Do I Need To Be Right?

Matthew 5:6 “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”

Is it important to be “right”?

Well… Jesus here is saying that it is, and the earnest prosecution of righteousness is in fact one of the “blessed”s of the most famous discourse ever given, his sermon on the mount.

Being right… right-eousness… up-right-ness… matters. God makes it a matter of salvation. And God makes it so that if you want it, you can have it …even in a world that is so wrong.

Many people in today’s society don’t think being right is important anymore, even though these people are just as self righteous as anyone else, and even though they believe they’ve found a higher more centred form of consciousness having been liberated from the idea that righteousness is centred in one entity but rather a gift possessed of all in his or her own fashion.

That kind of philosophy is definitely not found in the Bible, but in the new age… which is all just same old.

Judges 21:25 “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

The Bible teaches us that our Lord Jesus Christ loves righteousness. I could quote verse after verse to you proving that, you can barely read a chapter of Psalms without something about righteousness, because God “Bible bashes” us with the righteousness of Christ throughout.

And that is what people ultimately reject and hate… that God is right and they are wrong.

They don’t mind a concept of “God” which reassures them of how right they are… but they utterly reject the God that finds no righteousness in man, but all in Christ.

Today, I don’t want you to somehow read the words and interpret this as me being right and you wrong. I’m saying Christ is right and we are all wrong.

If you are right about Christ, and find righteousness in Christ, you have true righteousness now “And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.”

Even if you say who cares about this issue, fact is, just a brief conversation reveals you really do care about being right, and God still cares about righteousness and keeps it while noone else does.

In case you doubt what I say of Christ, read Hebrews 1, where the Bible says of Jesus Christ “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.”

And… “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”

Jesus Christ LOVES righteousness!

Furthermore in 2 Peter 3, the Bible speaks of HIS new heaven and new earth… look what it says is in it and the defining characteristic of it! “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” …There will not be one thing wrong in the new heaven and new earth, so how can you expect that a life lived in wrong, and dedicated to wrong, could somehow belong in a place where there is only right?

Righteousness matters.

Please note, left and right wing… in our world both are wrong, I am not partisan to politics, left seemingly is further removed from Christ than right in our country, but I’ve met right wingers as hardened to the righteousness of Christ as left wingers.

Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, he explained that to his followers and the Roman governor two thousand years ago, and you are not going to overhaul this world through political party and Christian culture… when Jesus was put to vote they chose Barabbas. And he will receive the kingdom from his Father, not be elected in. You will keep being disappointed until he returns, and every three or four years your aggravations will be massaged at the poll like your vote is doing one thing to make things more right.

Doesn’t mean you give up on being right, just give up on man’s righteousness and trust in Christ’s!

… It is important to be right.

There are some things it doesn’t matter if you’re wrong about, or differ from someone else… ideally we would be right about more things or not, but we are inevitably and invariably wrong about most things.

How many things have you got wrong in your life?… and they may have produced somewhat significant consequence… but today I am asking you if I can tell you about the one thing, the one MAN you cannot be wrong about… Jesus Christ.

Even John the Baptist, of whom Jesus himself witnessed to his greatness in a human sense, when he was imprisoned, he sent his disciples to Jesus Christ to make sure he had really got it, and got HIM, right.

See, you can be as tough as you want, you get to your dying day, and you’ll be calling for people that you think have a hold on the God you lived in denial of your whole life. Saul did that, king Saul wanted to get a hold of God after killing the priests of God, persecuting the man of God and denying and disobeying the word of God. He did wrong for many years and tried to find right at the end. I wouldn’t leave this issue of righteousness to the eleventh hour.

But John the Baptist sent his disciples to Jesus wanting to make sure he was right… that he had got it right about Jesus.

Please consider this, that if someone like John Baptist wanted to make sure he was right… and this was the guy that had prepared the way of the Lord and pointed people to Jesus and been imprisoned for preaching the truth and rebuking sin… if such a man wanted to double and triple check that he had got Jesus right… shouldn’t you?

Jesus is who John the Baptist wanted to make sure he was right about… but are you right about Jesus?

You cannot afford to be wrong about Jesus… and yet many are.

When they need not be.

Because the Bible is written to you, for you, so you have no excuse to be ignorant, misinformed and wrong about the only thing that matters now and forever… and God takes away your excuses, in the Bible he has made sure you have access to despite thousands of years of it’s attempted destruction, and perhaps also in the form of a Christian knocking at your door, perhaps also in a little person God has put in your life, like that little maid telling Namaan’s wife about a prophet in Israel who could cure his leprosy.

Look, it’s not hard to get people to agree that there are oh so many things wrong about this world. We obsess over all the wrongs, but never consider the fact we are also part of the wrong… so where is the right?

As the scripture says “But we see Jesus”.

See, today I am right in telling you how RIGHT Christ is. Because your righteousness, and mine, is unacceptable to God, no matter how much we try to right our ship, it’s a sinking ship… but the right thing you can do, and must do, is trust in Christ’s righteousness.

You see, where you are wrong, he is right. As he always has been.

Did you know that being right is a salvation issue? Did you know that being saved is essentially when it finally dawns on you that you are wrong and Christ is right?

But did you know you cannot be saved until you come to an end of your righteousness and trust in Christ’s righteousness? Until you are able to let go of all false notions of your righteousness, you will never be saved.

Today I hope you can be liberated from all false notions and beliefs about righteousness to the simple glorious truth of the righteousness of Christ “Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”

I know it’s hard to let go of how right you are“Every way of a man is right in his own eyes”! Everyone is right according to themselves. In case you don’t know, just ask them.

But today, I offer you the righteousness not of myself, which there is none, but the righteousness of Christ. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”

Praise God for the righteousness of Christ, make his righteousness yours also. Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

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