Righteous Works Have Their Reward

Brethren, I want to talk about righteous living today. I thought Mr. Sanny was going to launch into that same topic earlier, but he took off in a different direction than I'm going to go. If we want to wear the label (a lot of us are label conscious; the older we get we could probably care less about labels, but when we're young, we're very conscious of the brand and the label that we wear… it makes all the difference as to whether you're 'cool' or not), if we want to label ourselves a true Christian, we must daily bear the cross of righteous living. The most of the world who brand themselves a Christian live lives very different from the life of Jesus Christ. Far too many who profess themselves of Christ refuse to respect and obey His principles of righteousness and proper living. They don't even know how to live a righteous life. They don't know what is sin. When you don't know what is sin, and when you don't know how Jesus Christ lived and what He taught, then it’s very easy to not live a righteous life. God demands a new life from those He has called and chosen. When we go through a stage in life of repentance and change, it will definitely be different from what we're used to. That's true except for maybe if you were brought up from birth within the Church of God.

In addition I want to talk about the spiritual rewards that come from living a righteous life. God wants very much to reward you and me as we do good, as we overcome, just as we would give to and reward our own children in doing what's right. There's nothing more enjoyable at times than to reward good positive behavior. God wants to do that with us. I've entitled this message: "Righteous Works Have Their Reward". I want to begin by asking the question "What does God indeed expect and require of us in righteous living?" What is our Christian duty as we get up each day and go off to perform various activities of life?

Let's begin the answer to this in the Old Testament. In the book of Micah, God reveals some high level requirements from us. These are HIGH level, way up there, large in principle for us.

Micah 6:6-8

"With what shall I come before the Lord,

and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

with calves a year old?"

Verse 7

"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

and ten thousand rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

The fruit of my body (one's own child) for the sin of my soul?"

Verse 8

" He has shown you, O man, what is good;

And what does the Lord require of you

but to do justly, to love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?"

That is, "What do I bring God to show him honor? That is what it's saying there. God gives us three things here to focus on daily. Three requirements if we truly want to worship and serve God in spirit and in truth and be righteous before Him. God wants justice, He wants mercy, and He wants humility in our walk before Him. He wants those things as we deal with other people. It's not only before God, but as we deal with other people. It's our whole life, our total life… He wants these three things.

Of course, God has many more requirements, many more commandments for us to keep. But these are three spiritual issues, high level obligations that He wants us to focus on daily. Do we give attention to these three high level traits on a regular basis?

For us to do justly, we have to be moral. How do we define that? We have to go to God's Word. We have to be impartial to be just; we have to be fair; we have to be honorable; we have to be truthful all the time. Just to live justly, we can go through and list a lot of attributes we have to take on in our lives. To love mercy, which is the second item, we have to be compassionate and forgiving and generous and forbearing to those around us… even to those that we don't care much about… even to the politicians that rule over us that we get irritated with at times. We have to show mercy. I guess sometimes they feel they're doing the best they can, but they sometimes just walk mostly in ignorance of what God would expect them to do.

To walk humbly before God, we have to be respectful, we have to be unassuming and we have to be somewhat subservient to those God brings into our lives, whether in the Church or out of the Church, be serving of others, helping of others. It's not always easy or natural to do these, just these three things… these high level three requirements. Righteous living is usually going against our natural self, it's going against the carnal nature, it's paddling upstream. Yet, for us to change and to accept and to corral the flesh and to obey God will bring its reward. (We'll get to that later on.)

Let's look at what God spoke through the prophet Isaiah.

Isa. 66:1-2

"Thus says the Lord:

"Heaven is My throne,

And earth is My footstool.

Where is the house that you will build Me?

And where is the place of My rest?

For all those things My hand has made,

And all those things exist,"

Says the Lord.

"But on this one will I look:

On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,

And who trembles at My word.""

Poor in spirit is not talking about being physically destitute, it's not talking about a financial issue. Being poor in spirit is talking about one who is humble. A contrite spirit is a repentant spirit. Again we see three more additional similar, high-level attitudes that God desires from us. God takes notice of those who are humble, who have a repentant attitude, and those who tremble and revere God's word. As Christians, we must rightly fear the words of God. They're our source of living, they're our source of determining right from wrong. It takes faith to live by the words of God. Most of the world today lays aside the words of God. They lay them aside as being irrelevant, being unrelated to the physical problems and the issues facing the world. We know what Christ spoke in Matthew 4:4 "..Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." The words of God are very relevant, very relevant and they're up to date and all of us are duty bound to live by them. That includes all the commandments of God. Only in very, very conservative areas of the country, during elections, can you even mention the word 'God' and mention that you're a Christian and that you want to follow Christian values. In most parts of the country, you're automatically disqualified if you come out strong for some Christian values because the Bible has no relevance in some people's lives. The general approach of the world we live in today is that you can't operate the government on the words of the Bible. Sadly, we see the results of that kind of thinking. What do the non-religious rulers of the world have to offer that's really great and what good news is coming out of their efforts? We see every day the evidence of disobedience to God and His word… things are going bad and the world is getting worse and worse. We could go back just a few decades and when people, even though they didn't know the full truth of God, applied Christian principles in government and in their schools and in their lives… we saw a more blessed society. Go back into the 1950's and 1940's and even further back and you see the blessings there, whereas once you start removing God from all elements of life, you're going to have problems deluxe! Yet, people think that government can solve all those problems, but they are mostly spiritual problems and you have to follow God's words to solve those problems. Of course, I'm preaching to the choir, I guess. I think most of you know that.

To live by God's words, to live by the Commandments produces righteousness. That's the definition. We can go to Psalm 119:172 "My tongue shall speak of Your word, for all Your commandments are righteousness." That's a good definition of righteousness, it's living by the word of God, by all the instructions, by all the commandments of God. God makes very clear through his word what He wants from us is a righteous life that includes a life full of faith. We can't discount faith, it's not strictly obedience only, we have to have faith to believe that these words produce righteousness and will have their own reward. To be righteous is to put on the nature and temperament of God and remove the nature and the carnality of man… that is becoming that 'new man'. If we're truly converted and we accept this lifestyle, if we're trying to move closer to God and further from man's nature there are many scriptures that reinforce this desire from God for us to become righteous. Let me just quote two of those scriptures: Matthew 6:33 "But seek first the Kingdom of God and (what?) HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS and all these things shall be added to you." Only seeking the Kingdom first is not enough, there's more, we must seek God's righteousness alongside of seeking his kingdom. That can only come from having the Spirit of Christ in us. Without God's Spirit in us opening our minds to understand fully the scriptures and giving us the power to go against the tide and paddle upstream, we couldn't make it. We need God's Spirit. Another scripture (written by Paul to Timothy) is in 2 Tim 2:22 "Flee also youthful lusts (or passions); (We all have lusts and passions and desires because of being mankind, because of being carnal… that's our natural way.) but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart." Our aim is to take on godly attributes and flee the carnal pulls that try to bring us down. Sometimes we have to stay away from certain people whether at work or at school, or sometimes family. We need to be careful because certain people can pull us down and bring out the worst in us. There's a way to do that, to kind of excuse yourself at the right time when you see things going down a path that you just don't want to go. That's why when God does call us initially; many times we have to forego long- time acquaintances and friends. It's not that we dislike them; it's just that we have nothing much in common anymore and we realize they can't see the same things we do, so they're going to go their normal natural path and if we try to follow that, we're going to be struggling. So, we have to make decisions and sometimes we have to give up… we'll go through a scripture about that.

What does God want from those He has called? I think He has called every one in this room. He wants us to walk in righteousness; He wants us to exercise justice and mercy and humility. He wants us to be repentant, have faith and be reverent toward his Word. We could go on and on with the action words of what we're to be like under the banner of righteousness. What we've talked about so far is very similar to what Christ spoke to the Pharisees in Matthew 23. The Pharisees were probably Christ's most difficult people to deal with. They thought they were pretty on top of it all. Matt. 23:23-24 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: JUSTICE AND MERCY AND FAITH. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone." Verse 24 "Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel?" We can't go and pick and choose and designate our obedience to God as the Pharisees did. They liked to emphasize certain things and do that and let everybody else know about it and kind of ignore other stuff. We can't be meticulous in one command of God and then neglect another command, especially these other weightier matters of the law. These three weightier matters are very close to what Micah wrote. He wrote: live justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. Christ also adds faith to the weightier matters. These are high-level goals of righteous living. Everything we do or say needs to fall under the umbrella of these high level commands. From God's perspective what is justice; how does God define justice? It's not how carnal man defines justice, mercy and humility and faith, but what matters is God's perspective. God's perspective should be our guide. There's no other law to follow, the Ten Commandments give us very detailed steps of action to do or not do. The Ten Commandments are very specific, sometimes the decisions in life cannot be found only in the Ten Commandments, however, Per se. When that happens we have to look to these high level laws of righteousness. We have to look to justice; we have to look to mercy; we have to look to faith… but to do this we have to be well grounded in God's word to know how to apply these weightier matters of the law. The world tries to apply them, but they get themselves into an immoral situation. They apply a concept and principle of a God of love, so they reason that if two people love each other, then why not just live together and express that love that they have for each other and blend it in with God' s love and justify living together without being married. It's very easy to misapply the high level principles of God if you aren't grounded. God's principles will never cause you to disobey any other law of God. The high level laws of God will not allow you to disobey the Ten Commandments. It's not natural for us to naturally follow the high level laws of God or the more specific laws, it's just not in our nature… unless or until you have been following God's way for many, many, many years and decades and then it can become pretty natural, but even then, we're not sin free. We can be tripped up. We have to learn and practice obeying these laws so they can become part of our natural transformed lives. One of our goals is to be transformed, to be converted, to be changed.

If we want mercy from God, and who doesn't due to our weaknesses, due to our falling down and our stumbling at times… then we have to exercise mercy to those who don't live up to these laws in their lives. If we want mercy, we must show mercy to others who indeed don't even understand a perfect life yet, who don't have quite the ability to grasp what that means.

Our works of righteousness have value and we'll be rewarded by God. Behind the scenes God is observing us spiritually all the time. We can't hide from God, just because we go into a cave or someplace where nobody else can see us, God can still see us… you know that. Each day as life happens, I believe God is spiritually recording our decisions, our actions that relate to righteous living. Maybe his angels are charged with doing that, somewhat… that's just speculation, I don't know. The angels do have duties to perform. Maybe there's some type of spiritual ledger books that are being kept that record the good and the bad in our lives. I'm sure God can remember all He wants to without a set of ledger books, but you know we do have reference in scripture to 'other books', we have the Book of Life and the Book of Remembrance of conversations of God's people with each other. So, maybe there are spiritual ledger books. God is going to use as a basis for rewarding us for what we do physically in this life. In some manner or form, the righteous deeds of the saints are being stored up for the time when they will be revealed and rewarded. As we can see, scripture is clear that our works and actions whether good or bad go toward determining our reward in our spiritual life to come. The rewards for obedience are not restricted to this physical life; they're mostly reserved for our latter, spiritual life when we're changed over. God can very much bless us physically if He so chooses, but probably the Bible is mostly descriptive of being rewarded in our life to come, not so much in our physical life now because part of the overcoming process is enduring this life. Even though we may not win the lottery; all of us wish we could win the lottery (if we play it), but that's not usually the way God works. He's more interested in us following definite laws of success; hard work, going after right things, making right and proper decisions in our lives, to build ourselves up and have a decent physical life. Even when we do that, we can have troubles, we can have upsets. The Bible is mostly a book about spiritual living… for a time down the road. There are pastors out there in the world that talk a lot about physical wealth if you obey God; that you'll be blessed abundantly with all this physical wealth and I don't believe God's word supports that totally. God can bless us as He wants to physically, but my focus is on the rewards from the scriptures that I'm looking at once we're spiritual. We'll see those scriptures.

I want to clarify that when I'm talking about rewards and righteous living that that will lead us to being rewarded, I'm not talking about salvation. Salvation is ultimately a gift from God; it's based upon grace, it's apart from works. The rewards of righteous living are not so much focused on salvation, it's other things… to clarify that (because this is confusing to the world) : Eph. 2:8-9 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God," Verse 9 "not of works, lest anyone should boast." All the righteous works of obedience don't basically earn our salvation. My subject today isn't about salvation; it's about being rewarded once we have been granted salvation. We need to understand this issue of works and grace. God grants us special pardon and favor, which is grace, as we fully accept his calling and submit ourselves to Him in full faith and obedience and we look to God for forgiveness. ALL THE RIGHTEOUS WORKS WE DO, WHICH CAN BE QUITE A LOT, DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO ERASE AND FORGIVE OUR PAST SIN! ONLY THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST CAN ERASE PAST SIN! Our works cannot ultimately grant us salvation, but God is working through those who are obedient. We have to get our minds wrapped around all those areas so that we fully understand that we don't earn our salvation.

Our works of righteousness in this life as true Christians, have value not toward earning our salvation, but toward creating a potential toward being rewarded by God with special opportunities and positions in his government and family when He returns and when we are changed over to spirit life. That's a summary of the rewards that we can look forward to. Let's notice some scriptures now that support this.

Matthew 16:24 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, (that basically means saying 'no' to living a carnal life, to deny the flesh) and take up his cross and follow Me." Verse 25 "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." Verse 26 "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" Verse 27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works."" Our primary rewards are received when Christ returns and comes in His glory. They'll be based on how well we took up our individual crosses in this physical life to follow Christ. We all have our cross to bear. Every one of us is a little different in our natures and in how we overcome certain things. One person can struggle with 'this' issue over here and another person has no problem with that; but what this person over here struggles with, that other person may have no problem with. We're all different, we all have our crosses and events happen in our lives: we lose jobs, we may lose family members, and disasters happen that complicate life. We all have our crosses to bear; our rewards will be based on symbolically how often we've lost our lives, symbolically dying or what we have given up for the sake of Christ. We've all given up something. You cannot be a converted individual and not have given up something. You have to sacrifice something in your life, to all of us it can be the same things but to some of us it can be some different things.

Matt. 19:27 "Then Peter answered and said to Him, "See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore what shall we have?"" Peter is asking what their reward is to be for following Christ; he's asking what they get out of this. Jesus gives him an answer. Verse 28 "So Jesus said to them, "Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration (Some translations have here 'in the new age' or 'the renewal of all things', basically we understand this to be when God's Kingdom is established.), when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."" We see here some advance news. Christ was talking to his twelve disciples, so the literal reward of the twelve disciples will be to be judges on thrones who judge the twelve tribes of Israel. That is an example of a reward after we've changed from flesh to spirit. Verse 29 "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life."" Part of our reward will be receiving a hundredfold of all that we have given up to follow Christ and to bear our cross. God can and does reward us many times over in this physical life if He so chooses. I think if we read this same account in other translations or other books it says receive a hundredfold in this life. If we've lost mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, we could have a hundred mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters from all of you. When we go to the Feast and we see hundreds and hundreds, maybe up to a thousand or more… these can be our spiritual mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers. Sometimes they can mean more to us than our physical mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters because we have more of a connection with them. God is replacing what we've had to give up. Verse 30 "But many who are first will be last, and the last first." This is a very interesting scripture and I'm not sure any of us knows for sure its full meaning. We could sit for two hours and speculate on the ramifications of that one little scripture. Maybe the various rewards that Christ will give out will not go to those whom we expect them to go, I don't know. We can only speculate. Who are the first? When did they come on the scene? And who are the last? You'd think the last would be those just prior to Christ's return. The principle could be that those considered first could be the last in the rewards department. We may think Wow! this person is going to have a great reward in the Kingdom, but it may not turn out that way. God is the perfect Judge. God the Father and Jesus Christ are the only ones who can read and see the hearts of all of us and know perfectly our intent of mind and reward us perfectly for what we do here physically on this earth. We can only see in part; people can deceive other people very easily. Sometimes the Sabbath day is the very best you'll see of us. We can have our Sabbath smile on and live as God's children and then we go home… and what do we act like the next six days? Hopefully we're the same all week, open and sincere before God… that's what our goal should be. God knows, even though man doesn't.

Rev. 22:12-15 "And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work." Verse 13 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last." Verse 14 "Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city." Verse 15 "But outside are dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and whoever loves and practices a lie." Bottom line: each man is rewarded according to his work. We see here that God draws a very strong difference between those who obey the commandments and those who continue in habitual sin. There's a definite difference in how God is going to deal with people. Some may become so rebellious that they will never submit themselves fully to God and God has a plan for those people and where they will go and end up.

2 Cor. 5:9 "Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent (that is whether in this physical life or life to come with God) to be well pleasing to Him." Verse 10 "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." At some point, these spiritual ledger books or whatever records, however they're kept, will be opened up at the proper time for each of us and they will reveal the good, the bad and the ugly of our lives. We should never worry about those who do wrong, the bad people out there in the world who live a life of luxury, who rob other people; we should never worry that they won't be punished, that they will escape punishment. In this physical life, they may escape punishment, who knows? They may be caught, but they may escape to some degree, but in the life to come, which is most important, they will be judged accordingly. They will be judged by Christ, Who can see the hearts and understand their nature; their craftiness.

Probably the most well known scripture concerning our works of righteousness and their reward are in Matthew 25 and Luke 19. These involve the parables of the talents and the minas. These units of money symbolize our opportunities for spiritual growth and righteous works. This will make it clearer what our rewards are to be. Luke 19:12 "Therefore He said: "A certain nobleman (which pictures Jesus Christ) went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return." Verse 13 "so he called ten of his servants, (that pictures us, we are God's servants) delivered to them ten minas (pounds, or units of money) and said to them, 'Do business till I come.'" Notice that they each received the same number of minas to do business with. These minas, again, symbolize opportunities for spiritual growth. They picture using God's Spirit to spiritually mature and improve us. The ten servants picture you and me in this life and the trading symbolizes the bearing of fruit, the growing and overcoming of sin, performing righteous works. It pictures living that righteous life as true saints and producing a positive spiritual increase and gain over what we started with when we were first called. If we could chart out our spiritual life from the time we were called until today, we should see an inclining, rising line on the graph. If we got really close to the graph it would have ups and downs, but mostly still in an upward path… that is positive increase, that's growing, that's doing business with your minas. You can understand much more today than you could when you were first called by God. Verse 14 'But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'" Doesn't that sound like the world today and its leaders? People don't want God's law to rule over them and be a part of making legislation. Verse 15" And so it was that when he returned, having received the kingdom, he then commanded these servants, to whom he had given the money, to be called to him, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading." Verse 16 "Then came the first, saying, "Master, your mina has earned ten minas."' Verse 17 "And he (represents Christ) said to him, 'Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities.'" Verse 18 "And the second came, saying, 'Master, your mina has earned five minas.'" Verse 19 "Likewise he said to him, 'You also be over five cities'." These cities that are mentioned here are not salvation Per se, but they're our rewards, given to the saints at their change, after Christ returns and has received his Kingdom. These cities in God's Kingdom are given to those who in this physical life produced a positive spiritual increase, who grow their minas… some tenfold, some five-fold and everything in between. This is done by living a dedicated righteous life of good works before God. He saw the ledger books, he knew exactly how many cities to assign to these servants. It's an example for us. It's the big picture: we don't know all the details of how this will take place; we just see the big picture here. The world doesn't understand being given cities. The Christians of the world have to stop there when it says to have authority over ten cities. Where are these cities going to be? In heaven? We've been given insight here in how these cities can play into our future. Christ is coming back to earth and cities will be rebuilt. This is a very plain example of one reward, not the only reward, one example of how we may have authority over cities. Why? Because someone needs to teach God's truth to the physical people living at that time… to teach them the laws of justice, and mercy and faith and humility in God's Kingdom; the things that we've learned in this side of God's Kingdom.. the high level things.

This is confirmed in Rev. 2:26 "He who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations--" Here we see power over the nations and that would include cities, cities within those nations.

God's Kingdom will have its reward for those who overcome the flesh and keep the righteous works of God to the very end. Yet, unfortunately some will not receive a reward. Some will not grow their 'mina' by doing business and producing more fruit, they refuse to produce more fruit. Some will not let Jesus Christ reign in their lives. Luke 19:20 "Then another came, saying, 'Master, here is your mina, which I have kept put away in a handkerchief." Verse 21 "For I feared you, because you are an austere man. You collect what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.'" Verse 22 "And he said to him, 'Out of your own mouth I will judge you, you wicked servant. You knew that I was an austere man, collecting what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow." Verse 23 "Why then did you not put my money in the bank, that at my coming I might have collected it with interest?'" Just as an aside before we go on: What does it mean to put God's money in the bank and collect interest on it? I don't know that I've got a great answer for that. How would you explain that scripture? What would be some things that you would like to suggest about putting the money in the bank and collecting interest on it as this one servant is told he could have done? Maybe he could have escaped his punishment. Verse 24 "And he said to those who stood by, 'Take the mina from him, and give it to him who has ten minas.'" Verse 25 "(But they said to him, 'Master, he has ten minas.')" Verse 26 "For I say to you, that to everyone who has will be given; and from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him." Verse 27 "But bring here those enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, and slay them before me.'" There are some negatives in life. We have choices to make. We let Christ reign over us or we do not. What God wants from us is a righteous and productive life. We develop that righteousness over time by 'trading' and doing spiritual business. Day in and day out we produce either gains or losses in our 'trading'. I believe God is mostly interested in our long-term trading, measuring us over the months and years and decades that we are part of his body. He wants to see on that graph a gradual increase upwards. He knows we all fall down at times, but He's interested in whether we will get back up and return to Him and continue our 'trading' or whether we're just going to stay down and refuse to produce any more and run away from God and not let Him have anymore rule in our lives. He wants to see our attitude, our approach, what we're going to do. At any time God can intervene and allow things to happen that can give us a boost, to help us up, to steer us into a better direction. He wants to see what we're made of, what we're going to do.

Choosing to be righteous before God, confronts all of us every day. It is something that is beyond our station in life, whether we are rich or whether we are poor; whether we're educated with multiple degrees or we never made it out of high school; whether we're sick or healthy; or young or old; or married or single, we all have to do 'business' spiritually and make choices before God. Every day we have to make 'trading' decision points: "What should I do?' "How should I approach this issue?" "Did I say the right thing?" "Was I right in this decision?" All the decisions we make either increase or decrease our character and our honor before God. What God wants over time is an increase in our righteousness. He wants our talents and our minas to grow because He wants to give to us and share with us 'all things' including His Kingdom. We've already read that, He wants to give us cities. Luke 12:32 "Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." He wants to give us this.

Each day, we're surrounded with the good and the bad, maybe even the ugly that comes into our lives. We have to make decisions. Sometimes we just need to slow down and not be so quick in our decisions. Maybe we need to say, "I'll get back with you on that" or maybe to just bite your tongue before you say anything. Just be sure it's the right thing to do. Righteous character is not only built on the bad or ugly that comes our way. Sometimes we think character development is only when we have bad times, bad things happening, bad health, bad relationships, when things are not going well; that's not particularly true. When things are going well and the cupboards are full of food and there are no money problems, when our health is pretty decent, when the family is at peace and we're all getting together a lot, it may be just as difficult to do our spiritual 'trading' and 'business' then as otherwise. When things are going well, we may falsely come to not depend on God all that much in our lives. We may think, "I can do all this." We might begin to boast a little bit of all our hand has accomplished and leave God out of the picture… not realizing that God allowed us to be in that good position because of righteous living. Staying humble is a part of becoming righteous; it is one of those high level attributes. We should view ourselves as disciples in training who are being graded and being judged by a very perfect and righteous Judge. When things go into His ledger book, it is perfectly recorded. Whatever reward we receive in God's Kingdom, we should have utter confidence that it will be the perfect gift for us. God will not lie; He will give us the perfect gift that is due us. As spirit beings receiving that gift, we will perfectly understand that gift and accept it and be very honored that we received this gift from God. We won't have any regrets; we won't have the ability to get into a bad attitude. We will be very gracious in receiving what God is giving us, knowing it will be the perfect gift and what we deserve for what we've done in this physical life.

In closing, we started this sermon in Micah 6:8 "…And what does the Lord require of you

But to do justly,

To love mercy,

And to walk humbly with your God?

The one word to sum all of that up and all of God's laws and all of God's instructions and commandments is that God wants RIGHTEOUSNESS in our lives. He wants everything we do to be based on His Word, which has as its foundation Godly LOVE. We can sum up all righteousness as living a life of love, of Godly love. It takes a very mature, a very spiritual mind to understand that. The world likes to live a life of love, but they don't fully understand that love requires obedience and a host of instructions and commandments. One day they will understand, but today they can't… they've not been given the opportunity.

There's great value in righteous works, for they will have their reward. Let's continue to do 'business', 'trading', spiritual growth until Christ comes. Let's use the fullness of God's Spirit in us to help us gain and achieve the righteous standard of Jesus Christ.