O Spirit of God, descend on this
place. Come on us in power, dispensing
your grace. Expose to each heart the corruption
of sin, and show us our need of a Savior within. Our vileness
and guilt we sadly confess, and unrighteousness is all we possess. Our hearts are diseased, full
of death and decay. Come now and within us your mercy
display. Reveal to our hearts the Son
of God's love, who came down to earth from heaven above. Show
us that his blood, which was shed on the tree, has satisfied
God and sets guilty souls free. Come bless us this day, O Spirit
benign. Apart from your grace, we wither
and die. But by sovereign power, new life
you can give. So lead us to Jesus and make
us to live. Those words were a real blessing
to me and constitutes, I guess, the prayer of my heart this morning. Now, I would like this morning,
if you would, to turn with me to the book of Matthew, chapter
5, and I'd like to read verse 20. to you for our text and then
we'll use a few verses that Brother Randy read to us out of Philippians
chapter three. But I'd like to say at the very
outset this morning that we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus,
the Lord, and we're your servants for Christ's sake. I'd like to
say that you cannot tell what the season of the year is by
listening to me preach. I am a preacher of the gospel. God has called me to preach the
gospel. Paul said that, uh, woe is me
if I preach not the gospel. He said, I determined not to
know anything among you, that is, among the Corinthians, except
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Now we know that the preaching
of the cross is to them that perish foolishness. But unto
them, those of us who are saved, it is the power of God. Paul
said, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of
God unto salvation, unto everyone that believeth, unto the Jew
first and also unto the Greek. He said, I'm not ashamed of this
gospel, for therein, in verse 17, Romans chapter one, for therein
is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, As it is
written, the just shall live by faith. And in the words of
my great uncle, who was a primitive Baptist preacher, he said, I
know nothing in the matter of salvation but Christ and Him
crucified. So when I preach to you, I preach
the gospel to you. I want it always to be so. And
if any of you young people, any of you young men, desire to preach
the word, remember that it is our obligation and responsibility,
if the world stands, for a thousand years. It's our obligation to
preach that which is the bread of life, to preach the gospel
of God's saving grace, his mercy, and preach that one message of
the Word of God, how that God was in Christ, reconciling the
elect world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto
them, but imputing them to Christ in order that those that are
the elect of God would go free. and have the mercy of God shown
to their souls for all eternity. Keep that in mind. It's our business
to keep our ear open to the voice of the Spirit of God, that we
might hear what it is that God would have us to say unto his
people. And those of you that have ears,
let him hear what the Lord would say unto you. In Matthew chapter
5, I want to read verse 20. one verse of scripture here.
For I say unto you, these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ,
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. I would like for you
to hold your finger there and turn back to the book of Philippians
from the chapter that our brothers read to us this morning. And
I want us to look beginning here at verse 3 where the Apostle
Paul says, we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit.
He meant by that that they are the true people of God, that
He represented the true people of the living God, those who
were circumcised, not outwardly, but those who have that circumcision
of the heart, that which is made by the Spirit of God in the heart.
And we worship God in the Spirit. The Bible says that the Lord
seeketh such to worship Him, those that worship Him in spirit
and in truth. And then he said, we're those
that rejoice in Christ Jesus. Well, it's wonderful. It's It's
a glad privilege that we have to rejoice in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And that, of course, is our top
joy, our greatest joy, is our relationship with the Lord Jesus
Christ. We praise God for his unspeakable
gift unto us, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says that we have
no confidence in the flesh. Why should we if we've been taught
of the Spirit of God? We have come surely by now to
the end of ourselves We have come to that end wherein we look
no further Unto ourself for anything to recommend us to God anything
to commend us to God Anything that would give us approval before
God we find it not in our flesh Paul said in our flesh there
dwelleth no good thing and whether it be an apostle or whether it
be in the least of God's living family they find in their flesh
no good thing and Paul said we have no confidence in the flesh
but now he says I might also have confidence in the flesh
if any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust
in the flesh I more now Paul was around the Pharisees he had
been a Pharisee himself prior to his conversion to Christ and
Paul daily had to listen to the rhetoric of the Pharisees and
he was very well acquainted with those who made their boast in
the flesh of having a righteousness after the law that commended
and give them approval before God. And he said, I've got as
much room to have confidence in the flesh as any of these
other people around here that think they have room to have
confidence in the flesh. Now he said, I was circumcised
the eighth day of the stock of Israel, and we know that this
was commanded in the Levitical law, the old economy of the Old
Testament. And we know the Lord Jesus himself
was brought into the temple for this right to be observed when
Simeon, you remember, looked upon him as a baby. eight days
old and said this is the Lord's salvation this is God's salvation
and you know what he did he took him up into his arms and embraced
him which is a type of what all the elect of God do when they
hear of Christ in the inner ear and in the heart by the spirit
they all take him up into their arms and they embrace him as
God's salvation. Have you done that? Has that
time come in your life when you've embraced the Lord Jesus Christ
as God's salvation and worshipped him as that one whom God has
sent to provide that which your soul must have in order to appear
before God in acceptance? And so Paul said, that happened
to me. And he said, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin, and Hebrew
of the Hebrew, as is touching the law. He said, I'm a Pharisee.
I'm a Pharisee. I believe just like those Pharisees.
I believed like they did. And Paul said, I was a great
follower of Moses. And I was obedient outwardly
unto the law, just like the Pharisees. I was very strict. after the
manner of the law concerning zeal. He said, I went out and
persecuted the church of God because they were preaching a
message contrary to Moses. And they were preaching a message
that I could not accept in and of myself as far as my nature
was concerned as a Pharisee. It was contrary to me as touching
the righteousness which is in the law he says as far as I know
outwardly I was blameless he was like the rich young ruler
who as far as the law he said I kept it from my youth up I've
not been guilty of any infraction of the law however he did not
understand the internal demands of the law and that's where people
They're ignorant of the internal, the spiritual demands of the
law. God said, you love me with all
of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, and all of
your strength. God said, that's what you have
to do. You gotta love me with all of your heart, all of your
mind, all of your soul, all of your strength. And we know that
we've not done that. We're not capable of doing that.
We probably have not done that ten minutes of our whole lives. We've not done it. We failed
in that, and so we know that we are idolaters by nature and
that we are lawbreakers. But yea, he says, those things
that were gained to me, those were gained to him after the
flesh. Those he could put on his resume, his spiritual resume,
and he could produce them and he could present them to those
people that would ask him about his religion and where his confidence
was as a Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus. This was his resume, you might
say here. But he said, but what things
were gained to me These things that were gained to me after
the flesh, those I counted lost for Christ. Meaning that there
had to come a day. Listen to what he said. Ye doubtless,
and I count all things but lost. All of this, he says, I just
count it as dross. I count it as that which is refuge. I count it as that which is of
no account and that which does not figure in. to the scheme
of things when it comes to being accepted before a thrice holy
God. He says, I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my
Lord. And I'll tell you this, no man or no woman No boy, no
girl will ever come to fully understand and know the Lord
Jesus Christ in his fullness of grace and mercy and kindness
until they lose and until they willingly and voluntarily throw
away all of that which would becloud their mind and heart
toward the Lord Jesus Christ. There must be a loss of all things
that you have confidence in, in order that you might be able
to fully appreciate the Lord Jesus Christ. And he said this,
for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count
them but dung. I do count them but dung that
I may win Christ. Do not allow anything ever to
come between your soul and Christ. Do not ever hold on to anything
My friend, and let that be as it were, let that be as it were
come between you and the Lord Jesus Christ. Other words, to
make him who is a jealous God, jealous in that you're holding
on to something, some good work or some deed that you have done
in your life, something that you could produce. My friend,
do not provoke God to the face with holding on to anything.
Count it all done that you might win the Lord Jesus Christ. And listen to what Paul said,
and be found in Him. Oh my friend, that's where we
need to be found. We must be found in Him when
you come. I mean down to that last hour. When you come to that time when
the eye string is about ready to break, when you come to that
time when you can no longer utter words, oh my friend, we must
be in Him. Be found in Him. We must die
in Him. We must be found in the Lord
Jesus Christ. Paul says, not having mine own
righteousness, which is of the law. He says, I don't want to
be found outside of Christ, because to be in Christ means that I
have a righteousness which God will approve of. And he says,
but that which is through the faith of Christ, that which is
through the faith of Christ. Now we know that the Bible says
to him that worketh not, but to him that believeth on him
that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. I would like for you to look,
if you will, just hold your finger here in Philippians, and I guess
you all got that many fingers, but listen, turn back with me
to the book of Romans, and I want you to look here in the third
chapter at a few verses, and then we will go on to the fourth
chapter, look at a couple of verses there, and then back to
our original text. Now in verse 19 of Romans 3,
now Paul says, I want to be found in him not having a righteousness
which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ. Now we know in verse 19 of Romans 3, that whatsoever
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before
God, God's law. makes us to stand with our mouths
closed, we are guilty before God. We have broken God's law. Therefore, verse 20, by the deeds
of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now, In verse 21, the
righteousness of God without the law, without the law. Now
that needs to be looked at carefully. The righteousness of God without
the law is manifested. And that's what we're attempting
to do here today. That's what the business is of
this preacher this morning, is to manifest that law, or manifest
that righteousness, which is without the law. being witnessed
by the Law and the Prophets. The Law and the Prophets give
witness that that righteousness which we're manifesting is a
righteousness which is equal to that righteousness which is
of the Law. Because it is a righteousness
that both in spirit and in deed is the fulfillment of that Law
of Moses that law which men attempt to keep outwardly and provide
for themselves a righteousness, even the righteousness, look
at this, in verse 22, of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ
unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference. So you see, we have this righteousness
that Paul wanted, that righteousness that he wanted to be found in.
We have it as we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now look in
chapter 4 of Romans, and I want you to notice these verses. We
read here in the verse 16, and not as it was by one that sinned,
so is the gift, for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but
the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. For if by
one man's offense death reigned by one, much more they which
receive abundance of grace, and get it now, and of the gift of
righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ. Righteousness,
the righteousness which God demands, which you must have, which is
that which exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,
is a gift. That's chapter 5, if you'd pardon
me please. I made a mistake there, pardon
me. So that's verse 17 of the fifth chapter, it is, of the
Book of Romans. And in verse 18, therefore, as by the offense
of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so
by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men
unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience,
many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one, The obedience
of one, and we've often made a point of that word one, the
obedience of one, not me in God, not me in Christ, but the obedience
of Christ alone, shall many be made righteous. shall many be
made righteous. So this is what Paul was talking
about in Philippians chapter 3. He wanted to be found in Christ
not having a law righteousness of his own, but that which is
through the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we come back
then to our text In Matthew chapter 5 and verse 20 where our Lord
Jesus is saying that except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Saul of Tarsus, you shall
in no case enter into the kingdom of God. Except your righteousness
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall
in no case in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now the
scribes and Pharisees were in their day the most highly respected
and admired religious leaders in the world. Everyone stood
in awe of the scribes and the Pharisees, but our Lord said
to his disciples, He said, your righteousness had better exceed
theirs, or you're in no case going to enter into the kingdom
of God. Now those words must have been astounding to the disciples
and to the people who first heard them come from the lips. of our
Lord Jesus Christ. The scribes were the religious
scholars of the day. They were the men who copied
and expounded the scriptures. They gave their lives entirely
to this one great work for God and his people. That's what they
would tell you. That's what they were dedicated to. Now they consecrated
themselves to this one noble work. Now the Pharisees were
the strictest sect of the Jews. No one exceeded the Pharisees
in outward morality, in obedience to the law, in the prayers and
their tithing, in their outward obedience. unto the law. Nobody
excelled the Pharisees, and also in their Sabbath keeping, and
in their scripture memorization, personal righteousness, and public
approval. They were very well thought of
by the public. Yet our Lord declares that except
our righteousness shall exceed theirs, then we cannot be saved. We cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. Now, is the Lord telling us that
we must do more and that we must be better than the scribes and
Pharisees? Is that what he's telling us?
Is he saying that we must gain a greater measure of personal
holiness than these men had? Well, not at all. In fact, I
think he's saying to us just the opposite. The Lord is telling
us that it is utterly impossible for any man to gain favor with
God on the basis of his own personal effort and his personal righteousness. There never has been a child
of Adam from this earth good enough, righteous enough, holy
enough to inherit or inhabit the kingdom of heaven and there
never shall be. There never shall be a son of
Adam who is holy enough, good enough, righteous enough in and
of themselves to inhabit heaven, to go off and be in the kingdom
of heaven for all eternity. You and I must get every thought
of personal righteousness out of our minds and the very word
good out of our vocabulary when we think or speak of any human
being in God's sight. Now when it comes to God's sight,
forget about this goodness of man. Now it may sound pious,
it might sound very good to the ear of folks on the floor of
the Senate, are in the House of Representatives to speak of
good men. But the Bible doesn't speak of good men. The Bible
says there's one good, none good, save one, and that one is God. Now we have no righteousness
of our own before God, and no ability to produce any. If we
would be saved, we must have the righteousness of God in Christ
imputed and imparted unto us. That's what we read out of Romans
chapter 5, verse 17 through 9. Is this righteousness? Is this righteousness that which
exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? Do
what you may without the righteousness of God in Christ. You cannot
enter into the kingdom of heaven. You must have the righteousness
of God in Jesus Christ. Now, let me say that we lost
all righteousness in Adam. You might say, well, preacher,
you mean that none of us have any? None of us have any righteousness? None of us? Well, we've all sinned
and come short of the glory of God. The Bible says we all stand
guilty before God. So we lost our righteousness
in Adam. We all suffered, I think, a threefold
loss of righteousness in Adam. And until righteousness is recovered
and restored to us, we can never be accepted in the presence of
God. Now, when Adam sinned in the
garden, man lost, let me say he lost, his righteous nature. Man before the fall was much
more than an innocent creature. He was holy, he was righteous,
he was good, and he was well-pleasing to God. But after the fall of
man, he was guilty, sinful, corrupt, repulsive to, and condemned by
God after the fall. And that which was true of Adam
is true of all of the fallen sons of Adam, because we were
all in him when he fell in the garden. Every faculty of man's
being is corrupted, defiled, twisted, and deformed as the
result of the fall. And I hear those say, and I just
heard it as late as yesterday, that the original fall and the
original sin does not affect us in this day. But that's a
bunch of Tommy Rock foolishness. The original sin affects us down
to this very hour that we're sitting here or standing here
in this place. Original sin and our depravity
is real, my friend. It's very real. We lost all natural,
moral, spiritual goodness in the Fall. Fallen man has a perverted
heart. He has a corrupt will, and he
has a vile nature. There's no righteousness, goodness,
nor possibility of goodness in any of us by nature. In our flesh,
as we said earlier, there dwelleth no good thing. And this speaks,
I think, to our potentiality for goodness and there is no
potential that we shall ever be able to produce anything good
from this flesh that's going to commend us unto God. Now the
second place I said that we lost our natural righteousness and
in the moment Adam sinned we also lost all legal righteousness
in God's sight. Because Adam sinned, he was put
out of the garden, you know, he was separated from God. And we being made sin are by
nature separated from God. And all of those who are outside
of Christ today are separated from God. You're without God,
you're on the outside, and only those who are in Christ are reconciled
to God and only they are in fellowship with God and are accepted of
Him. Man is so far separated from
God by sin that he cannot of his own will and by his own works
return to God. It must ever be as it was to
Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam, where art thou? God must
come and approach unto man. It's not It's not that man went
seeking after God. It was that God cried out, Adam,
where art thou? It's that God must do the seeking.
And unless God himself intervenes to bridge the gulf between himself
and fallen man, we must be eternally separated from him in hell. And
what I'm saying is that God, because of the covenant of election,
that he comes, he seeks souls. The Bible says that Christ came
into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. He
came unto His own, His own received Him not, but to as many as received
Him. To them gave He the power to
become the sons of God, even to those who believed on His
name. The Lord Jesus is seeking out His people. He does the seeking,
and He must do so. Now having broken the law by
sin, We have no legal claim on God. We have no legal righteousness,
no legal grounds of acceptance with God. Dig around in the muck
and the mire all you want. You cannot find one legal grounds
upon which God ought to accept you. You have sinned against
God. You're a fallen creature and
only God can in mercy come to you and restore your soul unto
himself. Thirdly, I'm talking about the
three ways in which we lost our righteousness and fallen man
has no understanding of righteousness. Now this hurts me to say it,
but the natural man in his natural state has no understanding of
what God's righteousness is, what it is. and where it comes
from. Let me say, when man had righteousness
before God, he understood that he had it only by the gift of
God in creation. He understood that. He understood
that. And you never read where he went
around glorying in his righteousness. No, he didn't. He understood.
Old Adam understood before he fell in the Garden of Eden that
his righteousness, that his innocence was of God, that God gave it
to him in creation, and he did not boast and brag of it. But
ever since, Man lost his righteousness. Man has thought he has righteousness
and he pretends to have it and boasts of it as a grounds of
acceptance with God. He even attempts to cover his
nakedness in sin. His own works and expects God
to approve of his deeds. He goes out and he makes him
a fig leaf. anything he pretends that he
was only slightly wounded at the fall but my friend man fall
he wasn't partially disabled fig leaf is not going to cover
up your shame and did to your sin and let you into the kingdom
of God he's not going to do that he will not be You must have on the garments
of holy salvation, even the garments of righteousness, those garments
woven from the top to the bottom by the doing and dying of the
Lord Jesus Christ himself. And apart from that, there is
no salvation. So they were, listen, he is ignorant
of God's character of righteousness. ignorant of God's requirement
of righteousness. Anybody who thinks that he can
put God off by little works here and there, giving a little money
or something like that to the cause of God, anybody that thinks
that they can somehow or other induce God to have mercy upon
them in some way other than coming humbly before God and receiving
the testimony that God has given of his Son, that life is in him,
and he that hath the Son hath life, Anybody who feels that
is ignorant of God's requirements and ignorant of God's accomplishment
of righteousness in Christ. You know, it's so wonderful to
be able to preach the gospel because we preach an accomplished
righteousness. We preach an accomplished salvation. We're not up here trying to get
people to line up to assist God in saving their souls. No! We preach an accomplished righteousness. Isn't that wonderful to know
that the Bible says 2 Corinthians 5 and 21, for he hath made him
to be sin for us. He hath made him to be sin for
us who knew no sin that we might be made legally constituted the
righteousness of God in him. Don't you see that? That's an
accomplished righteousness. It's there, and it's, thank God,
it's what Paul had, same righteousness. We don't have a different righteousness
than Paul had, got the same righteousness. It's the righteousness of God,
and it's been revealed from faith to faith, down through the ages.
Abraham believes it, Paul believed it, old Abraham believed it.
And Abraham saw the day of Christ and rejoiced in it. He was glad. And we rejoice in it today. But
the world is ignorant of God's accomplishment of that which
He demands. They're ignorant of that. And
that's why everybody in the religious world is out trying to produce
something that God will take note of and that God will finally
at the last weigh them in the balance and they'll have more
on the one side than they do on the other and God will receive
them into the kingdom. Ignorance, absolute ignorance
of the truth of the Word of God. Being ignorant of both the righteousness
of God and a man's own sinfulness, fallen man ever goes about. ever
goes about. Romans 10 verse 3 and 4, for
they being ignorant of God's righteousness go about to establish
a righteousness of their own. Four, it says that Christ is
the end of the law to everyone that believeth. Christ is the
end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. He's
the end of the law for righteousness. Don't you see? So our righteousness
is the Lord Jesus Christ. Fallen Adam made, as we said,
an apron of fig leaves by which he hoped to meet with God's approval. Isn't that just like the people
of the religious world? They're just trying every way
they can to cover it up. The original sin. Ruin in Adam. Ruin in the first man, Adam. Absolute ruin. But God is a God
who sets aside the first and establishes the second. You see,
it's true all the way through the Word of God. So Adam, he
ruined us, and Christ, in Him, we're made alive. In Him, we're
furnished. with all that which God demands,
and we have that standing which we also must have in order to
approach unto God. Now his firstborn son, Cain,
he followed the example and nature that he received from his fallen
father. What did Cain do? He offered God, a bloodless sacrifice,
which he had produced by the works of his own hands. But God
despised it. God looked down upon it. God
would not accept it. Here is Cain now, and we get
where we are by what we hear, and we become what we hear and
what we listen to, and that's the reason why you've got no
business listening to false preachers say, I'm scraping around the
garbage can and getting a little good here and there. My friend,
you're going to become what you listen to, and we get where we
are by what we hear. And I tell you, don't be listening
to those who badmouth God and badmouth the decrees of God and
the sovereignty of God and the elective grace of God and the
predestinating power and purpose of the eternal God. Forget them
and quit listening to them, because they're going to pervert your
mind and carry your mind and heart away from God's truth.
God despised the offering. Somebody said, don't you think
he was sincere, Cain? Oh, I believe he was sincere.
I believe he was sincere. Put his heart into it, but God
despised it because it broke the type, don't you see? God
would furnish that which man must have in order for him to
be accepted before him. No one ever trusts Christ until
he sees it is utterly impossible for him to produce any righteousness,
any righteous work acceptable to God. Yet fallen men, ignorant
sinful men and women continue this vain and this futile work
of trying to establish their own righteousness. Now, beloved,
it don't bother me to go over and over in town and drive a
nail until I conceal it completely in the board. It doesn't bother
me to do that. Because I know that when I'm
finished here today, there's still going to be some of you
that will not understand what Matthew 5.20, what it means.
And but I will hammer and I'll pound on it until I can drive
a nail no further. Now listen to me, they take the
Brits. I'm talking about religious people trying to establish their
own righteousness. You say, preacher, you'd have
to go a long way to find anybody like you're talking about. My
friend, you won't have to go, but just a very short distance. You just, you get into Great
Falls and you can find it all over Great Falls. Go to any city
in America and you will find it everywhere. Men and women,
they take the bricks from the kiln of their corrupt hearts
and slime of their defiled hands for mortar and try to build a
Tower of Babel that'll bring them to heaven. Such cannot be
done. Such cannot. It's vain. By works
of legal obedience, moral reformation, personal sacrifice, self-denial,
devotionalism, sacramentalism, penance, and religious zeal,
foolishness, man hopes to establish this righteousness. I hear that
there, what is this month in the Muslim world, Ramadan? And
they get up early in the morning and eat, because they're not
going to eat the rest of the day after the sun comes up. But
they've got to get up early in the morning because they think
they're going to, the Muslims, they're going to get tired of
God by what they don't do. And there's other things that
they don't do during this month that just started, I believe,
on Saturday. But anyway, they're very strict
and doing these works of penitence and so on and so forth, and they're
just going to establish a righteousness which their God might approve
of. The only problem is their God
is not in charge. He is not in charge. I'm telling you, eternity is
inhabited by the God of the Bible. He sits upon the circle of the
earth, and all those that make up mankind upon the face of the
earth are a drop in the bucket as far as He's concerned. And
this God is the one that says what is and will be accepted
and what won't be accepted. And this God will accept nothing
other than what He's provided in the person of His Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. But now when this religious man
has done the very best he can do and offers it up to God, giving
God his righteousness, is like throwing a vile, disguarded,
loathsome, minstrel's cloth into the face of a thrice holy God.
Isaiah 64 and verse 6, God will not have it. and let them go
ahead, set apart two months if they want to, but unless they
have the righteousness of God in Christ, they will never be
accepted of God. Well, how good, somebody says,
does a person have to be, preacher, to get to heaven? Well, does
he have to be basically good? Sincerely good? Outwardly good? How good does he have to be?
No, my friend, he has to be perfectly good. Gotta be perfectly good,
he's got to be as good as God himself. Now this is profound,
even if I have said it. You must be as good as God himself. Now man's definition of righteousness
depends entirely upon his definition and his understanding of who
God is. Now this is important to see.
The problem is that most have never seen God in his glorious
holiness as he's pictured in the Word of God and as the Spirit
of God has revealed him to be. You see, old Ralph Barnard, preacher
that some people listened to when he was alive, preached his
heart out, and he would stand and he would tell people, he'd
say, some of you never seen the Lord. Some of you never seen
the Lord. And he said, he's talking about
Paul and how Paul had God revealed to him. And he would say, but
there are people here that never had God revealed to them. They
don't know who God is. They don't know anything about
it. People would laugh at him and say, well now that's not
very smart to say that these people don't know who God is.
They don't know who God is. They don't know who Christ is.
Not until he's revealed to them. Not until he's revealed to them.
So I'll stand along with the old brother and say that's exactly
what I believe. The problem is that this generation
has never seen God as he's revealed on the pages of the Scripture
and by the Spirit of Revelation. Once a sinner sees God in his
holiness, He will cease forever to speak of his own goodness,
personal holiness, self-righteousness, and he'll cry like Isaiah did
in Isaiah 6, verses 1 through 6, where he said, Woe is me,
for I am undone. And you mark it down. Anytime
you find a hypocrite or a Pharisee, and probably the two of them
are synonymous, but you find them together, you find them
over in a corner somewhere, and they're talking, and every once
in a while they're getting in a word to tell you about just
who they are, and what they are, and how good they are, and what
they haven't done, and other people have done, and what they
haven't done, and so on and so forth. Just keeping on, keeping
on, exalting themselves. You know those people, mark it
down, never saw the Lord. They never saw the Lord. The
Lord has never been revealed to them. Once God is revealed
to a man, he shuts his mouth. He doesn't go around talking
about his righteousness, his goodness, his personal holiness. He'll cry, woe is me, for I'm
undone. You know Isaiah said, in the
year the king Uzziah died, he said, I saw the Lord. I saw him
high. I saw him lifted up. And then I said, woe is me, for
I am undone. And he'll say, well, Job, I have
heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now, mine eyes
see of thee, wherefore I abhor myself. Now, I don't have any
problem. I mean, I can get along. I can
fellowship with a man who says to me, you know, John, I abhor
myself. I abhor myself. When I think
he's honest, I can say, Brother, let's shake hands. I abhor myself
too. And the more I learn of myself,
the more I abhor myself. And I'll tell you this, that
the more spiritual you become, the less cumbly in your own eyes
you're going to be. You're going to keep on just
dwindling and dwindling and dwindling. The more you know the Lord and
see the Lord and understand the truth of God, the less you're
going to think about yourself. And some people say, well, I
think that a Christian will just think more and more and more
of themselves because they just keep getting better and better.
That's a lie from hell. There ain't a bit of truth in
it. There ain't nobody keeps on getting better and better
and better. We were ruined in the fall and our flesh, as far
as it's concerned, is ruined and there's never going to be
any perfection in it. Not in this world. And as far
as I'm concerned, anything less than perfection is not worth
talking about. David said, I'll speak of thy
righteousness all the day long. I'll talk about it. I'll speak
of it. I'll talk about it. So get something
to talk about that's worth talking about. And shut up about your
own, your own little measly efforts. My friend, the Bible says that
we're unprofitable servants if we've done that which was our
duty to do. And there isn't a soul here ever done what was their
duty to do. If there's anybody here that
can say, I've done my duty, I just tell you, you're an unprofitable
servant. And so we're all unprofitable
servants. Now why am I saying all that? I'm saying all that
to magnify the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why I'm saying that. I'm
saying that to exalt the Lord. Wherefore I abhor myself. Job
42 verse 5 and 6. Behold, he says in Job 4, 4,
behold I'm vile. Now who can stand in the presence
of the Holy Lord God? No son of Adam can ever stand
in the presence of God because we're all under the curse. Galatians
3 and verse 10. Cursed is everyone that continueeth
not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do
them. God is so infinitely holy that he charges the angels with
folly. So holy that when he found sin
upon his own dear son, when his own son had by the decree and
purpose of God had been legally constituted sin, when the Lord
Jesus Christ became the greatest sinner that ever lived, having
the iniquity of us all laid upon him. When that happened, well
you know what God did? He forsook him and killed him,
that's what he did. He forsook him and killed him. His own son
I'm talking about. Are we better than the angels?
No. Are we purer than the heavens? Absolutely not. Dare we imagine
that God will accept us with our polluted works when he killed
his own son for sin? He's not about to. God killed, he put his own son
to death. It is Christ that died. Hear it. It's the gospel message. It is Christ that died. And only because that he died,
none can lay anything to the charge of God's elect. It is
Christ that died. It is God that justifies. Well, only one who is in himself
equal to God can stand in the presence of God and please Him.
Now did you get that statement? Only one who is himself equal
to God can stand in the presence of God and please Him. I'm leading
up to something here. That righteousness which God
requires only God can give in the person of Christ. Yet it
must be by the work of a man. It must be by the work of a man,
or it is of no value to men. Blessed be God, there is a man,
the God-man, who is seated at the right hand of God today,
who is himself, I tell you, he's God. who has magnified the law
and made it honorable. He has brought in, according
to Daniel, an everlasting righteousness by his perfect obedience to the
laws of man, even the very righteousness of God. He has satisfied the
law's justice by dying under its curse, and he lives forever
to give righteousness and eternal life to sinners. Now this is
the God-man. This is the one He was both God,
very God of very God, very man of very man, if you please. And
this one stands in the presence of God and all of us in Him are
accepted of God because we're in the Beloved and we're judged
righteous as He is and with His holy garments on we're as holy
as the Holy One. We're so near, the poet said,
so very near to God, nearer I cannot be. For in the person of His
Son, I'm as near as He. I stand in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now the man is God. The man,
God, is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, our substitute. This
is who it is. And so our righteousness then,
we must find it in Him. He is that one that is the Lord,
our righteousness, and He's that one which God has provided. And
you hear this morning that the children of God rejoice, rejoice. You have a righteousness that
God accepts. And that righteousness, God will
never accept anything less than that. And if you stand in Christ,
rejoice. Rejoice. And if you say, Preacher,
I took Jesus up like Simeon did, and I've embraced him in my arms,
I've embraced him. You looked upon him and said,
Now let thy servant depart in peace. Let thy servant depart
in peace. I'm ready to die. I'm ready to
die because I've seen the Lord's salvation. Have you taken Him
up? Have you taken Him up? And those
of you that have taken Him up, abide in Him. Abide in Him. Abide in Him. Father, in the
name of the Lord Jesus, We rejoice for this privilege we've had
to preach the gospel. We're undeserving of it. And
we're undeserving of, we absolutely are not, are not fit to preach
a message like this, or to preach any message from your holy word.
We tremble before thee. Thou dost know, our Father, the
needs of these that sit before us today. We've been tried by
thy grace to be faithful to their souls. And I pray that somebody
might hear today, be enabled by the Spirit of the Lord to
take up the Lord Jesus in their arms and embrace him. And they
might be able to go out of this place saying, this day has salvation
come to my soul. Father, thank you for your word.
Thank you for all that you've done. Bless our brother as he
ministers this afternoon in Shoto. May your hand be with him, may
your spirit guide him and strengthen him, and may great things come
as the gospel goes forth. We know the gospel, you've said,
that God has chosen through the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe. May you be pleased to save sinners.
In Jesus' name we ask it, for his sake, amen.