God alone is righteous and He will judge us according to His righteousness. Only those who are perfectly righteous will make it into His kingdom. And that is a good news. How so? Through Jesus Christ who earned our righteousness!

Jeremiah 23:6 (The Names of God #3)

 

Sermon Transcript:

“THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” (11/15/15 THE NAMES OF GOD #3)

INTRODUCTION: Last Sunday, pastor Eldie preached on the name of God that means The Lord Our Provider. I was slightly jealous because that is such a great topic to preach on, I wanted to preach on it! Who wouldn’t love a God that provides all our needs? But, I believe the name I’m going to preach on is even more astonishing and peace inducing. I love, truly love this name and I think you will too if you heard it – It’s “Jehovah Tsidkenu.” Don’t you just love that name? Oh, you want translation! It means “The Lord our righteousness.” Now, don’t you love it? You will, once I explain what it means.

We will take one word at a time from that name starting from the last word first and working our way up to the first.

I. “Righteousness.” (as our outside is, so our inside becomes)

“The Lord is our RIGHTEOUSNESS!” We love God’s grace here at As One. We certainly speak of God’s grace every week at our church and we try to practice it as much as possible. Therefore, if we are not careful, it is easy to forget that God is not only the God of grace but also the God of righteousness. What does it mean that God is righteous? The word “righteous” in the original language is “Tsidek” and it means “what is straight, correct, honest, just, and what is right.” You can even say it’s moral uprightness. In other words, God is upright and just. He is morally pure. There is no guile or lie in Him. He is perfectly good.

There are at least two implications of this: 1) Being righteous matters to God. Or He wouldn’t be revealing Himself this way to human beings. This is one of the names that He wants to be known as. “The Lord is our RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Deuteronomy 32:4, “The Rock! His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; A God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.” 2) God will judge the world based on His righteousness. He will judge you and me according to His righteousness. It makes sense since God is righteous, He will judge the world by His own standard of righteousness. Matthew 13:49, “The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous 50and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” It is crystal clear. Who goes to heaven and who goes to hell in the end? The righteous will go to heaven and unrighteous will go to hell. Because that is God’s standard. Those who meet up to God’s standard of righteousness will be with god forever in paradise, and those who do not meet up to it will be in eternal damnation. Matthew 7:21, “21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” Another word for “lawlessness” is “unrighteous.” So, it is very clear from the Scripture if we want to be accepted by God, we must be righteous. How righteous? What is the cutoff score? Will 51% do? If I just tip the scale, having done more good than bad, just barely, will that be counted as righteous? Matthew 5:20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Well, just how good is being better than the scribes and the Pharisees? Jesus says in Matthew 5:48, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” So, that is our standard of righteousness. We must be morally perfectly pure and upright! Or we won’t be accepted.

“But Pastor, I thought God accepts us based on grace. I thought we were judged by grace and not by righteousness. I thought because Jesus died on the cross for us, we are under grace, and righteousness is done away with.” If you thought that, you thought wrong. God cannot do away with righteousness. That is like God doing away with who He is in the core. God will cease to be God if He ignored unrighteousness. God will not and cannot accept unrighteous people as His children. And that will never change. Only the righteous makes it!

II. “Our”

“The Lord is OUR righteousness.” If I left at that, we would all be condemned to hell. Because none of us would measure up to God’s standard of righteousness. Who among us is perfect?

ILLUSTRATION: When I was younger, I was a good kid. I went to church every Sunday, I was a model student, teacher’s pet and perennial favorite of all the church ladies. And so I thought to myself, “I’m going to live the most perfect life that anyone has ever lived. I am going to stay a virgin, I’m never going to smoke or drink and will tithe on everything I ever earn. And in my mind, when I go to heaven God will pick me out among all the people there and say, ““Take a bow, Behold the man, Soongyol, he’s lived the most pure and holy life in the face of history. I want all of you to be like him!” And the crowd goes wild! Well, how did I do? A thing called college hit me at age 18 and completely ruined my plan! Shameful things I don’t even want to mention to you. And how am I doing now that I’ve been a Christian for 27 years and middle aged? I’m less confident in myself than ever before and without Christ daily sometimes hourly holding me up, I cannot even go a single day without sinning.

So, then am I righteous? Am I going to make it to heaven? Do I measure up to God’s standard? No. Not even close if you look at what I am inside. I am not righteous. I am a sinner no different than those monsters who killed 100 plus people in Paris this past weekend… And not just me. That’s you and that’s me. All of us. Romans 3:11-12, “No one righteous, not even one. None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” And just in case we missed the word “none” here, Paul adds, “For ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” in verse 23

So then, does that mean that I’m not going to make it to heaven since I’m not righteous? God is not going to accept me because I have not lived a perfect life? Am I and are you to be condemned forever without any hope because we are not righteous? Only if there was a way for us to be righteous some other way. If somehow, God’s righteousness can be transferred to us, because God alone is righteous, then we could possibly be righteous. And since the name is, “The Lord OUR righteousness,” it seems to be saying that the righteousness could be ours. But how? How can it be transferred from God to us? How can God’s righteousness become our righteousness?

III. “The LORD”

The answer: “The LORD is our righteousness.” The Lord – Not us or our good effort is our righteousness. But it is the Lord who is our righteousness. The word LORD is all capitalized and if you remember the sermon two weeks ago, that is referring to Yaweh, the proper name of God, which means, “I am that I am” that He revealed to Moses. This means the righteousness comes not from us or our upbringings, or our effort but it comes from the Lord, Yaweh. But who is this Yaweh, or Lord referring to? It is none other Jesus, God’s Son, our Savior!

Read the passage again in its context. Verse 5, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”

Who is in the line of king David – a descendent of David – and is also called the Branch? It is Jesus! Jesus refers to Himself as the Vine in John 15 – the Branch that every other branch, which is us, is attached to. He is our righteousness because He took upon Himself our sins and gave us instead His perfect righteousness. Jesus not only died the death you and I deserved on the cross, but He also lived the perfect life that you and I could never live and has given us the credit for it!

This is the most astonishing truth the world has ever known! It is something written in our hearts. Don’t you and I get so inspired when someone risks his life to save someone else’s? When a teacher stands between a gunman and a child to protect the child and in the process, loses his life! When a mother protects her baby in a burning building and so she is burnt to death and the baby is alive! What is that but a demonstration of what our great “I Am” has done for us! It was His life for ours. It was His righteousness for our unrighteousness! Two great verses: 1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.

2 corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

That is the greatest truth the world has ever known – God’s life for ours. So, when God covers us with grace, he is not lowering his standard of righteousness. No! In order to meet up to it, He sacrificed his own son and so that his son’s righteousness will clothe our own unrighteousness so that we are perfectly righteous in the eyes of God.

Our righteousness is alien righteousness. It does not come from within. It comes from the outside. Think of it like a robe we put on. Isa. 61:10 “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” And that is how we come to be righteous in God’s sight and be able to enter into heaven. You see, when God the Father sees us, He see us wearing the blood-covered robe that His Son has earned for us on the cross. He does not see all our imperfections and unrighteousness. All of that evil has been masked and covered by the holy garment that Jesus has given to us to wear.

Do you remember the prodigal son story? When the unrighteous son returns, you know what is the first thing the father said is? [The father said to his servant] “Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet…” (Luke 15:22) What is the robe, the ring and the shoes? It is symbol that the son is fully accepted back by the father and is the rightful heir. Did the son earn it? No. Did he deserve it? No. Was he clean? No. He stank of pigsty! Yet, the father puts his robe of righteousness on him because he came back to the father.

How do you and I become righteous before the holy and perfect God? When we put on the robe that Jesus His perfect Son has earned for us. We do not dare try to earn our own salvation through our good works. That would be like trying to get to the moon on a rocket ship with a gallon of regular gas. It won’t even get us off the ground….

CONCLUSION

Last week, Pastor Eldie spoke on “God our provider,” and told us a story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaaac. But God did not let him do it. And yet, God did not withhold his own Son, and let Him be sacrificed so that you and I might live. He would not let Abraham sacrifice his son, but He did sacrifice His own Son for us. Righteousness matters to God. It was to earn our righteousness that Christ died and lived for us. And that righteousness is transferable to all who would receive Jesus as their Savior and Lord. Let me end with this beautiful quote….

            Spurgeon said: Does yesterday’s sin make you uncomfortable? In the teeth of all your sins, believe that he is your righteousness still. Your good works do not improve his righteousness; your bad works do not ruin it. This is a robe which your best deeds cannot mend and your worst deeds cannot mar. You stand in him, not in yourself! Whatever, then, your doubts and fears may have been, do now, poor troubled, distressed, distracted believer, say again, “Yes, he is the Lord my righteousness.”