Jehovah Tsidkenu - the Lord Our Righteousness — David Wilkerson

This message is one of the Times Square Church pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, P .O. Box 260, Lindale, Texas 75771, or calling 903 -963 -8626.

None of these messages are copyrighted, and you are welcome to make copies for free distribution to friends. Praise his name.

I advise this church, you know we never tried to sell anything from this pulpit. Not interested in making money, but the New Covenant book, New Covenant Unveiled is available. We've had so many say, it has changed my life, brought such freedom and rest in my soul.

Those are available now here at the church and also to our mailing list. We have been talking about the names of God. You know we've been telling you that the names of God, he is Jehovah, but he has revealed himself in his character through various Hebrew names.

Jehovah Tsidkenu: The Lord Our Righteousness

I'm dealing with only Hebrew names right now, and this is the seventh in a series. These are like rays of a diamond, various revelations of his character and his nature. And this morning we're dealing with Jehovah Sidkenu, or Sidkenu as some pronounce it, the Lord our righteousness.

The spelling should be on the screen, is it there? All right. And for our deaf class over here also. Turn with me to Jeremiah 23, if you will please. Jeremiah 23rd chapter. I'm really glad you're here this morning.

Oh, come on. I'd rather be here than the hospital, I assure you. Jeremiah 23, verses 5 and 6 please. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby he shall be called the Lord our righteousness, or Jehovah Sidkenu. Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus.

Jesus is our Jehovah. Jesus is our righteousness. And Lord, we pray that you open our ears and our understanding. Lord, sanctify my body, my lips, my mind, and everything by which and through which your word goes forth this morning.

We acknowledge you. You are the object. You're the source. You're all in all. Jesus, we exalt you. It's all about Christ our Lord. We pray that you will show us what it means to walk in your righteousness, what it is to have your righteousness and not our own.

We thank you for what you have revealed in your word, and we pray that you give us ears to hear. In Christ's name, amen. Jeremiah began prophesying in the thirteenth year of King Josiah. Now, Josiah was a very righteous king, the Bible said, who did not turn to the right or the left, and he set his heart to bring a spiritual awakening to Israel.

And it was a wonderful fellowship that Jeremiah must have had with this young king because their hearts were akin to seeing God stir and awaken Israel. He started this great revival and a crusade to stamp out all iniquity in Israel.

The scripture says that the king called a special meeting of all the princes and the elders and the Levites, and the Bible said the king made a covenant before them and the Lord to walk after the Lord and to keep all his commandments with all their hearts and all their soul, and all the people stood to the covenant.

The Bible says Josiah waged a war against idolatry. He burned down the temples of Baal. He destroyed all of their priesthood. He destroyed the high places where God's backslidden people were worshipping the sun.

He defiled that Moloch God where so many babies had been offered as human sacrifices. He destroyed the male houses of prostitution, removed the sodomites from the land. And the scripture says that he destroyed also all of the temples that Solomon had built to the false gods.

He also destroyed the false gods set up by Jeroboam and Dan and Bethel. This was a legislated move toward wiping out iniquity in Israel. Remember that for 52 years under King Manasseh and his son Ammon, Israel had been sold into such degradation.

The Bible said that Manasseh caused Israel to sin more than any other king on the face of the earth. And the Bible said because of his bloodshed of innocence, the killing of babies, the destruction of so many innocent people in the bloodshed, God said, I will not forgive.

Anyone who thinks that God is going to forgive America, I don't care how many revival meetings we have, I don't care what kind of awakenings. God gave a 40-year hiatus, but he said, I will not turn away.

I will not forgive bloodshed of innocence. He will not forgive America for its bloodshed. I don't care how many prayers you pray. I don't care how many fall on their knees. This was a great revival, wiping out all of the institutions of iniquity.

And yet God said, I will not forgive it. And after Manasseh dies, the judgment came upon Israel and Judah. Now, after 52 years of iniquity, the nation down in the very pits of hell and corruption, God raises up this righteous king.

And Jeremiah must have rejoiced as he saw those houses of prostitution burning. He must have raised his hands and praised God as he saw all of these vile temples going up in smoke. The idolatrous priesthood wiped out.

What a rejoicing it was when he saw the armies of God, the armies of Israel, led by a righteous king, just stamp that iron god, that belly god that had consumed so many of those babies in its red hot belly.

What a rejoicing as he saw that idol stomped to powder. What a time it must have been to live in a time now where righteousness is ruling and reigning in the land, and the masses are talking about God.

And Jeremiah must have been ecstatic. What a day for him. Perhaps now all of these things that he talked about and all the hope that he had offered to Israel, he was now seeing it. But the prophet's hope was soon shattered.

True Righteousness Cannot Be Legislated

Very shortly, righteousness, though being legislated, being enforced by the king's army, I want you to know, folks, that true righteousness cannot be legislated. We have the idea that if we would put a born-again preacher, I mean a born-again president in the White House, we've had that before, if we could elect a born-again Congress, and if we could make laws that would outrule pornography, outrule internet sex, and outlaw all of this, that we would have a revival.

Folks, been there, done that. Didn't work. Because unless the heart is changed, the hearts of the people were not with him. The hearts of the priest. In fact, into the 13th year, Jeremiah, the scripture said, was howling against the backslidden priesthood.

He was howling against the backslidden people, saying, amend your ways or God is going to send judgment. He was preaching that in the middle of revival. A pseudo-revival in the land. Great experiment to try to bring about a righteousness by the hand and skill of man.

Self-righteousness is what it became. And this experiment absolutely failed, the scripture says. For 19 years, even into the reign of Jehoiakim, for 19 years, Jeremiah goes up and down the land and says, don't you understand that this has to be something that God does in your heart?

It can't be something that just affects the outward man. There has to be a change of the heart. You can be righteous on the outside. You can take a stand against blatant homosexuality. You can take a stand against the sins of the nation.

I was reading about a pastor in this city in the 1920s, who was a moral crusader. Moral crusader in every sin, and he was in the headlines. I saw some of the headlines. In fact, you can read about it in today's New York Times.

Or yesterday's paper in Daily News, I'm sorry. And this great moral preacher, they found, had the Ku Klux Klan center in his church. Legislating holiness, crying out about sins of the nation and everything, and yet, into the Ku Klux Klan.

For 19 years, he said, repent, amend your ways, because the Lord is about to make this temple like shallow, and this city like a curse. Josiah passes from the scene, and this revival dies immediately.

Not in years, but in months and days, the revival. And all this pent-up sensuality that had been covered by this self-righteousness, now bursts forth in the land, and they give themselves completely to iniquity.

You see, self-induced righteousness gives you no power over the devil. When you try to present to God your own righteousness of good works and deeds, it makes you a coward before the powers of hell. Absolute coward.

Jeremiah’s Hope for an Unfading Righteousness

The Bible said the righteous are as bold as a lie, but it has to be the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I can imagine the conversations Jeremiah must have had with the Lord. Something probably like this, Lord, what went wrong?

We had a man of God on the throne. He had righteous men around him. He had an army that did his bidding. We stamped out sodomy. We stamped out all of the false gods and veils and priesthood of wickedness and adultery.

He said we had everything going. People were talking righteous, everything. What happened? Where is the revival? Why did it die? Are we doomed, Lord? And he's looking into the future. Are we doomed to revivals that just fade and die?

Are we doomed to a righteousness that fades away like a vapor? And in his despair, he saw the revival just fade. He saw the people turn from their so-called righteousness to absolute iniquity, worse than in the times of Manasseh.

And he's in despair. He's looking to the future and thinking, God, will there ever be a righteous people? Will there ever be a time when there will be a king on the throne who brings forth a righteousness that doesn't die like this one did?

And in the middle of that crisis, he spoke to him here in the 23rd chapter. Behold, he said to Jeremiah, the days are coming, saith the Lord, that I will raise up unto David a righteous branch. A king shall reign and prosper, shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

And in his days, Judah shall be saved, Israel shall dwell safely. And this is name whereby he shall be called the Lord, our righteousness. Yes, Jeremiah, there will be a king one day on a throne. He will rule a people and he will bring forth a gifted righteousness that will not fade.

It will be eternal. Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold, the man who comes is of the name Branch. That's in Zechariah 6, 12 to 13. And he shall grow up in his place and he shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear the glory and he shall sit and rule upon his throne.

He is the son of David, the scripture says. And all who will trust in him shall dwell safely. Hallelujah. This is a righteousness that comes from God himself. It is not legislated. It is not forced on man.

It can't be done by human effort. God has allowed this failure to stand before us to show us the futility of self-righteousness and trying to bring something to God out of our own skill, our good deeds, our good works.

It's a stench in his nostrils. That's why he allowed it to die. Surely Jeremiah must have thought, Lord, will I be alive when that happens? Lord, will I see this? Will I experience that kind of righteousness?

The unfading righteousness of God himself, gifted and given, that his name shall be he who bears witness, he who deals righteousness to his people. And that's what it really means in the Hebrew. He who deals righteousness to his people, who gives his righteousness to his people.

I don't know if the Lord told him it's far in the distance. I don't know whether he ever expected, but I do know that you and I live in that day. Right now we are living. We have that king. The branch is alive and well today.

And he has given us his righteousness. This righteousness is ours today. The apostle Paul tells us that the prophets were witnesses to this kind of righteousness that is not by the works of man's hands, but by faith in what God has promised.

Romans 3 .21 says,. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested or revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto and upon all them that believe.

Now in the Greek here, the witness means one who's experienced and bears testimony to his truth. And he said, the law and the prophets bear witness. God never just throws the truth out without bearing witness.

He's always got two or three witnesses. And he said the prophets are witnesses. They experienced this. They had a taste of it, a foretaste, so they could prophesy about what was coming. Isaiah was one of those witnesses.

Isaiah’s Vision of Holiness and Cleansing

You know the story well. This revelation of Jehovah said, can he face Jehovah? He said, can you face to face? Remember after five chapters of prophecies, speaking of righteousness and holiness, he stands before God's throne and he sees him high and lifted up.

He's in vision now and he sees the father lifted high and he hears the angels and the seraphim singing, holy, holy, holy. The seraphims have covered their face with their wings, covered their eyes because of the brilliance of his glory.

And in the presence of that utter righteousness, that utter purity, that brilliance and glory, this man who'd been preaching, this man who'd been faithful, is driven to his face. And he can't look at the glory.

And he cries out, woe is me, I'm lost, I'm undone, I'm a man of unclean lips. Now the man with the unclean lips was the leper who had the rag under his lower lip, so he could run around saying, I'm unclean, unclean.

Isaiah says, I'm a leper, I am a leper. Folks, we're all lepers outside of Jesus Christ, we are lepers. And we've got to acknowledge it. Now I want you to look at this man on his face. He's in the presence of the utter holiness of God in his righteousness.

And he has nothing to offer. What does this man have? Because, you see, Isaiah is the condition you and I are in, even though we may have had years serving the Lord in some capacity, and done our best to be righteous or preach or prophesy.

When you come into the utter presence of His holiness, everything is exposed, everything hidden. That's the power of His holiness. And he's driven to his face, I am lost, I'm undone. This is Isaiah. You read the first chapter of Isaiah and see his heart against sin.

There's nothing more profound in all Scripture than the first chapter of Isaiah, when he talks about the corruption of the church and God's people from head to toe. And now he's before the utter holiness of God in his righteousness, and he's driven to his face.

And what can he offer? Folks, you look at Isaiah because that's what God is trying to show us. He said these prophets were witnesses to this kind of righteousness. And he is our witness, along with Jeremiah, along with Ezekiel, and all of the minor prophets.

Every one of them had this vision, one way or another. How does Isaiah come and stand before His presence now? What can he offer the Lord? Does he go to Him and say, Lord, I'll do better, I'll make promises?

You see, we do that, we make God promises, try me one more time. And he's crying, Lord, I'm unclean, I'm undone, I'm a dead man in the sight of Your presence. I have nothing to give You, I have nothing to offer in my flesh.

I've tried, but here I am, I am a total failure, I'm a leper. And how does he come into God's presence? How does he get approved? What does he have to offer? He has nothing. And unless the throne makes a move, unless God takes the initiative, he continues in his uncleanness.

Because he has nothing in his flesh, he has no power, he has nothing to give. Folks, you and I have nothing to bring. We have no claim. There is no good thing in our flesh. There is nothing good. I don't care how good you think you are.

You are no good, the Bible says, in your flesh. So quit sticking up your nose at other Christians. You know the story. God takes the initiative. He commissions an angel to take a fire with a pair of tongs from the altar before him.

That consuming fire of His holiness. That altar is Jesus. That fire is His sacrifice. And the Bible makes it very clear that that angel said, Open your mouth. He opened his mouth, put out his tongue. The angel put that hot coal in his lips.

He said, Lo, this has touched thy lips. Your iniquity is taken away. Your sin is gone. It's purged. All by the initiative of the Father. And all he had to offer Him was an acknowledgement, I can't do it.

I'm nothing. That's true repentance. That's acknowledging, Lord, if I'm ever going to be holy, You have to make me holy. If I'm ever going to amount to anything in Your sight, and the only way I can get into Your presence is through Jesus and His sacrifice.

Jesus, put that hot coal of fire on my lips. Sanctify me through Your blood. No other hope, no other way. God has to take the initiative. And He's the witness to this kind of holiness that we're talking about.

Righteousness that is given by faith. Hallelujah. Cleansing, purging came from the throne. He did nothing that acknowledged His helplessness. Now, this brings me to the question, how do I get that kind of righteousness in me?

Receiving Imputed Righteousness by Faith

How do I get God to impute or give to my credit, credit to me His righteousness? His righteousness is not dealt out to everyone who cries, Lord, Lord. Not at all. You've got to come His way. And He makes it very clear how you come.

The first requirement, listen very closely, please. A total repudiation of all efforts to establish your own righteousness by your human abilities. Abandonment of all hope of becoming holy by good works, good thoughts, good deeds.

You have to once and for all say, I cannot. There is no hope in my flesh. I have to repudiate every effort of my human ability until I am endued with the Holy Spirit. And He has done a work in me. And by His Spirit, we mortify the deeds of the flesh.

That's what the Bible said. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the deeds, the sinful flesh is brought under mortification and destroyed, the scripture says. Paul's heart went out to his Jewish people.

It broke his heart. He watched in pain as they struggled so hard to please God and be righteous. He said, I pray that they may be saved. But he watched, Paul said, I see how hard, I bear record, he said, to their efforts.

I bear record, he said, that they're very zealous for God. These people are very sincere. They had to keep the moral law, that's the Ten Commandments. He watched as they struggled in their human effort not to commit adultery and not to covet and to love their neighbor.

And he watched them struggle with no supernatural power, with no Holy Spirit within them to enable them to do what the law commanded. And he watched them struggle. Not only, folks, I want to tell you, they studied the Torah from morning to night.

They had 613 rules imposed by the Pharisees. 613. Can you imagine taking inventory at the end of each day? Folks, you had to be a scholar to understand what was required just to keep the Sabbath. How far you could go.

And if a Gentile tried to shake hands with you or your garment brushed his, you had to go and cleanse it. I mean, at the end of the day, take an inventory, and if they failed in one point of the law, nothing but despair.

And if they had a good day and they kept it, they boasted. I'm something. That's what the flesh does. The Bible said it can't be by the law because you just boasted that your righteousness is not His.

He's not going to let you do that. And Paul watched these people struggle. Paul said, they are ignorant of God's righteousness. In other words, they have no knowledge. Now, folks, that shouldn't have been because they had the very same scriptures I'm reading you.

They had the Pentateuch. They had Moses. They had the prophets. They had Jeremiah. They had the revelation that we're speaking of now. They read the very same scripture I just gave you. The Lord shall be our righteousness.

Jehovah said, can you? They had it. Paul said this word went throughout the whole known world. This gospel we preach. But he said they were willingly ignorant. They were willingly ignorant. He said, therefore, they go about to establish their own righteousness, having not submitted unto the righteousness of God.

Now, folks, these people were deadly sincere. These were not flakes. These were not insincere people. They were sincere people. They wanted to be holy. They wanted God's favor and blessing. They kept the Muppet Knights.

They prayed their long prayers. Folks, if you go to the mountains of Tibet and you watch those Buddhist priests spending all day long, get two, three hours of sleep, and you listen to their moaning groans that echo over the hillside, you see them spinning their prayer wheels.

You look at their faces and see how deadly sincere they are. You go to India and some of those dark, foreboding temples there. And lined up on both sides where they walk through, you see these big prayer wheels with prayers written on them.

And you see them going spinning this wheel and this wheel, spinning 50 wheels. And they honestly believe. They're so sincere that they're trying to please God. And that every time those wheels spin, that prayers are being imputed to their righteousness, their imputed righteousness of their guts.

They are sincere, but they are ignorant of how to receive God's righteousness. You go to the shrines in Canada. And you see thousands of people, especially in the summer times, walking on their hands and knees, crawling up these stairs, these huge mountain of stairs, going up and kiss a statue.

And they leave pleased because they feel they've done something righteous and God is pleased. And all the way home, they may travel back to Florida or fly to France or wherever it may be, and they have this sense, I have done something that God has received.

When God says, it's a stench in my nostrils, because they don't know the righteousness of God. So they go about trying to establish their own kind of righteousness. You show me a Christian who's indulging in sin.

He or she doesn't want to give it up. And I'll show you someone who doesn't want to submit to the righteousness of Christ because of the cost. They know that the Holy Ghost is a consuming fire. They know that if they open themselves and submit to the righteousness of God which is in Christ Jesus, they know that this righteousness, this holiness of God demands full surrender.

Full disclosure of every secret and hidden thing in the heart. But you see, they want to go that way. They don't want that bosom sin to be exposed. I received a letter from a Jewish man, married man. And he said, Mr. Wilkerson, he's on my mailing list, he said, I'm married but I have fallen in love with a wonderful Christian woman who's also married.

And she is so full of Christ. And she provokes me to do good. And he said, since neither of us love our mates, don't you think God would be pleased because we are soulmates that we should leave our mates and get married?

And you answered the letter for me, you remember? You wrote it this week, the answer. That was a good answer you gave. I got to thinking, this is a Christian woman? That provokes a man to righteousness?

You see, she'll not submit to the righteousness of God because she's got a soulmate. That's the biggest pile of baloney I have ever heard in my lifetime. Soulmates. That happens, soulmates, if you're married, you've got a soulmate that's not your husband or your wife.

That's the devil. That's not God. You've got a demonic mate, not a soulmate. This is the end of sight. Can you imagine this woman, though? She hears the word. She knows you're not to be unequally yoked with believers in the first place.

She knows that God hates divorce. She knows the consequences. But because I feel so right with Him and I feel righteous when I'm speaking to Him, it's got to be all right. In Greek, this word establishing one's own righteousness is simply this.

This is the meaning of it. Taking a stand on one's own concept of righteousness and bringing it to God. Taking a stand. In other words, you develop your own theology. And when you refuse to submit, the first thing you do is lower God's standards.

You lower them just underneath your sin. Now, you'll still judge everybody else's, but you'll lower the bar just to include yours. Christians bound by sin under its dominion who are addicted and refusing deliverance develop what I call a righteousness of illusion.

Their sin has so deceived them, they can live in adultery. They can live unmarried. They can commit fornication. They can sit in front of a television set and listen to watch R-rated, X-rated movies and just saturate their mind with all kinds of filth.

Commit fornication. Mix with vile sinners. Then come to God's house, praise the Lord, convinced that they're righteous. I'll tell you, Jeremiah has a searing word on that seventh chapter. Go to Jeremiah 7 now, please.

I have an idea the amens are going to fade. Jeremiah 7, beginning of verse 8. Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you still murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense under Baal, and walk after other gods whom you know not?

Then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name. In fact, in the Hebrew it says, in a house in which my name is being revealed. And say, we are delivered to do these abominations.

Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord. But go you now unto my place, which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the weakness of my people Israel.

That's where God left Shiloh and wrote Ichabod over its doors. The glory of the Lord has departed. You come to my house with your sins, trying to avoid your punishment, trying to appease me with your uplifted hands, in other words.

These people were committing adultery, living double lives, given to idolatry. Then they come to God's house saying, we are delivered to do all these abominations. Now let me give you the explanation of that in Hebrew, please.

We have a good reason, a good explanation for doing these things. We can't help it. It's fate. It's the way God made us. You hear that from the homosexual community? We can't help it. This is our fate.

We have homosexual churches now that dance the night away, promiscuous sex among the congregation, and they come and say, raise their hands and praise the God in the metropolitan community churches and say, that's our fate.

We can't help it. We come to God's house. God made us this way. Did you hear, I can't believe how low we have sunk. A man who has been indicted for armed robbery, did you hear about the defense? Prozac.

The doctor prescribed Prozac to me. Before I took Prozac, I was a wonderful gentleman, never even thought of robbery, but now he's robbing banks because of Prozac. Prozac did it. My doctor did it. They're going to sue the doctor.

You hear this all over America now? My dad was an alcoholic. It's genetic. It's in my genes. That's why I'm an alcoholic. I can't help it. It's my fate. Society has convinced multitudes that even violence is genetic.

You can't help being violent. You get some kid that's violent, you know, kill somebody, well, it's in his genes. A pastor was exposed a few years ago, multiple affairs, sexual affairs in his church, and he calls the board together, and he said, gentlemen, you're going to have to have compassion on me because God does.

He said, it just so happens that God made me a very energetic man with a lot of energy, and he said, I want you to know that I'm a very intense man, and I have great needs beyond other men, and he said, I know God has compassion on me.

He knows that this is the way he made me, so I just have to live with it. Well, thank God those people knew more than to be duped by such foolishness, and he was on his way out the next hour. If you continue in your sin, you live a double life, and you hide your secret lust and sin, and you just excuse it, you have no intention of seeking deliverance, you'll end up doing three things.

The Three Dangers of Self-Righteousness

Number one, you will lower God's standard to excuse your sin. Secondly, you'll try to present to God a self-righteousness that you have conceived and concocted of your own. And third, you're going to pervert the message of grace.

You're going to do injustice to what God says about mercy, turn it into lasciviousness. You see, people hear this message. They'll hear the covenant that we preach. They hear these wonderful names of God, and how God says, I'll take the initiative, and it's a wonderful thing.

And they'll hear this scripture, for example. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and to us also it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus from the dead.

In other words, Abraham believed God, and God gifted him with his righteousness as a result. Therefore, I believe God, I believe in Jesus, therefore I am and I have the righteousness of God. I have the righteousness of Christ.

I believe in Jesus. The Bible says, they that believe shall be made righteous in him, just as Abraham was. Now let me give you, I'm going to blow that to smithereens, and let me give you the Lord's definition of his righteousness, and how it is imputed or credited to our account.

Abraham's scripture says, staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, he was strong in faith, giving glory to God, being fully persuaded that what he had promised he was able to perform, and therefore, or because of this, it was imputed or credited to him for righteousness.

He staggered not at the promise of God, doesn't say promises, but at the promise of God through unbelief. He did not stagger. Jesus, the righteousness of the Lord, Jehovah said, can you, is imparted only to those who fully believe the promise, the same promise that God made to Abraham.

Abraham's faith, listen closely, was linked to a specific promise. It was not linked to the general promises that God's made to all of society. It was linked and focused to a particular promise. That promise had to do with the son that would be given to him, and that son would be the progenitor of a nation and a sea, which would be the Messiah, the Savior of the world, who would deliver men and women from their sins, so they could live all of their days without fear.

Jesus said, Abraham saw my day and rejoiced and was glad in it. Why did Abraham want a son? Because he was lonely? No, he had people everywhere. Did he want a son just so he could dote upon him? No, he had a revelation, he saw Christ.

He saw my day, Jesus said, and he rejoiced in it. And why did he rejoice? According to Luke 1 .72, it's because a Deliverer was coming to the world who would bring his righteousness, and he would give it to his people, and he would deliver them from their sins.

This faith of Abraham is linked to one promise. You can believe in Jehovah-Jireh and still be a devil. We have all kinds of people in the country today running around full of covetousness and saying, I believe every promise in the book that God will bless and prosper me.

And they live like the devil. You can believe in Jehovah-Jireh, you can believe in many of the names of God and still go to hell. But you can't believe in Jehovah-Zechariah without being changed. And you can't have this revelation until you link it to the faith of Abraham.

The Bible said it's the faith of Abraham that is focused on the seed, which is Christ. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us. He will deliver us out of the hand of our enemies, that we may serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life.

The object of Abraham's faith is this promise that he did not stagger at. God has promised to deliver us from the power of Satan, to cast out fear, to endure people with power to live righteous and holy all their days.

Now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made, he said not to seeds as of many, but as to one seed, and that seed is Christ. That seed of Abraham is Christ. He never got his eyes off the seed.

That's why when he takes his son up to the mountain, you remember he told his servant to wait here, he said, we're coming back. He knew. He fully intended to kill his son. But he knew that Christ was coming from that son.

He knew the deliverance from sin and righteousness to be imputed to a whole world was coming through that son, so he knew God had to raise him from the dead. The Bible said two things happen under Abraham's faith.

First of all, you believe in resurrection. God raises you from the dead. You may be dead here this morning and not feel anything. You may be so backslidden, you have nothing to feel. You're dead in your sins.

But you've got to say, Holy Ghost, stir me. You've got to believe in resurrection power. That's exactly why he was accounted as a righteous man. He believed God can raise the dead. And he also believed that God counted things as happening as though they hadn't happened.

Takes those things that are not as though they are. He looks at you and you say, well, I've prayed, I've fasted, I've done everything right, but I still fail, I don't feel righteous. Oh, but God sees something.

You've got your faith fixed on the seed. You've got your faith fixed on this Christ who can deliver from the power and iniquity of sin. And that's what you want. You're hungry and thirsting after righteousness.