Jeff Durbin: How to Survive This Evil World | Proverbs 13:6

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If you want to open your Bibles to the book of Proverbs, Proverbs chapter 13. This is our series.

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We've been going through an exposition of the book of Proverbs. We call it Wisdom from Above because that's precisely what this incredible book is about, is

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God's divine wisdom. God has spoken over the last couple of months.

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We've been talking about scripture, God's revelation, the creator of all things, condescending, touching us, coming to earth, walking in the dust of this earth, breathing the air that he created, speaking to his people, making promises.

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And so we are opening the very words of God here. These are not merely pithy slogans.

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This is not man -centered self -help works. This is the word of the living

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God, the true God, the only God, speaking to us, telling us not just what's true, but telling us how to live.

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And so as we enter back into this, I want to remind us all, we started this series talking about the difference between knowledge, knowing things about God, filling our heads with truth about God, which is a very, very good thing, knowing those things.

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But the book of wisdom, this wisdom is how in the world am

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I going to apply that? How do I live in this world? How do I navigate this world?

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If we want to learn and grow, if we want to have skillful living, if we want our way to be blameless and righteous, we need to hear from God.

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And that's what we're doing right now. So Proverbs chapter 13, verse six today.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless, but sin overthrows the wicked.

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Thus far as the reading of God's holy word, let's pray together as his people. God, we recognize and proclaim that this is your word.

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The scriptures are the breathed out word of God. And so Lord, we tremble as we come before your word and Lord, we rejoice that we have it.

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We recognize the grace you've given to us, not just in the cross, but in the fact that we are holding onto your word to us in its entirety.

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You've spoken. And so God, we ask as your people, help us to understand. Open our eyes, our minds, our ears, our hearts, fill us with a passion for this truth.

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Speak through the words today that are proclaimed by your spirit. I pray that you would empower these words by your very word, through your spirit.

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Let everyone forget me and remember you in Jesus name, amen. Righteousness guards him whose way is blameless, but sin overthrows the wicked.

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Powerful section. I struggled to think through how exactly do you unpack this and not spend weeks upon weeks doing it because you really could do that.

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And so much of what's here in this text, you're already familiar with. As a matter of fact, you should recognize the principle and the promise that's coming to us right now in Proverbs 13, six, because it's really a repetition of what's already been said before, but it's a reminder.

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It's a reminder to God's people of the ultimate victory that we have ahead of us in this world.

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The truth that God will sustain us. He will guard us. He will protect us. That's a principle there and that the wicked will be overthrown.

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They will slip. They will fall. It is the righteous who will remain. It's that theme.

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It is thematic. It's from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible, that theme of the righteous inheriting the earth, the righteous guarded by God, that these are

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God's standards and they protect, they bless, they bring light to the world. And so Proverbs 13, six is something that we're already familiar with, but now there's a specific principle and promise made here for the blameless with righteousness and also for the wicked and their ultimate ends.

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But here's what we have to acknowledge right away. These are some of the first things I was considering when I looked at this and I was praying through, how do

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I actually exposit this and explain this? There's two problems right now that we have in the church in the

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West, specifically in evangelicalism. There's two problems I think that we're immediately confronted with as Christians today.

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When you see a verse like this, first of all, we don't spend a lot of time in the modern evangelical church doing expositional preaching by and large where we're going verse by verse through the

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Bible. We're teaching the whole council of God, all the scriptures, and we don't spend a lot of time in the book of Proverbs wisdom.

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How do I live? And so of course that's an issue. But when you come to a text like this in the context that we're now in, there's two problems

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I believe that immediately confront us. The first difficulty is that we've been taught today, it's popular, it's in the atmosphere.

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We've been taught today that righteousness or obedience to God's standards and justice isn't actually necessary.

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It's not really all that important. We think about a truncated gospel. You've heard us say it a lot.

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We've truncated the gospel today to essentially mean one aspect of the gospel, and that's just simply this.

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God wants you to go to heaven one day. Do you want to go to hell, little boy? No. Do you want to burn forever? No. Then pray this magic prayer with me so you don't go to hell, you get to go to heaven.

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And that's really the main deal. You just got to get out of this world, escape it, get to that other world, that gassy, airy existence.

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That's where you have the ultimate divine experience, but it's not here in this world.

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Jesus comes to save you so that you can just go to heaven one day. And the truth is, yes, the gospel has at its heart justification and peace with God, reconciliation.

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It's all through Christ. He is the God -man who lived righteously, blamelessly. He died for sinners and rose again so that we can have peace with God through faith in him as a gift.

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Is it true that the gospel has at its heart that story of redemption that is intensely personal?

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Yes, that's absolutely true. But we've so truncated the gospel that we act like God's not concerned with justice.

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God's not concerned with righteousness. God's not concerned with holiness. As a matter of fact, it's very popular today in certain circles of professing

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Christianity like independent fundamentalists, separated Baptists, where they'll teach a heretical doctrine that I knocked on your door,

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I caught you in your undies, I scared the hell out of you. Literally, you prayed a prayer and now you're saved and it doesn't matter now what happens.

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You can have no desire for holiness, no desire for worship, no desire for being with God's people.

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You just never get into the word, never even want to, but you prayed that prayer and so you've got the main thing.

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You're going to heaven one day and you can live your life however you want and you're still quote unquote saved.

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Now do we believe in eternal security? Yes. Do we believe in the preservation of the saints, the perseverance of the saints?

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Yes. But that is a completely broken view of what God does in the gospel and we believe it today.

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We believe that God's not concerned with his law. We believe that God's not concerned with justice in the world anymore.

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We've so misunderstood the gospel of the kingdom, which is precisely the message

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Jesus was preaching when he left the wilderness and the gospel according to Matthew, he leaves it proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.

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We so don't know what that means. We so don't understand it. We so don't believe it that we don't understand that God's purpose is a real comprehensive salvation.

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It's all the nations coming to God. It's the Messiah drawing the nations up to God's mountain.

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It's it's Abraham does having descendants as numerous as the stars and like the sand on the seashore.

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And it is this Messiah, Isaiah 42, who will establish justice in the earth.

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We don't believe that. We think that obedience, God's standards, righteousness is not all that important.

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We think that's really the old Testament God, right? He was very concerned with how we honored

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God and how we did justice. We don't show partiality. We love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

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We have a just court system. We have good judgments, good justice. We preserve human life.

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We obey his law. We don't steal. We don't murder. We don't commit adultery. We don't covet.

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God cares about those things, but that's the old Testament God. And really, we want to unhitch from that.

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I mean, that's a popular book today, right? Unhitching from the Old Testament because God's standards don't really matter any longer.

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But this text before us says, righteousness guards him whose way is blameless.

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God's concerned with this. Is this word true? Yes. Is this his revelation? Yes. Is it his word to us today?

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Yes. And the text says, righteousness guards him whose way is blameless. We think righteousness is not really a concern for us in the

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New Covenant. The second problem we face when we come to a text like this is that we live today.

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It's popular. You know it. It's all around us. Especially as things get bad or there's threats of World War III and nuclear holocaust.

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And there's threats of a complete financial collapse. And you see, of course, immorality rampant.

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You have unrighteous rulers ruling over us. It's popular today and it's just sort of accepted.

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It's just the way Christian culture is in the West because of very bad eschatology. That it's just going to get worse and worse and worse.

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And really, I mean, we've heard it, right? Even from men that I highly, highly respect that are better pastors than I'll ever be.

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Pastors like Dr. John MacArthur that will tell people with boldness and with a smile that we lose down here.

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The church loses down here. Christians lose down here. And because that is in the atmosphere, we come to a text like this and let's be honest, we read it.

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It's an amazing promise. It's all throughout the Proverbs, but we don't actually believe it.

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It goes right over our heads. We don't accept it. We don't follow it. We don't pursue it because we don't think it's actually going to happen.

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Because it's popular in Christian culture to say, we lose down here.

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And so we have very bad eschatology that has us avoid the clear promise and principle that is right here and it's already been behind us in the book of Proverbs.

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We live in a Christian culture that by and large believes that the righteous will lose and perish in history and the wicked will prosper.

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We lose down here. That is what's said. I'm going to address these two things as we unpack this today.

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First, the first response in terms of righteousness isn't really important. We're in the new covenant, baby.

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That's a different God. That's the God who's real concerned with justice and righteousness and holiness, but Jesus saves us from that God so we don't have to really obey or be righteous because Jesus saved us.

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He took our sin and debt and God's not really concerned any longer. The question we have to ask is this when responding to that, is this, first, was

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Jesus concerned with righteousness in his ministry?

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Was Jesus, the one that we follow, the one we say that lived and died and rose again, was he concerned with righteousness?

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Now, we can go a lot of places with this, but I want to bring us to, I think, one of the premier sections that gives us what

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Jesus says about his law and righteousness. Go to Matthew chapter five. If we want to truly be

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New Testament Christians, we need to go to the New Testament and read the words of the

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Lord Jesus in his ministry. This, of course, you'll remember is from the most famous sermon in the history of the world.

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It'll never be taught. It'll never be, something else will never be more downloaded than it, more read than it.

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This is the most famous sermon in the history of the world and it always will be. This is the sermon on the mount.

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And Jesus says in Matthew five, you're familiar with it, you know, Jesus has the famous blessed section where he says, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

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Hey, there it is again. And apparently Jesus believes those Proverbs. It's the meek that shall inherit the earth, not the wicked.

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Apparently we actually win down here. Believe that. But Jesus says in Matthew five, 17, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

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Therefore, here's Jesus view on the law. Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

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But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

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For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Now just really important for those of you guys that weren't going through the gospel according to Matthew with us, very important.

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When you see Matthew using the terminology kingdom of heaven, you need to read that as kingdom of God.

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They're synonymous. It's synonymous terms. Kingdom of heaven is kingdom of God. And what that is, is that expected messianic rule in the world.

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The old Testament told you so much of what was coming in the ministry of the

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Messiah that of course contained the promises of salvation, redemption, forgiveness, the nations coming to God.

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But it also told that amazing story of God establishing justice and righteousness in the earth.

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And so Jesus is telling us his view of the law. And what he says is this, do not think in the

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Greek, may namasete, very strong way to put this. He's not saying, and you've heard me say this a million times before because it is vital.

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Jesus does not say here, stop thinking. He goes beyond that. He says a step before it, do not even begin to think.

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Don't let the seed come into your mind. Don't start the thought, may namasete, do not even start thinking that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. And then he gives the warning.

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If you relax even the least of these commandments, you'll be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

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But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great. And then so Jesus says something that is potent and it is so saturated with the gospel.

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We need to know it. Here's the gospel in the message today. Jesus says to people who were rigorous with their commitments to the law of God.

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Let's be honest. The Pharisees did a lot better externally at obeying the law to the letter than pretty much everyone in this room.

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As a matter of fact, they were so precise in their obedience to the law, that's rather tongue in cheek,

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I hope you get that, that they added stuff. They added stuff. It wasn't enough to have the commandments that God has given, they wanted to have more.

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So they added standards of piety and they added rules and traditions that packed around the law of God that God never even said.

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And they were devoted Pharisees in the first century were revered and respected.

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We see them oftentimes as Christians today, post new Testament as oftentimes the bad guys.

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But in the first century context, Jesus is talking about the most committed, rigorous people who hold to the law of God.

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And he says, you must have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the

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Pharisees. How are you ever going to get there? I mean, that's insane, right?

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I mean, these people like dedicate themselves day and night to this book and these scriptures and this law, and they've got all this additional stuff too.

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And Jesus says, you have to have a righteousness that exceeds their righteousness, which by the way, should pinch because that's not possible, right?

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If that's the highest, if that's the highest way, I mean, Paul says that in his letters to the Philippians, he says that.

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He says when he wants to brag about how, here's my resume, you want to see how good I am at this? Okay, I'll give him my resume and then

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I'll throw it away. He says, as to the law, in my past experience as a

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Jew, he says, as to the law of Pharisee blameless, he'd have nothing to say against me.

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That's how much they were committed to it. And Paul, an ex -Pharisee, he says this,

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I count that as scuba. It is hot garbage.

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It is gross. It's a dirty word. I count all of that stuff, that gain that I had in all of my devotion and my obedience.

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It does not matter before God. He says, I want a righteousness that comes from God as a gift through faith.

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He knows he needs a foreign righteousness and here's the point. Jesus is devoted to the law of God.

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He says, don't even think he came to abolish it. And you need a righteousness that is greater than the top tier of obedience, which is to say you need a foreign righteousness, a righteousness that comes from above, a righteousness that is a gift from God.

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It is a righteousness that you'll never attain on your own. You and I are sinners.

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We're lost. God is holy. There's no way to overcome it. And so two points here.

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One, Jesus is clearly saying the law counts. He cares about the law.

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He did not come to abolish it and that you and I need to have a righteousness that exceeds the greatest top tier level of obedience.

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You need a foreign righteousness. You need Christ's righteousness. Is Jesus concerned with righteousness?

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Yes. He's concerned with righteousness. Paul says as much also, and this would just be a quick touch on this.

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In his explanation of the good news, when Paul's explaining the gospel in Romans chapter three, after indicting everybody,

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Jew and Gentile, and saying the law will justify nobody, it's going to shut the world up after he says it's only through faith as a gift, because of what

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Christ has done. He then says on the heels of it, he says, therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

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And he says, do we then make void the law through faith? What's he say to that?

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So this whole idea of righteousness not mattering, obedience not mattering is fundamentally denied in the inspired apostles explanation of the gospel.

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It's through faith alone apart from any work, but we don't void the law through this faith.

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We actually establish the law. And so we can take down that first objection, that first problem of seeing the fruit of this beautiful promise in the

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Proverbs. Righteousness guards the blameless. The second point, as we've already seen in terms of overcoming the problem of the passage, when you look at it with the tradition we're holding onto and what's in the atmosphere, the second is that we've already seen in the

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Proverbs the repeated promises and principles of victory and protection for the wise and the righteous and the ultimate demise of the fools and the wicked.

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So go back to Proverbs and let's just move our way backwards just a little bit, just as a refresher, a reminder that this is not a one -off moment in the scriptures.

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This is thematic. It's in the beginning of the Bible, the middle of the

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Bible, the end of the Bible, it's in the teaching of Jesus throughout. And so in the Proverbs, we have

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God's wisdom telling us the same promises in Proverbs chapter 12, just move back one chapter,

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Proverbs 12, 7, the wicked are overthrown and are no more, but the house of the righteous will stand.

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Proverbs 12, 3, no one is established by wickedness, but the root of the righteous will never be moved.

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The root of the righteous will never be moved. Proverbs 11, 31, if the righteous is repaid on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner.

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Proverbs 11, 21, be assured an evil person will not go unpunished, but the offspring of the righteous will be delivered.

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Proverbs 11, 19, whoever is steadfast in righteousness will live, but he who pursues evil will die.

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That sounds like Proverbs 13, 6, it's just a different way of saying the same principle that just keeps being repeated.

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Again, it's thematic, it's not a one -off. Proverbs 10, in verse 30, the righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not dwell in the land.

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Where did we ever get the idea that we lose down here?

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How could you ever get that? Not from looking at the scriptures and allowing them to speak.

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What will keep you from seeing this tradition, presuppositions that are not actually rooted in the text of God's word?

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We'll lose sight of these glorious promises if we don't just let the text speak and tell us the story.

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But there's two specific sections I want you just to be thinking about, or us to be thinking about, when you think about what's said in Proverbs 13, 6.

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In Proverbs chapter 2, go back a little further, Proverbs 2, 20 through 23.

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In these promises of wisdom, the call, you'll remember, goes out like a father to a son.

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In chapter 2, it starts by saying, My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commands within you, making your heart attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding.

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That's a person just begging and pleading and listening and they're on standby and they're asking for it.

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God says, here are these promises in 20 through 23, it says, So you will walk in the way of the good and keep to the paths of the righteous.

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For the upright will inhabit the lands and those with integrity will remain in it. But the wicked will be cut off from the lands and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

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There it is again, same promise, same principle. God, I believe, means what he says.

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This is what is true in God's world. It's how he built the world. It's how the world works.

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It's the only way it'll work. And though the wicked may prosper for a time, the promise is that the righteous inherit the land.

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They are the guarded. The evil will stumble and they will ultimately be rooted out of it. And last is

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Proverbs 1, 29. When speaking about those who reject, when speaking about the scoffers, that's the unteachable.

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What's a scoffer? It's an unteachable man. It's an unteachable woman. When speaking about the simple one, these fools,

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God says, Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, would have none of my counsel and despised all my reproof.

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Therefore, they shall eat the fruit of their own way and have their fill of their own devices.

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For the simple are killed by their turning away and the complacency of fools destroys them.

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But whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease without dread of disaster.

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There's those promises. And admittedly, right, admittedly, in our own experiences, human beings, horrible things have happened to us in this world.

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Some of us have been victimized by other people. We recognize even the world around us seems like it's just gone absolutely mad.

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This place that has been the recipient of so many gospel blessings and blessings of the

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Christian worldview. You see the world gone mad out there. It looks kind of hopeless for the moment.

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But God makes promises. It's the righteous who will inherit. It's the wicked who will be overthrown.

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They're going to be rooted out. And here's here's a simple way to put this. It's something that Pastor James has said for a long time and it stuck with me.

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Stupidity doesn't work. Stupidity doesn't work. It will not work. You can live like a fool, complain like a fool, be a scoffer, and it might look for a little while like you're prospering.

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It might look for a little while like you're blessed, like you're in charge, but that's not the way that God made the world.

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If we don't live according to his standards, if righteousness does not guard us, if we are not blameless, if we are the wicked, if we are those that pursue sin, that sin will ultimately find us out and destroy us because this is

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God's world and the Lord does all that he pleases.

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There is no human being that can thwart the purposes of God. And so those sinners can prosper for a little while.

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They will ultimately be cut off in Proverbs 13, six. Therefore, the text says righteousness guards him whose way is blameless.

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Now we need to answer the question. If we're going to be faithful with the text, what does this all mean?

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What's it mean? Because it's promised a lot. Righteousness is first defined by God and his character.

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So if you want to get a quick snappy definition of, well, what is righteousness? What is the standard of justice and uprightness and holiness?

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What is it? And the answer first and foremost is look at the life of Jesus. Look at the incarnate one.

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Look at his blamelessness. Look at his love. Look at his wisdom. If you want to see righteousness on full display, study the gospels.

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Look at the life of Jesus. Read his words. Listen to him. Sit at his feet.

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And Jesus is the incarnate one. What would it be like? What would it be like to see righteousness in its perfection on full display as a human being?

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And the answer is in the God man, the one who is truly God and truly man. It's in the incarnation.

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There is what righteousness is. So righteousness is first defined by God and his own character.

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Well, let's go a little further. What does that mean? Well, you know the famous scene. It's our favorite to talk about as Reformed folks, right?

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We talk about God and his holiness, how he is separate. He is not like us.

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And we have that beautiful throne scene where we have the angels around the throne of God.

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And the angels are saying, what about God? Holy, holy, holy.

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It's the emphasis. It's the way of shouting that truth about God. What's he like?

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He's holy. He's holy. He is holy. He is not like me.

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He doesn't fail. He's not sinful. He doesn't have the desires that we struggle with.

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He doesn't fall short. He doesn't have weaknesses. He's not tempted by evil.

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In his own character as God, he is holy, holy, holy. What is God like as the righteous one?

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If he's the standard, what's he like? God is just. God is just.

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He's the judge of all the earth. He will always do right, the scriptures say. And next, and this is critical, here it is.

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His law word, the revelation of his law coming from his mouth.

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His law word is the standard and definition of righteousness.

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Now to this, we go to the longest chapter in the whole Bible. Let's read through it together today.

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No, I'm just joking. We don't have time for that. Psalm 119. Go to Psalm 119.

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We did a little bit of it today. Already, but Psalm 119, it's very difficult to read if you don't believe as you come to it that God's standards and his law matters anymore.

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So Psalm 119, 137, here's what the text says. Righteous are you,

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O Lord. There it is. I made the claim. I said that God's character,

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God himself, is the standard of righteousness. So mark it down. That was the point being made.

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God's own character. He is the reference point. He is the righteous one. You want to know what righteousness is?

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You look to God. You think on him. You think about his character. You think about what God is like. He is righteous.

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Righteous are you, O Lord, and right are your rules.

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You have appointed your testimonies in righteousness and in all faithfulness.

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My zeal consumes me because my foes forget your words. Your promise is well tried and your servant loves it.

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I am small and despised yet I do not forget your precepts. Here it is. Your righteousness is righteous forever and your law is true.

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Trouble and anguish have found me out but your commandments are my delights. Your testimonies are righteous forever.

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Give me understanding that I may live. So the point I was making there was, number one,

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God's own character. He is the reference point. God is the righteous one. If you want to know, if I want to know, what does it mean to be righteous?

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You look to God. If you want specifics, look at the incarnation. Read the gospels. Look to Jesus.

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But there's more. God's word clearly says, if you want to know what are the standards of righteousness, the text couldn't be clearer.

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It's God's testimonies. It's his law. It's his statutes. So here's the point.

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If we go to Proverbs 13, 6 and we say, okay, Lord, I believe it. That's the way the world works.

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This is how I'll guard my way. This is how the blameless are guarded in righteousness.

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If we want to know what that looks like, we have to go to God's law.

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We have to know it. We have to believe it. We have to be as passionate about the law of God as the psalmist in 119.

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And oftentimes as Christians, what do we say? We have this sort of like passing nod to the law of God. Oh yeah, those are good.

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That's the law of God. But we're not as passionate about the law of God as this. I mean, this is a full description of Jesus and how he is about the law of God.

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This is how he lived in light of the law of God. But if we want to know that righteousness that will guard our way, we have to know the law of God.

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Do you know it? Do you study the law? Do you invest yourself in the law of God?

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Do you pursue understanding it? Do you see it as the blessing that God says that it is?

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You remember in Deuteronomy chapter 4. In Deuteronomy 4, God speaks about his law that he gives to Israel in a way that we just don't talk like that anymore.

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He talks about the law of God given to Israel. And it was supposed to be such a gift to them, this standard of righteousness, this justice, that the surrounding pagan nations were supposed to actually hear about this law of God given to them.

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And they were supposed to say, wow, what kind of God is this? To be so near to these people and have statutes and rules as righteous as this.

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It wasn't seen as just a curse. I mean, that's an aspect of the law of God in terms of the law of God and God's perfection over sinners, yes.

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But the law of God is not a curse in scripture only. It's a gift to the world. It's light to the world.

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There's the standards. One more, Psalm 119, go to verse 160 now. The song of your word is truth.

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And every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

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Every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

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Princes persecute me without cause, but my heart stands in awe of your words.

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I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil. I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.

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Seven times a day, I praise you for your righteous rules.

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Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them simple. Are we seeing a pattern here?

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Are you seeing the theme in scripture in terms of God's standards of righteousness, his rules?

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Again, I told you it was thematic. I hope you're willing to test that claim.

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And I hope that I've already proven it to you. This is throughout the scriptures. This is what God is like. And here's what God calls us to.

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And so the point is, if we want righteousness to guard us, we need to know what it is and pursue it.

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So first and foremost, it's God, his own character. Second, it is expressed to us in his law, in his statutes, in his revelation.

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So here's my challenge to all of us. Do we love the law like that? Because most of us would say,

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I mean, I would love that, right? I don't want the wicked part and being destroyed. I love the righteous part and the blameless and the guarding.

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Give me that. I'll sign up for that. Where's the t -shirt? I'll buy it. Is it on Shopify? I'll get it. I'll make one.

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If we need, if we want it, then we have to know the law. We can't just be this. It can't just be this.

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I love the law of God. We walk away from it. My challenge to you is this. How much do you look into God's standards of justice and righteousness and his law?

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Do you look at the law of God like that? Do I? Seven times a day,

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I praise you for your righteous rules. So much for the evangelical idea of the law of God, not abiding or having relevance under the new covenants.

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Seven times a day, I praise you, God, your law is good. God, thank you for your law. And you could do it easily today.

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I think very easily. You could drive down the road and look at the dude wearing a dress. And you could just drive by and say, hey, praise you,

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God, for your righteous law. That's not good. That's not good. That's destructive, right? Or you can look at a family that's glorifying

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God, a husband and a wife honoring Christ, being obedient, teaching their children the law word of God.

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Honor your father and your mother. And you could say, Lord, I praise you for the second time today for your righteous rules and your law.

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I think I saw Daryl this week. I saw your post that probably stirred some controversy with unbelievers.

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What was it? What did you say? You said homeschoolers are going to take over the world.

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And that's a good thing. Amen. Lord, I praise you for your righteous rules, right?

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Thank you for your law, God, to have our children raised in a context where they're hearing the gospel, they're turning to Jesus, and they're looking to the law of God as this blessing and this good thing.

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They will be the ones who make it through the next generation. A culture of death will do just that.

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Die. A culture of death will die. People who turn away from God's law, they throw off his restrictions.

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They will destroy themselves. They will not last. History's told that story over and over and over again.

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It is the righteous who inherit the lands. It is those who follow God's righteous statutes that actually endure.

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They are the ones who are guarded because they have God's standards protecting them, protecting their lives.

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If you want to know what this looks like, read Psalm 1, sing it to God, say it every day,

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Psalm chapter 1. I'll leave that as your homework. Go back to it later. I'm sure you've read it before if you've made your way through the

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Bible. Next, part of Proverbs 13, 6 is just this.

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The next part is that promise of what happens in the overthrow of the wicked. Proverbs 13, 6, it says, but sin overthrows the wicked.

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Sin overthrows the wicked. Now, this is challenging. Let's be honest, because sin sometimes seems better, right?

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Fallen world, we're creatures. You see the success or what seems like pleasure of the wicked when they pursue what they pursue.

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You see the people who are just sold out for themselves. They're greedy. They're prideful.

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They don't think about others. They don't care about justice. You might see them prospering or you maybe at a time of your life, you might fall into a pattern of sin and sin seems very, very rewarding.

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And that's just the nature of sin. In J .C. Ryle's book, Holiness, by the way, you've heard me say this.

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You need to get that book, J .C. Ryle's book, Holiness, and you need to try to read it at least once a year.

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In J .C. Ryle's book, Holiness, I have this memorized because it was so impactful to me.

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He says that sin never comes to you, never comes to us in its truest colors saying,

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I am your deadly enemy and I want to ruin in your hell forever. Sin never comes to us like that.

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No, sin comes to us, Ryle says, like Judas with a kiss.

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That's how sin comes. And that's why it's hard as creatures to see something like this because sin seems to hold promise for the future.

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It seems to hold the benefit we're looking for, whether it's pleasure, freedom from pain, true relationship and intimacy, joy or whatever the case may be.

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Sin comes to us like Judas with a kiss. It never comes to us telling us, oh, I'm here to destroy you and take everything you love.

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It never does so. And that's the challenge. Sin doesn't look like it's going to overthrow me. It seems like it's going to fulfill me.

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It's going to satisfy me. This is what I'm really looking for. It's what I'm longing for. I think Ryle makes the best point when he says that.

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Sin promises and it lies. It doesn't actually deliver. It never will.

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This is God's world. It's not how he made the world. We're made in his image. It does not work.

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Pour sugar into a gas tank to make it go. And I'm sorry, it's not going to work.

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It's not how the machine works. You can jump into the back of a car, get a broomstick and try to drive from here to California from the back seat.

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Have fun with that. Eventually, you're going to end up in a ditch or killing yourself or somebody else because that's not how it was designed.

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Try to do it. Maybe get down the road a mile. Seems like it's working. It's a lot of fun, but ultimately ends in ruin.

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Sin promises, it lies. Sin promises, it never delivers. Sin, and here's what's really important, sin always counterfeits

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God's blessings. And that's the challenge. Is we're made in God's image to know

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God, to have all these gifts? I actually agree in many ways with John Piper when he talks about Christian hedonism.

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Christian hedonism. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Hedonist, a pleasure seeker. I agree with Piper that God created us, he's the happy God, to find pleasure in him.

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That God made us to actually pursue pleasure in him and that God made us to find pleasure in his pleasure in us.

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We should be the most joyful because we know the blessed God, the happy God.

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Did you ever stop to think that God is not unhappy? God is not unhappy.

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God is the happy God, the blessed God. God's not thwarted by anybody.

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In his presence is fullness of joy. In his right hands, what? There are pleasures forever.

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And the problem is, is in this fallen world, image bearers of God in rebellion against God, see sin and go, this is what

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I'm looking for. This is where I'll find joy. This is where I'm going to find happiness.

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Here's where I'll find true fulfillment. So sin counterfeits. It's always a counterfeit.

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It's a counterfeit of God's blessings. And so we have examples, of course.

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We can think about the culture that we live in today, the culture of sex and pornography, only fans.

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It's all this promise of, you can have all this. You can use this gift that God gave us.

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You can abuse it. You can give it away a million times and you can do it with no consequence.

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Sin counterfeits. Sin lies. It never delivers.

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It never does. And proving that point, sin overthrows the wicked, is a culture that says, free sex.

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Do all you want with as many people as you want. No consequences leads to a culture of disease.

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Disease today, some STDs that are so strong and resistant towards antibiotics.

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You have things like super gonorrhea that can almost not be touched. I know it's a hard thing to talk about in church, but let's talk about overthrowing the wicked.

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That's the culture we have, right? It's all free, no consequence. And what do you get?

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Disease and death. It's true. Or we have a culture that is obsessed with this gift of God that he gave for a certain context.

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And we say, no God, not your way. We'll take the counterfeit way, thank you. We'll take the bootleg way of doing this.

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We'll just give it out freely. We'll destroy ourselves with it. So it leads to what? It leads to a culture of molestation, a culture of rape even.

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It leads to a culture of broken families. It leads to a culture of broken homes.

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Sin overthrows the wicked. We say, let's counterfeit it. Let's go the bootleg version.

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And what takes place? It eats us up and it destroys us. It always lies.

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It never delivers. That's the truth. That's the way that God made the world. Or we think about how we will give ourselves completely away to the idolatry of taking drugs and abusing drugs or drunkenness and abusing alcohol.

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We think about what scripture says about those sorts of things, how God preserves us. But we as a culture say, do what you want.

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Do as thou wilt. And so we have drug and alcohol abuse. You know, I don't need to say much about this today in the context of our church that came out of a drug and alcohol rehab facility.

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But I was really thinking about it in terms of sin overthrowing the wicked in terms of what we have to deal with all around us in our community now.

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Are you noticing just the large, large numbers of people who are living on the streets right now in our communities?

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People who are living on the streets screaming at the sky. People who seem completely out of their minds.

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My wife and I were driving fairly recently and we drove and we stopped at a corner that is just consistently, consistently populated by people who are young people that look like they are old people.

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They are so destroyed physically. You can't really tell. He looks like he's 19, but he also looks like he's 92.

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And we saw this beautiful young girl. And you saw her and you thought, what is she doing out here?

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How did she get out here? And you could see that she was strung out. You could see that she was lost in probably opiates by the way that she was nodding off and all the rest.

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And so you see a woman like that. And it was just a matter of about four weeks later, I passed by the same street, saw the same girl.

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And she went from this beautiful young woman like, what in the world are you doing out here? So she looked like she had aged several decades in a matter of weeks, in a matter of weeks.

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Why? Because the counterfeit doesn't work. It's lying to you. You think that this is the answer.

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Here's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for peace. And this substance, it gave it to me. I have now a community that really loves me now.

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We use this stuff together and it's all a facade. These are all fake relationships.

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It's not true love. It's not real intimacy. It's not people who really care about you and will stand up for you and sacrifice for you.

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It's all a lie. Sin promises. It never delivers. It will only ever overthrow you.

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If you think about also how sin overthrows the wicked, you know, call me weird, but one of my obsessions, and you can ask my wife about this and all my friends about this.

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One of my obsessions is the mafia. That's weird, huh? And it's not because I like the mafia.

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It's I'm so fascinated by the culture of the mafia. I'm fascinated by a little world and underworld created, right?

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That promises so much honor and loyalty. I mean,

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I just listen to when I study all the stories of how the mafia came over in Sicily and all the stuff about Gotti and all the stuff about Sammy the

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Bull. My favorite movie is Goodfellas. I'm sorry, forgive me, but here's why

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I'm fascinated by it. Not because I want to join it. I'm fascinated by it because it's this little world created that promises honor, brotherhood, loyalty.

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I mean, what's it called? La Cosa Nostra. What's that mean? It's our thing, right?

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This is our thing. And you come into this and if you become a made man, there's an entire ritual behind getting made.

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And it's all that you want because if you're made in the mafia, nobody can touch you.

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You're untouchable. That's the promise. Nobody can touch you without permission. You have full protection.

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You're a made man. And so when you get made in the mafia, there's a whole ritual that goes with it, a blood ritual.

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And it's all about honor and loyalty. And you never defy our thing.

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But what is true about that little world is that that world actually is funded by and pursues what?

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Theft and murder, right? And so while you lie to yourselves and say, we'll create a world here where we'll sin, we'll steal, we'll oppress, we'll beat, we'll murder others.

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But we'll have our thing where we don't do that to each other. And then you just listen to the stories of like the mafia being turned on by people in the mafia, killing each other, ratting each other out, standing before judges and turning everybody in.

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Whatever happened to our thing? I thought this was a brotherhood. I thought it was loyalty. Sin overthrows the wicked.

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You live a sinful lifestyle in God's world. Nothing's going to work out.

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You can lie to yourselves all you want and say, this is our thing. We'll be loyal to each other.

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And ultimately, sin will find you out and it will overthrow you. So sinful enterprises will never work in God's world.

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When we think about things like theft and murder, they never ultimately pay off.

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They will destroy everything in your community. When you think about abandoning

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God's standards of righteousness and wisdom and think about sin overthrowing you, think about things like scripture repeatedly talks about slander, gossip, partiality, and judgment.

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Well, we think, even as Christians, like we can have those respectable sins in our lives among us, right?

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I mean, you know, I don't want to commit adultery or murder anybody. I'm not going to steal anything.

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But, you know, a little gossip here or there is, you know, not going to really destroy me or my fellowship or my family.

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We think, you know, I have permission to slander on occasion. I don't necessarily need all the proof to make an accusation.

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You know, I can show partiality. I could pick a favorite in a conflict. I could avoid justice for the other party because this is my team and I'll show partiality.

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We think that, well, we'll be able to get away with it because it's only really happening in our group.

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We're safe in our group from this happening to one another. But the truth of the matter is, is how you are is how you are, right?

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How you are is how you are. And the people that you're with who are comfortable with disobeying

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God's standards of righteousness, disobeying God's wisdom. If you're in a community, listen to this, if you're in a group, please hear this, where everybody is comfortable with gossip and slander and partiality, you're not safe either.

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You can pretend that you are. You can hope that in this group, we'll just slander and show partiality and gossip about others.

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But the truth is, is if you're in a community that abandons God's standards of righteousness and wisdom in that area, when you turn your back, that is what they are doing to you.

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And if you're at a church where you're comfortable behaving that way, living in that kind of way, you might think that leaving the church will solve the problem, the problems that you have and that you are doing.

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But the truth is, is how you leave a church is how you will be in church.

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You can leave a church in a sinful way, slanderous, a gossip, showing partiality and think that there's never going to be any problems at the next church.

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The truth is, is you're the problem in the next church because you're the unrepentant, slandering gossip at that church.

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Sin will overthrow you. Sin will overthrow that community. Think about when we abandon

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God's standards of personal property, like for example, watch this, ready?

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One of the 10 commandments is you shall not steal. Do you know what a blessing that objective commandment and word of God is for the world?

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That word, you shall not steal, is the foundation of the marketplace.

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It's the foundation for people being able to produce and to work and to create and to create jobs and build things and build buildings and skyscrapers and airplanes.

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You shall not steal has at the root of it, the belief of personal property.

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If God says you shall not steal, the assumption is something belongs to them that does not belong to me.

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And so if we have a culture like we do today that actually prides itself in covetousness, it will ultimately eat the entire world up around us because God says, you should not steal what a person builds.

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They create, they own it. What a person pays for, it belongs to them. It's their stuff.

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They can build, they can grow. It belongs to them. God says, you should not steal. It doesn't belong to you.

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Don't touch it. Don't even want inside yourself to have their stuff for yourself.

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From the heart outward, God says, that's theirs, not yours. Respect them.

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But we have a culture today that actually brags, it utterly brags.

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They actually have it as a political talking point. Their sin of covetousness.

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They will go before the public in the public square and they will actually say, can you believe all these successful business owners and wealthy people?

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They've got all this money. They should be giving us their money. And they talk to people who are hurting and poor and they say, hey, don't you want their stuff?

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And everyone over here goes, yeah, let's get their stuff. And it's a virtue today to say, let's steal from them and give to them.

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God says, that's wicked. And guess what will happen? You build a economy and a culture on theft, then there will be nothing left.

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Where has Marxism and socialism, communism ever succeeded in history? Answer, nowhere.

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What has it left everywhere in its wake? Death, disease, starvation.

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Why? Righteousness did not guard them. Their way was not blameless.

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Sin overthrew them. It's God's world. You obey his ways or you will be overthrown.

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Amen. Next, ending now on just the main points, we need to consider when you think about righteousness, first and foremost, don't be confused.

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Please hear me on this. Do not be confused. You will never have a righteousness that is acceptable to God and yourself.

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It'll never happen. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. There is only one righteous one.

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It's the Lord of glory who is crucified for us. There is only one with a righteousness that will avail before a holy father.

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And that is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It's his. And the only way to have that is a gift of God.

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So the call of the gospel is to repent and to believe, to turn your face toward God, away from your sin, away from your shame and your guilt.

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And turn and cling solely to Jesus and his righteousness. And that is only a gift.

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And it's a free gift. Jesus says to come to him for life. So come. That's the only righteousness that will matter in the end is his righteousness before the father.

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Mine won't and yours won't. And the next point is, is if you're in Christ and the

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Holy Spirit of God indwells you, then you need to read the promises. And I need to read the promises of God and all these principles.

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We need to believe them. We need to believe them. We need to actually say, all right, righteousness will guard my life.

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All right, so what's that look like? What is God's law? So I'll give you a little challenge right now.

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I want you to think for the next 30 seconds about the law of God that you know, his revealed law that he's given in his word.

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Let's say in the Old Testament, I want you to think for a moment about how many laws that reference

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God's righteousness or are righteous statutes that you know, that you can say right now at the top of your head.

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Don't yell it out loud, but just think about God's law and his revelation. He says, righteousness will guard the way of the blameless.

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So do you know his law? Think through what you know, what you can pass on to the world.

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Do you know his law? Do you meditate upon it day and night?

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Because if righteousness is defined by his own character, then you need to know him and dwell on him, meditate on him.

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And if righteousness, if his laws and statutes are righteous, then we need to actually love

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God's law and know God's law. It is how our lives are guarded.

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And I wanted to remind you of that precious promise of the Lord Jesus. It's the meek who shall inherit the earth, not the unrighteous, not the wicked.

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So let's pursue God's righteousness. Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word.

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Thank you for your promises. I pray that you'd bless us as your people with a longing for your law, a longing for your word and those blessings that come through you and it.