THE TROUBLE WITH BEING RIGHTEOUS
“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…” (Isaiah 64:6).
The subject of righteousness is very disturbing for a number of reasons. First of all, “righteousness” is not a word we use very much in our conversation and so we may struggle to define it. Then, when we do understand “righteousness” we feel very uncomfortable because, if we are honest, we don’t feel very righteous. And oddly enough, if you do feel righteous, you probably aren’t. More likely people would say you are “self-righteous.”
Jeff Bridges wrote, “Christians can never in themselves merit salvation through their personal holiness.” Our righteousness is like a filthy rag before a holy God. One of the early church fathers said, “Even our tears of repentance must be washed in the blood of Jesus.”
As post-modern Christians then, our response to the trouble of being righteous is to rely on grace for our salvation. Don’t worry about righteousness since you can’t earn it anyways. To preach righteousness is to promote a form of legalism, we might say. But that too is a misunderstanding of what it means to live the righteous life.
Is grace enough? To say that it isn’t is heresy. To accept the all sufficient grace of Jesus Christ and not be changed by it is also heresy or apostasy. To be apostate is a theological term that says “you have fallen away.” You have cheapened the free gift of God by treating it like a possession when it ought to possess you.
Isaiah looked ahead to the time when the Jews would live in captivity in a foreign land. He saw that their life with God, their spiritual walk, would be tripped up by the lifestyle of the Babylonians and by other Jews who would lose heart. To encourage the faithful in a strange land, Isaiah gave them the words of Isaiah 51 to remind them of the true nature of their righteousness and why they needed to hang on.
1. Pursue Righteousness
The LORD begins with a stern “listen to me” and uses this earnest appeal three times in speaking to Judah. “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the LORD…” (51:1). There are many voices in our heads, a cacophony of thoughts that pretend to teach us. The LORD says, stop listening to the skeptics and the mockers and even to your own heart – listen to me. If you pursue righteousness, listen to me!
What is righteousness? It can be defined as moral uprightness, as law abiding. When it is used in relationship to God it takes on its true meaning: “yearning to please God.” Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” (Mt 5:6). Blessed are those who ache to please God with their lives.
Now we know that we can never please God with our lives, with our actions, for they are just filthy rags before him. So how can we pursue this elusive righteousness? What does it look like?
a) It is lived by faith – We have the benefit of the NT to show us how righteousness is lived out. Isaiah is called the Romans of the OT and so we turn to Romans to help us. Paul professed, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘the righteous will live by faith’” (Ro 1:16-18).
As Paul would later describe it, we give up our filthy rags to clothe ourselves with Jesus. We don’t present our own righteousness to God, but we come before him wearing Jesus as our covering.
b) It is a change of behavior – If we have experienced the grace of Jesus Christ then there will be change in how we do life. Paul described this change, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (Ro 6:12-14).
To pursue a life of righteousness means that we seek ways in which we can use our lives for righteous work.
- The Rule by which we live is the Word of God
- The Example we follow is Jesus Christ
- The Test of our actions is how we glorify God and love our fellow believers.
c) It is worth losing everything for – Paul makes a beautiful confession concerning this loss when he said, “…I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Phil 3:8-9). To pursue righteousness may cost you everything but to gain Christ alone is worth the loss.
Now the Jews were facing a discouraging future of exile in Babylon. What they needed was hope as an incentive to continue pursuing a righteous life. Hope gives us an incentive to act. Hope helps us to leave what is comfortable and to go out and serve the LORD. So the LORD says:
“Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah who gave you birth. When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many” (51:1-2).
God reminds the Jews to consider their origin, to look at their past and judge for themselves if pursuing righteousness was worth it. Look what God could do with one man considered so old that he was almost dead, as the writer of Hebrews says it. And look at Sarah who was way beyond child-bearing years – to these two God promised a son, and not just a son, but many children. God acted faithfully in the past and that is proof that God will be faithful to the righteous in the future.
He even promises a time of refreshment and that their labors for righteousness (in Christ) will be fruitful. In verse 3 God says that dry desert lands will be like Eden, a great garden, and that there will be singing again in Zion. Once again we have the promise that hard times will not last forever. It is terribly difficult to live righteously in a nation like Canada. But our LORD is faithful and we should not be discouraged. God will accomplish his plan for the righteous.
2. Why Righteousness will endure
Right now it doesn’t seem like it’s worth it to live a righteous life. Very few are doing it, even in the church. Our neighbors live by the principle of I-D-O-L that we talked about last week. The influence of our generation is to live as individuals, to rest on our deeds, to gain opulence and to live for leisure time. What is the value of a righteous life when others get to enjoy this life regardless of their actions?
This is what the LORD says, “Listen to me, my people; hear me, my nation: The law will go out from me; my justice will become a light to the nations. My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way…” (51:4-5).
Our impression may be that the Church in North America is on the decline, that Christianity is losing ground. Brothers and sisters, how can that be? Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It starts out small and then continues to grow into a large tree. Taken for its analogy this means that the Kingdom can never decline. Salvation is spreading throughout the world. What we do not hear is that thousands are proclaiming Jesus as their Lord. We don’t hear it because the media does not report anything positive but only war, scandal, what Hollywood stars are doing, and so on.
I read Joel Rosenberg’s book Epicenter recently and he claims that Muslims are hungering for the truth of Jesus Christ. When we were in Turkey we discovered that the only thing Turks knew about Christianity was that Jesus rose from the dead and the terror of the Crusades in the Dark Ages. What if they were introduced to the Jesus of the Gospel as you and I know it?
Righteousness and salvation are nearly synonymous in these verses. The interesting thing is that Isaiah writes these words in the prophetic perfect tense. That means he is so certain that it will occur it is as if it has already happened. Salvation will be known all over the earth.
“Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail” (51:6). Don’t evaluate the things of God by the things of this earth. Don’t evaluate spiritual, eternal things by temporal and earthly things. That’s what the LORD is saying. The things of this earth will wear out like an old coat; it will be folded up and put on a shelf.
Peter challenges us saying, “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives…” (2 Pe 3:11). He goes on to say that we look forward to a new heaven and a new earth which will be the home of righteousness. Why? Because righteousness will be the only thing that survives the demolition of the old world. It is eternal in nature and the only thing worth pursuing.
3. Hold on to Righteousness
In the meantime we live in a world that is hostile to righteousness. To do what is right in the eyes of the LORD is not the popular choice. So God calls his people to attention again with another “Listen to me.”
“Hear me, you who know what is right, you people who have my law in your hearts; Do not fear the reproach of men or be terrified by their insults. For the moth will eat them up like a garment; the worm will devour them like wool. But my righteousness will last forever, my salvation through all generations” (51:7-8).
People who have the law of God in their hearts have more than an intellectual knowledge of God. The Word of God is part of their experience. Later in v. 16 the LORD says “I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand…” This is a reminder of Moses’ experience on Mount Sinai when God passed in front of him and to protect Moses God placed him in a crevice and covered him with his hand. So powerful is the Word of God that it is like a great covering, the hand of God protecting you from the full extent of trials and troubles.
So we don’t need to fear the insults of mere people. Isaiah uses the word “men” here in a derogatory sense. They are weak and temporal. But these same men are the ones who make us doubt our faith. Jesus has not come back yet. For two thousand years we have been waiting. They observe that the sun comes up every day the way it has every day for centuries. There is no sign of change. So live for today. Why hope for tomorrow? Why wait for the promises of God? Live now and take what you can get. It’s enough to make us cower and hide our righteousness, the very character of Christ.
Charles Spurgeon comment on this though, he said: “I cannot imagine a true man saying, ’I love Christ, but I do not want others to know that I love him, lest they should laugh at me.’ That is a reason to be laughed at, or rather, to be wept over. Afraid of being laughed at? Oh sir, this is indeed a cowardly fear!" (Charles Spurgeon, The Secret of Love to God).
Hold on to righteousness in the face of opposition.
4. The Hope of the Righteous
Isaiah responds to the LORD’s calls to listen. He calls on God to awaken, as if from sleeping. But in the biblical understanding God does not sleep. What Isaiah means here is “Remember!” But even that is not necessary for God does not forget. Using the words of our feeble language Isaiah is asking God to recall how he acted in the past.
“Awake, awake! Clothe yourself with strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days gone by, as in generations of old. Was it not you who cut Rahab to pieces, who pierced that monster through?” (51:9). Remember, Isaiah pleads with God, what you did to Egypt. That is who Rahab was and the monster was Pharaoh. We can gather that Isaiah is referring to the Exodus story by v. 10 and the crossing of the Red Sea. This is the great story of deliverance that Israel always falls back on. When they want to remember how mighty there God is they think of how the LORD defeated Egypt.
At that time they wondered how they would escape. It was too much for them to comprehend; they were overwhelmed! Nothing is too much for the LORD though – He is able to save and He will save the righteous. So this captivity in Babylon is not too much either. There is no need to be overwhelmed. Is anything in our life too much for our God to handle? Is there any reason we should feel overwhelmed? God is able to deliver us from any trouble we experience.
We have the hope of our own history to encourage us. As Israel was delivered from Egypt, we also were delivered from our slavery to sin. Paul described it like this: “…the gift of God is not like the result of one man’s sin: the judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Ro 5:16-17).
We, together with the children of Israel, will enter the holy City of Zion with singing. Our hope is established on the fact of the historical cross of Christ. He died, He rose, He is coming back again. Take out any of these truths and it all falls apart. The same is true of salvation: Salvation without the life of Righteousness is incomplete. Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness.
In a recent NCAA cross-country championship held in Riverside, California, 123 of the 128 runners missed a turn. One competitor, Mike Delcavo, stayed on the 10,000 meter course and began waving for fellow runners to follow him. Delcavo was able to convince only four other runners to go with him. Asked what his competitors thought of his mid-race decision not to follow the crowd, Delcavo responded, "They thought it was funny that I went the right way." Delcavo was one who ran correctly. In the same way, our goal is to run correctly; to finish the race marked out for us by Christ. We can rejoice over those who have courage to follow, ignoring the laughter of the crowd. As the Apostle Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:7-8 "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness."
AMEN
