Set Your Eyes on God’s Righteousness Towards You

** Continued talking about sermon on the mount. Jesus was trying to get them away from trying to earn their righteousness and take the kingdom by force and wants to take their eyes off their own works and set their eyes on the good work of God to do it for them and give it to them for free.

Remember the good work is to believe in the one whom was sent. Then you have meekness, no longer try to take the kingdom by force and understand it’s given to you for free.

When you rest in that, His light can come forth. If you rest in His ability to call forth light, you will find the light of God manifesting in you.

The light will shine out of those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who hunger and thirst after God and His righteousness and ability to bring forth light apart from your works.

Let your light shine is not an active thing but passive. Say I don’t have the ability to do that, so I rest in Him to do it. God said let there be light. God releases a word into the world about the beauty he sees in you and then you’ll find light manifesting out of you.

Men don’t put candles under a bushel, where does the light come from? We are the candle…it’d doesn’t light itself…God is the one who lights the candle. He comes and gives you that which you have been laboring to get for free.

When you can be persuaded of the beauty God sees in you, a light starts shining out of you and you don’t have to do anything to bring it forth…this is the good work God has done.

Did Jesus do any work on the cross? No. But we still see the light shining out of Him. He embodied what it meant to experience the mercy of God and to rest in God.

** The good work is to let the light shine, not make the light shine.

Remember the Hebrew word for law means teaching and instruction.

He is teaching them how they will find themselves rejoicing in God and inheriting His life.

When we see how serious God is about doing the work and then persuading us to rest in it, we find ourselves no longer thinking about what we need to do and resting in Him. Greg compared it to when he was a manager and had an employee who was serious about their work, then Greg wouldn’t need to worry about doing their work or making up for them.

Jesus said he was the light of the world in John 8. Torrah means light, the word for the law. Jesus was saying I am the way unto God. The teaching and instruction of God is that He wants to give you the kingdom for free and make you a co-heir, not some subject.

Is. 2:3 – the law of Moses came from Sinai, out of Jerusalem will come the law of God. Jesus was on a mount in Jerusalem delivering the law of God…this was fulfillment of the prophecy.

Those who teach to trust in God and His spirit of grace and they also believe in God and His spirit of grace are the real teachers…those who don’t are not…they are not the shepherds…not the one’s causing us to lie down in green pastures.

Whose righteousness was Abel trusting in? God’s. The Pharisees were trusting in their own ability.

Jesus wasn’t trying to scold the Pharisees when he told them about what they were trusting in…He was trying to save their life.

Matt 6:33 – seek ye first the kingdom of God and HIS righteousness – saying the way you seek the righteousness of God is seeking God’s goodness towards you to give you the kingdom apart from your works. The righteousness of God is defined as God being kind to sinners. God has a pure heart towards you. Seeking the kingdom of God is not seeing the fruit of God’s life and then saying I must go do that…it’s apart from your works.

The treasure He was talking about was God’s righteousness towards us in Jesus.

Mankind is not evil

Eating from the tree of knowledge good of and evil doesn’t mean you will become evil it means he will have experience of what it is where you want to good but can’t…you are wise until evil and wise until good.

Man cannot save himself and that is not evil…it’s how we have been designed.

If we define Sinful nature is that it cannot by it’s own ability partake of eternal life then fine…but most think when you say sinful nature that we are satanic.

Just like a tree needs water to live…do we call it evil if it needs water?

Everybody wants to do good…it’s not like those under the law don’t want to do good.

Romans 7 – when I’m carnal I’m sold under sin…under the bondage of wanting to do good but can’t. The sin Paul committed that was by thinking he could manifest righteousness by his own ability. Paul defines evil here saying I want to do good but can’t…that is evil. It’s evil that God’s ppl are under a cloak and cannot live. God has come to set man free from that.

The fact that you are good does not save you.

When Paul said there is nothing good in the flesh he’s saying there is not an ability to be like God in our own strength…not that nothing good dwells in the temple of God.