Knowing the Finish Line

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches his series in the

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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church.

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As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I just wanna welcome everybody. Glad that you're here. I wanna point out something that I think is kinda cool.

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I think about this often on Sunday mornings, but it's really cool to think that we're just a part of the big picture of what

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God is doing globally on the face of this planet, even here this morning, really on Sunday morning as the sun rises on each consecutive time zone, people gather together in the name of Christ to worship him and to hear from his word, and that's a beautiful thing.

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We're part of a global thing that God is doing, not just, and a lot of times we can get very myopic and just think about this little local thing or our church or whatever, but it is such a privilege to gather together and to worship him and to hear from him, and I hope that's part of the reason that you're here is to worship him and to sing his praises and to gather with his people, connect with others, as Dave said, and I wanna point out that our church name is a little bit strange.

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Some of you, this is your first time here. Some of you have heard this before, but I like to keep this in front of you so that you can remember these core values and think through what we stand for, but recast as a name is a double meaning.

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It originated out of Luke chapter five where the disciples, who were fishermen, had been fishing all night and got blanked.

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They didn't catch a thing. Jesus comes to them on the shoreline as they're pulling in their nets and getting ready to call it a night,

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I would assume that they're gonna go to sleep because they've been fishing all night, and he says, recast the nets to the other side.

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Now, they have a little bit of a decision to make at that point, right? Are they gonna obey this rabbi teacher?

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He's religious, so what does he know about fishing? They're the professionals, but instead, in obedience to Christ, they recast the nets to the other side and catch a huge haul of fish, and then he says something that's pretty radical.

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He says, do you see how you just caught all these fish? Well, I'm not gonna make you, I'm not calling you to catch fish any longer.

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I'm calling you to catch men and women for my kingdom, and so he uses that as a metaphor, and so our idea here at the start was to do something different to kind of follow

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Christ as much as possible, and that might mean not looking as traditional as many churches, but that also entails a radical desire to see others come in and to obey

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Christ and do things his way, and then the other part of the name, so I said it's a double meaning. It comes out of that idea of recasting the nets, but it's also an acronym for our core values of replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth, and I would love to sit down with anybody and talk about what all of those mean as far as core values about our decision -making and how we roll as a church, but simplicity is the one that I like to clarify a little bit more up front because it's the one that I think is the hardest to understand, especially when it gets practiced, and for the new person who's sitting here to understand why do we do things with simplicity.

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Well, simplicity works out in our conviction that everyone needs three simple things.

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Your growth and your relationship with Christ needs to be growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service, and so our programming centers around those three things and those three things only, and so growing in faith, we have a

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Sunday morning service. Growing in community, we have community groups. Those are getting ready to start again this fall. You can sign up for those online, but a chance to actually grow in relationship with one another, grow in relationship to God, and then serve the body and the kingdom of God, and so it's my conviction that every face that I see here has something that you can contribute here because you have the

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Spirit of God alive in you, and if that's genuinely true of you, then you have something to contribute that is vital and important to the church, and so every time,

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I wanna point out, though, that growing in faith component, that's what we're here for this morning, to take in God's word, to believe that it's true, and believe it so much that we'll go out and live it, and so letting it change the way that we live, letting it change the way we think about God and each other and our role in this world, and so every time we encounter

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God's word, be that in your quiet time, reading, whether you're on your way to work and listening to it, somebody read it to you or whatever, or gathering together as God's people, it has the power and potential to change us deeply, and so we grow in faith by hearing what it says, believing it, and then going and living it, and we're about to take in God's word, so I say all that as a preclude to actually taking in God's word, that has the power to change you, but before I do that,

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I wanna just consider a silly scenario before we read this text. I want you to, this kinda sets the stage a little bit for hearing

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God's word this morning. Imagine that there's a man training for a marathon. Now, I know that some of you have actually done this before.

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How many of you have run a marathon before? Go ahead and raise your hand if you've run a marathon. A couple of you, okay,

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I actually thought there was gonna be a couple of hands that maybe didn't, but yeah, how many of you have run a 5K?

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Okay, so more, that's more my speed. I can raise my hand on that one. I'm not gonna raise my hand on the marathon. That's crazy stuff right there.

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But imagine that there's a man, he's training for a marathon. He started last spring, and he's been working his way up to that grueling 26 .2

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miles, and race day comes. He's off at his pace, he's doing great.

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He does well for the entire race, and as he rounds the final bend, he finds himself getting quite annoyed.

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There are people all around the racetrack cheering, and someone has placed a big rubber mat right in the middle of the road.

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Like, how insensitive of them. I mean, don't they recognize that people could trip over this rubber mat? Why in the world would that be there?

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He doesn't even read the banner that's over it because he's so into his race, so into his pace, and he trips a little bit over that rubber mat and just keeps running, and then even more annoying is that there's tables set up in the middle of the road.

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Who in the world would set up tables in the middle of a race course, but there's bananas on them, and there's water bottles, and there's juice boxes, and he's like, get out of my way, and just keeps running his race because he's got a race to run, and this is up to him, and he's gonna do it himself, and so he's got this race that he's running.

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Nobody, this is a silly illustration. Nobody enters a race without the finish line in mind, and obviously,

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I've just given you an illustration of a guy who ran right over the finish line and just kept going, didn't even recognize his race was done, but you see, when we seek our own righteousness, when we, as people who have encountered

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Christ, then proceed to go on to trying to live out righteousness, trying to please God by our works, and trying to even just think in terms of works, when we look to our laws, rules, and regulations, and contemplate and consider that maybe those are a means of salvation, we're like a runner who is blown past the finish line.

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When we miss the significance of Christ as the finish line of our race for righteousness, we miss the point of the entire race.

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So consider, what is the finish line of your righteousness? What is your hope for justification and a right standing before God?

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Have you come to the finish line? The race is finished, for those who understand who

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Christ is and what he has done. The race is over for those who belong to Christ.

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You are righteous if you are in Christ. So in our text this morning,

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Paul is gonna demonstrate the importance of recognizing that finish line. Our only hope is a righteous standing before a holy

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God. That's what our hope is, and we can't obtain that on our own. All theistic religions seek some kind of justification before a holy

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God or holy gods, or powerful gods at least. But this text of scripture is clear that the only way we can receive justification that is a right standing before God is through faith in his son

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Jesus. And so let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Romans chapter nine, verse 30.

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If you have a device, you can navigate in that over. There should be a Bible under the seat in front of you, or at least in your row that you can grab if you don't have a

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Bible. Scripture journal, whatever. But recast, this is a privilege to read

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God's word. And we're gonna actually bridge a chapter. So a lot of times you see that big chapter 10 number, and it's like, wait, we're supposed to stop there.

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We're gonna go on through verse four of chapter 10, because that's really where the thought and the paragraph ends so they didn't always get that right.

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A guy in the Middle Ages took it on himself to divide this thing up into verses. He did a fairly decent job, didn't always get it right.

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So Romans 9, 30 through 10, verse four. Recast God's powerful word.

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This could change you this morning. This could change you. What shall we say then? The Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel, who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, did not succeed in reaching that law.

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Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.

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They have stumbled over the stumbling stone. As it is written, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

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Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, for being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

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Let's pray. Father, it's a privilege to hear from your word, and I pray that you would open our ears.

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I recognize that there's so many potential distractions. I can distract myself so readily, get caught up in thoughts that I have about my next week, or stuff that's going on, but Father, I pray that you would allow this to be a pure time of reflection on your word and on who you are, even these songs that we take in and we sing,

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Father, that it would all be reflected back on you and your glory, your grace, your mercy, your power, and ultimately the hope that we have in Christ and Christ alone for our righteousness.

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I pray that you would not allow any of us in this room to blow past or to trip over the finish line and keep going, but that you would allow us to see the finish line for what it is, the hope that we have, the only place that righteousness can be dispensed is in your son,

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Jesus. And so, Father, I pray that you would help us all to pause there, to build on that foundation, to build on that rock, and not stumble and trip and keep going.

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Father, I thank you that your grace covers us and gives us the freedom to even now praise your name and to sing praises to you in Jesus' name, amen.

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Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, and big thanks to Dave and the band for leading us. I just really appreciate the time and effort that they put in, and I hope you were able to step before God's throne and worship of him this morning.

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Remember that if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, take advantage of that.

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Restrooms are out, the barn door's down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those. But go ahead and reopen your

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Bibles or your app or whatever, Romans 9 .30 through 10 .4. That's gonna be the text that we're gonna walk through, and so having that in front of you just helps you to be able to reference it and kind of follow the flow of the message.

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That's gonna kind of be my outline this morning. So I'm having that open, and I wanna start off by saying some of you were here last week, and we talked about the sovereignty of God, a pretty heavy and thick passage, dense in its theology and then also significant and maybe even somewhat difficult in its implications.

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And I wanna point out that where Paul goes next, some people have been like, Paul's a doofus. Like last week, he basically said that God's mercy will be shown to whoever

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God has the desire to have mercy on. He will give his compassion to whoever he wants. It's up to him.

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And so then this text looks very different than that, and so then you look at this text and you go, wait, what's Paul doing? Is he kinda confused?

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Did he forget what he just wrote? Here in this text, Paul's gonna shift perspectives.

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He's gonna talk about salvation, I would say, from a human perspective. You see, when our mind rests and contemplates the sovereign

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God, the Almighty, the one who's in charge of all things, we see him choosing who he will express mercy to.

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We see him expressing compassion to whoever he wills. But when we put our mind on finite humans down here, when we put our minds and our thoughts to perspective on our lives, here we get discussions about faith and belief, two sides of the same coin.

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When you're thinking about the Almighty God, the thoughts about the way that salvation works are different than when you're thinking about us down here.

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And so faith and belief are a natural discussion in light of what it means to be saved here on this planet as sinful humans.

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And so this text is written to help us think deeper about the goal of our spiritual life. What is it that we all need?

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The fundamental problem is an unrighteousness that started with Adam and Eve in the garden and has come down to each and every one of us by both nature and choice.

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How many of you have ever chosen sin? You don't even wanna raise your hand. Some of you are like, I don't even wanna,

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I mean, give me a break, that's not even, but all of us have chosen sin. And so it is a part and parcel of who we are.

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And so what is it that we really need to be in a right relationship with God? Because it's sin and ungodliness and unrighteousness that was said in chapter one, verse 18, that that's the problem.

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The biggest problem is that God's wrath is indeed, by nature, poured out on the unrighteous and the ungodly.

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So what do we need? The whole book of Romans is pointing towards your need for righteousness.

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That's what you need. Anything shy of complete and utter righteousness is condemnable.

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And so that's what the whole thing is driving for. And so this text, Paul is talking about righteousness, our deep need.

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Paul is writing, by the way, to show us why the Jews have not come into the compassion and mercy of God. They didn't come and receive his righteousness in the way that he told them to.

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They had the wrong attitude toward God, and they didn't recognize the finish line of their quest for righteousness.

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And by the way, that's not merely a Jewish problem. That's why we're talking about it in church. That's why Paul wrote it to Rome. That's why we need to hear it today is because it's not a

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Jewish problem, it is a human problem. It's a problem that all of us face.

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And so look at verse 30. He says, what shall we say then, after everything that he said last week? Paul just made a case by, in the previous few verses, quoting the

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Old Testament, that only a small remnant of Jews will be brought into salvation, but grace and mercy will be given to many

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Gentiles. And he quoted Hosea in chapter 25 previously. He quoted

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Isaiah in verse 26, another part of Isaiah in 27, another part in verse 29.

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So he's been quoting the Old Testament to demonstrate that only a small remnant of the Jews will indeed be brought into a saving understanding of Jesus Christ, and then mercy and grace will be blown wide open to the

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Gentiles. And he's using the Old Testament to demonstrate that. And that creates, really, what is a conundrum in verses 30 and 31 for us, an upside -down reality that, when understood correctly, sounds scandalous to the religious ear.

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So if you were raised in a church, and you were raised in a family or in a church where rules, rules, rules, then this is scandalous.

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This is gonna rub you the wrong way if you bought into that notion that we can please God by following a bunch of rules and doing a bunch of good things.

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It creates a scandal. You see, the Gentiles didn't pursue righteousness by the law, verse 30 says.

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They were not even looking for God. They weren't pursuing righteousness. They were doing their own thing.

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They had not made sacrifices to God. They didn't build a temple for God like the Jews did.

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They ate all the bacon and lobster that they wanted. They probably even had lobster wrapped in bacon.

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Sinners. Actually, that looks kind of delicious, though. Anything wrapped in bacon.

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Ron Swanson. So there was all of these Old Testament laws, all of these

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Old Testament rules that they were supposed to be following, that were God -given laws,

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God -given rules to make them a distinct people, but ultimately, at the end of the day, to show the world and even them that they couldn't achieve the righteousness of God by rule following.

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They didn't pursue righteousness, and they have been given it now, the

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Gentiles. The Gentiles did all of these things against the law, against the law of God. They didn't pursue righteousness, but they've been given it by faith.

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Given it by faith. So wait a minute, here's the scandal. You mean to tell me they get to go have all of these pagan festivals?

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They get to go completely with gluttony and prostitution in their temples and all of this stuff?

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They get to go do all that stuff and then just say, I believe Jesus and be saved? How many of you, just in honesty, that feels a little scandalous?

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Because I'm raising my hand right now. That just feels a little scandalous. Nobody? A little bit?

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Nobody wants to admit it? It is. And that's grace. That's what grace looks like.

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It looks scandalous. Like, you mean to tell me that you could live like the devil for 20 years and then just say,

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Jesus, I want to follow you and I accept you because I'm not righteous and I can't do this on my own and I realize just the depth of my depravity and how broken and sin -cursed

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I am and how I just make a mess of everything. Would you give me your righteousness? And you mean to tell me

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God would say yes to that? Do you hear how a religious person raised in the church might respond to that?

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It might be like an older brother whose little brother sold, basically stole or took all the money from his father and then went off and lived wild until all the money ran out and then the little brother comes running back home and the older brother's a little jealous.

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Dad, I was here serving you all along. How dare you throw a festival for this little brother who squandered all of your, do you hear how that might hit the religious person a little bit in the gut?

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You mean to tell me I built temples for you? You mean to tell me I skipped bacon all of these years?

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I could've been eating bacon and you're, what, what is going on here? There's a contrast, of course, in verses 30 and 31.

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Israel, it says, pursued God through the righteous law, the law indeed being righteous. The law would lead to a righteousness before God for anybody who kept it.

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You heard me right. If you could keep the entire law, you could be declared righteous. But Paul clearly identified throughout the book of Romans, in particular chapter three, that this pursuit of the law would be fine and dandy if it wasn't for the curse of sin that rests over every single human heart.

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No one can please God through the law simply because nobody can keep it. Nobody can please

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God through the law because we all have, to a person in this room, an appetite for lawbreaking.

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Every one of us. And so we see a contrast between two types of people here in the text between 30 and 31.

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Those who grew up without religious rules and those who did. And what is the natural flow of things?

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Those who grew up with religious laws look down on those who didn't, right? And that's the flow of things.

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But let me be clear. If a man could keep the law perfectly, then he would be declared righteous by his own perfect obedience to God and his name is

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Jesus. He is the only one who succeeded in keeping the whole law.

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He was the only human ever born who was pleasing to God in his actions 100%.

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But there's something in this contrast that many of us have probably come to see in our own lives. Those who are more religious about law keeping have a harder time accepting the grace of God.

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Those who have the notion that they're good enough often get tripped up by a salvation that is by grace alone through faith.

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And they would love to make rules and legislate things for others to put and heap more burdens and heap more laws on people to make themselves look better and ultimately to help push others down.

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And the reason for this is given in verse 32. For the Jews specifically, they didn't get this idea of righteousness, they didn't get this grace.

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They got tripped up by salvation that is by grace alone because they pursued righteousnesses that were based on works and not based on faith.

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How does a person obtain a righteous standing before a holy God? That's the question that we're trying to answer this morning.

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That's what the text is addressing. How does a person obtain a righteous standing before a holy God? Will it be by effort?

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Will it be by giving money, church attendance, by serving at the food pantry, by avoiding certain shows, by avoiding certain foods, by a certain style of living, by homeschooling your kids, by whatever it might be?

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Why did Israel fail to obtain righteousness? Verse 32 says directly they failed because they were trusting in their own efforts rather than trusting in God to provide righteousness.

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And so anyone, even in the old covenant, who came to God based on faith, some of you have been confused over the years about how was a person saved in the

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Old Testament? Well, it was coming to God based on faith, coming to the end of themselves and realizing, I can't do this,

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I need God to justify me, I need his righteousness, and it's always been on the basis of a

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God -provided righteousness. No one, no one in the Old Testament, you're not reading hero stories in the

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Old Testament about people who kept the law, about people, that's why you see all of their failures, that's why it's all written there, so that you can identify that it wasn't by their law -keeping.

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David's not gonna be in heaven because he kept the law. You know stories about David, King David. So what is it that made him righteous?

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Because he saw that a righteousness must be provided by God. And so anyone in the

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Old Covenant who came to God based on faith instead of self -confident, arrogant attitude would be saved.

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So sometimes, think about an illustration, I blogged about this this week just because it's a point that I wanna kind of expand out on a little bit, and so if you get a chance to go to the website and you can read this blog,

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I expanded on this idea, but sometimes you have to give up on saving yourself in order to be saved.

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Did you know that? Sometimes you have to give up on saving yourself in order to be saved. I was a lifeguard just around the time that Lynn and I got married, so I was a lifeguard up at Camp Barakel for a while.

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I actually got to the point where as a head lifeguard, I could train other lifeguards, and then actually, after we were married, I pieced together about six different jobs at one point, and I was lifeguarding at the

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Y over in Battle Creek, and literally, I was paid to lifeguard and to train other lifeguards, and one of the first things that you wanna make sure that a lifeguard understands is that you never, ever, ever reach out with your hand to physically touch somebody who's panicked and drowning.

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Did you guys know that? You never reach out a hand to them. Why? Because a person who is trying to save themselves is dangerous.

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A person who's trying to save themselves is dangerous. They will climb on top of your head and hold you under.

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They will make it so that you cannot flap your arms anymore. They will hug you. They will squeeze you. They will push you under to keep their head above water.

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They will stand on your head, stand on your shoulders. You're going down if you reach out to somebody who's panicked and drowning, and it could be your best friend, but that panic that sets in is unreasonable, and it is terrifying.

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So I have a question for you. How much danger is there, and how much problem is there in the church, and I'm talking about Big C Church across the globe, how much danger is there precisely because people are there trying to save themselves, people who are trying to save themselves?

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I would suggest to you that the health of a church is only in proportion to the number of people who are humble enough to know that they need a

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Savior, that humility that brings us into the gospel relationship, and that makes the gospel active and alive in our lives, a humility that says,

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I can't save myself. I need Jesus. That humility is part of the nature of the unity in a church, and by the way, that's in comparison to the percentage of people who are still trying to save themselves.

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You have a lot of people in a church that are trying to save themselves and still are not getting the gospel, and there's gonna be problems where the gospel is truly embraced and understood.

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There is health, there is hope, there is healing, and love for God and love for each other because we recognize how we were saved just by the skin of our teeth.

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We didn't deserve it. We didn't earn it, but you show me a church where there are people trying to save themselves, and I will show you a church where there's competition, there's cynicism, there's distrust and disunity.

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When we base our salvation on works, we will always look around to make sure we look good, and maybe even more importantly to our sin -cursed heart, that others look bad because we wanna be the most righteous person in the room, right?

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And so at least I've got more self -righteousness than you. But at the end of verse 32, we're introduced to a stone in the pathway.

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We're kind of thinking in terms of a race toward righteousness, and the Jews were running a race seeking righteousness.

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Their goal in the law was that they would have righteousness. Now some of them were trusting in self -righteousness. Obviously some, like I said,

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David and others in the Old Testament were actually finding a righteousness that came from God and actually hoping in him and trusting in him.

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But the Jews at large in the Old Testament, they were running hard in their own effort to earn

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God's righteousness, and they tripped over this stupid rock that someone left in the middle of the path. Huge rock, not just a small rock, a huge rock.

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Everybody has to deal with this rock. It covers the entire trail. Nobody has time for rocks in the pathway in the middle of a race, do they?

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You don't want that. So who put that rock there anyways? Well, I'm glad you asked, because verse 33 answers by a mashup quote from Isaiah.

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God put the stone there. He intentionally put a huge and substantial rock in the middle of the path so that anyone running the race would have to choose what to do about it.

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Some will trip over it. Some will use that rock as the foundation of their lives.

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And by the end of verse 33, we know that we're not talking about a literal rock, because this is said of that rock, whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

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Who is that rock? That rock is Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, the foreshadowing of the

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Messiah, the one who would come, and even there in the Old Testament is this notion that some will stumble over the

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Messiah and some will put their trust in the Messiah. So what an encouraging verse, by the way, verse 33.

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Whoever believes in him, Jesus, will not be put to shame.

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How many of you like the idea of being put to shame? I don't think any of us, right?

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How many of you like the idea of not being put to shame? You like that notion that there would be no shame in the final judgment for you?

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I kind of like that idea. So how, you know, some may have left last week with a little bit of fear.

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How do I know if God's chosen me or not? How do I know if I'm in? How do I know if he's desired to express compassion to me?

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And in our community group, we had a discussion about that, and I thought it was worth addressing to everybody, because it was a pretty significant issue.

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You know, like, what if I'm not in? How do I know? Well, if you're asking that question, how do

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I know if I'm really in with Jesus? I would encourage you to trust the Bible and study it for the knowledge and understanding of what the gospel really means.

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If you believe in him, if you believe in Jesus, you will not be put to shame.

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Nobody who has their trust placed in Jesus for salvation will be disappointed, in other words, on that final day of judgment.

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So ask yourself these questions, and answer honestly this morning, not just a rhetorical question that you can kind of just let your mind wander.

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Really answer this question. Did you trust him in the past? Was there a time in your life where you said, Jesus, I trust you,

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I need you, I need your salvation? Yes or no answer. Then answer, do I trust him now?

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Maybe a more vital and important question, not that I just had a campfire experience at camp where everybody was around in a circle, and I kind of felt like I had just something in my gut, and I was like, oh,

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I believe. Do you believe now? And if you can answer that, yes, I have believed him in the past, and yes,

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I trust in him now, then please move on to trust him with your future.

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Move on to trust him with your future. Why would I believe? Why do I believe that on my final breath,

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I will be a follower and believer in Jesus? Why do I believe that? Because of him who holds me. Not because of my strength, not because of my ability, not because of my lifestyle, but only, only, only because of the one who holds on to me.

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Do you trust him? And then go ahead and trust him with what the Bible says about those who trust in him.

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If you trust him, you won't be disappointed. You won't be put to shame.

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Scripture is using this illustration of the stumbling stone as a silly metaphor. Those who are running this race in pursuit of righteousness stumbled over the rock of Jesus.

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There's an irony in this. They're pursuing righteousness, right?

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And they stumble over the only source of righteousness. They trip right over him in the middle of the path and curse under their breath and keep going.

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He's the finish line. He's the destination of everything that they've been pursuing and they shun him and they ignore him.

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He alone is the source of righteousness. He is the only place they can run to in order to find the very thing that they're seeking in this text.

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But they miss it, wondering who put this dumb rock in the middle of the path as they go on and continue in their pursuit of righteousness.

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Not realizing that they've just tripped over the very thing that they've been looking for all along.

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But those who know they have no hope of obtaining their own righteousness, those who know that they cannot please

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God on their own, those who are honest about their own sin are often eager to receive the one who promises a righteousness from God, a righteousness that cannot be earned, a righteousness that is never deserved.

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So the text continues right on into chapter 10. And in verse one, Paul is still talking about the religious

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Jews who miss Jesus as their righteousness. And it reminds us that he feels in his heart,

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Paul talking about the Jews, talking about those who were lost. He tells us he feels deep feels for those who are outside of Christ.

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And he says, I feel deeply for them. He desires for them to be saved in his heart of hearts.

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And he even prays for them to be saved. And the fact that God is free to give his mercy and compassion to whoever he wishes, which

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Paul clearly believes because he just told us that earlier, doesn't stop

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Paul from longing for more to believe. He holds his theology and practice as two sides of the same coin.

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God has those he's chosen, and we pray for and long for the lost around us to respond by faith in Jesus.

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Both of those are true. But Paul doesn't just feel and pray, but he sets out into action.

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As a matter of fact, we know that Paul's very life was one of action in the cause of reaching out to the very

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Jews that he's talking about here. The ones that he thinks have skipped over and tripped over their Messiah, he still hasn't given up on them.

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And see, he set out in every town he went to. You can read the book of Acts, looking for the way that Paul rolled on his missionary journeys.

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And he would go into a town, he would go into Ephesus, he would go into Philippi, he would go into Thessalonica, and the first thing he would do, they say, point me to the synagogue.

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Let me go and teach there in the synagogue. I want to talk to the

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Jews. Paul was a man of significant zeal. And he was very quick in his missionary journeys to testify to the

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Jews anywhere that he could. And he acknowledged that here in the text, he acknowledged that they have a zeal for God, but not a zeal that is consistent with the truth.

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They have a zeal for God, but not one that's consistent with the truth, according to knowledge. And his mission, therefore, was to bring to his mission as many as would listen to truth to set their zeal in the right direction.

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So they had passion, they had drive. The Jews were enthusiastic about religion, but an enthusiasm in the wrong direction.

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You see, Paul himself had this personal experience. He was like that. He was a man of significant zeal in the wrong direction before he met

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Jesus, wasn't he? He was persecuting the church in the name of Judaism, and he was traveling from town to town and city to city to basically eradicate those that he thought were against God until he met

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Jesus. So he could relate to what he's talking about here. He isn't being a jerk in verse two, but he recognizes what is at stake and doesn't tiptoe through the tulips, and he says, they have passion, they have drive, they have zeal, and this quest for righteousness, they've been training for it, they've been working hard at it.

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I mean, they're running their race. The Gentiles, not so much, but the Jews, they ran their race with zeal and with passion, and I wanna suggest to you that what he says in verse two, we live in a day and an age when it's unpopular to disagree with anybody.

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To suggest to somebody, yep, you've got a lot of zeal, but man, you don't know what you're talking about.

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Try that in your work, no, don't try that in your workplace, but I mean, can you imagine what those conversations would look like with people in your life and in your community, in your neighborhood if you were really quick to lead with what

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Paul is leading with here? But he recognizes what's at stake. He knows that this is important, and we're supposed to, we live in a time and an era where we're, some way, it's seeped into our minds that we're supposed to tolerate every religious teaching, and especially if the person speaking has a lot of passion and zeal, right?

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Unless you're online, and then you can disagree with everybody because it's anonymous, right? So then everybody disagrees. That's the only forum in which it's appropriate to disagree with everybody is a comment section at the bottom of something, but some of you got it.

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But there's a significant application point here in verse two for all of us. Nobody, nobody, not a single person will ever be saved by passion and zeal.

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You will not be saved by passion and zeal. As if, boy, they do a lot for God, doesn't that mean that they're saved?

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They sing really loud. They weep with tears that look like deep repentance. They give a lot.

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They're always at the church. They're leaders in the church. They've pastored a church for 25 years.

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What a terrible thing it would be to draw this close only to stumble and fall over the final hurdle.

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The hurdle, of course, is Jesus and his righteousness. And to the self -righteous, he can only ever look like he's in our way.

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He's in the way of our own self -righteousness. He gets in the way of my glory. He gets in the way of my effort to look really good before God.

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Because none of us, when we encounter Christ, we recognize, the stumbling looks like realizing,

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I don't hold a candle to that one. But I'm gonna keep trying. I'm gonna keep trying.

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You see, verse two is a really strong statement. It says they have zeal without understanding. So how can we fix this in our own lives?

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If you're sitting here and you're going, I have a lot of zeal, I have zeal, but I don't have understanding, or maybe you're even sitting here and you go,

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I kinda got neither. I don't have a lot of zeal, and I don't have a lot of understanding. Well, let me suggest to you that the first thing is not to try to drum yourself up into zeal.

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The first thing is get the knowledge of God. I never will once tell you to read your

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Bible every day as a routine. You're not gonna hear me say that. Checklist, read through the

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Bible in a year and just get it done and just do it. It is not about a routine. Every time

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I stand up here, and I can say this in all honesty, whenever I've ever encouraged you to read your

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Bible, it flows out of this problem that needs to be resolved in all of our lives.

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We need knowledge. We lack knowledge and we need it. Not book knowledge, though, that's a good start.

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It's a good place to start. We need to understand what the word of God is saying. It's good for us to study it. It's good for us to dig in.

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But not merely knowledge, but we need to know

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God. We need to read the word to know him. And we meet him, and we meet with him in the pages of scripture.

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So let's not be people who have a zeal without knowledge recast. The world seems to be increasing in zeal.

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Anybody agree with me on that? Is this world increasing in its passion, increasing in its ferocity, increasing in its drive and its passion towards things?

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Absolutely, very much. Oprah has a lot of zeal regarding spirituality, but where does she turn for knowledge?

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Many teachers have passion and zeal for the false messages that they are gonna present to you this week. They're gonna hear false messages this week uttered with passion and zeal.

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The world doesn't lack zeal. The world lacks the knowledge of God because we lack discipline to study what he has said to us about himself.

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And I don't think I need to tell you to have zeal. I don't think that's the place to start. Because that,

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I believe, will be a byproduct and will come with the true knowledge of the Holy One. When you gain the intimate knowledge of him from scripture and you draw close to him and he meets with you and you meet with him,

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I believe zeal is a byproduct of that intimate connection with your creator. But in verse three, we come back to the fundamental issue the text has been driving for, coming back and back and back to the issue, where do we go for righteousness?

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The Jews had a zeal for righteousness while being ignorant that God would give righteousness to anyone who came to him for salvation.

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Anybody who came to him, he's got it. He's like, I've got the righteousness here. Come to me and I will give it freely.

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But the text says, so being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God's own righteousness.

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A little illustration about this is like looking around the kitchen for your keys. While your wife is standing in the middle, holding your keys, she says,

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I've got your keys right here. You say, I know, but I'm looking for my keys. And she says, I've got your keys.

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And you say, no, but I'm looking for my keys as you proceed to go out in the living room, tear apart the sofa, looking for your keys.

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How many of you know you could look a long time for your keys, but if they're in your wife's hand, you're gonna have to come to her for them?

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Do you see what I'm saying? She's the one that has them. You can look your entire life for your keys.

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You can tear your house back down to the studs looking for your keys, but you're not gonna find them until you go to the one who has them.

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You can look your entire life for righteousness. You can work your fingers to the bone for righteousness.

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You can give all of your money away for righteousness. You can seek righteousness, righteousness, righteousness, but you will not find it until you come to the only one who has it, and his name is

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Jesus Christ. You can't get there by your effort, and that's the point.

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I mean, the illustration kinda, with the keys, being ignorant that she has my keys and seeking to find my keys,

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I did not receive the keys offered freely, but instead, kept pursuing my own keys.

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Oh, the depth of the futility of our pursuits of self -righteousness. He will forgive, he will set free, he will give us the only thing that we need if we only humble ourselves enough to ask.

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When Paul, who had zeal in ignorance, encountered

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Jesus, zealous against Christ, and he met him, and he, in Christ, found his finish line.

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I found everything I need. I need nothing else, and this is the way he said it in Philippians 3, eight through nine, one of my favorite passages.

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Listen, I mean, just to see how done Paul was with all other pursuits, all other things gone in light of the thing that I have found, and he said this, indeed,

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I count everything, think about that word, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain

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Christ and be found in him, and here it is. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

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He found the finish line of his pursuit of righteousness and said, the race is over.

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The race for righteousness is done in the life of a believer. You're not adding to it.

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You cannot improve on the righteousness that is given to you in Christ. Now go live free to love and to serve others.

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Now go live with a completely clean conscience before God so that you can indeed battle sin and you can indeed serve and love others.

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You're no longer that panicked person who's dangerous to those around you who will cling to them.

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I mean, there are some people who will destroy their spouse because their spouse is their God. There are people who will destroy their children because their children are their

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God, and you will suffocate them. You will cling to them as if they are your only hope.

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You will live a life of disappointment. At every turn, if you're seeking your pleasure, your righteousness, your satisfaction in anything except for Christ.

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Paul was transformed from a man pursuing his own righteousness with zeal to a man who trusted no longer in his own righteousness, but instead recognized the righteousness given to him by Jesus Christ.

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In this pursuit of a right standing with God, how do we know we've arrived? How do we know we've made it to the finish line?

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I wanna point out the race is never finished for one who is seeking their righteousness by works.

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The question that plagues those who are seeking their own self -righteousness, who trip over Jesus, is have

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I done enough? It's a question that haunts anybody who is trying to save themselves.

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Have I done enough? But verse four is where we find the answer. To how you know.

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Verse four openly declares the finish line for our pursuit of holiness. Christ is the ultimate end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

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Do you have Christ? Are you trusting in him? He is the end of the race to obtain righteousness.

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If you found him, you have found the only thing you need. Calling Jesus the end of the law, by the way, for righteousness might be too radical for some of us, especially those who were maybe raised in a more religious atmosphere.

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You see, once a person realizes what Christ has done for us, the law no longer comes up in discussions about righteousness any longer.

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It's the end of it. Christ is the end of it. What do rules have to do, what do rules and regulations have to do with the cross?

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I'm saved by grace alone through faith in Jesus. The law is shut out of the discussion.

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The law indeed did its work, and therefore it's a good and noble thing. We don't cut off the Old Testament and ignore it, but it did a good thing in showing me how weak

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I am and how incapable I am of saving myself. It showed me that I can't save myself, and then it stepped aside to reveal the glorious solution to my predicament.

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All else is eclipsed by the Savior who gave himself for us. He has saved us by his own righteousness.

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He has kept the law for us, even becoming the blood sacrifice that the Old Testament required.

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He has done it all, and I am no longer in relationship to law through Jesus.

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It is all of grace. So we do not live by law. We do not trust in law because we cannot live by our flesh or trust in our flesh.

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Our only hope is in the righteousness that comes through faith in the cornerstone. You see, the stone that caused many to stumble is the very foundation stone for the church.

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He is the stone upon which our lives are now built. So ask yourself in conclusion this morning, where are you at in your relationship to this rock who is

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Jesus? There's really three possibilities that I wanna point out. Maybe you can think of more and stump me or whatever, but here are the three things

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I would say. Maybe you're here and you lack the knowledge of God's provision of righteousness through his sacrifice.

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This is new to you. You haven't really heard that before, or you're not living that. You're not living that. You recognize that you've come to Christ and then you've gone back to this work.

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You've gone back and you've said, but I need to maintain my own righteousness. I need to hold on to my own righteousness. I need to build on Christ's righteousness.

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A really good next step for you would be to learn. And I would love for you to open your calendar, even maybe this morning, and figure out a time that we could meet or pull me aside after the service so we can talk about how to grow in the knowledge of God.

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Ask questions. Grow in the knowledge of this righteousness available to you through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by drawing closely to him and understanding the gospel, the good news by which we're saved.

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The second category is maybe you're striving to obtain your own righteousness through your own efforts. Maybe somebody's sitting here and that's where you're at right now.

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And a good next step for you would be to come back to the cross of Christ. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame, the text says.

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So rest in him alone for your salvation. Give up your own self -righteousness by recognizing that you cannot save yourself.

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And the third category, maybe you're submitted to his righteousness through faith in his son.

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Maybe Jesus has already given you righteousness and you rejoice in that and you're glad. So a good next step for you would be to follow

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Paul's example in verse one of chapter 10. Don't hold that all for yourself. Pray for the lost.

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Maybe even just this morning, maybe you would, during communion this morning, write down a name, jot down a name of somebody that you ought to be praying for.

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Pray for him this morning. He said, I pray, my heart longs for my, I have a deep desire in my heart for the lost and I pray for them.

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And in verse two, he witnessed to them by spreading the knowledge of Jesus and the righteousness that comes from him.

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Pray for them and a prayer that leads you to act, a prayer that leads you to speak.

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As we come to communion this morning, take some time to reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He gave us a righteousness that comes from God.

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So we take the cup of juice and the cracker to remember his body broken for us and his blood shed for us. We do this in obedience to him.

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He said, do this when you get together. So as a church, we kind of take it seriously. We take him at his word and we do this when we get together.

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This is for anyone who has come to understand Jesus is the finish line of righteousness. But if you're here and you're still seeking for righteousness and you've not yet found it in Jesus, then

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I'd encourage you to please sit back, take in the song, and don't come to the table because there's not really much for you to remember there yet.

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Hopeful for you, but you're not remembering something that Christ did for you if you don't believe that he did it for you.

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But I think each one, there's one main application that all of us can walk away from here with. Let's all leave this place, whether you're all the way across that line and you have been for years or you're kind of looking at that line going,

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I think I want to go in with Christ, but I'm not sure, or you're actually resisting and you're like, this guy talking up here, Don, he's a doofus.

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Wherever you might be today, let me just encourage you to be committed to bringing together zeal and knowledge.

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Pursue knowledge, pursue knowledge, pursue a solid foundation. You're here and you believe something different than everything

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I've said this morning, then I'd encourage you to still pursue knowledge. Don't give up on it.

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And challenge your sources. Try to figure out, why do I believe what I believe? But let's all to a person, whether you're the longest standing saint in the room and you've been a believer for 75 years or you're just kind of trying to figure things out, let's go out and put together zeal and knowledge so that we live out lives of passion according to the knowledge, solid knowledge of God.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace that is given to us and I thank you for the hope that we have and a righteousness that comes from Christ.

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I just think this passage is one of the most clear in all of scripture that the job has been done for us by Christ and that in that pursuit of righteousness, it's foolish for us to go back to works, it's foolish for us to go back to any thought that we can obtain or improve on the righteousness of Christ and to be just as foolish as a marathoner blowing past the finish line and continuing to run another 50 miles, wondering where that finish line is.

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So Father, I pray that you would press this on our hearts, those who need encouragement, encourage them. Those who need conviction, convict them.