We'll go a little bit further into this sermon on the Mount and talk about the people that Jesus Christ is welcoming into his kingdom. Remember, that's his message. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom literally is near. We need to repent. He says and enter the kingdom of God by believing in Christ, believing in the gospel. And as he's looking out along the crowds, he sees all of these people. And unlike preachers today, thankfully, Jesus Christ is able to read into the hearts and minds of people. And he reads in the hearts of many people a great dissatisfaction. I remember when we were doing the generations and community sermon series, we tried, if you remember, to pick a song that caught the ethos, the feeling, the spirit of each generation. When it came to the mind generation to baby boomers, I had to pick those songs and I was kind of torn between two of them. One of them was Bob Dylan's The Times. They are changing, son by Peter Paul and Mary, who most people think are three saints in the Catholic church. They are three people in the Bible, but they're actually a folk group back before electricity was invented. And so we chose that because it was better background music to be honest with, but it wasn't really the song that caught the ethos of our generation. That song is ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as the number two rock and roll song of all time written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. I can't get no satisfaction. Horrible English. I can't get no. That'll get you an F on any English exposition you write in school, but it does reflect a deep yearning. It's a song of rebellion. It was a song about elicit sex to be honest with you. And the distrust in gross and unkind consumerism and the frustrations of young people and trusting in the status quo and looking for satisfaction deep within. And I try and I try, but I can't get no satisfaction. And that is true of many people, many people who enter into life or unsatisfied. In fact, with no pun intended and no irreverence to the scripture, that song I can't get no satisfaction might well have been written by Solomon who talked that way in the book of Ecclesiastes. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear satisfied with hearing. Again, I saw vanity under the sun. One person who has no other, not son or brother, and there was no end to all his toil, but his eyes are never satisfied with riches. So they never says, for whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure, this also, I think, is vanity and an unhappy business. Because he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, and he who loves wealth will not be satisfied with his income. This also is the chasing after wind. If a father has 100 children and lives that many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life's good things. And he also has no burial. I say that a stillborn child is better off than he is. For all the toil of man is for his mouth, and yet his soul is never satisfied.
One of the great promises of God through the prophets, through the psalmist, is that he will give us inner satisfaction. Psalm 145, you open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living creature. Jeremiah 31, for I will satisfy the weary soul and every languishing soul, I will refresh. Psalm 103, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of his benefits. He who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies your life with good things, so that your mouth is renewed like the eagles. This satisfaction that God promises, in the Old Testament in particular, always comes about only one way, only through something called righteousness. The Hebrew word said dakka. It means justice, righteousness. It means to be straight and upright, straight in the terms of morally exact and morally honest. It can mean the adherence to a standard of norm that is good. It points to the quality and fairness for all men both under God and under the law. It always has to do with something legal. The idea is that God has, as one of his attributes, one of his character traits righteousness. The Lord is righteous in all his deeds and upright in all his doings, the Bible says. And that righteousness of God is reflected in his laws and statutes and principles, both the laws of nature and the moral laws of the Ten Commandments and the laws that we have in the statutes and ordinances that help us live together, the law is communicating the righteousness of God. And that law, if it is followed, always leads to a blessing, to the satisfaction of people. And therefore it's a duty of men, to acquire it of God, to man, that men and women are righteous. In fact, these three great Old Testament scholars, one of them that we just mentioned earlier, Laird Harris and Gleason Archer and Bruce Waltke, describe in their theological word book of the Old Testament that righteousness is trying to preserve the peace and prosperity of the community by fulfilling the commandments and laws of God in regard to other people. In the supreme sense, the righteous person delivers the poor and orphans, helps the blind along the way, supports the weak, is a father to the follow this and a provider to the poor. The righteous always always obey God's law and conform to God's nature, having mercy for the needy and helpless. And the source of all of this righteous conduct is to be stole of God's judgments upon a people that leads to their righteous conduct that blesses all involved. It's a perfect and simple concept and the prophets in particular are full of the exhortation for us, you and me, to pursue righteousness. He has told you, oh man, what is good? And what does the Lord require you but to do justice, to love kindness or mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? One prophet would say, let justice roll down like waters and righteousness I can ever flowing stream. Isaiah would say, is this not the fast that I choose to lose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house when you see the naked to cover him and not to hide yourself from your own human flesh? You shall break forth in your light, like the dawn, and in your healing, that shall their spring up speedily, your righteousness, which shall go before you and the Lord of glory, and become your rear guard. Righteousness is something that the Lord has built into his world and when it is lacking in any place for any people, for any amount of time, those people are deeply dissatisfied. Righteousness please is gone, satisfies humanity, and it gives to the human soul a great feeling that all things are well and good. So Jesus Christ, as he looks out on this massive groups of people, he begins to see the continuum of humanity. From those who bring very little to nothing into the kingdom of God, they come to him, maybe no worse than anybody else, but certainly more spiritually needy, those who are poor in spirit, those who are broken by sorrow, those who are lowly and oppressed. Then he sees a middle group of people, those who are hunger and thirsting for righteousness, those who are merciful, those who have as a great desire in their life to be pure in heart and to serve God with earnest righteous behavior. If finally you see he's perhaps on the far end of one continuum, those who bring a good deal into the kingdom of God, they are peacemakers and willing to suffer for righteousness and even be persecuted for Jesus Christ, but all of them share one thing. From the one we think brings the least of the kingdom of God to the one that we think brings the most, they all are welcome into the kingdom of God through one way and one person, Jesus Christ the righteous one. And each one of them is promised a great blessing for what they bring to the kingdom of God, whether it's their brokenness or their spiritual efforts or here in the middle group, they're yearning that things be right in God's world and with God's people. You know, some of these people, as we learn about them, we're going to say maybe not out loud, but in a heart, I'm not so sure I want those people to be in the kingdom of God and in the church. Well, the point is they're going to be here. Jesus Christ is inviting them into himself and into the church and into the kingdom of God and that means folks that they will bring with them a lot of baggage as we all do and their desires for righteousness may not always match up to your perspective of what righteousness is. They may think that some of the things that you think are wrong are actually right and they may think that some of the things that you think are right are actually wrong. But Jesus promises to both sides of this righteous debate that they will be satisfied. He offers to them what these be attitudes are offering to everybody the free availability and access to the kingdom of God, which means the rule of the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. So let's do with this little bit of attitude what we're doing with all the rest of them. Find out who these people are, who are hungry and thirsting for righteousness and how the kingdom of God will bless them, how they will be satisfied with Christ and His reign. First of all, who are those people who hunger and thirst for righteousness? They have a deep yearning and insatiable yearning Jesus as they are they are hungry to taste of God's justice and God's rightness. Their throats spiritually speaking are caked with the dust of a dirty corrupted world and they are thirsting to drink from the fountain of purity and goodness. They want in the Greek decalsune, the Greek version of the Hebrew set a car. They want things to be straight, right, just, fair, upright, pure. They want life to be as they somehow think in the back of their mind and deep down in the pit of their conscience to be the way ought to be even though they know it's not that way. What is this righteousness they're hungry for? Well, first of all, it could be a private issue and more than likely it begins there. They are burdened with great guilt. They have failed. No one else may know about this but they know that God knows and they have a feeling that the man Jesus who's preaching to them can see into their souls as well. Could be that they're full of shame. Could be that they're worried that they're not going to go to heaven. They may be spiritually along so far as they realize that in order to go to heaven, you have to be right with God and keeping the ten commandments and living by the golden rule of the rabbis and doing all the right religious things is not enough and they still feel after all that effort that they are not right with God and they are the sensitive souls who regardless of whatever they do, they never feel they're ready to come to God and worthy to enter the kingdom of heaven. They're the people that say either with their mouths or with their souls, well, when I get my thing cleaned up then God will accept me but they always feel unclean. It's a private thing or it could be they're yearning for personal righteousness. A great wrong has been done to them by some person or some organization or some institution and they're not wanting revenge, they're wanting reconciliation, they're wanting justice, they're wanting closure. Dallas Willard uses the example of a couple whose child was brutally murdered by someone and now that person is out of prison, set free and laughing that he was able to work the system to his own benefit. They, Dallas Willard says, will go through their life looking for justice to be rendered or it could be thirdly that the righteousness they're looking for is public. It's a political, cultural and legal sort of yearning that they have. Here's where I beg for your indulgence because this is where Jesus Christ opens up the idea of righteousness much more broadly than you and I are comfortable with here this morning. These people are civil rights workers who long for the day that race is no longer an obstacle to justice and human dignity. They're the feminists who are sick and tired of men who treat women as inferior objects of pleasure or ridicule. The ecologist frustrated that others cannot see what she sees, that we are polluting ourselves to death. The marine biologist whose passion in life is to save the whales and preserve the dolphins and replenish the sea, the housewife with a great burden to end human trafficking of domestic and sexual slavery. The politician who believes that both abortion and the right to vary anyone you want to of any sex, of any gender, is a human right that should be defended. The man running for office because he believes that it is unrighteous to saddle our children with unimaginable death that they will never be able to replay and therefore impoverished their lives for the whole of their being. A young lady who chooses to teach in inner city school because she's committed to the poor receiving a decent education. Those who stand silently outside the abortion clinic and pray for those entering in because they carry the guilt of a bad decision made in an hour of desperation years ago that haunts their conscience to this day. The welfare worker who thinks that wealth needs to be redistributed through taxes, taking from the rich and giving to the poor, those who advocate for rights for illegal immigrants, the Peace Corps workers and Somalia, the aged Zionists still committed to hunting down to the day of his death every Holocaust perpetrator of war crimes he confined and punishing them. The actors who's proactive in promoting same-sex rights and partner benefits and the list goes on and on and on and you'll say, wait a minute. They'll say, Mike Milton, get up here and replace this guy, he's become a flaming liberal. I didn't say all their causes were righteous but that's what they think is righteousness and that's what's in their hearts as they look at Jesus Christ. Do you know that today my friends, there are people in churches around the country, evangelical Christians thanking God for public health care because that's the right thing to do because public health care they say is a human right and there are other Christians perhaps in the same denomination in a church, a couple blocks away, thanking God that he'll someday get rid of public health care and take things back to the way it ought to be. Isn't it amazing that God's people, even in God's house, cannot always agree on what's right now? Of course, we know what's right. Why can't the rest of Christ and them in the world agree with us?
Well, I want to read something to you. I know some of you say, you know pastor you do these things just to get our blood pressure up and you're right, it's just a sanctified way of being mean but I really don't. I want us to be into to broaden the way we think so that we're open to more people coming to our church. By the way, hang with me this sermon has a very conservative evangelical happy ending, okay? But I want you to listen to what one man who calls himself an evangelical says about his frustration with a lack of justice and righteousness in the church. He said my disillusionment was intensified by what was happening in the Christian community during the 1980s and 1990s. A large number of both Protestant and Catholic leaders had aligned themselves with a neo-conservative political ideology trumpeting what they called conservative family values but minimizing biblical community values. They supported wars of choice, defended torture, opposed environmental protection and seemed to care more about protecting the rich from the taxes than liberating the poor from poverty or minorities from racism. They spoke against big government as if it was bad yet they seem to think that big military and big business were inherently good. They wanted to protect life human life inside the womb but they didn't seem to care much about human life in the slums or in prisons or in nations that they consider their enemies. They loved to paint gay people as a threat to marriage seemingly to miss the irony that heterosexual people were damaging marriage at a furious pace without any help from gay couples at all. They consistently relegated females to second-class status, often while covering up their fellow males when they fell into scandal of community criminal abuse. They interpreted the Bible in favor of the government of Israel and marginalized Palestinians and even before September 11th I feared that through their influence Muslims would be cast as the new scapegoats and targets of a scary kind of religiously inspired bigotry. You know I read that and the hair goes up on the back of my neck and I'm saying where did this maniac get these ideas? But those are the eyes of another evangelical pastor looking at the same world I look at and both of us praying to the same Jesus Christ that righteousness prevailed. He is dissatisfied with the way the world is and so am I and that is what this little be attitude is all about. Complex, you bet it is. We do not know what righteousness is every time. Good guys are bad guys probably not. Both people each seeking in their own understanding what the right thing is. Now this be attitude points to Jesus Christ as they all do and the truth of the matter is only Jesus Christ can fix America's healthcare problems. Only Jesus Christ can do the things right in a culture that's gone bad. Only Jesus Christ can remove racism, eliminate poverty, protect babies, care for women, relieve our debt, provide for our needs, heal the sick, heal our deep divisions, stand up for the poor, defend the fatherless in the widow, save the whales and save our souls.
Only Jesus Christ can make a person right with God and individuals rightly related to one another and a nation righteous before God. Even though all these people dissatisfied with the non-righteous world, even though they don't know it, what they're really yearning for is Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. See, they're not able at this point to verbalize that. They just come to Jesus Christ with this great anger and angst and frustration and they're saying this is horrible. You know how you know this is happening when you hear someone say, I don't know why a good God would let such and such happen in the world. I don't know why he'd let evil do these things. I don't know why he'd let terrorists do these things. I don't know why he gave us that president. I don't know why they voted for that law. I don't know why he doesn't stop X, Y or Z. That is the mark of those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And I say even though we don't know it at the time, what we're looking for is the righteous one.
Blessed, happy, are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. How are these people going to be satisfied? How are all these diverse views of what's right and wrong, politically correct and politically wrong, moral and immoral, good for mankind, good for the country, bad for people, bad for nation, how are all of these things going to congeal and to one congruent system of righteousness in Jesus Christ. Well, let me tell you, through five steps. Five steps into the righteousness of Christ that satisfies the human soul and will someday satisfy the human race. Step number one is an imputed righteousness. The righteousness of God revealed and applied to the human soul. You see, that's the great theme of the book of Romans. The righteousness of God has been revealed. In fact, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of this gospel. It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes first the Jew and then the Greek for in it, the righteousness of God has been revealed from faith to faith. As the Bible says, the righteous man shall live by faith. In fact, Romans begins with that and each one of the sections of Romans, all of its different sections, are different manifestations of the righteousness of God revealed and then applied to mankind. And Paul ends that magnificent epistle, Romans with this statement, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, not a matter of secondary issues, the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And Paul says, this righteousness begins to be revealed and applied in five ways, first, through imputed righteousness to an individual. The person standing before Jesus Christ, through the gift and the work of the Holy Spirit, eventually comes to say, wait a minute, before I worry about saving the whales, saving women from abuse, saving infants in the room and making sure that everybody gets health care, I better do the first thing first and that is to deal with the fact that I am not right with God, that there is evil in me and in every other person and that's why there's unrighteousness in the world. It's the Holy Spirit's effort to convert someone, to bring them to repentance of their unrighteousness and faith in Christ the righteous one. And then an amazing thing happens, a divine transfer. Our sins are imputed or credited to Jesus Christ, all of our personal unrighteousness is laid on Christ and His righteousness, His personal righteousness, as the sinless righteousness is imputed or credited in laid on me. I give Christ my sin, He gives me His righteousness, He is condemned on the cross, I am justified in God, He dies, I live then we come together and live our life in eternity in the righteous kingdom of the sun. It has to begin there folks, the solution to unrighteousness in the world is you. Every single one of you, it will never come about until you're right with God through Jesus Christ because until that you carry with you. I know perhaps unknowingly but you carry with you an unrighteous spirit that can never do the right thing ultimately. But when Jesus Christ invades the life and the Holy Spirit converts this all and God transforms the man from the inside out all of the sudden the kingdom of God comes and the righteousness of God begins to be displayed in your life and in mine. Step one and imputed righteousness from God through Jesus Christ. Step two and infused righteousness through the indwelling Holy Spirit. There's a difference. The one is a legal standing, the changes are character, the other is the Holy Spirit moving in to change our lives and infuse righteousness through the indwelling Holy Spirit which results in an infusion of practical righteousness. We practice the right things. Listen to Titus as Paul talks about this. For the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled upright or literally righteous and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the puring of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify Himself for people for His own possession who are zealous to do good deeds. Now there is the transforming power of the infused righteousness of the Holy Spirit. Not only are we declared to be right with God, He begins this Holy Spirit to help us act in a right manner towards God another. It takes on an interpersonal dimension, how we deal with other people and it takes on a world paradigm, how we look at the world and what's right and what's wrong. The third step is what we might call an institutional righteousness. These justified and spirit-filled people who are growing in holiness now step out into the arenas of their life, their families, their churches, their communities, their workplaces and their nation and they begin to say, wait a minute, there is such a thing as structural evil. There is an institutional lack of justice that the laws of the state are stacked against these kinds of people. The practices of business are not just and fair towards this kind of people. We're living only for ourselves. We are not loving our neighbors ourselves. We are not living by what God told Cain that we are our brothers keeper and therefore we go to where we go to work and where we go to school, where we worship and where we live and we begin to change the structures of our life to be more righteous, just, fair and upright. We begin to be concerned about the whole structure of life. An interesting fact of history that no one with a fair mind could deny that everywhere the gospel has taken the church, life for people has gotten better. The condition of children has vastly improved. The status of women is raised to one of dignity and honor. Slavery comes to an end followed eventually by the end of racism. Civil rights are instituted as basic human rights, right to life, the sanctity of marriage, the freedom of speech and religion, recourse to course, and rule of law with fairness and equity for every person under the law. You know, you don't read about these things in an Islamic country. There's no such thing as human rights in Iran or in Cairo, Egypt, or in Pakistan. We don't worry about the status of women and children in communist China for crying out loud, it's horrible for the women and children there. It's only where the West is able to bring its gospel influence because the gospel is conquered the West, the church has Christianized the West. And in its background, these simple things that you and I take for granted, the man is innocent until proven guilty who says so the Bible does. The people I've certain and the animal rights by their creator who says so, the Bible says so. The justice is the duty of the state who says so, Romans 13 does. It's where Christ goes with his kingdom that institutional righteousness begins to grow and people who are on the short end of the stick begin to be satisfied. Righteousness exalts a nation, Proverbs, but sin is a disgrace to any people. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people who may have chosen to be His heritage. After institutional righteousness comes international righteousness, as Jesus Christ goes out to conquer the world through the institutions that resource His church who take out this message of the sermon on the mountain, the kingdom of God who step into Indonesia, who step into China, who step into sub-Sahara Africa, who sneak into the 1040 window and say the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe in the gospel. If you won't believe that, I encourage you to take a trip to Indonesia, to take a trip to communist China, to go to sub-Sahara Africa as I have many times and see how the gospel is transforming an entire nation's way of thinking about right and wrong and God-ed-men sin and salvation. In all of those places, with all of their poverty and violence and unrighteousness, the Church of Jesus Christ is growing in leaps and bounds. And what is soon to follow is a righteousness that will improve their lives. Will it ever occur perfectly in this life? No. Because as soon as Jesus Christ pushes the frontiers of righteousness forward to the next frontier, there's something on the back and falling back into unrighteousness and away from Christ. And so he's always fighting on two fronts. Jesus Christ is fighting in Africa to bring a nation, a continent to Christ. He's fighting in America to bring one back to Jesus Christ because they are becoming more righteous and we are becoming more unrighteous because they're embracing the Savior and we're discarding him. This mighty hero of God is always fighting left and right in within his own circles and outside of his church to bring us back to righteousness and someday when only he knows right time, this conflict will come to an end. And there will be finally and fifthly an indesolable righteousness because the book of Revelation says now the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever. And he was seeded on the throne, said to me, behold, now I'm making all things new. And he said, write this down for these words, a trust worthy and true. It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, to the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. To one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, for sorcerers, idolaters, all liars, the unrighteous, their portion will be in the lake of fire that burns forever. The second death and they will have no part in the kingdom of God. Jesus Christ is coming for a final day of restitution and recompense. He's coming on some day and time when what will appear to be the end of our history as we know it. But really the beginning of an eternity with God and he will bring righteousness to its great and final conclusion. John and writing about it in the book of Revelation says that when that day happens, all the angels and saints from the Old Testament knew and from all over the world, people from every kindred nation and tribe and tongue will sing this song, great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations. Who will not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy, all the nations will come and bow down before you because your righteous acts have been revealed. We're worried today about healthcare and we should be. We're worried about the millions of innocent children in the womb and we should be. And we want racism and poverty the end and they should end. We want the government to do right. We want institutions to be just. We want people to be kind and fair. We want to feel clean inside and right with God and we should. And I'm here to tell you that Jesus Christ gives us a promise. You will be happy. You who want these things because in me and in the presence of the kingdom at hand, all these things will be satisfied. We'll take time and maybe the right ending will not be what we think ought to be done today but Jesus Christ is in control and he does all things well. He is the righteous one. In fact, he's the only one in the universe along with his father and spirit who know the right thing to do all the time with every person everywhere and that truth will unfold itself as it is. And we will be satisfied. Let's pray. Father, there is in each one of us this very Beatitude you're talking about, things that we think are wrong, things that need to be set right. So we turn to you for an imputed and infused and institutional international for an indesolable righteousness that only your son can bring to us. We look forward to the day when we enter the city of God, a righteous place for men made right with you through Jesus. Between now and then we ask for your grace to continue to work for what is right, to be kind and patient with people who think that our right is wrong and where we think that their right is wrong. We claim this promise that you've given us, this promise in Psalm 107 about leading your people through life in the world. He led them by a straight way until they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men, for he satisfies the longing soul and the hungry soul he fills with good things. Your kingdom come, Lord God, and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, usher in your kingdom of righteousness, correct us and humble us and use us to work with the Holy Spirit to that end. Bring us first of all this morning, each one of us, to a saving faith in Jesus Christ that his righteousness might be given to us. Help us even as I pray, Lord, to repent of our unrighteousness and sin, to turn in faith to Jesus Christ and to ask him to take us by the gift of his Holy Spirit into the kingdom of heaven and to begin to do his righteous work in us. And when all of the world is right with the Father, we will give thanks to you, Jesus Christ, for all you have done. Great and mighty is the Lord, for his righteous acts have been revealed to the children of men. And we praise you for this. Look forward to this process of righteousness unfolding and to life with you in the right way and in the right place and the city of God yet to come. And we ask and pray all this in your righteous name, the name of Jesus, our Lord, amen.