“How to Pursue
Righteousness”
TEXT: Romans 9:30-33 – Preaching: Pastor Stephen
Magee –
REVIEW
1. The Law of the Mind Versus the Law of Sin: In the earlier chapters of Romans, Paul tells us that there is a battle within us between our best intentions and indwelling sin. The bully of our sinful flesh is mightier than the best intentions of our mind informed by God’s law. Without reinforcements from outside us, we will not win this battle.
2. The Law of the Spirit of Life: Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, there is great help for Christians from outside us. The Holy Spirit has come with great resources of life. Our God is at work within us both to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Because of the purposes of God the Father, the righteous life and death of God the Son, and the great power and love of God the Holy Spirit, God’s good purposes for His beloved elect will be accomplished.
TODAY’S
PASSAGE:
Romans
9:30-33 30 What shall we say then? That
Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness,
even the righteousness of faith; 31
but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the
law of righteousness. 32 Why?
Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law.
For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.
33 As it is written: "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling
stone and rock of offense, And whoever believes on Him will not be put to
shame."
What About
Israel?
The
question of the salvation of Israel as the elect nation of God has been Paul’s
concern throughout this ninth chapter.
We don’t care as much as we should about the great principles of truth
that are so clearly revealed in God’s Word.
We are frequently much more interested in the specific plan of God for a
person or group that we love. In the
case of Paul, his heart longs for some good blessing to come to Israel. Yet he must bow before the plan of God who
will save only a portion of the elect nation.
This saved remnant is the true Israel within Israel.
The
irony of all of this is that some of those who are not elect appear to have
been seeking hard after righteousness, but they have not attained it. On the other hand, a very large number of
people who were apparently not seeking righteousness at all have found it. As we saw last week from Hosea, some pagan
Gentiles are now in, and some Jews, according to Isaiah, are out.
Gentiles who
did not pursue righteousness…
Let’s
take a look at some specific individuals in the Bible in order to explore
today’s message. The first is an unnamed
Gentile woman in Matthew 15 and Mark 7 who finds Jesus in the region of Tyre
and Sidon. She searches Him out because
she believes that He can heal her daughter.
This woman is very determined.
She falls at his feet and keeps asking Jesus to cast the demon out of
her daughter. Jesus rebuffs her, and in
doing so seems to draw out of her desperation a great display of faith.
The
Lord is clear about the fact that she is a Gentile, and that His ministry at
this point is to Jews. He uses what
seems like a very demeaning illustration suggesting that because she is a
Gentile, she is like a dog when compared to the children of the kingdom, the
Jews. She does not deny Jesus’
assessment at all. In fact she develops
the story further to make a great statement of faith. The little dogs around the table eat up the
crumbs that the children drop. Even a
crumb of blessing from Jesus will be enough for a great healing of her
daughter. Jesus commends this woman’s
great faith, and her daughter is healed.
This
distraught mother was surely not an expert in Old Testament law. She does not appear to be pursuing
righteousness in a way that would have been acceptable to any Jew. But she is pursuing Jesus, and in Jesus we
have all righteousness, and also eternal life.
She finds wellness that goes beyond the condition of her daughter. She has found Jesus Christ. Don’t you long for people to find Jesus
Christ?
Do you think of the Lord as
a Savior for good people who are trying to obey the Law? Think about the Samaritan woman in John
4. She would not have been confused with
an expert in the law. She was not
apparently pursuing righteousness. She
was not even pursuing Jesus. It seems
much more like He has an appointment with her than that she has any desire for
Him. This is the woman who had five
husbands, and when Jesus ran into here she was living with another man who was
not her husband. Before long Jesus has
revealed himself to this woman as the Messiah, the Savior of the world. Isn’t that marvelous? She thought it was. That’s why she told all her friends. She was not impressed suddenly with the
wonders of God’s law. She probably had
little knowledge of that. She was
overtaken by Jesus, and in finding Him, this Samaritan woman found
righteousness by faith.
Israel
pursuing the law of righteousness…
Meanwhile,
there are so many with great knowledge of and desire for God’s Law who
apparently miss God’s greatest gift. How
about the Jews in John 18 who took Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium. Remember how they did not want to go into the
Praetorium, lest they should be ceremonially defiled, and thus prohibited from
eating the Passover? These guys knew
something about the Law. I am sure that
there were many in their day who would have pointed to them and to many other
observing Jews as law-keepers. These
were the ones who were pursuing righteousness.
The
Syro-Phoenician woman ready to take a crumb falling from the table, she was
in. The Samaritan woman with the amazing
marital history, she was in. These found
righteousness in Christ. They are not
alone. Many very unlikely Gentiles have
been blessed by the hand of the man who calmed the sea. They have been touched and made clean. But the men who though they were clean and
just wanted to stay that way, they handed over the Lord of glory to be
crucified. The Gentiles were not
pursuing righteousness and many of them have found it. Some of the Jews who seemed to be the most
impressive law-keepers were pursuing righteousness with great vigor, but the
target eluded them.
Why?
What
can possibly explain such a strange thing?
Those who seemed to be the worthiest would be out, but the ones who were
far from righteousness were found by it.
We are given an answer. The
righteousness that we need does not come to us by our pursuit of it. Righteousness comes to us when God pursues
us, and gives us the gift of faith. All
who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
The only way that you can seek righteousness and hope to find it is by
faith. You need to trust in the Lord and
His abundant mercy. You will not find
the perfect righteousness by your own pursuit of it through the works of the
Law. It comes from the mercy of Jesus
Are
you a proud man or woman this morning?
Your pride will kill you. The
best thing you can do is to get down on the ground with the dogs that lap up
crumbs from the children’s bread. Take
the gift of Christ’s righteousness as an unspeakable blessing bestowed upon a
needy person, and not as anything that you could ever earn. True faith is a complete surrender to God.
A Stumbling
Stone
The most important thing for you to consider in this
service of worship this morning is your relationship to Jesus Christ. How have you related to the great cornerstone
of the church? Have you surrendered to
Him? If you reject Him, no matter how
closely you run after every commandment of God, you will not attain the true
goal of your life. God has laid a
cornerstone in Zion, but some have stumbled over Him, as the prophet Isaiah
said. They will not take free mercy from
Him. He has living water, but they
insist on the muddy pools that they have put together through their own
efforts.
If you are still relating to everyone based on whether or
not they measure up to your standards, then you can be sure that you are still
drinking plenty of that muddy water. You
need to throw away that old glass and find a fresh stream of perfect
righteousness that flows from the pierced side of our great Savior, Jesus
Christ. Do not stumble over that great
rock of our salvation. The more you
truly settle on the righteousness that comes by faith alone, the more you will
find grace in your life to love others who have failed you, or who simply have
not jumped through the hoops that you expected them to jump through.
Noah, a
Preacher of Righteousness
In
2 Peter 2:5, Noah is called a “preacher of righteousness.” What kind of righteousness did this man
preach? Did he preach righteousness
through obedience to the works of the law?
How good would someone’s works of obedience have to be in order to save
him from the floods that were coming? A
man who builds an ark according to God’s direction, is preaching deliverance
from the judgment of God’s flood by God’s gift.
For many years Noah had
quite the sermon illustration for all to see.
But one day the sermon was over and very few people had really received
the message. A day of judgement is
coming, and there is only one way out.
The only place of safety is in the ark of God’s provision. That ark is Christ. He is the only deliverer for the people of
God in any age. The day is coming when
the door to that ark will close. God
himself will do this. You need to be on
that boat of safety. You need the righteousness
that comes by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.