The Sermon on the Mount is the believer’s standard for living in today’s world. I have been thinking a lot about that lately.
 
How do I want my children and grandchildren to remember me?
How do I want God to judge me when Jesus comes again to establish His kingdom?
 
It is more important to me for Him to say, “Well done good and faithful servant…” (Matthew 25:23), than what friends, family and even fellow citizens say about my life. Don’t get me wrong. It is important what others think about me, but I am more focused these days on what God will say than any other person I know. To this end, Jesus holds up the standard of righteousness as a kingdom of God principle.
 
Is it possible to meet that standard in a world filled with so much animosity, greed and untruth?
How can a person ever be righteous enough to please God?
 
The truth is, we can’t. The Bible says, “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10). Our righteousness is as “filthy rags” according to according to Isaiah 64:6. I am unrighteous due to my many sins and I need God’s help to ever hope to be righteous enough to meet His standard.
 
That’s why Jesus is so important to me. He is my righteousness. His blood covers my sins so that I am righteous through the blood of Jesus on the cross, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). I am declared righteous through the blood of Jesus. Being made righteous through the blood of Jesus describes my kingdom character by my faith in what He did for me on the cross. I didn’t earn it. I received it the moment Jesus entered by heart and became the Lord of my life. So, I am a righteous person to God through faith in Jesus and qualify for citizenship in His eternal kingdom.
 
Righteousness is incomplete if I only strive to be right before God and slack up in my determination to do right in my daily life. It simply does not work to say that you are righteous when your actions say you are not. Righteousness means that you trust Jesus to make you right before God and then you dedicate yourself to do right every day. The Beatitude says, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness…” Righteousness must be your purpose and goal in all the decisions you make and the lifestyle you choose.
 
That’s what the rest of the Sermon on the Mount teaches us. It tells us that it is not enough to simply not murder someone. It tells us that kingdom people do not lend themselves to hate or belittle other people because that assassinates their character and reputation. Jesus says kingdom people do not commit adultery because they don’t ever look upon other women with lust in their hearts. Kingdom people do not worry or strive for excessive wealth because God takes care of them like He does the birds of the air and flowers on the ground. Kingdom people live differently than worldly people. Kingdom people keep their eyes on Jesus and not on the kingdoms of this world.
 
Are you a kingdom person?
Do you hunger and thirst after righteousness?
 
Guess what. If you do what the Bible says, “You shall be filled…”

​God continues to bless our church by sending new people to worship with our fellowship every Sunday. This past Sunday, we welcomed 4 new families to the worship service. You know that God is at work when you see new faces at church. Of course, God blesses His church through faithful and increased tithes and offerings received from hearts overflowing with love and commitment to what God is doing among us.
 
Our church family has consistently given over and above the goal established through the church’s 2020 Budget. As of this past Sunday, the Budget goal amounted to $133,167,60. Gifts received have exceeding that number by $7,184.64 because total contributions amount to $140,352,24. In addition, our Building and Renovation account has grown to $290,449.68. Grace has been abundantly blessed by God as a church whose members practice good biblical stewardship.
 
Of course, God has blessed our fellowship with new members and recent salvations. When have seen Bradley Swanner and Aubrey Mendez walk the isle to express their faith in Jesus Christ and present themselves has candidates for baptism and membership into the Grace Church family? While attendance has leveled to around 90 to 100 each week due to the pandemic, God continues to demonstrate His blessing upon us through new faces, good stewardship and people coming to faith in Jesus and membership in the church.
 
There is another clear sign of God’s hand upon us. When young folks recognize that God has worked in their lives to call them into kingdom service, you know that He is done something wonderful within the church body. God has called three men to serve as Deacons within the Grace church family:

​Ken Grindle – Unexpired 2-year term
Josh Dixon – 3-year term
Weldon Rogers – 3-year term

 
Weldon was ordained to serve as a deacon by our church 4 years ago. Ken and Josh are newly elected deacons who will be ordained to serve. The Ordination Counsel will meet on Sunday afternoon, October 25th at 5:00 pm to pray with and consider the scriptural basis for ordination with these newly elected deacons. The Bible says, “Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience” (1 Timothy 3:8-9). The purpose of the Ordination Counsel is to understand better what Ken and Josh believe about the Bible, Jesus, Salvation, the Church and other great doctrines we hold dear. Once the Council approves, they will be presented to the church for ordination which will take place on Sunday morning, November 1st. The Deacon Body will lay hands on these men to encourage and pray for them. The church family will approve of the Ordination as recommended by the Ordination Council and set these three apart for deacon service within the church family.
 
Set these dates aside and plan to be a part of what God is doing in our church to show us His presence and power calling people to step up and step out as devoted followers of Jesus. We sincerely praise Him for every good gift that comes from His hand.

I am continuing my reading through the Bible like many others in our church. Yes, I am behind in the schedule, but nonetheless, I am pressing forward. This week I am reading the prophets and today my time was focused on the great and terrible DAY OF THE LORD. Listen to what Isaiah said about this fearful day, “Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate; and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine. And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible…Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.” (Isaiah 13:9-11, 13)
 
The Day of the Lord in this instance is a description of what God was about to do to Babylon for its disregard for God. Babylon was God’s instrument of judgement against Israel when it failed to follow God’s direction. Now judgement was coming back on them for the same sins Israel had committed 70 years earlier. Isaiah called the judgement of God on Babylon, “The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amoz did see” (Isaiah 13:1). Talking about “What-Goes-Around-Comes-Around.” This is a prime example.
 
God’s judgement is a recurring theme in scripture. Wherever and whenever people willfully sin and disobey God’s divine will as it is revealed in His word, judgement follows. Do you believe we are living in a period of God’s judgement? What we are seeing take place all around us is stark and catastrophic like what the Bible describes as the Day of the Lord. A pandemic has infected over 7 million people in our country claiming more than 211,000 dead. Even if you disagree with the exact numbers, you must accept the fact that this disease is extraordinary in its scope and severity. The Day of the Lord is anything but, “business as usual.” The size of this illness falls in the catastrophic category like what the Bible describes as covering the light in darkness and shaking the heavens and earth out of their normal steady paths. My goodness, even the President and those around him have been shaken and disrupted by testing positive.
 
Wildfires, hurricanes, racial unrest, and chaos in the streets this year have been unusually abnormal. The Day of the Lord is a time when what is normal disintegrates into the abnormal.  God’s judgement is disruptive. It causes people to wonder about things and question what they see. Can you tell that I believe we are looking at our world today in the light of God’s righteous judgement? I believe He is saying, “Be careful. Things could become a lot worse.” Truly, the Day of the Lord would be worse than anything we have seen so far.
 
But, don’t quit reading with chapter 13 in Isaiah. Keep on until you get to chapter 14. There, Isaiah says, “For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob, and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob” (Isaiah 14:1). God’s judgement is progressive. He judges not to destroy, but to restore. Yes, Israel was judged by the way God used Babylon to attack their arrogance and pride. Now, after repenting and returning to God, the Babylonians themselves would be rescued by God’s restoration of Israel. Out of God’s judgement comes HOPE. God keeps His promises. God is not finished with us. He will restore if we will only repent. Pray for the repentance of America and for our restoration to faithfulness in God’s sovereign rule over our nation. The Bible says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord; and the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance” (Psalm 33:12). God is not done with us yet. Keep on praying and keep on trusting.

Our church begins a new and exciting outreach ministry today designed to share the love of Jesus with people in our community who need to know Jesus and become a part of a church family. The question is, “How do you reach out to people when, because of the COVID 19 pandemic, you cannot visit or make personal contacts like you normally do?”

Listen to the advice of the apostle Paul, “To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are  without law as without law, though not being without the Law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some” (1 Corinthians 9:20-22). Paul is telling us that he did what he had to do to present the gospel to all people and win them to faith in Jesus.
 
Today, somewhere around 60% of people living around us say they have made a personal commitment of Jesus Christ as savior. If that is true, there are in all county approximately 80,000 lost people who have never asked God to forgive them of their sins nor invited Jesus to come into their lives to give them eternal life. Within our neighborhoods there are numbers of people who do not know Jesus. We all are acquainted with folks who do not belong to a church where Jesus is the center of attention. You probably have family members who need Jesus. You go to school and work with people who have no church relationship that is meaningful in their lives.
 
In order to reach these people during this period of prescribed separation and social distancing, we have been led by the Holy Spirit to create an outreach box called our “PROMISE BOX.” This box is a gift from our church family to people who need encouragement to receive Jesus as Savior and become involved in the fellowship of our church. We are making these gift boxes available to you so that you may give them to people in your circle of relationships, neighborhoods, work associations and close friendships to say, “Our church loves you and wants you to know that we care about your spiritual well-being.”

Give one of these boxes to someone you know who needs a spiritual boost.
Give one to someone who needs to hear about Jesus.
 
Listen to what the Bible says as you think about who you know that needs to hear about Jesus and receive a tangible example of the way our church cares for them, “…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Each one of these boxes costs about $30 to fill with items designed to tell people that Jesus loves them, and we do too. Each box is a spiritual investment that is more powerful than anything money can buy. These boxes are filled with the Holy Spirit. They are power boxes. We have prayed over these boxes and every item inside them. If the Holy Spirit inside one of these boxes changes someone’s life, our investment will be worth everything it cost to put them together. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you who needs your personal witness through giving them a power box filled with the PROMISES OF GOD.