06-16-13 The Righteousness of Faith Pt.2

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ,

Phil. 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,...

The righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith!

We began studying this concept last week

and didn’t get as far as we needed to

so we’re going to jump back into it again.

And I want you to know that I do understand

the kind of frustrations

this type of study can generate within us as Christians.

I think, without consciously realizing it,

many of us come to a study like this

looking for the magic key -

Where is that “ANSWER”?

Where is that “CONCEPT”?

Where is that IDEA

or KNOWLEDGE

or EXPERIENCE

or VISION

or REVELATION OF GOD

that will blast me out of my struggles

and drop me into blissful

power-filled union with Christ

in which I can feel His presence constantly

and move in the world of great spiritual strength and victory forevermore?

If what we’re going to do this morning

is going to be of value to you

without becoming intensely frustrating

or discouraging,

we need to approach it with the right attitude.

During the next few minutes

I’m going to be giving you some knowledge,

knowledge from Scripture

dealing with developing righteousness in our lives.

But there is a huge difference between

knowledge and growth.

God tells us that knowledge is like food.

If you are a parent

you understand that one of your responsibilities is to feed your children.

Without the food

they will die.

If you don’t feed them healthy food

they will not be healthy.

But you also understand

that the food is not the same thing

as growth.

The food makes growth possible,

but in order for growth to take place

the body has to take that food

and digest it

and process it in a way that converts it into blood, and bone, and muscle.

And it takes more than just the food

for that process to take place.

It takes warmth,

and oxygen,

and sleep,

and exercise,

and a lot of other things.

And most of all it takes LIFE.

You can cram food down a corpse until it explodes

and it will never grow.

It’s the same way with true growth in our Christian lives.

We must have food - knowledge,

but that food is not growth,

it’s only one crucial ingredient in the process.

When the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah

described the true growth process

to which God calls each of us he said:

Is. 28:10 ...'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.'"

Do you know what that tells me?

That tells me my God is not a vending machine.

‟Let’s see, now - I could use a VICTORY BAR today.

Now lets see,

there’s the CHOCOLATE COVERED HEALING BAR,

and the FEEL GOOD DROPS,

and the HEALTHY WEALTHY AND WISE-CRACKERS.

Oh, yes, there it is -#4, VICTORY BAR...

just put my quarters in here

and push 4.”

Quoting God Himself,

Isaiah says:... 'Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there.'"

He’s talking about growth -

one step,

one day,

one issue at a time.

And its one DAY at a time,

not one SUNDAY at a time.

I just told you there are no secret keys

to instant success in the Christian life.

But having said that,

if I could offer you one it would be this:

learn to live in the daily presence of Christ,

sharing yourself and your life with Him continually.

Maybe if I share with you

a little bit about how this sharing-life-with-Christ thing

works out in my own life

it might help you to better understand what I’m talking about.

My Lord and I have built lots and lots of things together during the past half century.

Once, three decades ago we built a house together.

Many of the projects we shared together

turned out really well.

Others were...well, lets just say they were less successful,

but still worth doing.

I remember one project we shared together a number of years ago

before we had a garage,

when we needed some place to store some of our junk.

I remember the day when my Lord and I built a barn together.

It was a little barn,

but it was a really a cute little barn.

We happened to select one of those typical summer days

when rain shower after rain shower kept blowing over our area.

There were several hours in that process

when I had the trusses up,

but I didn’t have any roof on it yet,

and every time another shower would come over

I would grab this huge blue plastic tarp

and pull it over the trusses

so my little barn would stay dry.

I need to tell you

that my construction skills are somewhat limited

and all self-taught.

I love doing it

but I frequently haven’t got a clue as to what I’m doing.

And then too,

I’m more of a sledge hammer kind of guy -

I don’t have a good eye for detail.

Cutting boards to exact lengths

has always been a bit of a challenge for me.

Sometimes one of my saw cuts would turn out

just exactly right (always a bit of a high for me in building projects),

and I would thank Him.

Sometimes I’d mess something up

and I’d ask Him if He had any suggestions on how we could fix it.

Sometimes when another rain shower was coming

I would wait just a little too long

before trying to get this massive tarp

over the top of the trusses

and the tarp would get caught on one of the corners,

and I would point out to the Lord

that it was a really stupid tarp,

and He would point out to me

that the tarp was following the rules He had established for the physical world perfectly,

and that the problem was not with the tarp

but with the tarpee.

At one point

I pre-cut eight boards to support a 2 ft. overhang in the front of the barn.

When I held them up

I discovered I’d made the notch

a half an inch too big in all the boards.

I put them up anyway

because the alternative was to buy more boards

and I wasn’t going to do that.

About an hour later

I nailed a piece of siding in place

and suddenly discovered that all my wrong cuts

now fit perfectly

because the siding slid into the half inch gap.

It made me look like I really knew what I was doing.

I told my Lord I thought that that was a really neat thing He just did.

There were several times during the process,

especially when I had my blue tarp

securely in place,

and I would be sitting inside my little barn,

sipping a cup of coffee

and waiting for the rain to stop,

when I would say,

“Lord, thanks so much for making it possible

for me to be with you constantly.

Thank you that we can share this time together.”

Now why do I share all of that with you?

Because it’s the best way I know how

to communicate the true nature of the Christian life,

and to emphasis the stupidity of the vending machine mentality towards God.

God did not do what He did through Christ

so that we could get access to His power,

or His answers,

or His stuff.

God did what He did in Christ

so that we could have access to HIM.

That’s what Paul is saying in this passage:

...that I may gain CHRIST.

That’s the goal -

that’s the incredible gift of God.

It is not what we get from Him,

it’s that we get Him.

Certainly there are times when He arranges for our miss-cut boards

to fit just perfectly.

And there are times when the rules He has established

causes the tarp to get caught

and we end up getting very wet.

There are times when He heals

and we live

and it brings tremendous joy.

And there are times when He does not,

and we die.

But we now share all of it with Him,

knowing that this world,

this life

is not the end of anything,

it is simply the first tiny step

in an endless life in the presence of our Creator.

That, of course, is exactly what we heard Paul saying earlier in this letter to the Philippians:

Phil. 1:20 ...Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.

Phil. 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

And what He offers us most of all

is not a perfect fix

for every problem.

What He offers us is Himself.

And what does all of this have to do

with our study of the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith?

Just this - if we view righteousness

or purity to be one more item

in God’s vending machine

we are going to be deeply disappointed.

Practical righteousness

is not something God gives us,

nor is it something God “empowers” us to perform.

Righteousness, purity of life,

is the natural, reasonable, logical response to seeing our God,

ourselves,

and our world the way they really are.

In fact, I believe we will use that as our definition for this study:

Righteousness

is the natural, reasonable, logical response to seeing our God,

ourselves,

and our world the way they really are.

The more I see my God,

myself, and my world correctly,

the way it really is,

the more practical righteousness

becomes a part of my life

and the only reasonable, logical choice I could make.

And that growing knowledge comes

from actively, daily living with the King,

listening to Him,

talking with Him,

choosing to wrestle with the issues of life within the context of HIM.

During my early days as a Christian

I was fed a heavy diet of the “empowering” approach

to achieving moral excellence or righteousness.

There I was with my mind filled with lies

about myself,

my God,

and my world.

I believed my acceptance by God

rested not upon the death of Christ

and the total payment He made for my sins,

but rather it depended, at least in part, upon my ability to generate

a certain level of performance.

There were times

when I was absolutely certain

that I had to choose between

meeting my needs on one hand,

and obeying my God on the other.

Lies! All lies!

And then some sin issue would come up in my life

and immediately I would focus on my external actions,

and some well-meaning saint would come along

and encourage me to “just trust God to give you the power to remain faithful.”

Do you know what that’s like?

That’s like having rotting food

all over your kitchen floor,

and then walking into that kitchen

and having the stench nearly knock you over.

And immediately you focus on the smell

and start looking for some sort of air freshener

that has the power to kill the odor.

You try one and it doesn’t work,

so you go out and find something stronger.

Of course, the odor isn’t the problem at all -

the problem is the garbage.

And it’s the same way in our battle for righteousness -

we think our behavior is the problem,

and our vending machine mentality towards God

motivates us to believe that if we just drop in enough prayer quarters

we can get one of those Victory Bars,

and everything will be fine.

The truth is

sometimes one of the first things

our Lord has to do

is to get us to stop frantically running around the kitchen with our can of air freshener,

and to force us to recognize that

the real problem is not the odor,

its all the garbage on the floor -

it’s that wrong belief system

upon which our entire life and being is based.

In those circumstances

the most loving thing He can do for us

is to let the stench overpower us

so that we are forced to look at the floor

and face the real source of the problem.

OK, so what’s the real source of the problem?

So what is all of this garbage all over the floor?

“Come on now, Larry - just give me the answer

so that I can do what needs to be done.

I don’t care if the problem is the odor,

or if the problem is the garbage -

just tell me how to fix it!”

Now isn’t that where our minds end up?

What do I have to do to fix the problem?

And Paul’s answer to that

is not one we are going to like.

Or at least

its not one we easily understand.

He says the answer is found in

“gaining Christ, not having a righteousness of our own,

growing out of anything we do,

but that which comes through faith in Christ,

the righteousness that comes from God

on the basis of faith.”

We are going to take one more week with this whole area,

which obviously means we’re not going to finish with it today,

but let me just give you a few statements

to summarize what I’ve tried to say so far.

#1. Practical righteousness is not something God gives us

in the way He gives us a spiritual gift.

Practical righteousness is one of the by-products

of living with Christ in a way

that allows a growing trust relationship to develop between us and Him.

Being good is not the goal -

it’s not His goal for us,

and it shouldn’t be our ultimate goal for ourselves.

The goal always has been, always will be our getting to know our God,

learning to live in His presence,

learning to both hear and trust His voice.

If that happens,

as that happens

our behavior - our values, our priorities, our moral conduct, our relationships -

all of them will change step-by-step, day-by-day.

#2. Sin in a Christian’s life

is always an indication of an area in our life

where we are not seeing our God correctly.

Perhaps the most significant single verse on practical righteousness

found anywhere in Scripture is found in 1 John 3:2, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is.”

Why will we be like Him when He appears?

Because then, at last, we will see Him with absolute clarity and accuracy

and trusting Him will no longer be a choice,

it will be more natural than breathing.

#3. If we approach righteousness as the goal rather than a by-product

it’s like spraying air freshener in a filthy kitchen - in the end it solves nothing.

In the end we will end up in one of two possible spiritual swamps.

If we can muster sufficient self-will and determination

we may succumb to legalism -

an approach in which we create for ourselves

a rigid list of external rules that, if we keep them,

make us believe we are succeeding at the Christian life.

The double-edged tragedy with legalism

is that, rather than bringing any real healing or freedom from the lies,

it simply creates an external facade to hide behind,

and at the same time poisons our relationships with others

because we measure them by the same legalism we’re hiding behind ourselves.

Or the other possible tragic result

of viewing our performance as the goal

rather than the by-product of our friendship with our God

is that we forever see ourselves being measured by our God and falling short,

hiding from Him in shame an failure.

Now clearly, we are not finished with this.

We need more time,

so we’ll pick this up right here next week.