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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

John Diel

Righteousness:  What Does It Look Like?

Our theme this year in GYC Southwest is Christ our righteousness not I but Christ.

We would like to dig deeper into this theme called righteousness by faith.

Where I believe it was written in Spirit of Prophecy that not 1 in a hundred truly understands the principles of righteousness by faith.

We have speakers such as Doug Batchelor, Dwayne Lemon.

We also have speakers who have experienced righteousness by faith, like Sister Verna Santos, who had gotten out of the lifestyle, of alternative lifestyle, who no longer has a desire for the same-sex gender.

And I'm really excited with the lineup that we have.

But we're here at this moment, and I invite you to please bow your heads with me.

I'm gonna kneel down as we seek the Lord in prayer as we dive into the topic.

Our dear Father in heaven, we thank you so much, oh Lord, for an opportunity again to worship you.

Sometimes we make it a point that worship is not relational but worship is really an experience with you.

But Father, you know that we are nothing but dust, sinful human beings.

And so as we ask before we open your Word, we ask that you please cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

You forgive us from our sins and that you give us wisdom.

Open our hearts and minds to the message.

I pray, O Lord, that you would empty me of self, of self-dependence.

And I'm not asking that you just, that you only empower me.

Thank you for hearing and answering our prayer, for we ask in Jesus' name.

By the way, I forgot to put a little plug in.

You know, Pastor Lozano, when he was here and sharing testimonies, I said, man, they're really the Marines of mission work.

And I don't know how else I can promote it, but please come.

Come and maybe God is calling you to be 1 of those missionaries and He would put a burden upon you when you listen to the testimonies that He will be giving.

It only takes maybe 1 testimony to set that spark in our hearts and get the fire going.

Maybe you can search him more, but let's get to the message anyways.

Righteousness is 1 of those topics that is very, very, that has been, what's that?

Righteousness is just like perfection and there are a lot of misconceptions about it.

In the Bible it says in Psalm 37 verse 29, the righteous shall inherit the land and dwell therein forever.

Righteousness and being righteous is 1 of those things that Christians try to attain because righteousness is something that we need in order for us to be in heaven.

Righteousness is something that we had lost in Eden and in order for us to get back it is something that I must have and I need to have in order to be in heaven with God.

Also in 2nd Peter chapter 3 verse 13, if you have your Bibles with you turn with me there.

2nd Peter chapter 3 verse 13, the Bible says here, nevertheless we according to His promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The new earth and the new heaven that God promises to us is a place where in dwelleth righteousness.

It's a place where all the inhabitants are righteous.

And I don't know about you, but whenever I see my own righteousness and I compare it with maybe a person, especially Jesus Christ and His righteousness, I seem to have a sense of unbelongingness.

And so if we don't have righteousness, and The new heaven and the new earth is a place where in dwelleth righteousness.

If we're filled with unrighteousness, it would be a place of unhappiness for us.

So righteousness, what does it look like?

And that's what we're going to dive in today.

I hope that by the end of the service, we would remove some of the misconceptions on what righteousness is by looking at what righteousness looks like, and by God's grace, have an understanding on how to attain or receive this righteousness in God.

Let's turn our Bibles to Psalm 119 verse 172.

And in Psalm 119 verse 172, the Bible says, I feel like I'm not giving you enough time to go through your Bible, it's just I have a lot to cover and I want to make sure I cover everything so that There is no misconception after the presentation.

But in Psalm 119, verse 172, the Bible says, My tongue shall speak of thy word, for all thy commandments are righteousness.

The Bible speaks righteousness as equivalent to God's commandments.

As a matter of fact, I mean, what's this?

Righteousness is connected with the commandments of God or the law.

In fact, God's commandments are righteousness.

Let's turn our Bibles to 1st John chapter 5 verse 17.

And in 1st John chapter 5 verse 17, the Bible says here, all unrighteousness is sin and there is sin not unto death.

So by definition, sin is unrighteousness.

And we know from 1 John 3, verse 4 that sin is the transgression of the law.

If all unrighteousness is sin, then all unrighteousness must be transgression of the law.

If we flip that and say all righteousness then is keeping of the law.

A man asked him, Hey, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

However, misconception comes whenever we relate righteousness with keeping the commandments.

That's where we sometimes miss the point.

Whenever we say that, oh, righteousness is keeping the commandments, what we start to do is check myself whether I'm in line with the commandments of God.

And the way I would check myself is, you know, I would ask myself, is what I'm doing breaking the Sabbath?

Is hiking something that gets me too tired, therefore it's not resting, so am I breaking the Sabbath?

Is not giving tithe on my gross income, but rather net income, stealing.

And we start to have this long checklist and we say that righteousness is basically that thou shalt not.

Am I guilty of killing myself if I eat cheese?

And then we begin to have, I mean, we do have this long checklist.

And actually people come up, I mean, I don't know, people probably have come up to you and have come up to me and sometimes they ask whether what they're doing is in keeping with the commandments.

They want to make sure, you know, that they have the checklist.

There are people that have come up to me, what can we do during the Sabbath?

And oftentimes, we have misconceptions of what righteousness really is.

If we find something, and actually before I ask you something, and oftentimes when we have this view, what we do is if we see something in our lives that is not in line with the checklist that we have, what we do is we launch a campaign against whatever that thing is in our life and we strive to remove it from our lives and once we have removed it, we say, Oh, 1 more sin down, I'm more righteous.

Is righteousness merely an omission of sin?

Is righteousness merely removing something out of my life?

Is righteousness not killing, not stealing, not committing adultery, not having any idols, not coveting?

Many of us for a long time now have thought that that is righteousness.

And many of us are, maybe some of you here are striving to remove things out of your life.

Or maybe there are people here who sees many, many little things that I need to remove.

Righteousness: What Does It Look Like?

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