Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: What does this name mean, Jehovah Sidqenu? I believe it means "Jesus my righteousness." We're going to discover what that means today. Again, this is not a name that has an event or an incident to help us. It doesn't have a picture or something that happened and then God leaned out of heaven and said, "Now because of this event, this is how you will know me or how you will know me better."

This name particularly could be traced all over the place. There is a red thread of redemption running from Genesis to Revelation through your Bible. Some people say, "Well, why bother with the Old Testament at all? Isn't the New Testament, the New Covenant, the thing that Jesus told us, the most important thing?" But you cannot have the New without the Old. You cannot have the Old without the New. The New is in the Old concealed. The Old is in the New revealed or explained.

So the two parts of our Bible are absolutely one. The thread that runs through them or the string that keeps them attached is this red thread of redemption, which the name Jehovah is all about. Jehovah, the one who decided to be involved with that which was broken, who had made a decision to mend those things that had come apart. He is our God.

Now the occasion of this name or the prophecy can be found in Jeremiah 23, and you can turn to that with me. Jeremiah 23, verse 5 and 6. Jeremiah brings a prophecy, an oracle. He has a burden on his heart. He wants to tell us something about Jehovah that has not yet been revealed in quite this way. And so it's in this prophecy that God reveals to him who he is in a very special way. Jehovah, the righteous one, the straight one, the holy one, the just one, even though we've had a glimmer of that in the name Elohim.

We've had a little glimmer that he is righteousness, holiness, love. Remember, we touched on that in one of those names. But here specifically, Jeremiah brings a prophecy. "The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness."

So here in the Bible is the first time we get this specific name of God, The Lord Our Righteousness, Jehovah Sidqenu. The people, as we know, were unstable in these days. There was a downward moral trend or spiral which was going to end in disaster. And the few good kings that have appeared in the history of Israel have failed to arrest this trend. Maybe they stabilized things for a little minute, and they burned all the false gods' altars, and they got Israel back on track, but as soon as they died, then a bad king came on the scene who did evil in the eyes of the Lord and the whole downward moral spiral began again.

By the time Jeremiah is busy having a ministry among the people and he's the big prophet, he has got a pretty gloomy prediction of what's to happen. He says, first of all, that everybody is going to be overrun by the Babylonians and go into captivity. Now this is not the sort of message that is very popular. He further makes himself more unpopular by counseling Israel to be subject to Babylon because Babylon, he says God has told him, is the instrument of judgment against Judah.

God is allowing Babylon to do what Babylon wants to do. He is not going to stop them. And in his divine wisdom, he is going to use the trauma that this event will bring to turn the people back to himself because we know very well it's when we're in trouble we turn to God. It's when we're in trouble we turn back to the Lord, not usually when we're celebrating or when we're happy. And so God has told Jeremiah, "I am going to use this event which will happen. If Israel was walking with me, then I would stop Babylon doing this, but I'm not going to stop him."

And in the strange permissive will of God, God is going to allow this to happen and then use the trauma to turn his people back to him. Now this was not a popular message. In fact, he is the prophet probably above all prophets that had the toughest time with the message that God gave him to give to the people. He's called the weeping prophet for good reason. You should sometimes just sit down in one swoop, one hour, just read the prophecy of Jeremiah through, and you get the heartbeat, the agonizing heartbeat of this man.

He was treated so badly, and he was tortured so dreadfully for every time he'd give a message, something awful would happen to him. And in the end, he said, "I can't do it, God. I'm not going to do it anymore. Every time you've given me this awful message and I have to do it, I can't do it, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut." And then he said, "Oh, but your word is in me like a fire, it's burning me up. I can't be quiet."

They put him in a pit and he sank up to his neck in mud. He didn't even know if his feet were going to touch rock bottom. He thought that was the end of him. There he stood, no hope of being rescued. God in his grace got him out of there. But I tell you, he was the weeping prophet because he had a very unpopular message. How would Jehovah fulfill his promise if they submitted to Babylon, they would think? Hadn't God said in 1 Kings 2:4 that there would never fail a man to sit on his throne, never fail a man to sit on the throne of David?

Then if they submitted, like Jeremiah was telling them this was God's will, how could this ever be because there wouldn't be one of God's men sitting on the throne? There would be this awful heathen king. Well, Jeremiah told them as hard as he could that Israel would return from captivity and be restored in the land, and Jehovah would raise up to David a righteous branch who should be called Jehovah our righteousness.

And we believe that this prophecy was given in the reign of King Zedekiah, who was the last king of Judah. He was the last king. And Zedekiah's name means "The righteousness of Jehovah." His very name, this king's name, spoke of this idea. He was meant to be a model. He was meant to be a shadow. He was meant to be an example of the righteous king that would come who would be righteousness himself with no unrighteousness in him.

Now Zedekiah had his faults, and he wasn't modeling this very well. And it was in his reign that this prophecy was given. The righteous branch, the righteous king that would be raised up out of this dead tree that was dying, this righteous branch that would come forth would be all the king should have been, at least typically. Messiah would be that righteous branch. So that's the background to the giving of this name of God, Jehovah our righteousness.

The idea of the name is hidden in the name itself, in the little bit "T-S-E-D-E-K." That part of the name, and that part in the Hebrew means stiff or straight. and it contains the idea of a plumb line, if you like, or something absolutely godly straight so that anything crooked or anything off-key shows up. Righteousness is straight, is stiff. It's that part of the name that gives us the idea: I have got to be like that to bring pleasure and acceptance with God.

In the Roman days, you'd often see the symbol of a person holding a pair of scales. Well, that was the symbol in Roman times of Roman justice. They'd have somebody holding those scales and people would be weighed by the scales of justice. Now I think we know that picture ourselves very well. It's hidden in the Old Testament all over the place. Job 31:6, "Let God weigh me in honest scales," he says. The idea of Job sitting on one side of the scale and God putting his good works and his good character on the other and seeing that there was a just weight or a just balance in his life.

Psalm 62:9, "Lowborn men are but a breath and highborn ones but a lie. If weighed on a balance, they are nothing; together they're only a breath. Don't trust in extortion nor take pride in stolen goods. Though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them." This is speaking of coming short in righteous practices which men owe to God. And so the idea of a scale is a good one to use. This word "T-S-E-D-E-K" is used of a full weight or measure towards God in a spiritual sense.

Now there's a little story in the Bible that might help us to get this scale idea in perspective. If you'd like to turn to Daniel chapter five, I'll show you this. It's a wonderful story and I'd love to take all the time on it and develop it, that I can't do. But in Daniel chapter five, we have Daniel who's out of favor because Nebuchadnezzar has died and Belshazzar, his son, is on the throne. Belshazzar very well knows that his father Nebuchadnezzar was converted to Jehovah at the end of his life.

He had a very traumatic experience, did Nebuchadnezzar. He went crazy, as Daniel had told him he would if he took the glory to himself of his kingdom and all that he had done. God would strike him because God will not share his glory with another. God had given Nebuchadnezzar the power to be the greatest king of all. And Nebuchadnezzar said, "Well, by my own power I've done this," and in that moment he lost his mind. And he was driven from the palace, and he thought he was an animal, and he ate grass like an ox.

It's a very dramatic story how at the end of this period of insanity, God restored his mind to him and he was wonderfully converted to Jehovah. At the end of chapter four, he says, "At the same time my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisors and nobles sought me out and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven because everything he does is right. He's righteous. All his ways are just and those who walk in pride he is able to abase."

And Nebuchadnezzar, the mighty king, through the ministry of Daniel and the intervention of God in his life, became a believer in Jehovah. Incredible conversion, probably one of the mightiest, wonderfulest stories of God's power to change a human life in the whole of the Bible. His son Belshazzar came to the throne. He knew about his father's conversion, no doubt about that because Daniel tells him later, "You knew all these things." But he didn't care and he gave a great banquet for thousands of his nobles and he drank wine with them and they all got drunk.

He gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had stolen from the temple in Jerusalem, holy pieces of furniture from God's house so that he and his kings and his nobles and his wives and his concubines could drink from them, and he desecrated these things. And they brought all these things in and as they drank wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver and bronze and iron and wood and stone. And suddenly, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace. And the king watched the hand as it wrote. Wouldn't you have done? I certainly would. What was the hand attached to nothing that appeared at his party going to put on the wall of the palace?

His face turned pale, he was so frightened. His knees knocked together and his legs gave way. And the king called out for the enchanters and the astrologers and the diviners to be brought and said to the wise men, "Whoever reads this writing, tells me what it means, will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain around his neck. He will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom." All they came in, but they couldn't tell him. So he became even more terrified. And then the queen or the queen mother came in and said, "Oh king, live forever. Don't be alarmed. Don't look so pale. There's a man in your kingdom who's got the spirit of the holy gods in him. And in the time of your father, he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom like that of the gods."

"King Nebuchadnezzar your father, your father the king, I say... appointed him chief of the magicians, enchanters, astrologers, and diviners. And I think what's implied here is she's saying: and you got rid of him. You don't even know who he is and where he is. Why don't you ask him? This Daniel, whom the king called Belteshazzar, was found to have a keen mind, knowledge, and understanding, the ability to interpret dreams. Call for Daniel, he'll tell you what the writing means." So Daniel was brought and the king said, "I'll give you anything. Just tell me what that hand attached to nothing wrote on the wall of my party, the wall of my life."

Daniel says in verse 17, "Keep your gifts. Give your rewards to someone else, but I'll tell you what the writing says. You know very well your father Nebuchadnezzar exalted the Most High El Elyon. Remember the God who is the highest of all your gods? You know that your father came to know this Most High God. You know this. You know about his conversion. You didn't care. You his son, verse 22, haven't humbled yourself though you knew all this. Your father humbled himself. You haven't humbled yourself. Instead you've set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You've had the goblets from his temple brought in, you've desecrated them. You didn't honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways."

Boy, he was preaching up a storm, good old Daniel. "Therefore he sent the hand that wrote on your wall. And this is what he says: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. And this is what the words mean. Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed in the scales and found wanting. Parsin: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain.

Just the vision of this hand appearing makes your blood run cold, doesn't it? And yet, in a sense, God's hand has written on the wall of all of our lives these same words. Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin. God has numbered the days of your life. That is for sure. Our days are numbered. He has given us days to discover him, to know him, and to glorify him. You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

You say, "Now wait a minute, Jill." Can you put yourself in the scales? Can you see those two big scales in your mind's eye? Put yourself standing in God's scales on one side. And God wants you to come even, to have enough weight in your character, to have enough righteousness in your life to weigh as you should weigh. But you're not. You're found wanting. You're found lacking. You need some more weight. You need some more righteousness. You need some more godliness to weigh right, to be weighty enough, honorable enough, godly enough.

You say, "Well wait a minute. What about all my good works and what about all my prayers and what about all my going to Bible studies and what about all my goodness, all the good things, all my good works, all my righteousnesses, and I have got some? Aren't they enough?" And God says, "No. Your kingdom is divided and given to someone else and you will be slain. The wages of sin is death." And God has written with his hand all over this Bible. That's the wall that we need to look at. And it's all in here. It's telling us those things. We fall short. We come short. The scales are not tipped in our favor.

Or again, we can change the picture. All of us have become like one who is unclean. All our righteous acts are like filthy rags. Okay, we've thought about the scales. Now let's think about the filthy rags. All our righteousnesses, all the goodest, bestest things you have ever done are like filthy rags. Doesn't leave too much room for bragging. Even the best things that we can do, let's forget about the sins that put the balances out in our lives. What about our good things?

God says they're like filthy rags. What does this word mean? Well actually, this word "filthy rags" isn't very nice at all. It's talking about rags that are unclean ceremonially, like a person who has a terrible disease like leprosy would wrap up the bleeding parts with rags. They would tear up for bandages pieces of cloth. And they would wrap the stumps of their hands. Leprosy is a filthy disease just like gangrene. Bits of you die and bleed. And so then they would be wrapped.

And the leper, we're told, would have to run around making sure he wrapped up all the infected parts of himself because it's contagious. And then he'd have to say, "Unclean, unclean, unclean" in case anyone came near him. And that's the word that's used here. Even the very best things that we can do, as far as God's concerned, are like those filthy rags in his sight. And that's very hard for people to believe or to accept.

Another place that word is used is for the cloths that were used when a woman had her period. Filthy rags which would make a woman ceremonially unclean until she was over her period and had cleansed ceremoniously with water. The woman could not come into the outer court of the temple until that had happened. So in two places in the Bible, these filthy rags are used, and Isaiah takes them as a picture of all the very best churchgoing things that we could do in God's sight.

So we might not think that we're very bad and we haven't got a lot of sins against us in the balances. Maybe we think when we get to heaven if our good works balance us out, maybe God will let us in. That's sin, but what about all the good things that we do? As far as God's concerned, they're like filthy rags. All of us, not some of us, not everybody else but me, all of us have become like one who is unclean. All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.

Those who were ceremonially unclean were excluded from the presence of the Lord. I suppose you can ask yourself a question, as I did: if my righteousnesses are like filthy rags, what then is my sin like? And it doesn't leave much option to realize that I am never going to be righteous enough for God. But if I cannot live in heaven unless I am right, straight, clean, holy, because heaven is only full of such creatures... otherwise heaven would be like earth. God's not going to let us spoil his heaven like we've spoiled his earth. So only righteous, holy people can live there.

If that's the case, I don't have any righteousness to be able to live there. If I can only live there in righteousness rightly and I don't have enough of what it takes to live like that, then how am I ever going to live in heaven? How can I ever say, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, he's my salvation, I'm going to live in heaven when I die"? Obviously, I have to get some righteousness from somewhere else. Mine will not do.

Jehovah Sidqenu, The Lord My Righteousness. He's the source of it, he's the course of it. Elohim Sidqenu. He's the righteous God, there's none to compare. He's the one who's straight, straight as a die. He's the one that never sinned. And if he somehow could clothe me in his righteousness, then I would be able to stand in God's presence clothed not in my own righteousness, but in his.

The Bible says very categorically: there is none righteous, no not one. Not even one, not one little one. Not one, not even you, not even me. No, not one. Do we believe it? The Bible says it. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. And this, of course, is from birth. And the wages of this sin, the result of this sin, is death. We've all broken the law, in other words.

Hundreds of years ago when I lived in England, I was late for a meeting. It's the last time it's happened, of course. But I was in a car getting from one place in England to another place, and I had three small children to see to before I could get in the car and travel all this way. And it was icy and snowy on the roads, and I was late. That's all there was to it. It was a big meeting and I was the guest speaker, and I couldn't find my way and I got lost, which I've done ever since.

So I was running along, running late, and I was in my car and I was heading off to a little place called Blackpool, which was on the coast. Well, I eventually got there. I had about 20 minutes to go to find the church and I thought I was in great shape, but Blackpool's a big city. So I got the little map out and it says go right down as far as you can to the sea. I thought, "Well that's easy. I know where the sea is. It's on my left. I'll find a road and I'll get down there." And then I could see the church was along the sea road. So if I just could get there and turn right, I would hit the church.

So I set off in this car and I just kept looking at the notes and it says go as far as you can, as far as you can. Well I came sort of to the end, but there was another sort of little funny road in front of me and a sort of little way onto it. I thought, "Well maybe that's it because this is a big road here and this is a little road next to it with little hedges down it." It did look a bit funny, but it was dark and it was icy and I couldn't see very well. So I went through this little sort of gate onto this little road and I turned right because I knew I had to do that and I began to drive along this little road.

Well suddenly ahead of me I saw something I wasn't expecting: a tram. And I had gone onto the tram track. I looked behind and behind me I saw another tram coming the way I was going. And each side of me was a hedge, and I couldn't get off. And so I thought, "Oh dear, I'm on the tram track. What fun." What do I do? Well the tram passed me this way and everybody in the tram was looking down at this weird woman in the car on their tram track. But the car behind me was sort of coming closer. All I could see was the lights, so I just put my foot down.

And I took off down that tram track, and I got my wheels in the tram tracks, which was great because you could go faster. And I went along this tram track. Don't ask me how I... I just wanted to get away from the tram, I wanted to find the end of it, and I wanted to get off, and I wanted to find my church and go to the meeting. Well I did notice on the right, the other side of the hedge, little flashing lights, red and blue, same color as over here. And a noise that I could hear above the rain and the sleet. And I thought, "Oh dear, it's the police."

So I thought, "Well he can't go as fast as I can because he's only on a road." So I put my foot down and I thought I'd get off the end of the tram track before he does. Well of course I didn't because he put his foot in his as well. And in the end there was a little gate at the end of the tram track which I got off, and there was my friend the policeman waiting for me. And he came very slowly out of his car as British policemen do, licking his pencil and getting his little book out to write in it. And he said, "Never in my life, never in my life have I ever seen anyone go 65 miles an hour on a tram track in a car, never mind a tram. Who are you and where do you think you're going and what are you doing?"

So I tried to explain it all and that I was going to take a Christian meeting, and I tried to hide my Bible and all the rest of it. Now then, what has this silly story to do with all of this? I'd broken the law. So he told me. However, I said to him, "Where does it say in the law that you can't go 65 miles an hour on a tram track? I know, sir, it says on the road, but I wasn't on the road, I was on the tram track." Well he wasn't quite sure either if it said in the law that you can't go 65 miles an hour on the tram track, and so I got away with it, actually, because he knew there wasn't a law about the tram track.

But you know I did break the law. I really did. I mean he knew it and I knew it, but nobody else knew it because nobody had ever written a law about a tram track and ladies driving 65 miles an hour. So I sort of got away with it. And I've always thought about this incident since and I've thought, that's what people think they can do. They can get away with it. They can talk themselves round it and yet in your heart of hearts you knew you shouldn't have been on the tram track doing all that stuff, breaking the speed limit, right?

But somehow you think you'll get up to heaven and God will be like that old policeman licking his pencil and getting out his notebook. And he really wants to book you, but you've got all these good reasons. You're going to take a Christian meeting, got all these good motivations of what you were doing, why you were hurrying, why you were on the tram track in the first place, it was a mistake. You're going to do all this, you're going to snow God. You're going to come out with all your righteous reasons for all the stuff you've been doing.

And God is not going to be like that policeman. God is going to say, "Even if you didn't break the law today, you sure broke it the day before and you sure broke it the day after. And if you break one part of it, it's the same. And you cannot stay in my presence in your own righteousnesses, with your own arguments, with your own reasons for why you did what you did, however good or plausible it sounds. The wages of sin is death."

But here is my righteousness. What then does this mean? Jehovah chose a servant, a righteous branch. And the servant of Jehovah is written about in Isaiah 53. You can read all about him in Zechariah 3:8-10, where it says, "I am going to bring my righteous branch. I am going to bring a king to sit on David's throne like no king before David or after him, and certainly even greater than David." King David's greatest son, a righteous branch who will be righteous and live righteous and die righteously. I am going to give this man to you to clothe your unrighteousness so that you can be righteous and so that you can go to heaven when you die.

It's a bit like the story of the prodigal son. Let me use this as an illustration. Two boys, you know the story well, it's in Luke 15. One of them said to his father, "Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me." So his father gave him, gave him, gave him, gave him, gave him. He took what his father gave him, he took off, and he wasted his substance with rebellious living, with riotous living. And he ended up in a pigsty. When he was sitting in the pigsty, this sinner boy, he came to himself, the Bible says.

And he said, "What am I doing here sitting in this pigsty?" Remember he was a Jewish boy. How far can you get from your roots sitting in a pigsty? Do you get that? Jews don't eat pork, right? They stay away from pigs. Here was a good little Jewish boy sitting in a pigsty far away from everything he had known as a child, sitting in that pigsty. And he came to himself and he said, "I'm an idiot. Even my father's servants do better than I do. All I've got to eat is the pig food. I will arise and go to my father and I will say unto him, 'I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no more worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.'"

And so he got up and you know the story, the father was waiting and watching, not running after him. He let him go, but he was waiting and watching for him to come back. And as soon as his father saw him take those steps, he ran and met him and he caught him in his arms. And then he turns to his servants who've run after the old father and he says, "Bring, remember, a robe, put it on him. Bring a ring and put it on his finger and bring shoes and put them on his feet." And he covered the muck and the mire and everything else with his robe of righteousness, his forgiveness, his acceptance.

"You're going to live in my palace, my son. You cannot live in it looking like that in your filthy rags." And so he covers the filth with a robe. He gives him a ring on his finger so that he can do his work and he gives him shoes on his feet so he can walk like the son that he is. Now that's a wonderful picture of what Jehovah Sidqenu can do for us. All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. All our sin makes us even blacker than we could imagine.

But the father has provided himself to be the robe for us. In his person, as we accept Christ, we are clothed in God's eyes with the righteousness of Christ. Not our own righteousness, of course, because we know what that's like, but God's righteousness. And he puts that ring on our finger and he tells us to go out into the world and tell people about that. You know the ring had a bit on it where you stamped people's business documents. It was the authority of who you are coming from. It was the ring of the father to do his business down here on earth.

And so after we've received the righteousness ourselves we're meant to go out into our world and do the king's business, tell other people: your good works, your churchgoing, all this stuff, it won't get you to heaven. It's like filthy rags. And that's going to be an unpopular message. You're going to be like Jeremiah. They're not going to want to hear that. They're going to want to fight their own way to heaven. They're going to want to do it their own way. It's not going to work. But we need to tell them anyway. And hopefully they'll come to know Jehovah Sidqenu like we do too.

And the other thing that should affect us when we really understand that Jehovah is our righteousness, Jesus is my righteousness, the thing that should affect us is that Jesus is other people's righteousness as well and that we should be able to look at them as people that have been clothed too in the righteousness that God gives. I was at a conference for pastors and their wives in Colorado with Stuart. And at the end of one of the meetings, I can't even remember what I'd been speaking about, a very lovely lady came up to me. She'd been a pastor's wife many, many years.

I asked her for permission to use her personal story as an illustration and she gave me that permission that day. I'd been talking about abuse and how hard it is to forgive somebody if you've been abused as a child. I have a friend like that. I have many friends unfortunately who have had that awful experience in their lives. And I used an illustration about this and she came up to me afterwards and she she said, "I want to tell you something that happened in my own life and how hard it was for me to forgive my father for this abuse."

She said when I was a little girl I was abused by my father and he involved the brothers and the uncles and they had a grand time with me. But it was my father specifically. And he was not obviously a Christian man and he gave my mother a terrible time and used to beat her up and eventually he left the family, but not before he'd done this incredible amount of damage to us all. And then she said I grew up and my mother was a Christian and she took us to church and we became Christians and then I married a minister and we've been ministering ever since.

But she said I've never been able to cope with this, I've never really been able to forgive him. And then she said to my amazement he became a Christian in a Billy Graham crusade and he wrote to me and he said, "I know you'll be thrilled that I have become a Christian and God has forgiven me. I want you to forgive me for what I did to you when you were a little girl." And he said in that letter, "I'm now righteous. Jesus has given me his righteousness. He's covered all my filthy rags. Aren't you glad?"

And she said I wasn't glad. I couldn't be glad. I just couldn't be glad. And I couldn't believe it that God had declared this man righteous because Christ had come into his life and Jesus is our Jehovah Sidqenu, our righteousness. And that now when God looks at him he doesn't see him, he sees Jesus and accepts him because he is robed, he's got the robe over the pigsty muck that he's been in. And she said one night I went to bed and I had this dream. Whether it was a dream or whether it was a vision I don't know, but it was a very, very vivid dream.

And she said there was a great platform, and I realized it was a platform in heaven. And God and the angels were there and it was all light and I was watching this platform and suddenly onto this platform came my father. And he stood right in the center of the platform looking up and she said suddenly God's voice from heaven said, "This is my son." And from heaven two hands came down with the robe of righteousness and began to cover up this man, my father, who was standing on the platform covered in muck and mire and filthy rags.

And as the robe of righteousness came down over him I woke up screaming at the top of my voice, "No!" That's how I felt. It's not fair. It's not right. She said I talked long into the night with my husband. And by the morning I was able to say, alright, if God has clothed him in the robe of righteousness and if he has accepted him, I must too.

And you see when you really understand that you've stood on that platform first and all your righteousnesses are just as filthy as the filthy rags of a man like that in God's sight, and God has clothed you with Jesus... he was Jehovah's servant to make all this possible... and you've accepted that forgiveness for yourself and you are now righteous because of Jesus, Jehovah Sidqenu, the Lord my righteousness, then he enables you to look at other people like that and see their filthy rags covered with Jesus with the robe of righteousness.

One of my favorite hymns says this: Jesus thy blood and righteousness my beauty are, my glorious dress; midst flaming worlds in these arrayed with joy may I lift up my head. Jesus thy blood and righteousness my beauty are my glorious dress; midst flaming worlds in these arrayed with joy may I lift up my head. Let's pray together. And I just wonder if there is one today who has been trying to dress themselves in good works, in churchy things, in doing right, in trying hard.

Do you believe that all your rightnesses in God's eyes are as filthy rags, the leper's cloth? That's what God sees. And do you believe that he sent his righteous servant, the branch, to work your salvation out for you upon the cross, to die for you? Thank him for that. For providing through his death and resurrection a righteousness that is not your own, that he would clothe you with.

Revelation tells us we will be in heaven arrayed in white robes of righteousness, not our own but his. Oh what a price you paid, Lord, that you yourself had to become that leprous thing, that dirty object, that God condemned and struck in judgment so that we might say Jehovah, Jesus my righteousness. And we thank you for that.

And we pray too that as we face people who have done terrible things to us or to our family who are perhaps believers now, we may be able to see them as you see them, arrayed in the robe of righteousness, forgiven. Help us to see them with your eyes and to accept them as you accept them because of him. We ask all these things for Christ's sake, Amen.