For Your Benefit...

• Chuck Barnett needs help with the new pocket-sized directory. He needs help applying some stickers, assembling them, and stapling them. If you can help be in the Resource Room tonight following the evening service. Thanks in advance!
• Kevin & Michelle Collins have placed membership with us. Their information is: 7409 Smithfield Green Lane; Prospect, 40059; Date are 1/7 (A), 11/3, 8/3; Home — 742.7150; Kevin mobile — 917.673.7244; Michelle mobile —  917.749.3811; email — kmc.collins@gmail.com.

Calendar

• Oct 7-12 — Oak Grove.
• Oct 13 — Practice Singing @ 7:00.
• Oct 14 — Kid's singing @ 4:25.
• Oct 14-19 — Douglass Hills.
• Oct 15-19 — Oldham Woods.
• Oct 19-21 — Eastland.
• Oct 26-28 — Overland (Lawrenceburg).

For this week:


Solomon said, ""Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor." (Ecclesiastes 4:9)

Doing things in a group sometimes might help if you're shy about doing things alone.

Virtually every week we have people who are sick or who are in the hospital. We always have those who are shut-ins and cannot leave their homes.

Why not set aside one morning or afternoon a month, take a fellow-Christian, and go see one or two of these folks who need some encouragement.

It will stretch your soul. It will brighten someone's day. It will cement your friendship with another Christian. How can you lose?



God has always been a stickler for men doing what He tells them to do if they desire to please Him. He has always made it clear that you can't practice "cafeteria religion", that is, to pick and choose which commands to obey, while neglecting others because we deem them unimportant or unnecessary. It seems that men have always thought that the demands that are related to public worship are far more obligatory than those that relate to service to our fellow man. It may be that we seem be more conscientious in our public worship because others can more readily see our failures there than they can in our neglect of responsibilities to humankind. There is often more concern about what others think of us than what God thinks about us. But God expects us to fulfill our duty to Him with equal faithfulness in every aspect of our lives.

The Jews certainly had the idea that worship according to the law could justify them while they ignored what were daily requirements of godliness, which included decent and charitable treatment of their fellow man. Listen to Isaiah addressing this issue in chapter 1:11-17: "'What unto me is the multitude of your sacrifices' saith Jehovah: 'I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When you come to appear before me, who hath required this of your hand, to trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination to me; new moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I can not put up with iniquity and solemn meetings. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates, they are a trouble unto Me; I am weary of bearing them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; yea you make many prayers, I will not hear you; your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widows.'"

This indictment dealt with the hypocrisy of the worship the Jews offered to God. God tells them what was needed to make worship acceptable was repentance and a complete rededication of their lives to Him. God was concerned about the nature and the things offered in their worship. In Malachi 1:8 the prophet says this: "'When you offer the blind for sacrifice, it is no evil! And when you offer the lame and sick, it is no evil! Present it to you governor; will he be pleased with you? Or will he accept the person?' saith Jehovah of hosts." God expected the best to be offered in worship because it demonstrated a heart that understood the reverence and homage that was due Him. Offerings of an inferior nature would not be offered to some human dignitary, how dare we offer something inferior to our God and Father that is unworthy of Him. So God expects the very best when one comes to worship Him and the worshiper should offer nothing less than the very best he has.

But God is as equally concerned with the character reflected in the daily lives of those who worship Him. He is a holy God and He expects His people to be holy also. "For it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy" (I Peter 1:16). There can be no holiness in one's life who does not understand his duty to his fellow human beings. Jesus said the first and great commandment was to love God with all your heart and the second was like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. The taking care of the needs of one who is lacking those things needed to survive on earth, is a basic obligation of one who is a Christian. James did not mean to give an exhaustive description of true religion in James 1:27 when he said, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." But it sure gives some emphasis to those duties when it is used in such a way in this passage.

Christianity is a total way of life that affects every part of the believer's existence every day. It demands worship of our Creator that comes from the heart and is ordered by what He has demanded in His word. It also demands something beyond those formal hours of praise, thanksgiving and adoration we engage in on Sunday. It demands a life that seeks every day to be a star in a dark world. It demands that we seek and help those who are in spiritual and physical need as well. It is what our Lord did while He was here. Can we do less and please God?