Tsedek Yahweh
Israel was a mess.
Tired of the anarchy that reigned in the days of sporadic judges, when “there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25), they pinned their hopes of peace and stability on having a king to rule over them.
Though they had sought this for the wrong reason (“make us a king to judge us like all the nations” 1 Sam 8:5), yet the request in itself was not wrong. God had revealed it had always been His purpose for them to have a king rule over them – only, one of His choosing, not theirs (Deut 17:14-15). In particular, the king of God’s choosing was “not to multiply horses for himself, not to multiply wives for himself, nor greatly multiply silver and gold for himself” (vv 16-17).
But of the kings that followed, “when they were good, they were” not “very, very good.” Even the best of their kings – notably David and Solomon – failed in these most basic requirements of good governance.
And “when they were bad they were horrid”.
Though God bore long with His people, frequently forgave them, and (as in the days of the judges) sometimes restored them under a better ruler, at last the wickedness of King Manasseh sealed their fate. Neither Manasseh’s late repentance, nor the reforms of his righteous grandson Josiah, could reverse God’s judgment on the nation. (2 Kings 23:26-27)
To quote Longfellow again:
Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all.
From then on it was all downhill. Four kings followed in quick succession, the last being the third son of Josiah, Zedekiah. Ironically, this name (from the Hebrew: Tsedek Yahweh), given to him by the pagan Nebuchadnezzar, means: “The Lord (is my) righteousness.”
A more unrighteous king could hardly have been found in the long line of many unrighteous kings.
Yahweh Tsedek-enu
The kings Israel so desperately looked to, to bring peace and stability, had failed. Even the best of them.
A new, a different, king was needed.
In the darkest days of Zedekiah (Tsedek Yahweh), the prophet Jeremiah foretold the coming of a new, a different, king.
His name? Jehovah Tsidkenu (from the Hebrew: Yahweh Tsedek-enu): “The Lord, our righteousness.”
“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; a King shall reign and prosper, and execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.
In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely.
Now this is His name by which He will be called:
The Lord Our Righteousness [Jehovah Tsidkenu]” (Jer 23:5-6)
This was the “Branch of David” whose coming Isaiah had also prophesied more than a century before.
There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots… Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins, and faithfulness the belt of His waist. (Isa 11:1,5)
This was the coming Messiah.
The Christ!
We are a mess
We are a mess without a king.
We are not righteous.
But God is.
“Righteousness” means to measure up to a standard – in this case, God’s standard.
God’s standard is His Law. God’s Law defines what God is like.
God’s Law tells us:
– what God loves because of what He is like
– and what He hates because of what He is like.
To be acceptable to God, we must love what God loves, and hate what God hates. We must be like that ourselves.
We must be “righteous” as measured by His standard: the Law.
Unbelievers reject God’s standard; they despise God’s Law.
Sadly, some professing believers do too; they think the Law has nothing to do with them – whereas it has everything to do with whether they are accepted with God or not.
You cannot despise God’s Law without despising God.
God is righteous.
He lives perfectly consistently with His own standard.
Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness. (Psalm 119:142)
We are not righteous.
On this, both Job and his critics were at least agreed:
What is man, that he could be pure?
And he who is born of a woman, that he could be righteous? (Eliphaz, Job’s critic)
Truly I know it is so,
But how can a man be righteous before God? (Job)
The New Testament agrees:
All have sinned and come short, measured by His standard – His glory. (Rom 3:23)
Sin is the transgression of the law. (1 John 3:4)
Hence:
There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God…
There is none who does good, no, not one. (Rom 3:10-12)
We fail to meet God’s standard.
We are not accepted with Him.
Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because I am a man of unclean lips,
And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. (the prophet, Isaiah)
We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin…
I agree with the law that it is good…
I know that in me nothing good dwells…
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (the apostle, Paul)
We are in a mess.
Enter the Messiah
Christ (“the Anointed One”) was anointed by God as the new King.
God owned Him as “My righteous Servant” (Isa 53:11)
He is the righteous King who lived perfectly by God’s standard:
A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness;
Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You… (Heb 1:8-9)
But He is not only righteous Himself.
He is OUR righteousness!
He is our passport to acceptance with a righteous God.
The Bible puts it this way:
God made Christ who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Cor 5:21)
We are not righteous; we could never be accepted with God.
But Christ has become our righteousness with God.
God now accepts us in Christ.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! (Rom 11:33)
Robert Murray M‘Cheyne
Robert Murray M‘Cheyne lived in Scotland in 
the first half of the 19th C.
When he was 18, his brother’s death had a profound effect upon him. He writes: “I lost my loved and loving brother, and began to seek a Brother who cannot die.”
After this, he was drawn slowly, but surely, to faith in Christ.
He went on to study for the ministry, and was ordained in 1836. He was just 23.
He ministered in St. Peter’s Church, Dundee, where he was as a much loved pastor.
He died an untimely death from typhus just short of his 30th birthday in 1843.
(This was just two months before the Disruption which saw one third of the ministers of the Church of Scotland separate to form the more gospel-centred Free Church of Scotland.)
M‘Cheyne’s congregation pleaded that he be buried in the graveyard beside St Peter’s Church in Dundee, rather than in the family’s own burial-ground in Edinburgh. His parents (still alive) agreed and he was buried there; an estimated 7000 people attended the funeral.
He also wrote poetry.
At the age of just 21 he composed his poem, Jehovah Tsidkenu.
This is also sung as a hymn, usually to Caritas (“My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine”).
You can find four (of the seven) verses sung to that tune here.
Though I particularly like this rendition (only three verses):
Here is M‘Cheyne’s poem – it has always been a favourite of mine.
1. A Stranger to Christ’s Righteousness
M‘Cheyne begins looking back on his teenage wanderings apart from God:
1. I once was a stranger to grace and to God,
I knew not my danger, and felt not my load;
Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,
Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.
Though unconverted, he found pleasure in reading the Bible, though only as literature that moved him. Even a love of Bible reading does not ensure you are converted.
2. I oft read with pleasure, to sooth or engage,
Isaiah’s wild measure and John’s simple page;
But e’en when they pictured the blood sprinkled tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.
He was not only moved by the words of the Bible, he was deeply affected as he thought of Jesus on the cross. But he had no sense of his own sin that had put Christ there.
Faith engages the emotions. But emotionalism itself is not faith – though many seem to confuse the one for the other in worship today.
3. Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,
I wept when the waters went over His soul;
Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu—’twas nothing to me.
2. Discovering Christ’s Righteousness
Grace discovered M‘Cheyne’s soul with deep conviction of sin – another aspect of faith that often gets bypassed today. Some seem to think grace has little to do with conviction.
But as Newton wrote: “T’was Grace that taught my heart to fear” before “grace, my fears relieved.”
4. When free grace awoke me, by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety in self could I see—
Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.
“No refuge, no safety in self could I see…”
I love those words of Toplady’s: “Foul, I to the fountain fly, wash me, Saviour, or I die.”
Though I once heard a woman on talk-back radio complain that she went to a funeral and it was turned into a “religious occasion” – she hadn’t gone there for that! “And the words of one of the hymns was disgusting: Foul, I to the fountain fly… What does it even mean?”
The radio host sympathised with her, as he had no idea either.
Thankfully for M‘Cheyne, not only did grace teach his heart to fear, but (again, in Newton’s words) “grace, my fears relieved – how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.”
5. My terrors all vanished before the sweet name;
My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came
To drink at the fountain, life giving and free—
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.
3. Living in Christ’s Righteousness
From then on M‘Cheyne clung to Christ’s righteousness as his only – but certain – hope of acceptance with God.
6. Jehovah Tsidkenu! my treasure and boast,
Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne’er can be lost;
In thee I shall conquer by flood and by field,
My cable, my anchor, my breast-plate and shield!
Yes, even in death:
7. Even treading the valley, the shadow of death,
This watchword shall rally my faltering breath;
For while from life’s fever my God sets me free,
Jehovah Tsidkenu, my death song shall be.
Just before he died in 1937, J. Gresham Machen, one of the deepest Reformed thinkers of last century, wrote to John Murray, professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary.
His last words read, “I’m so thankful for the active obedience [i.e. righteousness] of Christ. No hope without it.”