Dive deep into the concept of righteousness as explored by Ronald L. Dart in this enlightening episode. Discover how the two great commandments shape the rest of the laws and how Jesus exemplified these through His teachings and actions. The discussion delves into the critique of oral traditions while maintaining the sanctity of written laws, asserting the everlasting importance of loving God and neighbor.
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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Would you agree that Jesus was a good man? I doubt that we could find anyone who would argue to the contrary. Would you then agree that Jesus was a righteous man? I am reasonably sure you would. But what exactly does that mean, a righteous man? I ask the question, if you only had a short time to tell someone about God, what would you want to be sure and tell them? Each of us might have his own list, but God gave us his. You’ll find it in Jeremiah 9, verse 24. He said this, Let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight. Three things in particular he wanted us to know about him, all of which speak to his character. Lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness. And the last thing on God’s list of things He wants us to know and understand about Him is that He exercises righteousness in the earth. And since Jesus is God in the flesh, we would surely expect Him to be an example of righteousness. But again, I have to ask, what does that mean? The psalmist answered it this way, He said in Psalm 119, verse 171, My lips shall utter praise when you have taught me your statutes. My tongue shall speak of your word, for all your commandments are righteousness. And I suppose that makes sense. There has to be something somewhere that defines the difference between right and wrong. Yeah, we have a conscience that tells us what’s right and what’s wrong. But what is it that informs our conscience? Where does it get its inputs? How do we finally learn that something is right and something else is wrong so that we get guilt feelings when we do something wrong? The word righteousness means simply rightness. It’s important to know because men have a hard time of getting the question of right and wrong straight. The question that bothers us probably the most is, well, why is this act right and why is the other one wrong? Some people came to Jesus on one occasion. One of them was a lawyer, and he asked him a question, deliberately tempting him. He said, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Now, it’s not clear what the lawyer was driving at. Was he looking for one of the Ten Commandments? Well, whatever it was, Jesus answered him. He said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Now this is a truly fascinating answer. It has far-reaching implications. And that last sentence is the one that does all the damage. On these two commandments, he said, hang all the law and the prophets. Now, Jesus’ choice of words is interesting because it implies that the rest of the law depends on these two great laws. They are like nails nailed to the wall upon which everything else is hung. Pull out those nails, and all the law and all the prophets fall to the ground. And what are they again? You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now consider this. When the law says, thou shalt not steal, this law hangs on a greater law. What would that be? Well, it is thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. You love your neighbor, you don’t steal things that belong to him. You respect his property. Every law in the Bible, every last one of them, is an explication of one or the other of these two great laws. Each and every law is an answer to the question, how do I love God? Or how do I love my neighbor? Now consider this. Love is a constant in life. If we want to argue that a given law has been abolished, what we are arguing is that we no longer need to love God in this way. Or that we no longer need to love our neighbor in this way. And if that’s the case, then was it not really love in the first place? In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said something very important about this. In chapter 5, verse 17 of Matthew, he said this, Do not think I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. I don’t know if you noticed the same terminology he used in answering the question about the great commandment. Remember what he said? These are the great commandments. These two commandments hang all the law and the prophets together. Here he says, don’t think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. Jesus said plainly that he is leaving the law intact, and indeed he must, because the law was merely a detailed description of how to love God and how to love your fellow man. And Jesus continued to say, for truly I say to you, Until heaven and earth pass, not the smallest letter or stroke of the pen shall pass away from the law until all is accomplished. Now I could pause for a moment and let you look outside and see if heaven and earth are still there. And if they are, the written law is still there too. Yeah, I know how problematic this statement is, but Jesus is awfully explicit here. He doesn’t leave any wiggle room on the issue, especially all the way to saying not one jot, not one tittle, not a stroke of the pen, not a period at the end of a sentence is going to pass out of this until everything has come to pass. Jesus goes on to say, “…whoever then annuls the least of these commandments and so teaches others…” he’ll be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So now, is anyone willing to tell me that Jesus annulled some or all of these commandments when he said that anyone who does annul them or even teaches that will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven? For I say unto you, Jesus continued, That unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. What? Your righteousness. Your rightness. The fact that you live your law, your life, according to the law, according to the two great laws. You love the Lord your God with all your heart. You love your neighbor as yourself. And you can’t claim to love your neighbor as yourself when you lie to him, cheat him, steal from him. Can you? So this is where we are. This is what Jesus said we have got to live up to. Now, we can discuss the problems of Jesus’ statement, and there are some at another time. But for right now, let’s just see Jesus as an example of what God meant when he said that he exercises righteousness in the earth. Do you have any idea why Jesus said what he did about not abolishing the law? There was a reason, you know. He was launching into a sermon in which he was about to teach from the law. And the problem was his teaching was going to directly contradict a lot of things they believed about the law. So he wanted to be sure from the get-go that they did not misunderstand what he was about to say. While he would teach contrary to their oral traditions, he would not be teaching contrary to the written law. That’s why he made this statement. Now, what follows immediately in Matthew’s gospel will serve to illustrate this quite well. And we’ll talk about that when I come back.
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It’s sometimes hard for people involved in traditional Christian teaching to get their mind around this, but Jesus was a teacher of the law. The reason is simple. The law was that in the Bible which defined righteousness. It said this behavior is right, that behavior is wrong. This way to worship God is right, that way is wrong. And so that Jesus, when he came along, since he was given to righteousness, since he would live a righteous life in every aspect of it and would teach righteousness, naturally was a teacher of the law. But the problem that he ran into with the Jews he was talking to was that they had a tradition about the law in addition to the law. They had an oral law that had added enormous amounts of material of do’s, don’ts, and things they had to do in order to be a good Jew that didn’t necessarily follow through from the written law itself. And so Jesus says, don’t think now I’ve come to do away with the written law, but I do have some things I’m going to have to tell you about your traditions. In Matthew 5, verse 21, he says this, Now, I feel real safe at this point, don’t you? Because, I mean, here we have, we’ve made it all the way to this point in my life. I’m 68 years old nearly now, and I haven’t killed anyone. I feel pretty good about that. However… There are some things that the written law can’t quite reach. Jesus said, You heard it was said by them of old time, You shall not kill, and whoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say unto you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Whoever shall say to his brother, Raka, an insult, shall be in danger of the council. Whoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. What Jesus is telling us here is that your temper, your anger, your tendency to explode in the face of another brother is going to take you into the realm of murder. Therefore, here’s how you ought to live your life. Here’s some righteous conduct. If you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has ought against you, leave there your gift before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then and come and offer your gift. Jesus has chosen here an extreme example. Theoretically, we should really think about this before we ever go down to bring our gift to the altar. But his point is, if you’re all the way there, If you’re at the altar with your gift, ready to offer it, and you remember suddenly that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there, go your way, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. I don’t know if you realize what Jesus is doing here. There is a law, thou shalt not kill, which hangs on that part of the law in the prophets that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And as a part of that law, Jesus is talking about the spirit of the law, that along with that, in order to really be righteous… You have to be a person who is given to reconciliation, a person who is willing to be reconciled. You don’t even leave the grudges hanging out there, much less kill somebody for them. Agree with your adversary quickly, he said, while you’re in the road with him, lest at any time he deliver you to the judge, the judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. I’m going to tell you the truth. You won’t come out of there until you have paid the uttermost farthing. So what’s he talking about? What he’s talking about is cleaning up your act. It’s talking about cleaning up your heart, of being a person who is a reconciling person, who puts differences aside, who resolves problems, resolves difficulties, negotiates his way out of problems instead of trying to go to violence to get your way out of your problems. Let’s look at another illustration of how Jesus explained this. He says in verse 27 of Matthew 5, You have heard that it was said by them of old time, You shall not commit adultery. Okay, we all understand that. But I say unto you that whoever looks upon a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. Well, that becomes a little more difficult, doesn’t it? Because you have to now consider what’s going on inside, and you have to head off the thoughts, the ideas, the approaches that are going to cause you to commit adultery. For if you can recognize the rising of lust, if you can recognize the problem of even looking at a woman to desire a woman you shouldn’t desire, if you can see the problem there, You’re going to head off adultery in the process. Then he says something really difficult. If your right eye offend you, he says, pluck it out, throw it away. It’s profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell. And if your right hand offend you, cut it off and cast it from you, for it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish and not that your whole body should be cast into hell. Well, how are you to take that? Obviously, it’s a figure of speech. Because if you go into a store and you shoplift, your right hand reaches out and takes a sweater and tucks it under your jacket and you go out with it, it’s not your right hand that’s solely guilty for this thing that has taken place. I mean, your right hand does what your head tells it to do, right? So what’s Jesus talking about? What he’s doing is using a figure of speech to illustrate that no matter how close something is to you, no matter how dear it is to you, if it’s the kind of thing that’s going to lead you in the direction of breaking the seventh commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, cut it off. Get rid of it. Get rid of that subscription to Penthouse magazine or Playboy magazine or Hustler or whatever it is that you have hanging around the house. Just get rid of it and cut it off. And that’s not all. Whatever it is that heads you down that way, you need to deal with it. Righteousness, you see, is a very high standard that involves the heart as well as the hands. But this is important to know. It is a standard that Jesus lived and expects us to live. the mere fact that we can’t get it perfect all the time, in no way excuses us from the effort to follow His example. Sure, we make mistakes. Sure, we have to be forgiven. Sure, we have to repent and go to God and ask Him to forgive us. But the fact is, tomorrow, having been forgiven, we don’t need to be going out doing the same thing all over again. Jesus Christ is an example of the righteousness of God, and that means that God has standards that He expects us to to live up to. We don’t get brownie points for keeping God’s standards and His laws. All we are doing is reaching the minimum standard He expects of us. And He expects us to go beyond that. He expects us to follow the example of Christ. One day, a little story that’s described in Matthew 3 and verse 13, then came Jesus from Galilee to Jordan to John to be baptized by him. And John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of you, and you are coming to me? Jesus said to him, I want you to suffer to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness. So John baptized him. Now, it’s interesting that Jesus said that it was necessary to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness. So, I would ask, is baptism required of us? Of course it is. Now, we approach baptism thinking, well, baptism is to wash away my sins. Baptism is so that I can be forgiven. But Jesus never committed sin. He is the perfect example of the righteous life. Why did he need to be baptized? Well, if for no other reason, to set an example for us. Think about that.
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I’ll be right back after this message. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, Knowing God, Number 8. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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One of the most familiar passages in all of Jesus’ teaching is a section called Beatitudes. And it’s interesting that right in the Beatitudes comes this same question of the righteousness of God. We’ve probably heard somewhere that he said, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. But right after that, he said in Matthew 5, verse 6, blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. And, you know, I really think that most of us really want to do the right thing down inside of ourselves. We engage in a lot of self-deception from time to time about what is right and what is wrong, and we have an awful time sometimes doing what we even know to be is right. But he says, blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, who really make some effort, who really do want to please God, since they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. righteousness sake. And there’s a real mystery here involved because whenever you sit down and you think your way through what righteousness really is, you know, loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God, you know, with all your heart and soul in mind, why would somebody be persecuted for that? And then you get down to the various laws that fall under these headings, like thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. All these marvelous commandments. Now, these are the kind of people we want to live next door to. Why are people going to be persecuted for righteousness’ sake? That’s a tough one. The only answer I can give to you is that evil is present in the world at all times. And that evil hates the right, hates the good, and fights against it. And I suppose one of the problems is that those people who really do try to live right in this world, in their actions, even apart from their words, they don’t have to say a thing, that by their continual doing of the right thing, they condemn the people who won’t. And so they are reviled for what they do. And Jesus said, “‘Blessed are you when men shall revile you. They will say all kinds of bad things about you.'” Jesus said, “‘Blessed are you when they shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven.'” For so persecuted they the prophets which came before you. You know, it seems the Bible tells us that all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And there really is no way to understand that except to understand that in the process of living a godly life, you make people feel guilty who don’t. Later in this same sermon, he spends quite a bit of time helping you to establish your values and to understand what is really important in life. In Matthew 6 and verse 24, he says, “…no man can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other or hold one and despise the other. And you cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon is not a word we use very much and doesn’t click with us a lot, but basically what he’s saying is you can’t serve God and your stuff. You know, you can’t serve God and this world and things and cars and jobs and money. They just don’t work. So I say this to you. Don’t take any thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor for your body, what you put on. Isn’t the life more than food and the body more than clothes? Now, he doesn’t mean that you don’t plan what you’re going to, you know, your wardrobe. What he means is don’t take any anxious thought. Don’t sit around worrying about these things. Look, he said, see the birds flying around up here? They don’t sow. They don’t reap. They don’t gather anything in the barns. But your heavenly father feeds them. Aren’t you better than they? And which of you, by taking thought, can add one inch, one cubit to his stature? Can you actually stand up against the wall and by worrying about it, make yourself taller or shorter? Why are you worried about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don’t work, they don’t spin, but even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like these. Now look at this, fellow. If God clothes the grass of the field this way, which today is here and tomorrow is cast into the oven, is he not going to more clothe you, O ye of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or how are we going to be dressed? The Gentiles look after all that stuff. Your Heavenly Father knows what you need. Okay, what are we to do? If we’re not supposed to be seeking these things, what do we seek? Oh, well, he has an answer for that. Seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. I don’t know, I think maybe sometimes people stop when I say, Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and forget that second phrase. Seek His righteousness. And what this says to me is that we’re supposed to try to live a good life. How hard is this to understand? That we’re to follow a righteous life. And what are we to use to define what righteous is? Well, we use the law. We read the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments tell us how to love God, how to love our neighbor in some details. And then there are all kinds of other laws in the Bible which describe for us circumstances in which we may find ourselves and how we can respond to them in line with the law. I suppose it’s possible to fake this. because some people certainly made a very good effort at it. Jesus spoke to them on one occasion. You’ll find it in Matthew 23, verse 27. He said, It’s a strong word in our language. It was probably about as strong then, but what it really meant then was a play actor, somebody who went on the stage and acted out a part rather than it being their life. He said, woe to you. You’re like whited sepulchers. You’re like whitewashed tombs. You appear beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you’re full of dead men’s bones and every kind of uncleanness. Even so, what does he mean by that little analogy? This is what he means. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within, you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. You see, this is what Jesus was driving at in the Sermon on the Mount when he talked about how that I’m going to – here’s what the written law says. But I tell you, you’re going to have to go further than that. We’re going to have to get down inside of you and rearrange the wires. We’re going to have to change the way you approach life. We’re going to have to change the way you think about other people. He says, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You build the tombs of the prophets. You garnish the sepulchers of the righteous, and you say, oh, well, if we had been there, we wouldn’t have done what they did. He said, well, you’re witnesses to yourselves that you’re the children of the people who killed the prophets. Fill you up the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? These are very, very tough words. And, you know, Jesus goes on here to say, essentially, what he’s going to do to these people is send them a test. You know, you can only pretend to be righteous so often. You can build the tombs of the prophets. You can whitewash the outside. You can appear to be righteous to all your friends and all that. But what God is going to do is send something your way that you’ll be tested on to find out what’s really inside your heart. And you know, the time to think about that is now. If your heart isn’t right when the test comes, you’ll fail. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart.
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and you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1-888-BIBLE44 and visit us online at borntowin.net.
SPEAKER 01 :
Christian Educational Ministries is happy to announce a new full-color Born to Win monthly newsletter with articles and free offers from Ronald L. Dart. Call us today at 1-888-BIBLE44 to sign up or visit us at borntowin.net.
Dive deep into the concept of righteousness as explored by Ronald L. Dart in this enlightening episode. Discover how the two great commandments shape the rest of the laws and how Jesus exemplified these through His teachings and actions. The discussion delves into the critique of oral traditions while maintaining the sanctity of written laws, asserting the everlasting importance of loving God and neighbor.
