can be made righteous
by their obedience to the law, that righteousness is received
through faith in Christ. Romans chapter four, verse two. The two illustrations Paul gives
us here are Abraham and David. For if Abraham were justified
by works, he hath whereof the glory, but not before God. For
what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God. and it was counted
unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the
reward not reckoned of grace, but of death. But to him that
worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly,
his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth
the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness
without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are
forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. And the Lord does not impute
sin to them because he imputes the righteousness of Christ to
them. And he imputed their sin to Christ at Calvary. That's
the only way a sinner can be made righteous. It's the righteousness
of Christ that he earned for us. It's not earned by us. It's
received by faith. And our very best righteousness
can't make us righteous. any more than it could the scribes
and the Pharisees. You know, today, we can't look to our morality
any more than they could. And we can't look to our right
doctrine any more than they could. Absolutely, their doctrine was
wrong. You hear right doctrine, true doctrine, but you can't
look to that to save you. We must look to Christ. We must
believe Him. We must lay hold upon the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is our only hope of righteousness. Doing righteousness is believing
Christ. It's not keeping the law. Now,
God never gave the law so man could earn a righteousness by
keeping it. That was not the purpose of the
law. I can show you that in Galatians chapter 2. Galatians 2. God gave us the law to show us
that we're incapable of keeping the law. God gave us the law
to shut us up to Christ, to show us that Christ is our only hope,
and to drive us to Christ. Galatians 2 verse 21. I do not frustrate the grace
of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ
is dead in vain. If righteousness could come by
my obedience to the law, there was no need for Christ to come.
God actually wasted his time sending his son to come in the
flesh to obey the law and to suffer and die the worst death
you can imagine. God wasted his time doing all
that. If I could make myself righteous by my keeping the law.
That's pretty serious business isn't it man? I mean that's serious
business now. This righteousness is ours through
faith in Christ. Look over Galatians 3, across
the page here, verse 21. And we lay hold upon Christ by
faith. Is the law then against the promises
of God? God forbid. For if there could
have, if there had been a law given which could have given
life, fairly righteousness should have been by the law. But the
scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by
faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. For
before faith, before faith in Christ came, we were kept under
the law, shut up under the faith, which should afterwards be revealed.
Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster to bring us under Christ, that
we might be justified, how? By faith. By faith. But after
the faith has come, we're no longer under a schoolmaster.
For you're all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. So doing righteousness is not
keeping the law. Doing righteousness is believing
Christ, who is our righteousness. All right, here's my third question.
Then what is it to teach righteousness? It's to teach Christ. It's preaching
righteousness. Teaching righteousness is preaching,
it's declaring that the Lord Jesus Christ is our only hope
of righteousness. To teach righteousness is to
remove any hope anybody has in salvation by what they do or
who they are. Force people to look to Christ
to take away every hope but Christ himself. It's compelling sinners
to go to Christ for all their salvation. That's teaching righteousness. Teaching righteousness is teaching
this truth that God's elect are saved through the law. Through the law. by the law being
kept. Nobody is ever saved by lowering
the standard of the law. And this is what the Lord says
in verse 19, whosoever therefore shall break one of these least
commandments. Now there is no least commandment
is all the commandments are the same to offend in one point is
to be guilty of all. So there's no least commandment.
So who's teaching a least commandment. Somebody who's lower in the standard,
they're saying this commandment is not important as this commandment.
Whosoever 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 them, the same shall
be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now, if God's going
to save sinners, this is what he's saying. The law has got
to be kept and it's got to be kept fully in Every commandment,
every commandment is of equal weight. Salvation cannot come
by us lowering the standard of the law because salvation requires
perfection, perfect obedience, perfect holiness. Now, the word
break that the Lord uses here means to loosen. It means to
loosen the restrictions, lower the requirement. And anybody
who lowers the requirement to the law, anybody who says this
law is more important than this one, they've broken the law. By lowering the standard of the
law, we broke the law. Now, the self-righteous, they
want to earn their way into heaven, don't they? They want to earn
their way by keeping the law. Well, any honest reading of God's
law is going to tell you, I got to lower the standard if I'm
going to keep it. Can't be perfect. I've got to lower the standard
if I'm going to keep it. And we'll get to this in just
a few, in just the next couple of weeks. Besides all that, they
lower the standard of the law by completely ignoring that the
law is an inward thing. The law requires perfection in
the heart, not just outwardly. They ignore the fact that this,
this is not just a brand new concept spoken of in the New
Testament. The Old Testament law tells us
this, that to Think about sin. To desire sin makes you guilty
of it even if you don't act on it outwardly. The law requires
inward perfection. They just completely ignore that. Sometime go read with that rich
young ruler when he came to the Lord and talked about everything
he'd done. Read what he said. He lowered the standard of the
law. He completely ignored inward obedience and inward holiness.
He just talked about the outward. to lower the standard of the
laws to say some commandments are more important than another
one. And when they do that, you know what they do? They stress
the ones that they think they can keep. That's what they do. I mean, you know, they stress,
stress the tithe because they think they can calculate 10%.
They stress the Sabbath day because they think, and they now You
know, I'm not going to make it on Saturday because Saturday's
the day everybody's off work and we got to get stuff done. So
we'll say it's Sunday, you know, so already we're changing it
to Sunday. And then, you know, they think,
well, I can not do any work on Sunday because I'd rather take
a nap Sunday afternoon anyway. They just pick the one that they
think they can keep. I love what Brother Henry said
about this. I remember him saying this so many times. He said,
I can jump over a barn. I can. I mean, he's an old man. He said,
I can jump over a barn. If you let me build the barn. That's what lowering the standard
of righteousness is. And our Lord says people who
teach that. Help us not to teach that to
others, to lead others astray, but to lead them to Christ. God
says people who teach that are least in the kingdom of heaven.
Now he's not saying here now everybody who's religious is
saved and somebody teaches this. They're just barely into heaven.
You know, they're just out there in the slums of heaven, but you
know, they're still there. That's not what he's saying at all.
The word least means, part of the word means short. They come
short. They come short of righteousness. They come short of the standard.
It doesn't matter what I say the standard is. What matters? What does the judge say the standard
is? God says the standard is perfection. So these who come
short, they have no way. to enter into the kingdom of
heaven. They've got no way to enter into righteousness and
they're going to be cast out just like all the other thorns
and briars. But teaching righteousness is teaching that Christ is our
righteousness. Isn't that a whole lot better
message? Wouldn't you rather rest in Christ and then constantly
be having the burden of the law laid upon you? Christ is our
righteousness. Now rest in Him. Salvation God's
way honors the law. Salvation man's way diminishes
the law. Salvation in Christ honors the
law. We're saved through the law,
by Christ's obedience to it, not by ours. And anybody who
believes that, anybody who teaches that, you know why they believe
and teach it? God has saved them. God's imputed the righteousness
of Christ to them. Now, people who say, well, you
believe the gospel, you believe in God's sovereign grace, you
believe that God's people will be saved no matter what they
do. They say the gospel is against the law of God. They accuse us,
same thing they accuse the Lord of, saying you're an antinomian,
you guys are drunk, you're a wine baby, you're crazy. But now listen
to me, the law of God, the gospel is not against the law of God.
The gospel lifts up. and magnifies the law of God
by showing us how Christ kept it. God didn't lower his standard
to save his people. He saved them through the law,
through the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ came
as a man, born of a virgin, born of a woman under the law, under
the requirements of the law, so that he could redeem his people
by keeping the law for them, by bearing the curse of the law
away from them. So if you want to be righteous,
you look to Christ. You trust Him. And somebody's
going to say, well, but now the law is still there. What about
the law? Can't I look to the law after
Christ saves me? Can't I still look to the law
and see how to act? Not if you're in Christ, you don't. You don't
look to the law if Christ saved you. Tell you what you do, you
continue exactly how you began. How did God save you? How did
the experience of your salvation, how did it begin? It began looking
to Christ, didn't it? Don't grow a hair off that. Continue
just like you began, looking to Christ. That's a whole lot
better than the law. Looking to Him. Trusting Him
to be your righteousness. Trusting Him to be your wisdom.
Trusting Him to be your sanctification. Trusting Him to be your life.
Trusting Him to be your salvation. That's doing. and teaching righteousness. All right, I hope the Lord blessed
that too.