Ezekiel 33:12 – Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth.

Ezekiel 33:13 – When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it.

Hello readers, I’ve stacked up quite a few thoughts this week, so want to get them down before I forget them. It doesn’t matter what you did right! In this blog, we want to talk about one of the most fundamental mistakes people make when they’re justifying themselves and their own morality, goodness and righteousness before God. They think that because they were pretty good, or did mostly good, or didn’t do that much wrong… that validates their life and morality and qualifies them for heaven. The problem is, what you did right won’t count when you stand before God, the only thing that will matter is what you did wrong. You can live a good life, but that one wrong will send you to hell. And ultimately the one wrong that will matter above all else is the sin of rejecting Jesus Christ. All your good, which is worthless, won’t count, for all that will matter is the sin that you are answering for, and be sure of this one thing, every sin will be accounted for. Jesus promised that in his sermon on the mount.

Before we even start, firstly, you’re wrong. If you’re think you’re pretty good, mostly good, essentially good or have some good in you… you’re wrong. Because none of us are good enough. The Bible says that all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. The best day you’ve had is dirt in the sight of God. Your problem is you don’t know who God is, and you have no idea of the holiness of standard that is required of you. This is a God that the Bible says will by no means clear the guilty. None of us are even remotely nearly as good as we think we are or so we are. Sorry! We are all wicked, hell deserving sinners. Jesus wasn’t just a good idea or a complement to your already pretty good life, just to help you get across the line. Without him, not a person in existence is accepted by God, much less going to heaven. Peter says the righteous are scarcely saved, and it took the blood of Christ, the innocent dying for the guilty, the sacrifice of God’s very own Son to get you there. It took you heaven’s absolute best to purchase your salvation.

But many people think they’re pretty good. These two verses quoted above are from Ezekiel, where God told him he’d set Ezekiel as a watchman for the house of Israel. God told Ezekiel “thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me.” So be warned today, be warned by the word of God. Not the word of man, the word of God. This isn’t monkey business. Read the chapter yourself, and learn a critical truth from the watchman, a watchman who is watching for your soul, a watchman set by God for you to heed and turn, do something with the message of the watchman.

So be warned, your goodness, your best you think you have and can present and be accepted by God, it won’t matter. It doesn’t count. You’re being tried for your wrong. Even if you lived a 99.99% perfect life, that 0.01% is what would matter. Psalm 5:4 ” For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. You can do the absolute best you can, and for so long, and you can do a pretty good job of it, and you can think you do pretty well… but that one sin is enough to send you to hell. All those good things you did, and the only thing that matters is your sin and the ultimate sin of rejecting Jesus Christ, sent by God to save you from your sin. Because God already has judged you, you are already judged and under the wrath of God. No wonder John the Baptist preached to FLEE from the wrath to come.

So Ezekiel says “The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression.” You understand what that means? All your good works, all those brownie points you think you earned, all those times you gave yourself a pat on the back for doing the right thing… that is meaningless when you sin. You are going to be judged according to your sin, not what you did well, or rather what you think you did well. When you go to court having broken the law, you don’t go there to answer for all the good you did, no you go there to answer for the point in which you offended.

So here’s an example. Say you killed someone intentionally and you go to court and stand before the judge. You may have been a good bloke your whole life, but you made a mistake, you had a fit of rage, someone badly wronged you, and you took vengeance, and you’ve done this heinous deed. You’re caught, and you stand before the judge to answer for your crime. Do you think the judge will let you off because you’ve done a lot right in your life? See, you’re in court for murder, and all your righteousnessness you may have done apart from that one act, it won’t deliver you. Maybe you were a good dad before that fateful moment, maybe you were a loving husband, maybe you gave to charity, maybe you did community service, maybe you always had your friends back… whatever. You’ll be standing before the judge and tried for you transgression, not your righteousness. Your righteousnesses, all your best in your life… they’re worthless in your day of judgement. You’re not there to answer for what you did right, but what you did wrong!

Imagine a judge saying, well, you’ve done mostly right your whole life, go free! There would be an outcry. Well if this is so, how much more in the court of God? God who only does that which is perfect and right all the time and everytime. It is a fatal and eternal error to think that when you answer for your sins, you think the good you thought you did will tip the scales in your favour. They won’t. God’s standard is perfection. There surely wouldn’t be a person reading this who thinks they’re perfect, most people can agree that they do a lot of wrong both in thought, speech and deed. Doing a few good things has no capacity to outweigh and make up for the bad things you’ve done.

When you stand before God at the end of your life, it won’t matter what you did right. It’ll matter what you did wrong. And the fundamental wrong that will send you to hell is rejecting Jesus Christ. Because we are all sinners, but your sin has been paid for. Did you know that?  Jesus died for the sins of the world. But if you refuse Jesus Christ, you will stand before God yourself with no intercessor, no mediator, and a life littered with transgressions. The good bits you think you did are all worthless. It will only matter what you did wrong. James 2:10 says ” For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.”  That’s pretty serious stuff isn’t it. All the good you did won’t be remembered, it’s worthless, all that’s important is what you did wrong. Far out aye. God is so good he isn’t going to look the other way or use an unjust balance. See what was at stake in this chapter was the “equality” of God. People were saying God wasn’t equal. The way of the Lord is not equal, the way of the Lord is not equal! Oh God is equal, it’s you that’s out of balance.

This principle in the Bible plays out so much in society. But lets look at a Biblical example of this fact. I mean, you can look at David’s life, and do you know the huge amount of good he did?  He was a man after God’s own heart. You read about this man and there is so much good in it. But what we remember is the one wrong thing he did. And when he committed that adultery, and compounded it with murder… did his righteousness deliver him in the day of his transgression? Hardly. All that good he did was washed away with one bad decision. David didn’t trust his righteousness, and he was someone that had quite a resume of righteousness. His trust for his soul was purely on God, it was God that put away his sin and solved his sin problem. You know, David is only in heaven because of the righteousness of Christ, that’s it.

Oh, what a mistake people make, what a fatal error when they balance their own life with their unjust balance and then have the gall to call God the unequal one. When will we get this vital truth through our thick heads? No wonder the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10:12 “they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.” Comparing yourself to someone else is stupid. Comparing yourself to the standard of society is stupid. This entire message of Ezekiel was pointing the people to a Saviour. Because if anyone was remotely honest with themselves, they knew that trusting in their own righteousness was utter folly. Don’t trust your righteousness, because it’s not going to save you. We know that we all sin, if you say you don’t sin, you are just deceiving yourself. And the more we go along in our Christian walk, the more aware we become of how utterly fallen and depraved our flesh is.

So, all your righteousnesses are not going to deliver you in the judgment. You may think you’re pretty good now, but that’s because you’re comparing yourself to an unequal and unjust standard. You’re measuring yourself against other sinners, and elevating yourself thinking because you’re not quite as low as someone else you’re pretty good. Or you’ve made your own little moral code which you can’t fail at, because you define it! Problem is, you’re only passing your own depraved moral standard, not God’s standard, which is the standard that matters. Or you gauge your goodness by whatever society and this world is defining as good and right at the moment, which is worthless and perpetually subject to change. But you know, the Bible talks about every mouth being stopped, and I was thinking about how Job was saying how if he could find God and talk to him, he’d fill his mouth with arguments and order his cause to God. But when God spoke, we know that Job didn’t have much to say, in fact all he said was, I’ll shut up now, and he repented in dust and ashes… a man already in dust and ashes said that.

You can do a lot right in your life, and you know what people will see? What you did wrong. It happens in society all the time. You won’t be judged by man by what you did right when you do wrong. How much moreso with holy God as compared to sinful man? Your righteousness is not going to deliver you. God doesn’t accept good outweighing bad, God only accepts perfect goodness and perfection righteousness. In the scales, you’ll realize today or at judgment day, but one day, all your righteousness is utterly worthless. You have been warned. There was only one righteous. There is only one who’s name is Righteous. There is only one man who pleased God. It is the Lord Jesus Christ. We are only accepted by God based on his life, his death, and his resurrection and his eternal intercession for us.

It truly doesn’t matter what you’ve done right. That can’t make you saved, nor can it earn your salvation. That’s why the Bible says Abraham believed God, and that was counted to him for righteousness. The only righteousness he had was the righteousness of faith. Let that sink in. His only righteousness was believing the word of God. We are all sinners and it doesn’t matter what you did right, only what you did wrong at judgment. So before you die and it’s too late, do the only right thing you can do, and that is trust in God who is right. Trust in his Son who he provided for you, to save you from your sins. Jesus Christ was sinless, perfect. He is the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world. He died for your sins, and the only righteousness you can ever truly have is his righteousness, the righteousness that counts, and he will save you, trust in him today.

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