Joseph prince sermon You Are Still Righteous When You Fail: People come to God like this, they come to God and they are afraid, having this sense that they have failed. A sense of like, I didn’t measure up, I didn’t do this enough, I didn’t do that enough, and then what you do to compensate for this you try to do something else, You try to do something good.
But the reason you are doing that good thing is not because it is an overflow from your heart, you are actually doing it because you are Trying to cover up for the lack you think you have.
So in people’s eyes, it is good work, but in God’s eyes, it is dead work. Rehoboam is the son of Solomon, was a good king. He ascended the throne when he was about 16 years old and he was good at first, but he began to listen to the advice of his peers, And he rejected the counsel and wisdom of the older counselors.
Pastor Joseph Prince says, “In the multitude of counselors there is safety. His father (Solomon) wrote that in the book of Proverbs, The same counselors who were around his fathers who heard his father’s wisdom— he rejected them And as a result, the kingdom was divided into two And that is why you have the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.
From his day, there was a split that was how he caused a Church split, Later on he repented and he walked with God, for a few year, but later on again, he forsook the Lord and God sent a prophet and the prophet said this to Rehoboam: “Because you have forsaken Me, I will hand you over to the King of Egypt, Shishak And the Bible says in 1 Kings 14:25-28 “It happened in the fifth year of King Rehoboam that Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem.”
Now, this King of Egypt- mizraim, the place of double stress, the place where the devil wants to constrict your space, your influence, restrict your movement, Egypt. He came against Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, and in the fifth year, what he did was terrible. It was very sad, he took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house, and he took away everything.
The essence of the gospel is the gift of righteousness From God; The law is all about God demanding righteousness. Clearly, God said, “Do your best to be righteous.” But God knew men could not keep it, men are so proud, we proud beings, we do not know we could not.
So God had to give us the law first, If God gave grace first, we would not understand or appreciate grace and give God all the glory, we would give glory to ourselves because we do not know how bad we are.
So God gave the law, the law is about demand from a Holy God, So God said: “Thou shall not” But men could not. On Mount Zion, God gave the Spirit and grace is not about God demanding anymore. It is God supplying, so even now, in our lives, we live life with a sense of supply instead of demand.
So people who acknowledge the Lord and say, you are my righteousness, I am the righteousness of God in Christ, then when you do good, it is not to be righteous, It is an outflow. It is something you want to do because you are righteous already.
But whenever you try to become righteous, you are essentially saying you are not, when you say you are not, you negate what Jesus did at the cross and the Holy Spirit has nothing to bear witness to.