JAN 16 2022 | Proverbs: Ancient Wisdom for a Modern World S1E4

Sea Change Church · Proverbs for the New Year · "Proverbs" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · January 16, 2022

Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Music Start spreading the news. Right. I'm leaving today. We've got some good news to spread all around La Jolla, around your neighborhood, around the world, around San Diego. And hopefully you are spreading the good news of Jesus Christ in the way that you live, in the way that you speak, and in the way that you hope for others. I want to say I really appreciate all the volunteers that made the first half of the service happen.

The majority of that was done by volunteers. Paul coming and stepping up and doing the giving as a volunteer saying, hey, I just want to do that. And so media team, all of you out in the courtyard, can we just give it up for all of our volunteers? Be a part. Be a part of the family. Be a part of the family. Jump into the family. Jump on, you know, talk to Chris about the worship team. Jump on the worship team. Whatever it would be, we'd love to have you be a part of that.

Let me pray, and we're going to jump into God's Word in the book of Proverbs. Lord Jesus, we want to thank you, God, for your goodness. We just love your wisdom. We love the God of the Bible, God, and we love your Word. We want to love your truth. We want to walk in your truth, Lord God. And would you stabilize this church as you look upon it, God? You know that in Revelation you look upon churches and you give a report, and I pray that we would be a report of a righteous church that would be solidified for another hundred years and beyond.

In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Great to have you. I don't know if you ever had the conversation about if you could have a superpower, what superpower would it be? We definitely live in the world of superheroes at this point. You see it in the Marvel Universe. Those are kind of the epic sagas of today. I would say they are the modern odyssey. They are the modern storytelling. And people are loving them because they reach beyond reality into something that is beyond humanity.

And what we see are these different characters that have these different powers. But if you could have a superpower, what would it be? Now, my wife, my daughter and I regularly talk about this. My youngest daughter, my 14-year-old Lucy, and she, we always talk, she tends to think that teleportation would be the thing. Just boom, you're here and then you're there. I think that's pretty solid. Reading people's minds, don't want it.

Definitely don't want to read people's minds. Visibility, don't want it. Too easy to rob a bank. Too many temptations, you know, bank robbing. But I would sit on the concert stage at different concerts. I've kind of always gone with flying. I think flying would be super cool. Now, a little known or thought about miracle of Jesus was at the ascension, Jesus flew. Have you ever thought about that? Like, you always talk about the miracles of Jesus, but you never talk about him flying.

And so it's pretty cool. Jesus flies. And so I thought that was cool. This week, I went and jumped into the multiverse. And if you have been part of one of those COVID super spreader events, which has hit our community, which is everyone seeing Spider-Man eight times together during the holiday season, then you know what that movie is all about. Really interesting in Spider-Man, as I look through Spider-Man, it almost seems like someone who was raised in the church wrote it.

It does make a youth pastor joke at one point, which is really interesting. There's a whole bunch of different things. But at one point, Green Goblin, who was played by William Dafoe, can we get my Green Goblin picture? William Dafoe, he saved that movie. First of all, the movie needs an editor. Like, it doesn't need to be nine hours long, okay? But William Dafoe is unbelievable as Green Goblin. He is, like, Oscar-worthy, although you're never going to get an Oscar for a superhero movie.

I digress. One of the things he says as he is choking Spider-Man, I won't ruin it for you, he's choking Spider-Man, and he says, you are choking on your morality. I thought, wow, what an interesting statement. I'm not lost on those little statements. And I don't think it is something that the screenplay writer just wrote. You're choking on your morality. Right now, there is a battle in our culture of morality. And there are two different views on what morality is.

And today I want to talk about that because in the book of Proverbs, it talks about morality, but it uses the word righteousness. And if you are going to follow Christ, I want you to know that you can take, as an interchangeable synonym, the word morality and righteousness. And righteousness is God's morality. It is God's morality because it is God's character. And so righteousness and morality have to do with character.

A verse we're going to focus on today, if you have your notes, your Bible, or at least we're going to mention a handful of verses because we are kind of walking through a bunch of verses in Proverbs, is Proverbs 12, 28. And I guess going back to the superhero and what that has to do with this sermon, is I believe that righteousness, God's righteousness, is something that you can put on, much like Green Lantern's, you know, ring that he wears, much like, you know, whether we Wonder Woman, she has the lasso, all these different things that they put on and they get a superhero power because of it.

But the Bible is very clear that righteousness has a supernatural component. And the Bible says you can put on righteousness. Now, you can do righteous acts because they are equal to what God would do or because God would want you to do them. But you can actually put on righteousness, we'll see, through Jesus Christ. And it actually works like a superpower. The righteousness of God, if you walk in the righteousness of God and you accept the righteousness of Jesus, it actually changes the course of your life.

If you make righteous decisions, it bends your future. It bends your future in the right direction. The Bible in the Proverbs talks about going left or right based on your decisions. I want to say that righteousness is a superpower. It is a supernatural power that is, when you do righteous acts that are in alignment with God, it bends your future in the right direction. It is guaranteed. The Bible says that. I'm going to prove that today through Scripture.

The question is, how bad do you want it? Because in the end, there are true paths that you can go by. And as you choose, one will lead to life and one will lead to death. And there is no middle path. The Bible is just clear about that. And that is why so many people reject the Scripture. First, Proverbs 12, 28 says this. In the way of righteousness, there is life. And along that path is immortality. And that's a powerful Scripture.

It says, in the way of righteousness. The way of righteousness is a way to be righteous. The world has a view of righteousness. And the church and Christ has a way of righteousness. Sometimes they line up. Sometimes they don't. And it says, along that path is immortality. So the Bible here is promising you, as a follower of Christ and a follower of righteousness, immortality. That's a powerful verse. So, you will live forever.

You will not live an eternal death forever, but you will live an eternal life forever. So the first thing is that in Proverbs. Now, Jesus mirrors this in Matthew. If you want to take a modern gospel, if you want to take one of the New Testament books that talks about righteousness, more than any of the other gospels, it would be Matthew. Especially in Matthew 4, 5, 6, and 7, starting mostly with 5, with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

If you want to walk in righteousness, if you want to walk in the supernatural power, which the Bible promises you of righteousness, one of the things you can do is begin to go this week and study Matthew 4 through 7, especially the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus models that. But in Matthew 6, 33, he says this. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, so it puts the kingdom of God, and his righteousness. So whose righteousness is it?

It's his. Let me do a Joe. I'm going to do a Joe-ism right now. At the count of three, we're going to say his. One, two, three. His. Oh, I think I got a way better response than Joe did, don't you? Do we have a Joe-a-meter? No, I'm just kidding. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and what? His righteousness. You're not seeking your righteousness. This is one of the differences between the righteousness of self-righteousness that I think the world goes for, which I'll prove with an Albert, not prove for the whole world, but there's an Albert Einstein statement here, a little bit in the message, that says that you can have righteousness based on what you believe and what you do on your own volition.

We say that it is impossible to be righteous unless that righteousness comes from Jesus, that no one is righteous on their own. We'll see that in just a minute. So that is the difference here between the righteousness of the world and the righteousness of Christ. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then what will happen? Everything else that you desire, all these other things, will be added unto you.

I think we get it backwards sometimes. We chase all the things that we desire, and then we try to sprinkle his righteousness on the things that we desire. I will say that God does have a plan for you. God does have a purpose for you. And if you seek his righteousness, you will not be able to outrun that purpose for your life. Your purpose will come, and it will lay down at your feet. This scripture actually says to you that if you quit worrying so much about your future and your purpose, and if you're going to dance your dance and sing your song and do all the things that you want to do, if you quit worrying about that, and you seek ye first the kingdom of God, that all of those other things will come and lay at your feet.

They'll just be added unto you. So I think sometimes we have the wrong focus. And so what we see here is righteousness. Now what is righteousness? Righteousness, as a definition, says acting in accord with divine or moral law. Now, you have to understand that when God makes a law, he doesn't make it random. He doesn't just have these rando laws that he makes up. They're attached to his character. So the reason a law is righteous is because God decrees something based on who he is in his nature.

And so when you do a righteous act, whether you follow Christ or not, you are actually stepping into the nature of God. When you step into the nature of God, it's like jumping into a river, and all of a sudden you will get thrust down that river, and you will receive righteous results because of that. Whether you are a Christ follower or not, if you are honest in all of your business dealings, you will have blessing upon those.

Why? Because you are in the momentum and the character of God as you do things. So one of the questions is, is are you walking in God's character? That is righteousness. So it's acting in accordance with divine or moral law, and I should add to that, which is in accordance with his character. That's just who God is. God going to be God. So why is righteousness a superpower? Well, I just said that. Doing righteous acts bends reality towards the good.

Let me just say that again. When you do righteous acts in your life, you're honest, you live according to godly standards in regard to your sexuality, in regard to what you look upon, in regard to where you go, in regard to the decisions you make, it will bend reality in the direction of goodness, life, and God. Your righteousness changes your future. You have future-changing possibilities by putting on the righteousness of God and making right decisions.

How often do you find yourself with a crisis of thought? We recently this week found out that there's something that we want to do for the kids building, and I was meeting with somebody, and they said to me, hey, we've done 100 churches during COVID, and usually you need a permit for this. Not usually. You need a permit for this. But I've done 100 churches, and no one has taken the permit. Well, first of all, I think 100's hyperbole.

But I was very tempted. I'm like, we need this done, and I don't got nine months for the city to do a permit. But I know that it's not righteous for me not to use a permit. So the first thing I said to him was, I'm really surprised at that, that 100 churches all made the decision to not. I said, that concerns me about the future of the church. He was like, uh, I guess I said the wrong thing, you know. And I was tempted.

The other day, about halfway through the day, I thought, we should just do it. I just, no permit. We're just gonna, it's a little thing. No one's gonna care. Let's just do it. And then I realized that when I do things, and I've proven it in the past, that aren't in accordance with God's righteousness, they tend not to have this covering of protection over them, that when I do things according to God's, God's ways. Would you give me a Kleenex real quick?

Because I just keep wiping my nose up here, and then it just gets awkward. So, uh, and so one of the things is we see the problem of, that we see that this is in alignment. Are you going to make decisions that are in alignment with God? Are you going to make decisions that are convenient for you in the moment? We do this when you're single, or you're married, and you're dating life. You, you come up with a reason why you, you think that there, you should be able to do what you want.

I will say that, uh, holiness never needs, there we go, thank you so much. Holiness never needs to be reconciled. Holiness never needs to be explained. When you go the way of holiness, you never need to, um, take some time to figure out, like, why this is good, and, and argue against it. Holiness is usually, a lot of times, black and white. Here's the problem with righteousness, though. Bible says that no one is righteous.

Look at your notes. Romans 3.10. As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. This is something that the world does not understand. This is something that we would say would be a crossroads in secular understanding and with Christian understanding. Christians believe, the Bible says, that no one is righteous. You can't be righteous, you can't work your way into righteousness, you can't do a bunch of good acts, no matter how many orphans that you help and bring water to, no matter how many, you know, elderly folk you help across the street, no matter how many times you do benevolent acts, you will never be good.

And right now, there is a hierarchy in the world of, well, these people are good because they do this, this, and this, and they're good, and these people are bad. The Bible says no one is good. Why? Because the standard is perfection. God is the only thing that you can be good, and the standard is perfection, and that is why we need something to fix our problem of, if I may, un-goodness, if I may. No one is righteous, it says in Romans 3.10.

God alone, though, is righteous. In Psalm 129.4a, it says, the Lord is righteous. Only the Lord is righteous. So, if you get upset with yourself, this is one of the reasons you can cast guilt away, is because we are not righteous. We are born with the stain of sin. And so how do we fix that problem? That no one is good, and there is no one that is good, but we can still have Christ's righteousness. What does that mean?

Just quickly, let's look at the road to righteousness. Now, there's a word called imputed righteousness. I'm going to do another joke. Can you think I can get away with one more? Okay. You think I can, Chris? Okay. We're going to say imputed righteousness, okay, at the count of three. This will be the last time I'll ever do this, I think. But I'm doing it right now. Imputed righteousness at the count of three. One, two, three.

Imputed righteousness. Right. What is imputed? What does that mean? It means that you get somebody else's righteousness and you get to put it on. And when God looks at you, he sees all the acts of that person. Who is that person? That person is Jesus Christ. God knew that we could never outgood God. You can't outgood God. But God says, I want to be with my people. I want to actually indwell them. And so he had to find a way out.

And the way out he found was to send his son to die on the cross and live a perfect life. And then it says, we can actually, in the scripture, it says, we put on his righteousness. Let me just read a verse that points to that. If you go a little bit further down your notes, Galatians 2.16. It says, we know that a person is not justified by the works or the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Now put a pause there.

Justified by faith, which means you get to put on the superpower of righteousness before God by having faith that Jesus did what he said he did on the cross, that he died for your sins and you are no longer held accountable for sin. In God's eyes, all the time, even when you sin, he understands that you sin, you are still seen as righteous because why? Once you accept Christ, he sees you through the lens of Jesus. It doesn't mean that you don't have sin you have to deal with.

It doesn't mean that it doesn't stain us, but you have this imputed righteousness. It is one of the reasons you don't have to walk in guilt. I'm no good. I'll never be good enough. I messed up. All of that is antithetical to what the scripture says because righteousness is a superpower that has the ability to wash you from shame, to wash you from guilt. It says, so we too have what? Put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ, not by works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

Now there's a quote, I don't know if they have it there, but I put a quote in my notes from Albert Einstein. And I really appreciate a lot of Einstein. But what he says here, I put it under a biblically untrue statement. It's a quote that he made, and it reflects the view of the world, that you can outgood whatever moral force there is in the world, whether it's Mother Nature, whether it's energy. There's a lot now, just, hey, pray good energy, or what they say, send me good energy.

I see that a lot online. What does that mean? Like, where does the energy come? I have no idea what that means. But as they're saying it and wanting this, this is what Einstein is speaking about. And so he says this, true religion, I think he was an atheist, so I don't know about true religion, why he's talking about true religion, but nonetheless, I don't, look, I don't talk about string theory, you don't talk about true religion, okay, bro?

Nonetheless, I know you're Einstein. I know you're Einstein. Stick to string theory. True religion is real living. Living with all of one's soul. So once again, that's a religious statement. With all one's goodness. Bible doesn't believe in goodness for individuals. And righteousness. Of all one's goodness and righteousness. I want to, let me just make it clear. And I, this is a stumbling block for people. Because the Bible will look at me and it'll point to me and say, Adam, you have no righteousness, you have no goodness.

You are created in the image of God with the ability to do righteous things, but because of the stain of sin, you need something because you can't out good God. And so what is that thing? It is Jesus Christ. Now, this started, we're going to start next week. Do not miss next week. We are diving into the Old Testament. We are diving into Abraham. He was the one that started this whole covenant live by faith thing. And it is by faith that you were saved.

And it goes back. We're going to be explaining this more in detail, especially if you've never been to church. And we ask you, how can you take someone else's life and take their deeds and put it upon yourself? How does that work with God? Why does that work? We're going to talk through that. We're going to look a little bit at righteousness and by faith. But that's imputed righteousness. Excuse me. In 2 Corinthians 5, 21, it says, For our sake, he made him to be sin.

That's Jesus. Who knew no sin. He'd never done anything wrong. So that in him, we might what? Become the righteousness of God. If you don't understand the eternity bending power in that statement, it bends your eternity. That we have two paths that we can go by. And of that path, that if we have faith in Jesus, it makes you immortal. Now remember, it said that at the first scripture in these Proverbs, that if you do righteous things, that was righteousness before Christ, but now you attach not only doing righteous things, but you get to put on it by faith, the righteousness of Christ, you're golden.

You're golden for eternity. It bends and makes you immortal for life. You become immortal. It actually is a supernatural power that goes far beyond anything you see in the multiverse of Spider-Man. And so we see these different laws that are happening. Now I'm going to give just four quick blessings that come with righteousness. What does righteousness mean? Righteousness means what you look at. So the question is, should I be looking at this?

It says in the Proverbs, I have David, I believe it's David, or I believe it's David who says, I have made a covenant with my eyes that I would not look upon a young woman with lust. Just made a covenant. Covenant with your eyes. Now, it doesn't always have to be a young woman. It could be a car. It could be the property you want. It could be the thing that you set up as an idol. It could be your future. It could be that purpose that you want so bad that you make an idol.

I had someone come to me this week. I've been making an idol of my purpose. And I said, well, glad. I'm glad you can be freed of it because Christ promises you all the things that you think your purpose are going to give you for free. You don't have to find your purpose to find all the goodness that Christ promises you of love, joy, peace. But there's some blessings in righteousness. So what do you look at? Where do you go?

What do you say? What do you do with your actions? Righteousness is boiled down to what you think. Okay, you know what? I'm not going to think this thought. I'm going to do my best to change my thinking. Righteousness is your thinking. Righteousness is your actions. Righteousness is what you say. Righteousness is what you look at. Righteousness is what you do. It is the decisions that you make in your life. It boils down to decisions.

If you want to know what righteousness is, Matthew 4, 5, and 6. Chapters 4, 5, and 6. Get into them this week or begin to read the book of Proverbs. Let me give you four quick promises. And I just picked these out. I could have done a bunch more because the word righteousness in the book of Proverbs shows up 87 times. 87 times the word righteousness shows up. Let's look at this. If you're righteous, where you go, the decisions you make, what you say with your mouth, if you're going to be honest, if you're going to get the permit or if you're not going to get the permit, you're going to usurp the authority to get something done because it's no big deal.

Whatever it is, that are righteous decisions. If you make righteous decisions, first of all, you're going to be blessed. God says, and this is, look, this is as close to a superpower like you see in the Marvel Universe as you can get. I'm not talking magic. I'm talking the power of God that rests upon your decision making. When you make decisions, the Bible says, don't be unequally yoked with somebody. I'm going to turn them into a Christian.

I'm going to date them anyway. He's going to turn them into a Christian. That's an unrighteous decision. Why? Because it goes against the word of God. The Bible says you can turn your mate. That's after you're married and you're saved and they're not saved. And so it's just an unrighteous decision. God does not want you to be unequally yoked because he loves you and he knows that could become a train wreck, especially for your children.

And so, blessing. It says in Proverbs 33, 33, he blesses the dwelling of the righteous. What does that mean? It means God takes all his goodness on your house when you make righteous decisions, when you do things that are right, when you speak right words, when you try to do, you know, the right things before God. He takes his goodness out of his heart and he just lays it upon your house. That can play out in a multiplicity of ways in the multiverse of your life.

That can play out in a multiplicity of ways, but he will bless you. Things will be bent towards goodness in your future. Does it mean that you won't have negative times? No, it doesn't mean that. But it means that God will always be there. He blesses the dwelling of the righteous. The next, Proverbs 14. It says you're going to have light. We live in a dark society. People don't know what's happening. They're worried about the future.

If you could have a light that when you got up in the morning, you just knew there was more light for your day. Light of what decision to make, light on where to go, light on what to do, light on peace, light on how much God loves you. Just light. If you just had more light. I have a lot of people who are in the supernatural, new age world, and they'll say to me, you have really good light around you. And I'll be like, yeah, it's all called Holy Spirit.

I won't actually say that. But I've had many people say, maybe you have as well, you have really good light on you. And I believe that they can see it. I believe that they can see those things. And the Bible says the reason that is is because you actually have the light of Christ upon you. But in Proverbs, once back to Proverbs, Proverbs 14, but the path of the righteous is like what? The light of the dawn. Imagine that.

If your path in front of you, the way you walked, was like the light of the dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day. What about provision? You have provision in your life? You know, going hungry, you know, or the job, or the things that we worry about. What about provision? I'm not talking about all the things we want. I'm not talking about the Tesla. I'm talking God doesn't promise a Tesla. God promises provision.

In Proverbs 10, 33, it says that the Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but thwarts the craving of the wicked. You will never go hungry if you follow Christ, is what the Bible says. He will give you provision. A lot of times, you know what the problem is? We're not satisfied with provision. Remember the first series in this message in this series? If you want to be happy, what's the answer? Want less. You want to be happy, want less.

Want less. If you want less, want more of God and less of the world and less of your stuff. It says he'll give you provision. And the final one is deliverance. I love this. I mean, there are so many, if you just read all those 87 times that talks about righteousness, so many times there's a promise. I only had time for four because we're at the end of the message. I only had time for four. I'm just giving you four good ones.

Blessing, life, provision, and deliverance. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. Boom. There's a promise. Oh, if I love God, why did something bad happen to me? Because many are the afflictions of the righteous. Because you have another current in the world, and the enemy, which is the devil who we believe in, who is going against the current of God's righteousness. And many are the afflictions of the righteous.

But the Lord delivers him out of all of them. But the Lord delivers them out of all of them. I had a prayer partner. We were prayer partners for five years. After five years, it had kind of run its course. We were done being prayer partners. And as we split ways, we looked back at all the things we prayed about in five years, and we said, you know what? We've never lost a battle. There was not one battle we prayed for together.

Whether it was his marriage, my marriage, our kids, anything we prayed for, there was not one battle that we did not, that we lost. We didn't lose one battle. They didn't all go exactly the way we wanted, but we couldn't look at one battle where we said we lost. In our Tuesday prayer meeting, show up at noon, pray with us. I'm there every Tuesday at noon. There is not one battle that I can think that we have prayed for, whether it be permits, whatever it is, that we have lost.

Why? Because we pray, and because I believe there's a group of people here that want to walk in righteousness. If you want the superpower, if you want to walk supernaturally, if you want the future to bend in the direction towards God in life, decide how much you want righteousness. It's a decision. Jesus talks about this. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all of his righteousness, and everything else will be added unto you.

Amen? Let's stand if we would. We love to bless you here at this church. We're going to bless you with righteousness. We want to bless you with the righteousness of Christ. If you have not asked Christ to become your righteousness, or if you walk in shame and guilt and all that all the time, we want to encourage you, one, to go to the back and talk to the people at the next steps table. We want to help you make a decision to follow Jesus, put on the righteousness of Christ, or we want to pray for you up the front.

If you have problems you need to be prayed for, we have prayer up the front you can be prayed for. Let me just, if you extend your hands, I want to bless you. Lord Jesus, we want to bless your people, Lord God. We want to pray, God, that you would just let this sermon resonate and let them see these things in life where they say, my future is not bending in the right direction. Lord God, I pray that you would open up the word of God, that if they choose to read Matthew 4 through 7 this week, that they would be highly encouraged and that the Holy Spirit would speak to them and counsel them.

If they read the Proverbs this week, that it would come alive. And if they pray this week, Lord God, that you would begin to bend their future, God, in the supernatural future, God. We bless you. May the blessing of God be upon you. May deliverance be upon you. May light be upon you. May provision be upon you as you seek God. Go from this place, be blessed, and have an incredible week. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. Amen. Hey, we love you. Get a coffee. See you soon. Next Steps table or prayer. Thank you, sir.