The Last Invitation – Part 2
By
Craig Meeker
Let us consider
four ways you and I can fall into the same condition as the man in the wedding
parable of Matthew 22. He thought he was right, but he was wrong.
There are three things that we must guard against.
How do You Measure
Yourself?
1 Many professed Christians are falling right
here: “For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves
with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves,
and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.” 2 Corinthians
10:12.
You will notice, at the outset of this text, Paul
talks about these people as commending themselves. They commend themselves
based on what they see in others. They are measuring themselves with a
totally different measuring device than God has given them. There are two
things by which the true Christian should measure his life: The Law of God
and the life of Jesus.
In the life of Jesus you see a revelation of the Law
of God. But if we are measuring ourselves among ourselves, we are opening
ourselves up to possible deception, believing that we are better than we
are, that we are right, when in fact, by the very act, we are wrong. If we
are going to measure up to the full stature of a man or of a woman in Christ
Jesus, we had better use the measuring rule by which God is measuring
us.
We will not come short of the measure, if we follow
His rule and the Law of God, if we pattern our lives after the life of Jesus
Christ.
2 In Romans 10:2, Paul is talking to and about
Israel, and he says, “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but
not according to knowledge.” Knowledge is essential to be ready for the
marriage supper of the Lamb—a rightknowledge, the knowledge that is found
in God’s Word, the knowledge that is rightly interpreted to us by the Holy
Spirit, which we receive when we have a willingness to do God’s will. We
do not receive God’s Spirit apart from a willingness to do God’s Will.
Without God’s Spirit we will be misled; we will wrest
the Scriptures unto our own destruction. “For they being ignorant of God’s
righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not
submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” Romans
10:3.
They have a zeal; they are working for God, but
they are not working with God. There is a distinct difference,
brothers and sisters. There are many people working for God but not
with God. If you have a question about that, all you have to do is
turn to Matthew 7:21–23, and you will find there a group described who work for
God but not with God.
Establishing Our Own
Righteousness
3 Paul, in Romans 10:3, identifies a group
as “being ignorant of God’s righteousness.” What did they do?
They established their own righteousness. Brothers and sisters, this
should alarm us. This is speaking of the professed people of God, those
within His house of worship who are taking His righteousness and twisting it
this way and bending it that way and making it their own righteousness.
How do you do that? How do we establish our own righteousness within the
sanctuary of God’s righteousness?
We compromise His righteousness. What God tells
us to do, we only go part way with Him, and that is our own righteousness,
because God’s righteousness is perfect and whole and complete. Anything
short of that is ours. You can even add to God’s righteousness, and it
becomes your own righteousness. Many churches that profess to be Christian
are doing that today. They are adding to what God has said. Rome is
foremost in this, but many churches are following her lead.
What righteousness will they have when they get to the
marriage supper of the Lamb? They will have their own, and their own is
not enough. They will be cast out. You can add to the righteousness
of God, or you can subtract from the righteousness of God; either way, or both,
what you have left is your own righteousness and a profession of
godliness.
Satan is concerned about us. He wants us to be
derailed from a full readiness to enter into that marriage supper some
day. He wants to derail us, and he can, brothers and sisters, if he can
get us measuring ourselves among ourselves or by compromising the righteousness
of God by adding or subtracting from it.
We Are Not Saved by being in
the Right Place
4 “Trust ye not in lying words.” This is
God Himself speaking through Jeremiah. “Thus saith the Lord…Trust ye not
in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The
temple of the Lord, are these.…Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot
profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and
burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And come and
stand before Me in this house, which is called by My name, and say, We are
delivered to do all these abominations?” Jeremiah 7:34, 8–10.
We can be deceived, brothers and sisters, by believing
that we are right, just because we are in the right place. You see, we are
not saved by being in the right place alone. We are saved, and will be
saved, by being in the right place, doing the right things, for the right
reasons. No mere physical connection with the truth will save us, whether
that connection is in the church or with the Word of God itself.
Merely memorizing the Word of God is not
salvation. Salvation is righteousness, God’s righteousness within
us. It is having this Word taken by God’s Spirit and put upon our
hearts. There is salvation. I can memorize the Word; I can know it
from Genesis to Revelation and be lost. No mere physical connection will
save us, and we should never trust in such things.
Our anchor, our security, is in the Lamb of God, the
Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world. He is able to make us
worthy. He is able to get us ready. He is able, if we are
willing. Oh, God has made all things ready, and all we have to do is
cooperate with Him, and He will make us ready too.
You may be wondering, just what is the wedding
garment? We have already alluded to it, but it is a wonderful thing to see
it in the Word of God. “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul
shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of
salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom
decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her
jewels.” Isaiah 61:10.
Without His
Righteousness
There it
is. The wedding garment is two in one: it is the garment of salvation; it
is the garment of righteousness. Whose righteousness? Jesus’
righteousness. And I want you to note, you cannot possess the one without
the other. You cannot have salvation without His righteousness. They
go together.
There are some
people who believe that you can have salvation without His righteousness.
Believe—that is what we hear. Only believe! God says, “Faith without
works is dead.” James 2:20. It is the work of His righteousness that
He wants to see in us. It comes by way of faith. So the garment is a
robe of righteousness.
Now what is
righteousness? If you were to define righteousness, what would you
say? It is doing what is right. We have a God Who created us; Who
does everything right, at the right time, in the right way, for the right
reason. As His creation, He wants us to be right.
Jesus echoed
these thoughts in Matthew 6:33 in the Sermon on the Mount, when He said, “Seek
ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” They go together,
brothers and sisters, you cannot go into the kingdom of God without His
righteousness.
He Wants YOU
There
We saw a
man who tried to circumvent the rules in the parable in Matthew 22.
He tried to get into the kingdom of God with his own righteousness. It
does not work. God is up front with us. He is telling us all the
facts, because He wants us there at the marriage supper. He wants to put a
place setting right there for you and for me. There may even be a little
plaque there with our names. It is going to happen as verily as we are
here, because what God says will happen, will happen.
The righteousness
of Christ comes in two parts, but it makes up one whole. The robe is in
two pieces, but it is in one. Let me explain. The righteousness of
Christ is first imputed to us through the righteousness that Jesus lived out in
the flesh in this world. He lived a perfect life. He was tempted in
all points like as we are, yet without sin. He imputes that righteousness
on us, when we confess our sins and receive the invitation of the Gospel.
We confess our sins; we forsake all that we know is wrong before Him, then He
imputes His righteousness upon us.
Now, where do we
stand in the sight of God when we have that experience? We are
perfect, perfect in Jesus’ righteousness. But now God wants to do
something more for us than merely forgive us, because He knows that we must
continue to walk in and grow in the Gospel truth. So God has a part of His
righteousness that is called the imparted righteousness. That imparted
righteousness makes us whole.
The imputed and
the imparted cannot be separated. There are some people who are trying to
separate those two. You cannot do it. It is like the garment of
salvation and the garment of the robe of righteousness. They go
together. It is like seeking the kingdom of God first and His
righteousness. You cannot separate the kingdom and His
righteousness. You cannot separate salvation and His
righteousness.
If you have
imputed righteousness, you have imparted righteousness, or access to imparted
righteousness. And thereby you and I, by the grace of God and the power of
His Spirit, are able to maintain justification. That is how He keeps us
justified, through the sanctifying influence of His Spirit and His Word and our
cooperation with it.
Righteousness Within Is
Manifested Outwardly
“Righteousness
within is testified to by righteousness without. He who is righteous
within is not hard-hearted and unsympathetic, but day by day he grows into the
image of Christ, going on from strength to strength. He who is being
sanctified by the truth will be self-controlled, and will follow in the
footsteps of Christ until grace is lost in glory. The righteousness by
which we are justified is imputed; the righteousness by which we are sanctified
is imparted. The first is our title to heaven, the second is our fitness
for heaven.” Messages to Young People, 35.
You see, God
wants to take us beyond the title; He wants to give us the fitness. He
wants to take us beyond saving us from the penalty of sin, into the area of
saving us from the power of sin. God wants a people who shine in this
world, and we are only going to shine if we have on the full garment. It
is an inward/outward experience. It can never go outward/inward. If
you have the true experience, it is an inward/outward experience.
It is an
experience that takes us beyond the right day to worship, to keeping it in the
right way. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he
is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new.” Paul said it this way: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things
which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13, 14.
You see, God
helps us forget the past, when He imputes His righteousness unto us. When we
confess our sins and, by His grace, forsake them, then the impartation of His
righteousness gives us power to maintain that condition.
I want to make it
clear how we are to be ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb. In
Zechariah 3:3-4, is an illustration on how Christ’s righteousness becomes our
righteousness. “Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood
before the angel.” [This is how you and I stand before God without His
righteousness. All our righteousness is as filthy rags.] “And he
answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, ‘Take away the
filthy garments from him.’ And unto him he said, ‘Behold, I have caused
thine iniquity to pass from thee, [This is justification by faith in action.]
and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.’”
Praise the
Lord! Whose work is this? It is God’s work. It is our
submission, our choice to cooperate. God says, I will do the work, be
submissive, be obedient and I will clothe thee with a change of raiment.
Behold, all things become new. This is the righteousness of Christ that
becomes our righteousness through a transaction.
What did Joshua
give? His own righteousness which was filthy rags. You see, not only
unrighteousness, but all my righteousness I need to give God, and He will
give me His righteousness. It is an exchange; it is a transaction.
Jesus alludes to it very strongly in the message to Laodicea in
Revelation.
I Counsel Thee,
Laodicea
Laodicea is the
last period of Christian experience on the face of this earth. It is the
last church, the last remnant of time for God’s people just before Jesus comes.
There are some problems in Laodicea, to say the least, but Jesus says to
Laodicea, “I counsel thee, [Here is the invitation.] to buy of Me gold
tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest
be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine
eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.” Revelation 3:18.
Do you see the
transaction? He wants us to buy of Him. That means that there is an
exchange occurring. We just saw in Zechariah 3, that exchange is the
exchange of our righteousness for His righteousness. Do you see
that? Now notice what is going to enable us to make that
transaction. He says, “Buy of Me gold tried in the fire.” What is
gold tried in the fire? It is faith that works by love under
fire.
You see, only God
can give you that kind of faith. It is a faith that works by love in the fire of
temptation; in the fire of trial, it will be victorious. That kind of
love, that kind of faith, God gives to us. When we are motivated with the
kind of faith that comes by looking at Calvary and seeing what Christ did for
us, it warms our hearts, so now we are motivated with that kind of faith.
We are able to receive the white raiment; we are able to make that
exchange.
When we receive
that righteousness, it anoints our eyes with eyesalve, so we can see spiritual
things for what they are. There are very few professed Christians, even in
the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who have anointed eyes, who have
spiritual eyesight to see the true issues that are transpiring today in this
world.
If we never have
that anointing of our eyes, we will never be able to see spiritual things.
We will never put on His robe of righteousness fully and completely unless we
have a faith that works by love in the midst of the fire. We are almost at
the expected end.
Jesus says, “Behold, I stand
at the door and knock.” Revelation 3:20. Is that an invitation? That
is what I do colporteuring. I knock at the doors, and what I am basically
doing is inviting those who come to the door to have the Word of God. That
is all that God is doing with you and me. He is knocking. “Behold, I
stand at the door and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will
come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” There is the
qualifying factor for getting ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb.
If we are going to sup with Him some day at His table and be served by Him, we
must sup with Him now. We do that by being a laborer, together with God,
in the salvation of our souls first, then in the souls of others. Paul
said, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know
in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.” 1 Corinthians
13:12. Face to face with Jesus! We can be there, because He made it
possible.
July 2001 Table of Contents |