Righteousness Through Faith

The following message from Dr. Paul Burby was recorded live at Gate City Church in Nashua,

New Hampshire. We pray this lesson would be an encouragement in your walk with the Lord

and not in any way replace weekly attendance at your local home church.

Thank you, Lord. Let's go ahead and stand if we could do that. Again, welcome to Gate City Church.

Good to have you on board with us today. And greetings to just even the many people around

the world that are logging in. And it's good to have you online too. You know, we have people

from Asia and Europe and South and Central America who log in every week. It's just an amazing thing

to me to be able to use this medium of expression to be able to get the word of the Lord

out there and worship too. It ends up being a real blessing, you know, for shut-ins.

And we have not forgotten you. We're glad to be able to

serve you this way. So, amen and amen. If you're a first-time visitor to Gate City Church,

could you raise your hand just a little bit just so I can see? Yeah, welcome.

Anyone else here for the first time? Yeah, good. Good, good. Yeah. Welcome.

We're delighted to have you with us and want you to know a couple things that we love the Lord,

that we love his word, and we really want to be stirred in word and spirit.

And we're a Bible teaching church. A lot of preaching went on yesterday in the ladies'

meeting. We do more on Sunday, more of the teaching, line-up online, precept upon precept

mode. And there's room for both, isn't there? So, thank you, Lord, for all of that. So,

let's do our Gate City Declaration. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,

sovereign of the universe, you alone are the Lord. There is no other. Here today, we say,

blessed be your name. Here today.

We ask that your kingdom would come, your will be done. And here today, we declare that Jesus is

the Lord, the Savior of the world. He alone is the Lord. There is no other. You know, I've been

really stirred this month. You know, a little reflective. I think old guys do that. But I'm

wrapping up the last two weeks of my 40th year of pastoring this church. And it's caused me to be a

little reflective.

And appreciative of what the Lord really has done for us. And, you know, he's given us a wonderful

footprint, a good site. But look around you. He's given us great people. And it's all the people,

isn't it? It's all about the people and the people that God connects you with, you covenant with,

you walk with, and all of that. And so, I'm forever grateful for the many people that God

has brought here. I remember 40 years ago,

41 actually, I was up in Alaska going to Bible school, took a trip back here to see about starting

a church. And I saw this building for sale. And it had a big for sale sign on the front of the

building. And so, I called and I came and did a walk around and it was an absolute disaster.

And there were over 500 pigeons flying around. And they'd been flying around for 10 years. So,

you could only imagine, yeah.

Yeah. Not quite on a wing and a prayer, you know. Yeah. And I just want to say,

publicly declare that I like this flock much better. So, let's do our memory verse if we

could do that from Psalms 28, verse 7. The Lord is my strength and my shield. In him, my heart

trusts and I am helped. My heart exalts and with my song, I give thanks to him. Psalms 28, 7.

One more time. The Lord is my strength and my shield. In him, my heart trusts and I am helped.

My heart exalts and with my song, I give thanks to him. Psalms 28, 7. Last time. The Lord is my

strength and my shield. In him, my heart trusts and I am helped. My heart exalts and with my song,

I'll give thanks to him. Psalms 28, 7. You could all be seated.

Paul Kumar did an exceptional job last weekend.

And I am continuing a series of lessons that I've been working on.

And today's going to be a little repetitive. And yet, I really do believe that the Lord wants me to

to not push too quickly through the last theme that I shared with you. And it's about righteousness.

You remember that one?

And about the importance of realizing that God is a holy God. He's a righteous God.

He's not like us. And he's perfect in every way. And he's a good God. And we'll talk

about that in great detail. But we're told in Matthew chapter 6, verse 33, to seek first his

kingdom and his righteousness. And I don't know about you, but for me, those were two concepts

when I first gave my heart to Christ 50 years ago.

22 years old. The kingdom of God and the righteousness of God were foreign concepts

to me. And it wasn't until I came to know the scriptures and came to understand

who Jesus was and what place he wanted in my life, that those things really began to not just open up,

but to become important to me as well. And, you know, it's kind of interesting when you

think about it. God says, this is really important.

And then in our human nature, it's so foreign from how we are innately wired. It's almost like

we have to learn, God, what do you consider good? What are the ways of the Lord? And that's where

the scriptures come in again and again to just show us. So I want to share a little of the

breakdown of what we've been doing here over the course of the last four or five lessons that I've

been sharing. But before we go there, let's just open with a word of prayer.

Lord, I just thank you for just this privilege, the sacred trust that you've given me

for these so many years to just bring the word of the Lord.

And I thank you for the promise that your word will never return void.

And it's a foundational expression. It's very, very important for each one of us

that we be rooted and founded in the word of God. And my prayer is that the word of God would speak

to us. It'd be more than just the word of God. It'd be more than just the word of God.

It'd be more than just a preacher sharing musings and thoughts, but God, that we could hear you

speak through the scripture, God, that it would prompt our hearts to just even know you more,

to love you more, and to respond to you, to be more willing in allowing you to mold us and shape

us into the people that you want us to be in Jesus name, I pray. So again, a great deal of time has

been spent talking about the kingdom of God.

And we talked a lot about God's holiness and righteousness. The series really

has involved the importance of repentance. And it's not enough just to believe in God,

but we need to each and every one of us say each and every one. Yeah. In the Greek,

each and every one means each and every one. It's not enough just to believe in God,

but every one of us needs to believe and come to him in repentance, acknowledging our sinfulness

before the Lord.

You know, we're born as it were, each and every one of us with our backs turned to the Lord.

Someone's trying to get my attention and I'll catch you later.

And we're born with our backs turned to the Lord. And it's only as we turn to Christ and have the

eyes of our hearts open, then we start to realize that, you know, God is,

he's, he's awesome God. But he's not like us. He's a holy God. He's pure. He's good. He's sinless

and righteous in every, every, every way. So we've been looking at repentance,

the kingdom of God, holiness, righteousness. And then today we're going to talk about

righteousness by faith, talking about how do we come into this whole package?

And what's God's plan for us and how we relate to a righteous God. And the answer to that,

it's by believing in him and by stepping out in faith. Before I go too far,

there was a quote that I happened to read about recently

that I want to share with you. And it really spoke to me in a profound way.

And it's in relation to the Bible. And it was, it was from R.C. Sproul.

And what he said was, you don't have to give up your intellect to trust the Bible.

You don't have to give up your intellect. We've got people here, doctors and all sorts of chemists

and people who's a PhD in physics and all the rest. You don't have to give up your intellect

to trust the Bible.

But you do have to give up your pride. And you got to be willing to say, okay, God,

if you have a way that's better than my way, would you open the eyes of my heart and show me

what that all means? You say amen to that. So we're talking about God's righteousness and

the dictionary defines that as a behavior that's morally correct or right. And really the Bible's

standard for righteousness is God's own righteous perfection. And God is righteous in every

attribute. It's his essence really. He's righteous in every action, every reaction, every behavior,

every word, every judgment of God is a righteous judgment. And I think it's important for us to

understand the scope and the width and the breadth of, of all of that. God always acts rightly in

every action. And I think it's important for us to understand the scope and the breadth of, of all of that. God always acts rightly in

no sin. There's no unrighteousness in the Lord. And his righteousness is, is eternal. I shared last

time I spoke, well, what about our righteousness? And, and you remember I said, not so much,

you know, or, or that, that old adage from the film Houston, we've got a problem

and we do have a problem. It's a sin problem. We fall short of the glory of God.

We're falling short of the glory of God. We're falling short of the glory of God.

creatures. That's how we come into this world. And Jeremiah tells us that the human heart

is corrupt, deceitful, and desperately wicked. And as we look around, you don't have to watch

too many news programs to realize that fallen humanity is really steeped in these things.

Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 64, 4 or 64, 6, we're all like an unclean thing. And our righteousness

is like filthy rags. So God is righteous. We're not. And yet we're told to seek first his kingdom

and his righteousness. And so that leaves us with, okay, how does that all work?

You know, how do we unwrap this thing? How do we get our arms

around it? You know, how can we lean into this a little bit? And so that comes as the background

for our lesson on righteousness and that our righteousness is only imputed to us by faith.

And it's not ours, really. It's Jesus' righteousness that we have kind of placed on our account.

And

you know,

And now we are given standing because of his righteousness.

So, you know, that's so far different than, you know, I'm not that bad.

Well, I'm not that good.

Or if I only do this much good, I'll be all there.

But the reality is it'll never be enough.

And yet Jesus was perfect in every way.

You know, one of the interesting stories is that when in the Old Testament,

they slaughtered the lamb, it had to be perfect and without blemish.

And that was the blood that was applied in the altar.

And the reality is it's the blood of the lamb,

our lamb of God who's come to take away the sin of the world.

The lamb, Jesus Christ, our scapegoat,

the one who has sacrificed for us, that really gives us standing.

So what I want to do,

is a brief run through the book of Romans.

You know, they call, scholars call Romans the Roman road.

Say that fast three times, woman road, you know, the Roman road.

And they call it that because it really clearly shows the pathway.

It depicts the right way to procure secure salvation,

right relationship with God.

And so we're going to run through three chapters of Romans,

not all the verses, maybe about 10 or 12 verses and just highlight them.

Again, what are we trying to do?

We're saying righteousness by faith.

Okay.

And what part does faith play in,

in the establishment of your righteousness and mine?

Are you with me here?

We touched on it last time.

But we're going to unwrap it more fully today,

because I believe that God wants us to have a better feel,

a better understanding really of how this plays into your life and mine.

Okay.

And so Romans chapter three,

verse 10 is really an expanded version of six different Psalms.

And so it's a reference to six portions of scripture from the Psalms and one verse in the book,

the book of Isaiah.

We'll read that.

And it really tells us in a lot of ways that sin is universal.

And we all have in the Greek all means we all sin.

We all fall short of the glory of God.

We all miss the mark.

And this sin problem ultimately affects our thoughts,

our words, our actions, our reactions.

So let's read through.

Romans three,

verses 10 to 18.

There's none righteous.

No, not one.

There's none who understands.

There's none who seeks after God.

They've all turned aside.

They together have become unprofitable.

There's none who does good.

No, not one.

Their throat is an open tomb with their tongues.

They've practiced deceit.

The poison of ass is under their lips.

Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Destruction and misery are in their ways and the way of peace they've not known.

And there's no fear of God before their eyes.

Look around you guys in our culture and our society, our world.

It's not just here in America, but around the world.

There's no fear of God in the land and everyone doing what's right in their own mind.

And it's not right at all, it's wrong.

Now highlighting verses 10 to 18, none righteous, none understand, none seek after God, all have

lost their way, living unprofitable lives, none do good.

They've all abandoned the way, corruption instead of holiness, selfishness instead of

goodness, cruelty instead of kindness, all have lost their way.

So you want to, you know, every year we'll have the president or someone get up with

the state of the state or the state of the nation and this really is the state of humanity.

Really the bottom line on our problem, isn't it?

Yeah.

Okay.

Romans 3, 21 to 22.

In light of everything I just shared, but now, but now the righteousness of God has

been made manifest.

And you know, Schofield in his notes says that the righteousness of God is more than

an attribute, but the righteousness of God is Christ himself.

Think about it guys.

The righteousness of God is Yeshua, is Jesus himself.

Let's look at that verse.

But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith

in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

And again, all have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God.

Yet God through Christ can still make you and me presentable to the Father.

I mean, and that's a miracle.

Yeah.

And that's, you know, beyond what we deserve.

That's amazing grace that God would take us who have no standing in our own righteousness,

impute to us Christ's righteousness so that we could stand before our holy God, the father.

I mean, amazing.

Amazing.

Okay.

Another verse.

The son of God.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Now, now kind of track with me here.

All have sinned past tense.

All fall short of the glory of God.

Present tense.

Yeah.

Until we by faith come into that right place through Christ.

Hallelujah.

We're all lawbreakers.

We've all violated God's.

God's commandments. We're all guilty before the Lord. And we're all

born with a sinful nature because of the fall of Adam.

And we've all committed sin.

Yeah. Willful,

volitional sin

before the Lord.

Yeah, I would hope

you know what I found

walking with God for 50 years?

You kind of start out thinking maybe you're not that bad.

And then every year I come to know him more and his holiness

more and his righteousness more, I realize I am not that good.

It is absolutely amazing grace

that has given me standing before the Lord. We're all

guilty. We're all under judgment

unless we repent.

Let's unwrap this a little bit more.

Verses 24 to 26, chapter 3.

We're justified

by his grace as a gift.

We can't buy it.

We can't earn it. We're justified by his grace

as a gift. We can't buy it. We can't earn it.

We can't earn it. We can't buy it.

We can't ask for it. We can't to the redemption that's in Christ Jesus

whom God put forward as a propitiation

by his blood to be received by faith.

And this was to show God's righteousness because

in his divine forbearance, he had passed over

former sins. Now, did you catch that?

Justified by his grace

as a gift to be received by faith?

Yeah.

We become righteous

by accepting by faith the one who is righteous, Jesus,

who again and again is called the righteous branch

into which we are engrafted by faith.

It's like, whoa, this is kingdom stuff.

That's incredible.

You know, I was reading, you know, I do a lot of research

and praying over this, and one of the writers,

I forget which one, says that every one of us

would be pronounced guilty in God's courtroom.

And yet the father sent his son to go into the courtroom

and make a plea on our behalf because of what he did.

What he's done for us.

It's like, whoa, yeah?

Talk about a plea deal.

Our scapegoat.

Now, in verse 24, or 25, there was a word, propitiation.

And I'm sure you all know what that means.

Yeah?

When I started reading the Bible, I had to look that one up.

It wasn't exactly.

It wasn't exactly the kind of verbiage we used on Elm Street.

Propitiation, what is that all about?

Well, let me tell you.

A propitiation is an act of appeasement

in order to avoid divine retribution or judgment.

And the short of it is Jesus became our substitute

and incurred God's wrath on himself on that cross

in order to judge us.

Justify God's justice against the sin that we committed.

He who had no sin became not the essence of sin,

but carried your sin and mine to the cross of Calvary.

And that's why he went there as a propitiation

in order to make it good so that we could have standing

by faith in who Jesus is.

You say amen to that?

This is the simple gospel, guys.

And if it doesn't leave you saying,

oh, thank you, Lord, for what you have done for me,

then there's something wrong.

Verse 27, 28.

Then what becomes of our boasting?

It's excluded by what kind of law?

By a law of works?

No, but by the law of faith.

For we hold that one is justified by faith,

apart from the works of the law.

That whole justified by faith means made righteous by faith.

Are you hearing me?

It's like, whoa.

Okay, I told you we were going to look at three chapters.

Let's move to chapter four.

You with me?

Just move your head back and forth.

Amen.

Yeah.

All right.

Chapter four, verse three.

We know what the scripture says.

That Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Now, Abraham, just so you know, came before Moses.

Abraham came before the law.

And it wasn't through the law that he was justified, but through faith.

His standing came about by faith.

Now, listen to me.

This goes a little bit deeper than just having faith to believe in God.

But it actually connects having faith in God, believing that he is,

and then having a faith that believes that what he says is true.

I'll unpack that for a moment.

Walk with me here.

In Romans 4.13.

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring,

that he would be heir of the world.

Talk about, I don't know if you've ever taken any business courses or anything like that.

But in management, they talk about BHAG's big, hairy, audacious goals.

Yeah.

You're going to be the heir of the world.

You know, not just the neighborhood.

But you're going to be the heir of the whole world.

I mean, think about that.

Yeah.

And there was included in there a promise that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through him.

You think about that, and it's like, whoa.

So, he believes that God is, and that God is directing his steps.

And then God promises him some things, directs him in other things.

And by faith, he responds.

He was tested.

I mean, think about it.

He went out.

Not knowing where he was going.

He was told that he would have a son.

You remember that whole thing with, you know, Sarah and the handmaid and all these Ishmael and all these different things.

He was told that he would be led to the promised land.

And yet, there was a fair measure of difficulty along the way that led him to Egypt.

And then he was told that the nations would ultimately be blessed.

Through him.

And look what it says in verse 21.

And Abraham was fully convinced that God was well able to do what he had promised.

And that's why his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

It's like, whoa.

So, it's beyond that little simple believing in the Lord, but also believing that what God says is true.

Let's move on to chapter 5.

Are you with?

Are you with me?

Yeah?

All right.

Verses 1 and 2.

Therefore.

Now, when you see therefore, it often tells us why it's in therefore.

Therefore.

Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through whom also we've obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand.

And we exalt.

In the hope of the glory of God.

Again, to be justified by faith is to be declared righteous by God.

By faith.

Verse 17.

For if by the transgression of the one, death reigns through the one,

much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness

will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

I hope you can see how this is all wrapped up.

In him.

He's the way.

The truth and the life.

He's the way out of darkness and this life.

He's the way into eternal life.

Forever.

It's Jesus.

And only him.

A quick review of these three chapters.

Jesus is the propitiation for our sins.

He's the one that took the sin.

He's the brunt of the punishment for us.

He's our justification.

He's the one who gives us standing.

And now he becomes our peace.

Again, propitiation that that appeasement in order to avoid divine retribution or judgment.

Our substitute.

And again, thinking about it, we're cleansed through the blood.

We have peace with God.

We have peace with the cross.

We've been given standing through Christ.

And we have divine hope for this life and for eternity.

Think about that.

Four takeaways.

Not so quickly.

God is a righteous God, a holy God, a pure God, a good God.

Righteous, the Bible tells us.

In all of his ways.

And he's gracious in all of his works.

And he promises to be near.

To all who call upon him.

Now I got to tell you, I was, I was, I was in the military.

Serving as a sergeant in, in the Air Force.

And I remember one morning, it was five, about five o'clock in the morning.

And I was in the military.

five o'clock in the morning, I was on the flight line,

and I saw the sunrise over the Chugach Mountains.

And the beauty, the wonder of

God's creation. And I was all by myself out there,

you know. And I remember yelling out to God,

God, if you're out there, I want

to know you. If you're out

there, I want to know you. You know why

I did that? I had had enough religion growing

up to know that if there was a God

out there, I was in a bit of trouble. And I

knew, I wasn't sure he was, but I knew I wasn't in a good

place. And I knew if there was

a God, I needed to get things right.

You know. And so I

yelled out, if you're out there, I want to know you. And he turned

my world on its axis

to show me who Jesus really was.

That I could, by faith, come into the family

of God. Not because of any goodness in me,

but because of the free gift of eternal life that he wanted to give to me.

You know. Okay, how about

our righteousness?

Well, we don't have any on our own.

We don't even have the ability to achieve our own righteousness.

No standing before the Father.

Except by the grace of God.

We have no right to enter into God's

heaven apart from the grace offered to us through

Jesus. That's the reality. In Isaiah 59,

again talking about people, us, our feet run to evil. They hasten to shed

innocent blood. Thoughts are always on iniquity, devastation, destruction

are in the highways. Don't know the way of peace. No justice

in their tracks. They've made their paths crooked. Now, Jesus,

listen, is our only hope.

And it's only through him that we can secure

righteousness sufficient to get

into God's heaven. John Calvin, one of the

great reformers, he made this statement,

we'll never be clothed with the righteousness of

Christ, except we first know assuredly that we

have no righteousness of our own. And I don't know about

you, but that speaks to me. It's like, whoa.

Again, I talked last time about the names of God and

you know, Jehovah, Jireh, our

provider, and Rapha, our healer, and Nisi, our

banner, and Kadesh, our sanctifier. But one of the names of God

is Jehovah Tzitzkanu, which is the Lord

is my righteousness.

You know, if we're standing at the pearly gates

and St. Peter asks us, why should I let you into God's

heaven? What righteousness

do you have that warrants your being allowed to enter

here? To be able to say by

faith, it's the righteousness of Christ.

It's the blood of the Lamb that has cleansed me

from my unrighteousness. And it's his

righteousness that gives me standing.

So our righteousness is by faith, you know?

And we're told to live by faith.

We're told to live by God.

Harry Ironside, I love his commentaries.

If you're ever looking to pick up some good, simple, but deep

commentaries, Harry Ironside says this.

How hard it is for the natural man

to give up all the

pretension to righteousness and to fall

down in the dust of self-judgment and

repentance before God.

before God.

Martin Luther, another reformer,

talks about, I think, the importance of personalizing this,

which I've done, and I think every one of us should,

to be able to say,

Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness.

I'm your sin.

You took on you what was mine

and set on me what was yours.

You became what you were not

that I might become

what I was not.

It's like, whew.

And we've been called to pursue righteousness.

Yeah?

And the righteousness that I'm pursuing

is not my own, but God yours.

Make me less like me and more like you.

Cleanse me from all unrighteousness.

Let the words of my mouth,

the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5,

Jesus said,

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst

after righteousness.

They shall be filled.

Yeah.

What did you hear this morning?

Anybody?

Yeah, back here, George.

You know, it just leaves me saying,

thank you, thank you, thank you

for redeeming us.

Thank you that you showed up.

Thank you that you came and made a way.

Thank you, God.

We had no way out.

I mean, to draw a parallel,

you get this spacecraft out there

and these people are stuck

and they're going to be there for months.

The relationship,

the relief that they would have

to have another vessel show up

that could bring them home.

Pray for them.

But that's what Jesus came

so that we could ultimately go home.

Anyone else?

What did you hear right here?

Yeah, Kim.

That we need to be fully convinced

that they are the Lord.

Oh.

That we are only,

only God.

Yeah.

Lord, thank you for

carrying our sin to the cross.

Thank you for

though our sins be a scarlet,

they become white as snow.

But your heart desires to cleanse us

from all unrighteousness

and then impute to us

the righteousness of Christ,

which we don't deserve.

That when the Father looks down,

we have access and standing.

Thank you.

Lord, let's go ahead and,

and grab our communion emblems.

If we could do that.

Again, communions for the body of Christ,

for those who, I mean, who are praying right now.

who have received Jesus as Savior and Lord,

for those who are right standing with him.

Anyway, a couple of scriptures.

So with a view to righteousness,

reap in accordance with kindness.

Break up your fallow ground.

It's time to seek the Lord

until he comes to rain righteousness on you.

You know, Harry Ironside, one more time,

he says that righteousness is not found

when your back is turned towards God.

First thing we need to do is turn to him.

Oh, God.

But then the promise is,

as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

and as the garden causes what is sown in it to sprout out,

so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise.

To sprout up before all the nations.

So Jesus took the unleavened bread and broke it,

handed it to his disciples and said,

come eat of it and do this in remembrance of me.

Lord, we thank you

for carrying our sin to the cross.

We thank you for willingly being broken for us

that we could be made whole.

Let's receive you.

And then he reached for the cup of the Passover wine,

offered thanks and said,

this cup that is poured out,

that's poured out for you is a new covenant in my blood.

This too do in remembrance of me.

Lord, thank you.

Thank you for the blood of the lamb

that's been applied to the doorpost of my heart.

Thank you that my name, our names,

have been written in the lamb's book of life.

Thank you, Lord,

for the free gift,

justification by faith,

righteousness of Christ,

and life everlasting.

Let's partake together.

Amen.

A couple of announcements real quick.

A big thank you

for giving to the Lord.

We really do

thank you for supporting the work of God here.

And we don't talk about it much,

but

it does cost to

to do the work of the Lord.

And we thank you for your faithfulness.

Youth group.

Yeah, there we go.

You want me to stand over there?

I forgot to unmute it.

Sorry about that.

Why did I ask for help?

No, no, no, no, no.

Hey, good morning, everyone.

Can you hear me?

All right.

So youth group starting back up tonight.

It's getting toward the end of summer, early fall.

The ministries are kicking it off.

Again, a little bit of a change from last spring

or whenever we stopped

is that we're extending it by 30 minutes.

So it'll be from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m.

And we'll either have the ramp unlocked

or the door next to it in the alcove right there.

So looking forward to seeing you guys

at sixth grade through 12th grade.

Also had a couple of members of the body here

ask for some help with a move next Saturday.

And so definitely, you know, many hands make light work.

Mark and Maria are moving down to Myrtle Beach

and they're right around the corner here in Clock Tower.

So if you could give like an hour, two hours,

just if you're able-bodied, unlike myself,

I'll be there, but we'll make it easy.

Hand trucks, whatever we have.

If anyone has any kind of like rolling things

to put furniture on or what have you,

that would be great.

What is it?

A week from this coming Saturday.

Oh, a week from this coming Saturday.

Sorry, so two weeks from now.

21st.

So if you're feeling that you'd like to help out with that,

then we'll hang around for five, 10 minutes up here.

Please let me know.

Thank you.

You need to stay here.

You don't want to go there.

There's Chinese balloons floating around there.

I mean, it's just...

Can't shovel sunshine, right?

Yeah.

Thank you, Lord.

A couple of other announcements.

I actually put the announcements away,

but we've got a bunch of them.

I just want to say thank you.

We had an awesome church picnic.

How many of you went?

Man, it was...

I think we had somewhere between 250 and 300 people

that passed through throughout the day,

and it was really a great community-building time.

Thank you very much to those who worked so hard.

Also, thank you for all the people yesterday

at the women's event that went on here.

We had over 100 ladies come out for that,

and a bunch of the guys stepped up and helped.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for that as well.

Yeah.

Growth and healing, that resumes on September 11th and 12th.

Anything you want to say there?

Are we okay?

Yeah.

Yeah, so we can still sign up and be part of all that.

Thank you.

Ladies, Bible study is...

Resuming, too.

So, you know, September is the beginning of the new year,

church year, in my mind.

That's how I've always kind of tied it in with school year.

And so women's Bible study is beginning on the 16th,

and men's ministry is resuming, too.

I understand they have a video.

Yeah.

Hey, this is...

Levi Lusko, and I want to invite you to join me

on a study of the books of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.

Going through these scriptures have really changed my life.

And specifically, one of the things that it really helped me with

was understanding grief and hope

and how to have my heart set on heaven

while I'm still living here on this earth.

I think this study will be an encouragement to you

and a blessing to you,

no matter where you're at in life and what you're going through.

So we encourage you to take advantage of that as well.

So that's starting up.

I'm not sure about the Saturday one.

I don't have the...

Next Saturday?

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

And we also have Erev Shabbat.

Erev Shabbat.

Shabbat is Saturday, right?

And...

In a Jewish context.

But the Erev is the Friday evening preparation for the Shabbat.

Shabbat actually starts on Friday night at sundown

and to Saturday night at sundown.

And so we're beginning our Erev Shabbat

to bring those back since COVID.

And just encourage you to come.

It's going to be really a nice time

to just really focus on our Judeo-Christian roots

and take advantage of all that.

So let's all...

Let's all stand if we could do that.

You know.

It's an honor to serve the Lord.

And God's not...

Listen, God's not called us to just believe in Him.

He's called us to walk with Him.

He's got things for you and me to do.

Lord, here we are.

Here we are.

Use us for your glory.

Let us be your hands and your feet

that are willing to touch others

with the amazing grace that's touched us.

In Jesus' name I pray.

God bless you.

Amen.

Yep.

This concludes this week's podcast.

For more information about Gate City Church

or to listen to any archived sermons,

visit www.gatecitychurch.org.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord make His face to shine on you

and be gracious to you.

The Lord lift up His face on you

and give you peace.

Amen.