Major Bible Themes
Mike Doyle · Aug 14, 2011
Major Bible Themes (2011), No. 33
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926243423663

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

The subject matter today is not sanctification. So, we've got to go back. The subject matter today is righteousness. Is it showing up up there? Yep. Awesome. Okay. What do you think righteousness is? Right standing before God. Alright, that's my righteousness. I could define it as right standing before God. But what's the word itself mean? Some attributes of God. An attribute of God? Some of all attributes. Oh, some of all of His attributes. That's pretty good.

Because we're going to say that God is righteous. Which means what? who he is, what else? Anyway, God is righteous, we're going to talk about the self-righteousness of man, we'll talk about imputed righteousness, and then we'll talk position and condition. So, four aspects of righteousness. Signifies just without prejudice or partiality. The root word decay means right or just.

So that helps us with the definition that God is right in everything he does. And everything he is, is right. And he's just. Which means there's no messing around internally with him. As we've discovered in studying sins and the consequence of sin, God said the consequence of sin was death. Did he ever let anybody off the hook? No. No, he didn't.

And that reason he didn't is because he's right or he's righteous. Okay. Therefore, righteousness is a character or quality of being righteous. And I like this, formerly spelled right-wiseness. Isn't that an interesting term? right-wiseness. I really like that term.

I wish I could make this bigger. I know, I can't see it. Well, if you can look up one. Even then, my eyes are too big. I don't know how to do it. I'll ask Roy for next week. It should be bigger. So, God is righteous in his very being. Monique brought a Bible, so Monique gets to look this up. James, Chapter 1, verse 17. Oh my goodness, it's going to take a while. James? See, I... Is that a Bible? New Testament.

I'm not, I'm in it. I can't find it. You can't find it? It takes me a while. Okay. Oh, is it J-A-M-E-S? James is right after Heber's. I have my... Isn't that nice? Or you can just go right to things. That's why I need a computer. Talk to your husband, don't talk to me. Talk to Mike. Okay James, do you want me to read it? Please read James 117.

Okay, every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights, bright lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. Okay, so one of the characteristics of righteousness is that there is absolutely no variation in God. You know, we love variation and diversity and tolerance and all that other nonsense, but with God there's absolutely no variation. He is who He is and He acts and lives and functions as He is. And there's no shifting or shadow, right here, which would be caused by His turning, like He never turns to the right or left. He never has to compensate. He is who He is.

Okay. Which is good, because otherwise you could sort of think, well I did this but I could sort of slip by if God isn't going to see me. Well, yeah, not only that, but I could think that, well, maybe I could do my own little dance and He would accept me. Yeah. No. It's just the way, you know, that my way or the highway, that's kind of what that's about.

So, 1 John 1.5 says, We have heard from Him that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." That's a really cool verse. That in God there is absolutely no darkness at all. Which means that all of his character and all of his righteousness and all of his glory is in light and there is absolutely no darkness at all. None. Very cool. So God is righteous in all of his ways.

Romans 3.21 says, and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to perform.

And therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, but it was imputed to him. but also for us it shall be imputed to us who believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification." So he's talking about justification by faith and he has justified Abraham and then he comes and talks about that Abraham didn't waver. And which means that God, verse 20 says, he did not waver at the promises of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that he that promised, he was also able to perform.

It's a very important part when we're talking about God's righteousness. When you're reading the Word of God and you see a statement where he declares something. It's absolutely unequivocally dependable. He never ever changes. So when he says that he saved you for all eternity, he means it, no matter how you feel about it. And when we get to position and condition we'll talk about that.

So he's right in all his ways The righteousness of God has been manifested. In other words, through the study of the word of God, what you discover is that God has shown forth for everybody to see his right-wiseness or his righteousness, that he's consistent.

What did I read on Comcast this week that there's a bunch of scholars in Jerusalem that have been studying for 50 years the Old Testament and they've come up with all of these inconsistencies and that the Bible isn't what it claims to be. That's complete nonsense. Because the Word of God is written by God, it has to be righteous. You see that?

So he's going to make clear his righteousness. God let the sins of earlier times go without punishment. And that's a very interesting point, because one of the places that you'll be challenged about God's righteousness is, well, Christ didn't die until 35 AD or whenever he died. But what about all those sins that he said he forgave in the guys in the past?

How did he do it? How did he do it? Because the work of the cross had not been completed. Now you could say, well, he's an eternal being and Christ is the Lamb, slain some foundations of eternity, which is true, but he covered over the sins of the Jews if they would do an animal sacrifice.

How could he do that and still be righteous? Well, could he have looked into their hearts and they knew that they had faith? According to Genesis, he looked in the hearts of man and he found evil only continually. I've heard of people looking towards the Messiah in the future. Yeah, he did it on credit.

He knew what Christ was going to do and because of his righteousness there wasn't any doubt as to what Christ was going to do. So he said, I will cover your sins until Christ dies and pays the penalty for them and we'll accrue them up all the way up until the cross, and then we'll take care of him there. But if there was any doubt as to whether Christ was going to die or not, he couldn't have done that. Did the Israelites realize that the covering of their sins by sacrificial bloodletting, did they understand that at the time?

Yes, they did. As a matter of fact, they did understand that. And the reason that you know that is because they actually went and did it. You understand what I'm saying? In other words, they went to... I screwed this thing up again. They actually went down to the temple and got an animal and sacrificed it and had faith in the system. And they had faith in when God told them that he would cover their sins if they would do what he asked them to do.

Do you see that? Yeah, but the part of my question is did they understand that that was in preparation for Christ on the cross? Oh, I think so. And the reason, wow, that's awful. I think so and the reason I say that is because of the promises made to them, of the promises made to them by God to Abraham.

The four aspects of righteousness for all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all of our righteous deeds are like filthy rags. So you and I cannot be righteous. And the reason is because God has declared that all of our deeds are like filthy rags.

Romans 3.10 says that there is none righteous, not a single one. Ooh, what an indictment.

Romans 10.1-3 seeking to establish our own righteousness they did not subject themselves to God's righteousness.

It goes back to kind of Steve what your question is. What the Jews tried to do through the law was establish their own righteousness. The problem was it was their own. And, 2 Corinthians 10, some of those who commend themselves when they measure themselves with themselves, compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding.

That's the definition of the U.S. Congress. Right there. There it is. Because the 534 people that run the country in Washington are all self-righteous. And this is really who they are. Idiots is what they are. They're idiots. They are. Yeah, they really are. So, those four aspects of my righteousness.

Now, 2 Corinthians 5.21. Now this is where we probably ought to talk a little bit.

One of you guys with a computer, go to 2 Corinthians 5.21. Somebody read it.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God. Okay, now, we've talked a little bit about God and his righteousness, okay? And I just quickly went through how human righteousness measures up, which it doesn't. So in order for you and I, or any human being, to be acceptable to God, to be allowed in his presence, to be able to communicate with him, what standard must we arrive at?

Perfection. Now, can I arrive at perfection in and of myself? No. Could a Jew who perfectly kept the law be righteous? If you look at Romans 7, Paul is going to say that he was righteous once, before, under the law. Remember that? But then sin came, or the law came, which is the word I'm looking for, activated his sin nature and he sinned and died. When you walked out of the temple after sacrificing your last lamb, or as you were doing it, you were righteous. under that system.

In other words, Abraham was declared righteous because he believed God. But that doesn't mean that Abraham lived perfection from then on. But he was declared righteous, which means he was justified, just because he believed God. And so God said, you can come and stand before me because of your faith. That's right. But don't you find it interesting that God was able to say to Abraham, I declare you righteous before me just because you believe me.

And what did he believe? He didn't believe salvation, he believed that he'd be the father of many nations, that there would be the land that he would have and on and on. He just believed what God told him. He didn't believe the gospel, didn't know what it was.

So God is able to say, okay, you're righteous before me because I said something to you and you believe me. It does not mean that you're righteous in and of yourself. Right, because we couldn't be. However, read the verse again, 2 Corinthians 5.21. to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Okay, now this is a really interesting point.

He made him, who's the him? Christ. He made him who knew no sin to be sin itself. Right? So He takes your sin nature and my sin nature and He takes all of our sins, the sins of the whole world plus all the believers' sin natures and He puts them on Christ and He identifies them with sin. This is the God of the universe now who is identified with everything that falls short of who He is. All of it. And what does He do? He dies. Which means He separates from all of that sin and unrighteousness and His death pays the penalty. Now He says, to you and me, I am not declaring you righteous, I am going to make you the righteousness of God in Him.

So, could I say, Steve, you're a pretty righteous guy, because you're a Christian. Tell me about that, and Steve would have to say, yeah, I know, I believed in in the Lord Jesus as my Savior and God made me righteous. Would that be a correct statement? If you say yes, you have to explain. If you say no, you have to explain. That's his position. Ah, see that's really important to understand.

That verse says that we have been made the righteousness of God. Wow, this thing we talked about, that God is right in all that he does and everything that he is, we have been made that righteousness, but location is everything. Where does that avail us? In Christ. See that? So because we have this position in Christ, we have the very righteousness of Christ.

Now is that the same thing that Abraham had? Why not? What's the difference? Abraham is declared righteous because of his faith, but I'm said to have the righteousness of God in Christ. What's the difference? The first difference is that Abraham isn't in Christ.

So, if you're in Christ, the righteousness that you possess is God's very own righteousness. It's His righteousness that you have. See that? Now, into eternity, when He leaves the planet, you will be right in all your ways. You will manifest the glory of God in everything you do. There will never, ever be anything other than perfect righteousness for you and me for all eternity. Never. because we're in Christ. Monique, you have a question?

No. When you were talking earlier about how did God deal with Israelites when the cross hadn't yet happened, and you said he covered kind of like on credit, whatever, but also God's timing is different. When he sees time, it's different. That's all right now. Yeah, and so to him it's, yeah, okay, Abraham was a long time before Christ, but to him it all happens. And Christ is said to be the Lamb slain from the foundations of eternity, yes. And there was no doubt that Christ was going to do it because... In time. In time. Because it already was done in eternity. Sure.

But for some reason it had to take place in time. You know, he had to be born a human being, he had to go through that process and he really did have to die. And so for our minds, in our simple little brains, that's hard for us to understand. But when you look at it from the little bit we can see of God, it's like, okay, that makes sense.

You know, we studied something really cool on Wednesday night. We're in Hebrews. 1st Corinthians. That's Tuesday's Hebrews. We were talking about why Paul came to the Corinthians with no wisdom. He didn't preach wisdom, because the Greeks loved wisdom, and they could debate. And what it did is it hit their minds, like you were just mentioning your mind.

But then he says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. So rather than it being intellectual, it's powerful and it gets implemented. Salvation is not a demonstration to the mind. I think what you're seeing with Child Evangelism Fellowship, when somebody gets saved, it isn't an intellectual persuasion, although we really try to do that. What 1 Corinthians says is that the gospel is the power of God. It's not the mental persuasion of God, it's powerful. So when you lay the gospel on somebody, it isn't that they're going to get real smart about it, it's the power of God nails them. And it saves them.

Something gets implemented that intellectualism wouldn't implement. Kind of cool. the conviction of the Holy Spirit for them to be able to say, yeah, I'm a sinner and I need Christ. Power. Yeah. Salvation. And that only happens because of the Holy Spirit, not because I'm sharing the Gospel. That's exactly right. You're just the conduit. That's exactly right. And the power comes to them. That's exactly right.

And it's not really flowery persuasive language, although so many evangelistic efforts are focused on persuasion rather than just the power of the gospel. It's really interesting. I have a friend that, I know she needs Christ and things like that, but she also is not the type that likes religion, so I don't either, but we've hung out enough and I've never really talked about it much because I'm a believer, a Christian, know whether I should say something to her and present it to her or just be around her because I mean I spend lots of time around her she knows I care about her is she gonna see that without me saying a word or is it just I mean I don't I'm also worried that I'm being concerned about not saying something because I'm afraid of her rejecting me or it. Yeah, and that's really honest. I'm glad you said it because that really gets to be a problem with all of us where we love somebody, we care about them.

And we said, boy, if I tell them the gospel and they reject it, oh, I'm going to send them to hell. No, they're already in hell. Come on. That's another thing we studied on Corinthians. Those who are being lost, those who are lost, nobody's in the middle. Everybody outside of Christ is lost. And they're perishing. They're not going to perish. They're perishing right now.

I like to see her struggling over so many things that fatherhood is just like See, that's one of the ingredients that I personally look for. I look for need in somebody's life. Perfect. You know, God didn't call me to be an evangelist, right? But I do know that the gospel in and of itself is powerful. and you don't have to be anecdotally persuasive.

Well can I just say what it is and do I even need to go in the house and get the bible and show it to her? I would if she'll look at it. I would take her in Romans 3 and 4. I would talk to her about, you know, that Jesus said, you come unto me and I will give you rest for your souls.

If you're struggling in your life, you know I don't have any rest. And see, I think that the problem with the human race in terms of the consequences of their sinning, is that there's no rest. There's no rest. So the Lord Jesus says to everybody, if you come to me, I'll give you the one thing you can't find anywhere on the earth.

I'll give you rest for your souls. And so you might say that to her and say, you know, let me just tell you what the good news is and just lay it out to her. that Christ is the Son of God. He died on that cross for your sins and mine. He was buried and resurrected. And he says very simply, if you believe Him and what He did, He will give you rest for your soul. He will save you for all eternity. And you will see things totally different than you see them now. It's a real... All you have to do is believe it. You don't have to do anything else. That's enough. That's enough. Isn't it also good to take the word you out and just share what happened to me?

You know, lots of people think that anecdotal evidence is persuasive. I'm not so sure it is as much as just the gospel itself. That's my concern. I don't want me to snap into maybe flesh bone and try to convince her based on human, like try to reason with her. Everybody's different.

I read someplace one time that said if you're going to introduce somebody to Christ, you better be friends with both of them. I found out the other day that she had gone to, with a friend to church, like probably way back before I ever met him, like to a Methodist church or something, like she had tried church, but she didn't feel like it. But we're not talking about church. No, but I'm wondering, should I invite her to church? No. Or is this too much? No, you just want to give her the gospel. That's all you want to do.

And let the Spirit of God do the work. You know, just say, look, The solution to your existence is the gospel, the good news. Christ died for your sins. It's real simple. Well, I'm not a sinner. Oh, really? Just see how it goes. Trust the Lord. He'll do it. Now, maybe she might want to know what happened to you. Maybe not.

The guy that led me to Christ, you know what the first thing he did to me was? He took his finger and he went, do you have a Bible? I said, no. He said, here, take this one. Give me a pen, he says. Wrote down four scriptures in his phone number. He said, you go home and read these scriptures and call me up.

Okay. Well, it was perfect for me. I mean, you know, if somebody was dancing with me, I wouldn't have paid attention to them. But this guy was right in my face. I loved it. I went home and read them. I called him up. You know, depends on the person. So God sends, right, so God sends God could send a person to you because he knows you and what would make you tick. That's exactly what he did. So he sends the right person. He did that when you're salvation and yours and yours. And not only that, he sent the right person into your life all along for your spiritual growth. He does it every time. And you're not going to lose a friend.

You know, you're going to tell this person just by giving them the gospel that you cared enough to do it. If they want to know what happened to you, fine. But the thing that's powerful is the word of God. That's the power in the gospel. And just simple. The simpler the better, as far as I know. Paul said to the Corinthians, I preach Christ and Him crucified. That was it. Nothing else. No flowery speech, no oratory, no nothing. Christ and Him crucified. What were the four scriptures? What happened here? My computer overheated. What were the four scriptures he gave you? What? What were the four scriptures he gave you? Oh, I don't know. It was a strong one. One of them was Romans 3. I don't remember what they were.

You know, when my wife Monica and I got got saved. This pastor came to our house. He did this thing called Romans Road. And I know it's a little complicated how someone gets saved and all the things that people have said that planted seeds, but that night we both thought, wow, we need this Jesus as a man. We believed it. I've got a version of it at home I could mail to you that It just cuts to the chase. It's so simple. The gospel is so simple yet so profound and so powerful. It's just amazing. Okay, let's move on.

The results of God's imputed righteousness. You become members of his body. You become branches of the true vine, we could spend a lot of time talking about what the true vine is, is Christ. God the Father loves us as he loves his son. God the Father accounts us to be what his own son is.

Romans 3.22 says, oh my goodness, I'm going to move ahead because I want to talk about position and condition before we get out of here.

Position and condition or the other terminology that you hear is standing and state. When you read in the Word of God in Paul's epistles or Peter, James and John or Hebrews, a specific statement about you. Let's say the statement is, I have been crucified with Christ. Is that a positional truth? Answer yes. Those are things that are true of you that you may not have any experience at all about.

You know, we taught that class, the 34 things that happen to you at the cross. Do you feel like you're an inheritor or a co-heir with Christ? Do you really think that you're going to inherit all this stuff? Do you think you're a son of God in the fully-orbed sense of it? Do you think you've been made the righteousness of God in Him? but more importantly do you think you were crucified with him?

I wasn't around two thousand years ago. Yeah, I had a hard time with that. Was I buried with him? Did I rise when he rose in him? Is that really true? Because I mean if you engage your mind and you say, give me a break with that, I'm living in the 21st century.

That, Romans 6, 1 through through 10 is positional truth. It is something that God says about you that's absolutely true from his perspective. Now when you get presented with a positional truth, what do you do with it? Stand and believe it. That's all you do is believe it.

You don't go to God and say, well you're going to have to show me. No. He showed you in the Word and all he wants you to do is believe him. When God told Abraham, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z, Abraham believed him. He didn't say, well, better show me.

If God says to you, there's no condemnation for those, which includes you, who is in Christ Jesus. None. Oh, wow. Do you mean I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I'm never going to be condemned? And what does in Christ mean anyway? Positional truth. Am I in Christ or not? If I think about it and try to come to the conclusion of in Christ from my experience and my mind, I will never arrive at that conclusion. Never. Because I'm looking at my behavior.

Position is the most important thing in understanding truth. And you should be able to distinguish, as you study the Word of God, position from condition. In most of Paul's epistles, if not all of them, you're going to find the first part of the epistle is positional truth, things that are true of you. Once that's established, then the condition, which is your everyday walking around existence, how one ought to behave because of his position is laid out.

As an example, Colossians 3 says, since you've been risen with Christ. Is a risen with Christ a positional truth? Yes. Okay, that's true, positionally. I'm supposed to believe it, based on it being true and my believing it, here's what he says. Seek those things which are above. What does that mean? Set your mind, your heart, your affections on things above and not on things of the earth. Conditioning, right? Verse 4, here's another position, for you died and your life is hid with Christ and God. Is that true? Absolutely it's true. It's position.

Your position can never be altered, never changed, never anything. If you never seek those things which are above, you never set your heart and mind on things above and not on things of the earth. Guess what? It doesn't change the fact that you've risen. or your life is hid with Christ and God. But a result of that position should be that you seek things that are above. Position is grace. All positional truth is grace based. Which means it should motivate you to function.

Right, and if you have faith and you don't have interest in worldly things you get more into But you can't say to yourself, I'm just not going to be interested in the Broncos. No, no, no, I don't mean that. Or politics. But automatically you think of things above. You can only think of one thing at a time. And if your mind is taken up with Christ, it's not taken up with the world. Even though I do think of the Broncos. Sure, so why? But what you'll find in spiritual growth, is that increasingly amounts of time in your mind will be taken up with the things of Christ.

You might spend more time studying the word or you might just spend time praying or talking. You stop reading those trashy novels. Why? Because I have no interest in that anymore. Why? Because something replaced that interest and what replaced that interest is the glory of Christ.

It's not that you're actively setting aside those interests, it's just that the Lord has interests. They drop off. And so then you start to live a life that's consistent with what your position says you are. And you're living it by grace and you can't take any credit for it. You're walking by faith. And somebody like your friend looks at you and says, man, there's definitely something different about you. Or something really weird about you. Or something. What is it? So that people will come and ask, what's the hope in your heart?

There's something different about you. It's Christ. Now you can't expect, your condition, spiritual growth is your condition lining up with your position and that takes the rest of your life. But when you leave the planet, you'll behold the Lord Jesus face to face. Guess what? Your condition instantly matches your position. You got it all quickly, bang, just like that. Okay, I'm glad I moved ahead.

Great, let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, how we thank you that we have the very righteousness of God in Him, and we thank you for the understanding of this incredible position that we enjoy. by being in him, may we continue to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus and thereby have him and his spirit affect how we function conditionally. We thank you. We pray in your son's name. Amen.