It was supposed to be like that. Good morning. Hope everybody's having a great morning. I'm a little hoarse. Actually, I'm a little hoarse. Had some nasal work done on Thursday. Wasn't sure I was gonna make it, but I pulled through. So, thank the Lord. You didn't live till you had a needle up in your nose, injecting whatever they injected in my nose. 12 times. Oh, boy, that hurts. Got that from the tape, wherever that is. But I'm glad to be here, and I'm glad God's on his throne. Well, we're in chapter 19 in our book that we're working through, and it's our response to the righteousness of God. If you were here last week, you know we worked on God's righteousness, or talked about God's righteousness. And I'm gonna start off with a verse here. I don't think that's in our lesson this week, but I just wanted to set a context. Psalm 7, 6 says, Arise, O Lord, in thy anger. Lift up thyself because of the rage of my enemies, and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded. So shall the congregation of the people compass thee about for their sakes, therefore return Though art thou on high, if the Lord shall judge the people, judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness and according to my integrity that is in me. Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just. For the righteous God trieth, or he test, the hearts and the reins. So we talked last week about the righteousness of God, and this week we're gonna talk about our response to the righteousness of God. So righteous basically means to be just or to be right in conduct or character. You can carry that actually a little further. And we're talking about God's righteousness. It's important to remember that God is always righteous. Not just today, and not just tomorrow, but forever. And he always has been. God is always righteous. We can be good for a little while, and then I blow it. We can look good to others, but in our private time, are we the same person? So he's righteous 24-7. So, we'll start off our first verse there, John 2.29. In this verse, well, let me read the verse. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who practiced righteousness is born of him. So this verse, hate to start off saying what it's not saying, but this verse is not saying that if you are born from Him, then you will practice righteousness, or you will always practice righteousness. It's saying that those that practice righteousness have been born of Him. There may be some that have been born of Him and not practicing righteousness right now. But if you see anybody practicing righteousness, you can be sure that they have been born of Him. They've been born again. So if you've been born again of Him, you should practice righteousness. Sometimes if you get 12 shots of Novocaine in your nose. You may not for a short time, but tomorrow's a new day, and we can pick up and start working on it some more. There are times you may not be a good reflection of our Heavenly Father, but if you're born of Him, there should be a desire, there should be a draw, there should be something within you, which is really the Holy Spirit, directing you to do better, and for you to practice righteousness. There should be a desire in your heart. And you may think, or someone may say, I know someone that's as good as most church members, and they're not born of him. And I'd say, well, I do too. But first off, that's not a real high bar. Some church members, right? That'd be easy to live up to. Some people have not been raised really well. Some people have been raised well, and it's easy for them to be good. They were raised like that. And it's set to them by, no matter what standards, the standards of their parents, but they've picked up on it. But some people at church, even some people that's been born again, were not raised well. And it's harder for them. But they are still practicing righteousness if they're trying to do better. So what is John saying? If you see someone practicing righteousness, that would show a true desire to be more like their Heavenly Father. And that desire had to come from the Holy Spirit inside. And that's what makes you born again. It's not the practicing part that makes you born again. It's the being born again that makes you want to practice righteousness. 1 John 3, 5, our next verse there says, actually that's not our next verse, but I've added this in here. Sorry. 1 John 3, 5 says, Jesus answered, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, you must be born again. So you must be born again. No matter how good you are, you must be born again if you're going to see the kingdom of heaven. And you must be born again to practice righteousness. So 1 John 3, 7 says, little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous, referring to God. We understand that practicing righteousness does not make you righteous. But if you practice it, then you are. There's only one way a person becomes righteous, and it's not through practicing righteousness or practicing being righteous. It's through being born again. To be righteous, you must be born into it. That kind of sounds like privilege, you know. But it is privilege. Because you didn't earn it. Jesus paid it all. So when you're born again, you're declared righteous. It's given to you. You didn't earn it through hard work and practice. You were born into it. You inherited it through the Spirit of God. So to become born again, you can try to work for it, but you'll never obtain it. or you can have it bestowed upon you, you can have it declared, and that's called grace. Romans 4, verse 5 says, but to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Speaking of righteousness. And Philippians 3, 9 says, and be found in him not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. So our righteousness is from God. It's been imputed to us. It's not through works which we have done or through practice, but it's been declared by a righteous God. As pointed out in 1 John 3, 7, those that practice righteousness do it, not to obtain it, but because it's in their nature. And that's what John was saying. If you see someone practicing it, you can believe that they've been born of Him. So, we should also I really messed up my intro here when I got into this. But we're covering four responses of our righteousness of God. And we just covered, we should live righteously before God. And now we're jumping to, we should live with great confidence. So Proverbs 3, 5 and 6 says, trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not on thy own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy paths. So if you're going to trust somebody with your life, not only with your life, but with directing your life, you might think about trusting somebody that was powerful. You might think of someone that was smart, everlasting. Those would be great attributes to make an ally with. But if you were trusting your life with someone, then it would be best to put your trust in someone that's 100% righteous. Someone that will not lie. Someone that cannot lie. Someone that always tells the truth and never even misspeaks. That's political for lying. That's what the politicians say. I misspoke. But God never, ever makes a mistake. He never even has a wrong opinion. So if you're going to trust someone with your heart and you're going to not lean on your own understanding, there's no one better than our righteous God. And fortunately, He is great, perfect, eternal, immutable, all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing, holy, truthful, faithful, and He's all-loving. And thrown on top of that, He's merciful and He's gracious. The absolute righteousness of God is one of the greatest incentives to rely upon him, even in the midst of trials. Because he is righteous, we can trust our lives to every word and work. Psalm 92.15 says, to declare that the Lord is upright, he is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. So what does this scripture teach us about the truth that we can trust in God? Well, the Lord is upright. And it's amazing the things that come out when you really nail down on a verse and just study it, but the Lord is upright. The Lord is exactly straight, you could say. You can put a level on him. You can put a plumb bob on him, and there's no imperfections in him. We'd say, he's true. You can measure him. You can check him out, and you'll find he's true, he's exact. He's what he says he is. He's perfect. Then he goes on and says, he's my rock. And that's, if you look that word up, rock, in the original language there, says properly a cliff, or generally a rock or a boulder, figuratively, and we're speaking figuratively here because he's not really a rock. He's calling him a rock. So figuratively, a refuge, it says. So he's calling him a refuge, a fortress. And we know in this instance, he's calling him a rock because He's a place you can go in for protection. You can run to Him for protection. So we don't worship rocks, but we worship the God that is like a rock. He's a fortress like a rock. He's a refuge that we can run and hide to. Psalm 31, 2 says, bow down thy ear to me, deliver me speedily, be thou my strong rock. And then he says, for a house of defense to save me. So that's exactly what he's saying here. Proverbs 18.10 says, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. And then he goes on to say, there's in our verse, 92.15, and there's no unrighteousness in him. The Hebrew word for unrighteousness is used 53 times in the Old Testament. One of the main words, or main analogies, how would you say that? Alternative word is distortion. There's no distortion in him. There's no deviation from standard or truth. God is the standard and he never changes. That's something to shout about. We can trust God because He's perfect. We can go to Him for a refuge and protection. There's no deviation from the truth. He is exactly what He says He is. He's strong. No distortion. He's upright. Our next verse, Isaiah 41.10. says, do not fear for I am with you. Do not be anxiously, do not anxiously look about you for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. So what does this scripture teach us about this truth that we can trust in God? Well, he tells us not to be fearful. He tells us not to be anxious or dismayed, if you're looking at KGV, or worried, and then tells us why, because I am with you. That's a good reason, right? God is with us. We have nothing to fear. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand, he says. That's not just my hand, he says. Not just my right hand, but his righteous right hand. That just keeps getting better there. Everyone has heard the saying, this is my right hand man. That comes from days of old when the king would have a person on their right, usually a counselor, someone they most trusted counselor, advisor, that would give them advice. And we still say that today. Well, he's my right-hand man. This guy right here, I can trust him. He's everything I need him to be. We usually say it in jest kind of, but that's what it means. So everyone's heard of that. And that means your best counselor. It means a good friend. And the person on the right hand also has your right ear, and they can talk to you, and they can ask you favors. So when God says he is going to help us with his right hand, he is saying we're very dear to him. He thinks highly of us. and is speaking to you as someone in a seat of honor that he bestowed upon you. See, that right hand has to be given. It's not elected office. It's not assigned to you. That's of your picking, who's on your right hand. And God's chosen us to be on his right hand, to pull us up with his right hand. So, in the righteous hand, I mentioned. That's the only kind of hand God has, meaning it is just and will do no wrong. Therefore, we can trust it. We can trust Him and not fear. We can rest easy. We cannot be anxious because we're on the right side of God. That's the right place to be, isn't it, on the right side of God? So the righteousness of God that leads us to trust in him is also the foundation and incentive for prayer. So what do you think the following text from the Old and New Testament teach us about this truth? We'll start off with Psalm 145, 17 through 19 there. It says, the Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his deeds. The Lord is near all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth, he will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He will also hear their cry and will save them." So this verse is really pretty plain, without a doubt, saying the Lord is near to everyone, right? Everyone's own Not exactly. Not to everyone, to those that call upon him. Those that trust in him. Because he goes on to say, to all who call upon him in truth. So the King of Kings is different from Earth of Kings. God knows the motivation of our hearts when we come to him. And when you ask him something, he knows why you're asking, not just what you're asking, but why you're asking. So we do need to, when we go to him, we need to make sure, when we call on him, we need to make sure that we do it in truth, for honest reasons, not for self-serving reasons. James 4.4 says, you ask and receive not because you ask amiss, that you may consume it upon your own lust. So, because God is righteous in all His ways, we can put our full confidence and trust in Him and call upon Him. And yes, knowing He is righteous should put a reverential fear in us, a respect that goes so deep that we do not want to disappoint Him. That fear, when we fear God, That's a real fear. It's a reverential fear. It's a fear out of just a deep love for Him. So, which is why when people are in sin, or get off in sin, backslide, whatever you want to call it, they don't sit around praying and they usually don't go to church. Because they feel, and if they're truly one of his, they feel like they've disappointed God. And they want some distance there. Just like Adam and Eve in the garden after they had sinned, they went and hid. And a lot of our church members, a lot of our family here are hiding right now because they're away from God. They've sinned. They're not living up to what they feel God wants them to live up to. Everyone knows that if your child is good, right, you got a child, you got three or four children, well, if you got a good child, and I mean one that does what he's told, one that obeys the rules, then when they come to you to ask you for something that they need, they usually get it because you know you're not going to spoil them. They're being good children. And at the same time, if you've got a child that's not obedient, doesn't mind, always giving you problems, And they come up and ask for a Game Boy or whatever is popular right now. They're not going to get it. As a matter of fact, you may take something away. And that's what I was having lunch with a guy the other day in Fort Smith. He was talking to me. He said, I'm running out of stuff to take away from my kid. So I said, maybe you should buy him something else and he could take it away. But he said, like a good four-wheeler, then he could ride it. He couldn't ride it. So God will give us the desires of our heart. Those that fear him, he'll give the desires of your heart. Meaning those that are obedient to him. And of course, if you're obedient to him, if you've been born again, you're practicing righteousness, the desires of your heart are going to be honest, sincere desires that would be helpful, not a new Corvette, which I would like. If he wants to give it to me, it would be good. But that's not what he's talking about, desires of your heart. So Luke 18, 7 and 8 says, now will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night? And will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. So these verses are found in the parable that we used to call the unjust judge. I suppose it's still called that. So when answering the question above, it's important to read verse one, 18. Or verse one, I'm sorry, of chapter 18. So it says, now he, or Jesus, was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart. So that's what Jesus is teaching through this parable. If you're familiar with the parable, you know this woman is going to a judge, an unjust judge, just a normal judge, I guess you could say, and asking for justice. Well, the judge did not care about justice. He did not care about doing right and wrong, really. That wasn't his priority. But because this woman was calling on him so often, and pestering him, he decided to answer her request that he would give justice to her. Basically, just so she would leave him alone. That was the judge's line of thought. It actually says pester in there. So, the point is, if this unrighteous judge will answer this woman's request, then for certain, a righteous God, a righteous Heavenly Father, will most certainly answer our pleas for help. So the point, don't stop calling on him. Don't stop calling on him for justice. Call on him for righteous things. For his will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven. And when we pray for that, we'll get an answer. So our next section here comes to we should live a life of worship to God. Psalm 96, 11 says, let the heavens be glad and let the earth rejoice, let the sea roar and all it contains. Let the field exult and all that is in it. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy before the Lord, for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the people in his faithfulness. So who wants to be judged? Probably no one's gonna raise their hand. No one, right? But he is coming to judge the world. But I'm okay with that. Matter of fact, I'm gonna rejoice in it because he's gonna judge the world in righteousness. So we'll know it's a just judgment. See, one day before, I approached this righteous judge and I confessed my wrongdoings. I confessed my wickedness. And there was no judgment needed because I confessed that I was guilty and I threw myself on the mercy of the judge. So my case has already been settled. I've been redeemed, and now I'm on his team. I'm on his side, and I see things clearly that I didn't see before. And right now, I've been seeing a lot of injustice, a lot of bad things happening, and I'm tired of seeing the injustice in our country, in the world. So when that day comes, When the righteous judge comes, I'm gonna rejoice. I'm ready for a righteous judge. And I can worship him because of who he is. I can worship him because what he has done and what he will do. I can worship him because of the grace he gave to me and the mercy he continues to give me. So we should all rejoice about this and proclaim it. especially if you've been redeemed, or only if you've been redeemed, because if you haven't, you're going to be judged, right? So redeemed, how I love to proclaim it, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, redeemed through His infinite mercy, His child and forever I am. So I'm ready for Him to come. I'm ready for Him to show up and judge this world and set things straight. Revelation 15, three and four says, and they sang the song of Moses, the bond servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God, the Almighty, righteous and true are your ways, King of nations. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy, for all the nations will come and worship before you. for your righteous acts have been revealed." So righteous and true are your ways. That's something to be thankful about. We should be thankful so much for that right there alone, we should fall down and worship. Because the God who is righteous is the King of all nations. He's going to judge them. We know it will be a just judgment and he will reign truthful because not only is he righteous, he's also holy. He does no wrong. He's separate from all wrongdoing. You know, if we ever got a president or someone to lead our country that was just, that was upright, the people would rejoice. In fact, Proverbs tells us that when the righteous are in charge, the people rejoice. But those are getting fewer and fewer, far between, and even those that try to do good get cheated out of I'll just say cheated out of it. No telling the amount of people that never make it to run for office because they get shut down even before that. See, God understands that. We were all sinners, and we may have had something in our past, but once you've been redeemed, you've been redeemed. He knows your heart, but the news media doesn't know people's heart. They don't know anything about you. So if they got some trash to bring up, if they don't like you, they'll bring it up. But if they like you, if you're their guy, they're not ever gonna bring it up. Matter of fact, they'll hide it, as we've seen. As we've seen Hunter Biden's laptop just disappear and it was Russian propaganda before the election. So we should proclaim God's righteousness to others. According to the scripture, not only, I'm almost done, not only are we to live righteously before God, trust in His righteousness and worship Him for His righteous deeds, but also we are to proclaim His righteousness to all people, both near and far. So what do the following texts teach us with regard to this truth? And how should we apply these truths to our life? I'm looking at Psalm 40, verse nine. And I think Mr. Washer made a mistake here. I think he should have included verse 9. He only put verse 10 in their lesson. But look at verse 9 says, Psalm 49 says, I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation. Behold, I will not restrain my lips, O Lord, you know. So that's even better than verse 10, as far as telling us to proclaim it. Verse 10 says, I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great congregation. So the psalm is a great example. of the heart God wants to see in us. He wants us to recognize what he's done. He wants us to praise him for it, but he wants us to proclaim it to everyone. He wants us to proclaim his goodness. I think it was Proverbs 26 is, most men will proclaim everyone his own goodness, but a faithful man who can find. Yeah, when we ourselves do something good, we often tell people about it. You know, I did this the other day. You should see what I did. Come look at it. But do we ever do that for God? Hey, let me tell you about God. Let me tell you what he's done for me. That is exactly what we should do. And we should proclaim his righteousness. I'll tell you the truth, I've never thought of, you know, I knew he was righteous. I knew that was an attribute of God, but I never thought of proclaiming that, you know, or sharing that aspect. But we're told to do that. We should praise God not only for his goodness, but also of his righteousness. We should be able to see this better than we always have. I already talked about this. We are longing for some righteous people to run for office, but what we have is most important. We have a righteous God. Amen. Proclaiming is slightly different from praising. Praising can be done in private. Proclaiming is done with an audience. Psalm 71, 15 and 16 says, but as far as me, I will hope continually and I will praise you yet more and more. My mouth shall tell of your righteousness and of your salvation all day long. For I do not know the sum of them. I will come with the mighty deeds of the Lord. God, I will make mention of your righteousness and yours alone. So two times right here, he mentions God's righteousness. And at that point, after reading that psalm, I felt somewhat convicted because I don't know if I've ever proclaimed just his righteousness, you know what I mean? Maybe his holiness, maybe him saving me. I like that part. But do I ever just mention that he's righteous? So he says, my mouth shall tell of your righteousness. I will make mention of your righteousness in yours alone. How often do you do this? I already said righteous is not something that occurred to me to praise God about. Is grace and mercy? Yes, absolutely. Is love and kindness? Yes. His all-powerfulness, absolutely. His holiness, yes, but I actually never meditated on praising God for being righteous all the time. I would say that this is one attribute I've taken for granted. Let me skip down. So, last verse. Peter says, 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellence of him. Who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light? For you once were not a people, but you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So Peter's telling us to proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. He also gives us several things to praise God about. In the chosen generation, we're the church, we're a holy nation, we're God's people. He called us out of darkness. That's something to praise God about. So because God has done this for us, we should live well, or as good as we can. We should strive for righteousness because of our gratefulness, because of our heart has been changed, and now we desire to please God. We have a desire to be with God, and we have a desire to be like God. Amen? And I'll wrap it up. Okay, we got prayer requests. I'm not really sure what the issue is right for her. Carol Smith. And also Bill Coley's Is his wife, is she gonna stay there? Is she gonna move with the children? I'm sure she's got a lot of decisions to make on what to do. Anybody else have any prayer requests they'd like to? Yes, sir. In prayer for Angie Alexander. She got a phone call this morning. We want to cover anything else? Let's keep in mind our decision makers in Washington. I feel like we're on a precipice here. Could be going to a world war, but God knows that we'll just pray. Pray to Him that we don't. We'll pray for what's best. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Lord, we do come to you this morning. We do want to praise you for who you are. We want to praise you for your righteousness, Lord. We want to pray to you. And Lord, we want to ask you and give you our petition. But Lord, we thank you for who you are, and Lord, we know you're a holy God, and Lord, we just thank you that you lend an ear to us this morning, and that you're willing to hear our petition. Lord, we do wanna pray for the Coleys, the Coley family, and Lord, we just pray that you'd be with them, and direct their thinking, and help them through the funeral, and the arrangements, all that they have to do, Lord. And Lord, we pray for Angie Alexander, Lord, losing her sister. We pray for the whole family and just ask you just to be with them through this time. And Lord, we do want to pray for our country and Lord, for all the countries of the world. Lord, we look forward to that day that you'll come back and judge us in righteousness, Lord. But until then, Lord, we pray for those that are in charge of each nation. Lord, we pray for you to just impart knowledge for them. We ask you to put a good right-hand man beside them to give them counsel. And Lord, we pray for the Holy Spirit, Lord, to lead these people toward peace. And Lord, we do want to tell you we love you this morning. We do want to uphold your righteousness, hold you up, and just recognize the fact that you are righteous. Lord, help us to learn that fact. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.