Hope Church LV Sermons
Rightness with God
Well, at hope, we are committed to studying straight through the Scriptures, verse by verse, extracting all of the truth of God as it was written. And currently, we are studying straight through a section of Scripture that's referred to as the sermon on the mount. And it's found in Matthew, the first book on the New Testament, chapters five, six, and seven. It's referred to as the greatest sermon in history. And it was taught by the greatest teacher in history, Jesus himself. And the setting is very simple. Jesus was walking with his disciples and he was teaching them and instructing them. And then crowds just began to follow Jesus in his disciples. And so Jesus makes his way up on the side of a hill and with his disciples, he sits down. And he begins to share with them about this radical way of life that he calls his disciples to. And as he's speaking to his disciples, he's really speaking to thousands because of the large crowd that was looking on and listening in. And several weeks ago, Pastor Mike unpacked for us verses 17, 18, and 19 in Matthew, chapter five in this powerful sermon from Jesus. And he talked about the connection between the Old Testament and Jesus. He talked about the way that we in 2010 can still relate to the Old Testament. And I wanna recap that for you real quick in case you were gone or you just weren't listening or you forgot or whatever reason. A couple key things Mike talked about, he talked about that we can relate to the law because the law shows us as humanity, how helpless and hopeless we are left to ourselves. You see, the law is a standard. And when we look at that standard, we realize very quickly, we don't measure up. And it's impossible for us to measure up to the standard in one way that we still relate with the Old Testament is that we realize we're hopeless and helpless left to ourselves. But a second key component he talked about that's very important for us as we look at our text this morning, he talked about that the Old Testament points to a Messiah. That as you read through the Old Testament, as you look at the prophecies and the foreshadowing, it is all pointing towards a day when a Messiah would come and rescue and redeem the people of God. If they put their faith in him. And we know today that that Messiah is Jesus. And so there's a lot of connection we can still pull from the law, even though it was written so long ago. In this morning, we come to verse 20. One verse and Jesus is gonna kinda sum up everything he's just talked about in those verses and in the rest of the chapter. And so if you would look with me at Matthew chapter five, and I wanna read one verse for us this morning and it's gonna be our text. If you don't have a Bible, it's gonna be on the screen for you so you can follow along with us. Verse 20 says this, he says for in light of everything I've just said about the Old Testament in the law, I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Several years ago, I was in a third world country and we were traveling from village to village to village sharing the gospel with different people. And I remember one time in particular, we were in the back of a truck and we probably rode for three or four hours. Just traveling down this dirt road all the way to reach this one specific village. And they had heard we were coming and I remember pulling up to the village and starting to see, I mean, rural like clay huts and no electricity and no running water. I mean, it was remote this village we were at. And as soon as we pulled up, a translator ran to the car and he says, I need to speak with someone. This is urgent. And of course, being the guy who's in the ministry scene, everybody kind of looked at me as I was supposed to go. So I went with him and he says, you've gotta come with me, Travis. There's a lady and she's been asking a question for years and no one has been able to answer her question. And I said, well, take me to her. And so we walked down a couple of places and we finally see this lady. And she says, Travis, can you answer my question? And she's speaking through the translator and I said, what's your question? And he went on to ask. He said, she's been wondering her whole life. How can she be right with God? To which I said, I would love to answer your question. And I think for us today in America and in Hope Baptist Church, there's a lot of us who still wrestle and are wrestling with that question. And it looks different depending on what stage you are spiritually. But I think a lot of us still wrestle with that question. If you're here today and you don't have a relationship with God, probably for you, it looks like asking the question, how could God ever be pleased with me? I mean, I've done some stuff. I mean, some stuff I'm embarrassed even to say out loud, how could God, how could I ever be right with God? If you're maybe just begin following Jesus, maybe you were saved a month ago or a couple of years ago for you, it may look like asking the question, is God happy with the results so far? You know, I've had to transition from a life in the world to a life of following Jesus. Is it happening in the right way? God, are you pleased with my pursuit of you and how I've stepped away from all those are things? I know, I have struggles, but God, are you pleased with the progress? For those of us who've been following Christ for a long time, it may sound something like this. God, am I consistent enough in my walk with you? I mean, God, I know the sermons, I know the scriptures, I know the songs, and God, are you withholding a blessing or God, are you not using me in a certain way because I'm just maybe not as consistent or maybe there's a sin in my life? God, are you pleased with me? And all of us on some level ask that question. And this morning from this text, I wanna talk about that. And I wanna simply ask three questions that I wanna pull from verse 20 that will help us get an understanding of what it really looks like on whatever level you're walking on to please God. Here's the first question, what is righteousness? What is righteousness? I know for a lot of my life, when someone asked me that, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to really articulate something that I could get my mind around. I mean, I knew it was a good thing. I knew it's something I wanted associated with me, but I really didn't know what it was. I wanna give you a three word, very, very simple definition of righteousness. Righteousness simply means rightness with God. That's what righteousness is. If a person is righteous, that means that they are right with God, there is nothing in between them and God. They are right, they have been made right with God. And it's very important that we get our heart around this because in the front part of this verse, that's the word Jesus uses. And this word really sets the tone for the rest of the verse if we're really gonna embrace it this morning. And as he said that into this crowd of thousands of people, there were a lot of people who could resonate with righteousness, but there were a lot of different definitions about how a person becomes right with God. And I think even today, 2000 or so years later, there's a lot of people who have a lot of different ideas about what it looks like to be right with God and how you come to a place of being right with God. And so I wanna give you this morning a clarifying principle that hopefully will help you as you share with people, as you talk to people, about how a person gets to a place where they are in fact right with God. And I wanna give it to you in two pieces. Here's the first part of the statement. True righteousness, if it's real, true righteousness begins on the inside. True righteousness begins on the inside of humanity, ever has a hope to be right with God. It's gonna be because there is a heart change on the inside of us and we are transformed on the inside. That there's a time when we confess to God and He takes us from spiritual death and moves us to spiritual life. True righteousness starts on the inside, but how does that happen? How is that even possible that God could grant that to me, me being the horrible person that I am, we see here's the back story, that God looked at the world in a hopeless and a helpless state. Knowing we had no chance at life, no chance at a relationship with the name He said, "I love my creation too much to leave 'em that way." And so He bankrupted heaven and He sent His son Jesus out of heaven, out of eternity, into time and to take on flesh. And Jesus was on the earth for 33 years. And in His time on earth, He lived a perfect life. He didn't make mistakes. He didn't engage in sin. He didn't fall into the nation. He lived a perfect life, qualifying Him to be a perfect sacrifice for the sin of humanity. You see, you and I can't be that sacrificed because we're not perfect, but Jesus was and is perfect. And so Jesus, not because He deserved it, but out of love, went to die on the cross to be a sacrifice for the sin of humanity. And He paid the sin penalty. And I hope we say it like this. His death on the cross was really our death because we deserve to die. He did not, but He died in our place. And three days after His death, God the Father, through His power, raised Christ from the dead, showing that God was satisfied with that payment for sin and giving Jesus the authority to give life to anyone who had placed their faith in Him. And so today, Jesus says to us, if you'll place your faith in me, I will give you my righteousness. I'll give you my rightness with God so that you can have a relationship with Him. And so now today, for those of us who've put our faith in Jesus, when God sees us, He doesn't see us as the wicked and immoral people that we are, He sees us through the lens of Jesus. So He sees us as if we live the life Jesus lives. How is that possible? It's because on the cross, God saw Jesus as if He lived the life we live. And so when we put our faith in Him, God declares us because of the sacrifice and grace of Jesus to be righteous, to be right with God. The theologians call this positional righteousness. And that's why when Jesus here says righteousness, He's talking about a righteousness that begins on the inside through a transformed heart. Here's the second part of this statement. Not only does true righteousness begin on the inside, but it always spills over on the outside. True righteousness starts on the inside, but it always underline that word always, always spills over on the outside. Because of the power and the magnitude of what takes place inside the heart of a believer, it always spills over to affect everything else about our life. The theologians call this practical righteousness. And here's the idea that what has happened to me positionally is so powerful. It flows out of my life in a practical way. Here's the idea that at a point in time before Christ, you and I were the center of our world. Everything we did revolved around us, our decisions, our actions, what we thought about all flowed out of us being in the center. But then we begin to follow Christ and things changed. And when we begin to follow Christ, He became the center. He became the Lord and the master of our life. And so now everything doesn't flow from us. Everything centers around Him who is in fact our life. So what happens on the inside spills over to affect everything else on the outside. This statement is what sets Christianity apart from every other belief system. Because every other belief system says this, if you'll just fix the outside, if you'll just do the right thing, act the right way, have the right things going on, then eventually the inside will take care of itself. Well, scripture is in direct contradiction to that because scripture says above all else guard your heart. For from it, flow the springs of life. What's in our heart affect every one of our actions. And so when Jesus says righteousness here, He's talking about rightness with God. And true rightness with God starts on the inside and spills over to the outside. Here's the second question this morning. Not only what is righteousness, but what is Jesus saying about righteousness in this text, what is Jesus saying specifically about rightness with God in this text? Well, look at the next part of the verse. He says, "For I say to you that unless your righteousness, your rightness with God, surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees." You've got to imagine Jesus here and he's teaching from the hill. And he says, "Now I know that I'm not the only God talking to you about rightness with God. I'm not the only voice in your city, in your culture who's talking about righteousness. I know there's some other groups saying it. And then he specifies the groups. He says too. He says scribes and he says Pharisees. Now who are they? Here's a quick bio. Scribes were the teachers and the expounders of the law. Their only role in society was to make very clear what the law said. They took care of making sure that people knew what the law was. Who were the Pharisees? Well, they had a much different role. Their role wasn't teaching the law. Their role was actually obeying the law. They had become masters at obeying every single aspect of the law to a point that they even formed a code of conduct. And that was basically, you want to know what it looks like to obey the law? Watch us, we'll tell you. That was their role. And everyone in that culture respected and looked up to them incredibly. Everyone just hoped that one day, maybe one day, I could be like a scribe or a Pharisee. There was even a myth that kind of floated around in this day that said, if God only chose two people to go to heaven, one would be a scribe and one would be a Pharisee. I mean, it was that intense that they looked up to these people. And Jesus here and he says, you know what? I know the scribes and the Pharisees are also talking about righteousness and what it means to be holy and sanctified. And everyone in the crowd is like, yeah, they know all about it. And Jesus says in essence, here's the problem. When God thinks about righteousness and God thinks about holiness, he doesn't think about the Pharisees or the scribes because they're not holy and they're not righteous and a hush fell over the crowd. I mean, this was radical. This was calling out the people that they respected the most. And Jesus said they missed it. They missed the whole thing because here's the problem. The righteousness Jesus was talking about was the righteousness of God. A rightness with God according to the scriptures, but the righteousness, the Pharisees and the scribes were pursuing and that they was living for was a self-righteousness because deep down they believed that by doing what they could with their actions, they could somehow please God. I think for a lot of us today, we struggle with that. We struggle with internally thinking that maybe something we do on the outside is gonna merit for us a right relationship with God. And it's easy to spot with the Pharisees. It's easy to read the New Testament and see exactly how arrogant they were, how prideful they were, but it's a little bit more difficult to identify with us, especially when you're trying to do it for yourself. So very quickly, since this was such an issue in this scripture, I wanna give you three quick facts about self-righteousness that'll hopefully help you examine your own heart this morning and see if there are any self-righteous tendencies that maybe you've picked up over time that are hurting your relationship with God. Here's the first fact that we see in the Pharisees and could potentially be in our life today. Here's fact one, it focuses self-righteousness, focuses on the outside to the exclusion of the inside. Anyone who has self-righteous tendencies will focus on the outside to the exclusion of the inside. You see, the Pharisees and the scribes thought that the measuring stick God was using to measure righteousness was external. They thought that it was okay if I hate my neighbor in my heart, as long as I don't murder him, they thought God's okay with that. They thought it's okay if I lust in my heart towards a person, as long as that doesn't spill over into some form of external action. God's okay with that. Their entire measuring stick for righteousness was external. Jesus was so disgusted in what they had manipulated all of these people into, and in Matthew chapter 23, it's gonna be on the screen for you. Jesus speaks directly to the Pharisees. Listen to what he says in verse 25. He says, what sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you're filthy, full of greed and self-indulgence. You behind Pharisee first washed the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too. What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees, your hypocrites. For you are like white washed tombs. Beautiful on the outside, but filled on the inside with dead people's bones and all sorts of impurity. Outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly, your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness, strong words from Jesus. Here's what we learned from what he just said. What is internal, what is inside of us is way more important than what is outside of us. That's what Jesus just summed up as he was talking to the Pharisees. And that has great application for us today. Did you know that the heart of worship that you walked on this campus with this morning, the desire to worship God, to gather with God's people, that that heart of worship is way more important than the clothes you have on. Nothing wrong with nice clothes, nothing wrong with dressing up. We have both spectrums at hope. We have suits and we have shorts. But I think one form of self-righteousness that can surface in the church in America is that we think by what we have on, we are somehow appeasing God. Nothing wrong with being respectful, nothing wrong with looking nice. But our attitude, our heart of worship is so much more important when we come to a gathering than what we have on is. Did you know that your personal, intimate love relationship with God is way more important than how many ministries you serve in here at this church. There's nothing wrong with serving. I would encourage serving. It's just not more important than my intimate love relationship with God, why? Because what's on the inside is more important than what's on the outside. Did you know that your attitude towards your family, the way you treat your family, is way more important than the amount of money you put in the offering basket at the end of the service. Nothing wrong with tithing. Nothing wrong with tithing. It's just not what's most important. Your attitude, the way you are on the inside is way more important. It far exceeds the importance of what's on the outside. Let me ask you a question. Are you thinking more about the outside than you are about the inside? We all drift there. We all struggle with continually pursuing the righteousness of God over self-righteousness. But I just wanna ask you to examine this morning. Are you focusing more on the outside than you are on the inside? Because that is a clear distinction of self-righteousness. There's another fact about self-righteousness. Self-righteousness redefines God's laws based on human standards rather than calling people to a holy life. Self-righteousness redefines or reduces God's law based on our capability rather than seeing the standard and saying I've gotta be holy for my Father in heaven. God is holy. Pharisees did this. They redefined all the terms, all the language that was used in the synagogue. They said, you know, God said to be holy and there's something floating around that that means a purity of heart. No, it doesn't. When God says be holy, he means do these five rituals. They redefined what God said. "To their standard." And for any of us who struggle with self-righteousness, we do the same thing. Let me ask you a question. What aspect of God's word are you ignoring in order to get what you want? We all struggle there. What aspect of God's word are you ignoring and then how are you justifying your actions in order to get what you want? Only you can answer that question. But one key factor in self-righteousness is this idea that I'm gonna try to pull down God's law to meet my standard so that I feel better about what I'm doing. That was a defining mark in the life of the Pharisees and the scribes. And I hope for us this morning we can examine our own heart. Let me ask you a question. Are you compromising any aspect of God's word in order to get what you want? God's standard hasn't changed. It's still as high and as holy as it's ever been. But is there any aspect of God's word that you are compromising or ignoring in order to get something that you want? Or am I doing that as well? Because that's a key characteristic in a self-righteous life. Here's a third fact about self-righteousness. And it was true in the Pharisees and maybe true of some of us this morning. Another characteristic of self-righteousness is that it brings glory to self rather than glory to God. If a person is on a track of self-righteousness they are continually trying to bring glory to themselves rather than bringing glory to God. The Pharisees wanted to be respected. They wanted people to applaud them and praise them and look up to them and they were willing to do anything necessary to get glory for everything that they had going on. They were trying to rob it away, to take people's attention off of God. I think all of us struggle with that in some capacity. All of us have areas that we really too want to be noticed and applauded. Nothing wrong with encouraging people, nothing wrong with affirming people. But there is something wrong when we are starving for glory that only belongs to God. Let me ask you a question. Are you seeking to make much of Jesus on a daily basis? I love the way that Stephen Curtis Chapman, who's a songwriter and a musical artist, he framed it in a song he wrote called "Much of You." And I wanna put just a couple pieces of the song, but I love the heartbeat behind this and I pray that this morning we can embrace this type of desire. He says this, he says, "How can I stand here "and watch the sunrise?" Follow the mountains where they touch the sky, ponder the vastness of the depths of the sea and think for a moment, the point of it all was to make much of me. He says, 'cause I'm just a whisper and God, you're the thunder. And I wanna make much of you, Jesus. I wanna make much of your love. I wanna live today to give you the praise that you alone are so worthy of. I wanna make much of your mercy. I wanna make much of your cross. I give you my life, take it and let it be used to make much of you. I believe that's the heart of God. Then as his church, as his children, we would walk on a daily basis saying, "God, today I wanna make much of you. "God, I'm not worth it, I'm not worthy, "but in everything I do today, God, "could I just make a big deal "and give you all the glory that you deserve?" Is that your heartbeat? Is that my heartbeat? Because someone who was walking a line of self-righteousness and says, "I'm not giving God the glory "because I want the glory." Are you am I seeking to make much of Jesus on a daily basis? Those are three clear facts about self-righteousness that we have to examine our own heart about today and ask ourselves, "Have we stopped pursuing "the righteousness of God and begin chasing "a righteousness of self?" And just really quick, and I know this is a lot in the outline, I just wanted to give you some life applications. Really, there's four and they're really short, but they're kind of confessions. And these are things that several years ago, God just really burned these in my heart and I have to say them every day, here's why, because I struggle with self-righteousness. I struggle with wanting to be noticed, with wanting to be praised, with wanting to lower God's standard, with wanting to focus on the outside. And so God just kind of gave me four statements that I just breathe every morning that just help my heart veer away from self-righteousness and pursue the righteousness of God. And I just want to give those to you this morning as a way to maybe go up against what you're struggling with if you're anything like me. Here's the first statement, I just kind of breathe every morning. God, I need you. The Pharisees weren't saying that. The scribes, they weren't saying it either. But I believe it's people who don't want to be self-righteous, who want to pursue the righteousness of God, it is very important at the front end of our day that we get in our heart the reality that we need God. And we just confess that. I do it every morning. Here's the second phrase, I just kind of breathe to God every morning. Not only God, I need you, but God, you don't need me. I think I'm great, I think I'm smart, I think I'm sharp, but God, quite honestly, you don't need me. You could do this whole thing without me, God. I'm not that big of a deal, God. You don't need me. Now that really hurts my ego. But it's true. And just so we're all on the same page, he doesn't need any of us. But through his grace, he's invited us to be a part of what he's doing. Here's the third piece, I just kind of breathe every morning that just helps my heart veer away from self-righteousness. God, I am not you. Because there's mornings, I say this when I've been awake for 30 seconds and I've already had a couple flashes that I'm the boss and I'm the king and I'm in charge. And I just need to say out loud, God, I'm not you. I'm not in control, I'm not the king, I'm not the boss, I'm not the Lord, you are, I'm not. That pushes me away from thinking that there's something I'm doing that can merit a right relationship with God. And here's the fourth thing, that how it encourages you in some form just to confess as I do, God, I choose to follow you. Above everything else today, God, above my desires, above what other people say, above my dreams, above anything else God today, I'm choosing to follow you. I need you, you don't need me, I'm not you, but today I choose to follow you. And when I breathe that in the morning, it just sets my heart in a path that is pursuing the righteousness of God that is by grace through faith, not the righteousness of self that is all built around what I can bring to the table. And I hope for you as you examine your heart and as you begin to live with God this week, maybe those confessions would be on your heart as well. They're not magical words, but I think they just give us perspective. As we enter into a world every day that is so about self, it helps us keep our anchor on Jesus. Hope you can apply those to your life. Here's the third big question from this text this morning. Not only what is righteousness and what is Jesus saying about righteousness in this text, but thirdly, why is righteousness a big deal? Why is righteousness a big deal? Look at the last part of the verse. He says, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Here's why righteousness is a big deal because God demands it. God set his standard and it's not changing. And his standard is perfection. His standard is holiness and righteousness is a big deal because God demands righteousness. But here's the gospel. Here's the good news today. Not only does God demand righteousness, but God gives it. God gives righteousness. Look at this quote from John MacArthur. He says, the one who demands perfect righteousness gives perfect righteousness. The one who tells us of the way into the kingdom is himself that way. The king not only sets the standard of perfect righteousness, but will himself bring anyone up to that standard who was willing to enter the kingdom on the king's terms. That's the gospel of the church. That's the gospel of the Bible. Not only does he demand righteousness, but he gives it to those who would enter into a relationship based on faith and based on Jesus. Let me ask you something. Have you made pleasing God into a list that you walk through on a weekly basis? Or do you understand how desperately he desires a love relationship with you? Because if we all set on a daily basis and say, "God, through my actions today, I'm going to please you." We will fail every moment. But when we enter into a day and say, "God, I need you. You don't need me. I'm not you, but I choose to follow you and I want to love you with my whole life. Would you press your life out through me? I am surrendered." That pleases the heart of God. One story and I'm finished. There's a little girl and I'm probably like your daughter. She had a lot of dolls and she had all the dolls lined up on a wall. And here's what she would do. She would start at the end and pick up the doll and she would hug it as tight as she could. And she would put it back down. She'd go the next doll. She'd pick another doll up, squeeze it as tight as she could. She would put it back down. When she got about midway through the dolls, her mom walked over to the door and said, "Sweetie, "what are you doing?" Little girl picked up one more doll and she squeezed it as tight as she could. She set it back down. She looked at her mom and a tear went down her eye. And the little girl said, "Mom, "I love 'em and I love 'em and I love 'em. "But they just don't love me back." I'd want you to love him. More than anything else, he wants you to love him. Not a list of do's and don'ts, not a list of rituals God wants you to love him. And that is what pleases the heart of the Father. Let's pray this morning. We're going to spend some time, not long with just a few minutes responding to God today as a church. And our praise team's going to come and we're going to have some time to examine and then we're going to sing in just a moment. I just want to ask you just right there in your heart, I want you to think about you. And I want you to think about your pursuit. Because I think if we're honest this morning, a lot of us would say we have picked up characteristics of a self-righteous life. But this morning, God is putting on your heart that that's wrong and you need to begin to pursue him with your whole life and with all your love today. If you're here and you don't have a relationship with God, we've got some people who are kind of standing along the sides in this room and at any point where you would feel led, you just want to go to them and ask them, "How can I have a relationship?" I realized today it's not about rules, it's not about me doing the right things, it's about Jesus and me surrendering my life to him and leaving everything up to him. You feel free to go to them. They would love to share with you how you can begin a relationship with God. But for a lot of us, we just need a strong time to examine. Let me ask you a question. If you came to a place in your journey where you're focusing more on the outside than the inside, thinking in some way that that's what a relationship with God is about, maybe this morning you would just confess that. There have been things in your life that you've tried to lower down God's standard to get those things and you've justified it, you've ignored the truth of God's word because you want to get your hands on what you want and this morning you just need to be honest about that before God. Have you found yourself in a place where you're trying to direct glory towards yourself and away from God? Are those characteristics of self-righteousness surfacing in any way shape or form in your heart? Now's the time you can just be still before God. There is nothing more important you could be doing right now than just examining your own personal relationship with God. Maybe as our team just kind of sing some verses of a song that is so powerful over us, you just need to make those life application statements out loud to God and just tell them, I need you. You don't need me, God, I realize that. I thought I was something, but I'm really not. God, I'm not you, but I choose with my life to follow you as best as I know how. So our team is just going to sing a few verses of a song over us in a minute, Teddy's going to invite you to stand and sing, and it's just a great confession for all of us to have today that I think points us in a direction of the righteousness of God. Jesus, speak to us. We are listening to you in this time to respond, God. [MUSIC]