NIV
2 Corinthians 5:14 For Christ's love compels
us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves
but for him who died for them and was raised again. 16 So from now
on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded
Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us
the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the
world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. And he has
committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore
Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We
implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made
him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.
One
Sunday morning, the pastor noticed little Alex was staring up at the large
plaque that hung in the foyer of the church. The plaque was covered with names,
and small American flags were mounted on either side of it. The seven-year-old
had been staring at the plaque for some time, so the pastor walked up, stood
beside him and said quietly, "Good morning, Alex." "Good
morning, Pastor," replied the young man, still focused on the plaque.
"Pastor McGhee, what is this?" Alex asked. "Well, son, it's a
memorial to all the men and women who have died in the service." Soberly,
they stood together, staring at the large plaque. Little Alex's voice was
barely audible when he finally managed to ask, "Which one, the 8:30 or 11
service?
What is
righteousness? What does it mean to be righteous? God looked upon the earth in
the time of Noah and found Noah to be righteous. In the time of Abraham, God
looked upon the earth and found Abraham to be righteous and decided to make a
great nation from him. What does it mean to be righteous? Noah was considered
righteous by God, as was Abraham. But what does that mean for you and me? In
some ways that is the Holy Grail that for our lives as Christians. It is the
thing we believe we are striving for as Christians, to be righteous in the eyes
of God. But is it achievable by our good works and our desire to be good
disciples?
David is
a righteous person in the eyes of God and like Jesus, is highly favored. David
starts out as a God loving person and never leaves that understanding in his
life even when he allows his humanness to overwhelm him. So what does it mean
to be righteous and how do we achieve that in our lives? Well the difficult
news is that nothing that we can do can ever be enough to qualify for
righteousness status. God looks within us at our hearts to make that
determination. There I believe is the answer to the question.
So what
am I saying? We can never do enough good things in the world to be righteous.
We can never help enough homeless people, never feed enough, never clothe those
who are cold enough to be righteous to God. There are lots of people who do
great work at helping the poor, reaching out to those in need and working to
heal or prevent illness. We should by the very definition of discipleship be at
the forefront of those efforts. When I came to this church I heard about all
the mission work we do and I continue to push that we do even more to help
those in need in our community and our world. We need to be good people sharing
the abundance of God with the world around us. I am so proud of the mission
team who has decided that this season of Lent and Easter we are going to be
helping children.
So if
being good is not enough, what is the answer? Well I have already given you a
hint, it is our heart. David loved God with all that he could. Even when his
humanness caused him to sin with Bathsheba, his heart for God never wavered and
once his sin was challenged, he went to God in earnest prayer asking for
forgiveness. Abraham followed God even though Abraham had no idea where they
were going believing and trusting in God with all his heart.
I
remember some years ago, the congregation I was serving, wanted to give food
away as an act of God’s love. But there was a snag in the work toward that.
They were worried about giving the food away and doing anything that would
offend anyone. We agreed though that to give it away without involving God in the
process was being good without being righteous. God looks in our hearts and
looks at what we love. When we love our neighbors in unconditional ways, we
love in the way that God loves. When we love God with our hearts, we place God
above everything else in our lives. When we focus on loving one another all the
good things become fruit of that love.
What that
means is that the acts we do to help the homeless, to feed the hungry and to
clothe those who are cold are good things. But in order for them to be righteous
things, we must do them with our hearts on God. God is the source of love and
abundance and when we do things not for the benefit, we receive, though we do
benefit, but we do them because our love of God overflows into them. Am I
making sense here today? When we love God with all that we are, we are obedient
to God in all that we do. When we look at the world in the way that God looks
at the world, when we reach out to each other in the way that God reaches out
to us, God sees righteousness.
Who are
we today? Where are our hearts centered today? We have all come to this place
because we believe that it is what we should do. But what if we have come to
this place out of a deep sense of love for God, so much love that we want to
worship God and thank God for all that God is doing for us. When our hearts are
directed to God, everything in our lives is directed at God. When our loves are
directed to God we will not only desire to do good things in our world to make
it better, we will feel an overwhelming pull to do those things just as David
felt an overwhelming need to go face Goliath. Paul says that we become
ambassadors to Christ when we have that kind of love in our hearts. Paul tells
us that Christ died so that we might have no sin in us and we could become
righteous to God. Are you ready to be a righteous person to God? Give God the
one thing you have to give, your hearts. Let us together become a church where
the righteousness of God thrives within us and its fruit will spread out into
the world around us.
Charles
Colson, in Loving God, tells the story of Telemachus, a fourth century
Christian. He lived in a remote village, tending his garden and spending much
time in prayer when one day he heard God tell him to go to Rome. And so he did.
He arrived in the excitement of Rome and heard the gladiators saluting Caesar
and saying, “We who are about to die salute you.” Realizing that they would
fight to the death, he shouted, “In the Name of Christ, stop!” But no-one heard
him.
So he
pushed his way through the crowd and dropped down to the floor of the colosseum
and shouted again, “In the Name of Christ, stop!” The gladiators and crowd
thinking it was part of the show laughed. But when the realized it was not the
laughter turned to anger. One of the gladiators took his sword as He was
pleading with them to stop and plunged it into him. As he lay dying, you could
hear him still pleading, “In the Name of Christ, stop!”
Then a
strange thing happened. Silence overtook the colosseum and way up in the upper rows
a man stood and made his way to the exit. Soon others followed until all of the
colosseum was empty. The year was BC 391 and that was the last battle fought in
the colosseum. Men no longer killed each other for the entertainment of the
crowd because of one small voice that spoke truth in God’s name.
Are you
ready to be righteous before God?
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