God’s Righteousness Is Better Than We Could Ever Dream.

The Problem of Sin is worse than we thought, but God’s righteousness is better than we could ever dream.

Do you ever dream about what your life would look like if you had God’s righteousness flowing in every part of who you are?

(What is Righteousness? Doing right things, for the right reasons, at the right time.)

Relationships that are deep & rich

Living life without regret

Showing love to people that we love in the best possible ways

Seeing the people that we love flourish, as God’s righteousness flows through us

Having a pure, free and open relationship with God, that grows day by day

The Good News is that God’s righteousness is far better than i could ever dream.

Its an overwhelming goodness, and purity

Its the deepest love there is

Its beyond my words to describe, in part because I don’t even have all of the facts and information.

Paul desperately wanted to know God’s righteousness working throughout his life. He wanted to grow day by day. In Philippians 3:7-14, we see what the Holy Spirit gave Paul to write about not just knowing about God’s righteousness, but living and experiencing it as well.

Philippians 3:7 (HCSB)

7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ.

Why Count it all as Loss?

Do we have any accountants here today? Because this is accounting language that Paul is using

-profit and loss, what is the difference between the two sides, and hopefully your difference ends up on the side of profit.

It seems that Paul is doing some destructive accounting here.

He takes all of the good things that he has ever done, and moves them to the losses side.

At the end of the day, his entire life’s work is all in the loss side, and the only item in the profit side is Christ.

Why would he count everything that he had ever done in the loss category?

The answer will come in vs 8. There is an incredible value in knowing Christ Jesus.

Nothing else matters to Paul.

Put on your accounting hat and sum up your life? What is loss and what is gain? Can you see the value on Christ that Paul could see? (handout)

If we are describing our dream of righteousness, how do the things that we have done measure up? (goodness, peace, joy, rich relationships, etc)

My efforts certainly don’t add up to that dream. The best that I can do leaves me exhausted and unsatisfied. I think that its the same for Paul, maybe it's the same for you.

Philippians 3:8–9 (HCSB)

8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ —the righteousness from God based on faith.

Contrast: Our Righteousness vs. God’s Righteousness

There is a huge difference between me trying to do something right, and God doing something right. Our righteousness and God’s righteousness are not even comparable.

God’s Righteousness

It is an aspect of his character, and our sin limits our knowledge of Him.

the righteousness of God is related to the holiness of God as seen in the Old Testament law and ethical teachings of Jesus

The law is not God’s righteousness, but an expression of it. We see things like holiness, love, integrity and perfection in this expression.

What is Our Righteousness like? How does it compare to God’s

Ex: Our church youth group from time to time will play games that require currency, like “The Game of Life.”

The first time that we played the game one of the youth designed a currency for us.

We call it “Shafer Bucks” because we have Pastor Shafer’s picture on the currency.

But what if I took a stack of that money and went over to the store and tried to buy something with it?

They won’t accept that kind of currency.

Our righteousness is like Shafer Bucks. No matter how much of it we acquire, it doesn’t get us anything.

Isaiah 64:6 (HCSB)

6 All of us have become like something unclean, and all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment; all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.

Our righteousness, all of the good that we try to do are like a polluted garment, READ, unwearable because of contamination.

They say that the first step to beating a problem is admitting that there is a problem. When it comes to righteousness, we are the problem.