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[0:00] He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.

[0:30] Do we stop and ask ourselves, what does God want from me? What does God want me to do in my life? What is his will for me? It's really encapsulated right here. It's just these simple words, his simple message from God to man.

[0:55] Our Lord shows us what is right and what the Lord wants from us. He travels with us as we walk with him. And we see the first thing, do justly. Do justly.

[1:08] God calls on us to act with wise judgments, to make wise choices. And you think of life and how people live and go about their lives and the run of the mill kind of person without God.

[1:23] The kind of lives they live. Yet even some worldly people have some of these qualities. But God expects it of his people. A number of things.

[1:36] And the first one is to do justly. And when you think of doing justly, you think of integrity. Having integrity in your life. For example, the psalmist said in Psalm 26 verse 11, But as for me, I will walk in my integrity. Redeem me and be merciful unto me. I will walk in my integrity.

[1:58] And could it be said of you that if people were to do some searching in the records of your life, if suddenly you were going to be marrying a royal or something, they'd be digging up in all the history, wouldn't they?

[2:12] Or if you were going to be the president, they'd want to find your birth certificate. Or whatever it is, they'd want to find out what dirt can we dig up about this man or this woman. But a Christian should be able to say, honestly, I will walk in my integrity.

[2:30] There's an integrity about your life. To do justly means integrity. To do justly means honesty. In 1 Timothy 2.2 in the part it says, That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

[2:46] Can that be said of you? That you're living in all godliness and honesty. Romans 13.13, Paul writes, Let us walk honestly as in the day.

[2:57] Not in rioting and drunkenness. Not in chambering and wantonness. Not in strife and envying. Let us walk honestly as in the day. That's about being justly, isn't it?

[3:09] Living justly and doing what is just and true. Doing what is right. Do justly. There's a lot in that simple phrase.

[3:22] Do justly. We read that we are to be doers of the word. Doers of the word. There's an action there. There's something to be, to do, to go about in your life.

[3:36] To do justly. Integrity. To do justly. Honesty. To do justly.

[3:47] Decency. And modesty. These are all just things, aren't they? Right things. Work ethic. That's something, isn't it?

[4:01] Can your employer count on you to work when he's not watching? That there'll be a work ethic in your life that if you were to be scrutinised by your colleagues at work, they would say, yeah, he's just.

[4:23] He's doing justly. He's doing right. He's living right. He's working hard. He's not a man-pleasing. No, he's not doing it with eye service. So, when eyes are watching him of men, but he's doing it as unto the Lord when he knows that.

[4:39] The Lord's eyes are watching him when he's working. To be that person of integrity. To do justly. What about your word? The word that you speak.

[4:50] Do you honour your word? When you say you're going to do something, do you do it? Or, when you say something, do people think, yeah, we'll see.

[5:01] We'll see if he actually delivers on what he says he's going to do. What he promises. Can your word be counted upon?

[5:12] That's about doing justly, isn't it? Adam Clark, a commentator, said of this verse about do justly. He says it means to give all their due.

[5:22] To give to all their due. To God, his due. To God, thy heart, thy body, soul and spirit, thy wisdom, understanding, judgment.

[5:36] To love him with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength and thy neighbour as thyself. This is God's due and right from every man.

[5:51] Give to God his due. Secondly, to give your neighbour his due. To do to him as you would that he should do to you.

[6:02] To give to yourself your due. Not to deprive your soul of what God has provided for it. To keep your body and temperance, soberness and chastity.

[6:16] To give to all their due. Are you a doer of the word? You know, I've heard it put that faith is a verb.

[6:28] Faith is a verb. It's a doing word. It's a doing word. Not that faith saves us. But there is an active sense to this word.

[6:41] Faith. Believing. Trusting. Sticking. Relying upon him. These are all the sense of the word.

[6:52] A doing word. Not that our work saves us by any means. Not in any way, shape or form. But our faith is active. As James writes, that faith without works is dead.

[7:08] Our faith should be living and vibrant and active. Paul writes in Galatians 6 that we are to not be weary in well-doing.

[7:19] For in due season we shall reap if we faint not. So keep on doing what is right. Keep on doing what is just. What is true. What is honouring to him.

[7:32] Keep on doing that. Because he is watching him. We want him to be pleased. Secondly, love mercy. Love mercy.

[7:45] Now we've heard about God's mercy to us. We can extend mercy too. We are to love mercy. Love mercy.

[7:55] To walk in love. To walk in kindness. So when we see others around about, we want to show mercy.

[8:06] We want to be merciful. We want to be kind. Someone said to speak kindly does not hurt the tongue. Kindness is the only language that the blind can see and the deaf can hear.

[8:20] Kindness. There are some kind people in this church that go out of their way to pick people up to come to church. And I thank God for people who love mercy.

[8:32] I can lean on those kind of people. There's lots more people I can give them to help in this church. There's times when I just don't have the capacity to respond to every need myself.

[8:43] Sometimes I feel like we need a phone service in our church, you know. You have called Church for You. Press 1 if you want counselling. Press 2 if you want food.

[8:56] Press 2 if you want whatever it might be. And I just can't respond to every need. But maybe some of you can. Maybe some of you can. Maybe some of you can respond to the need.

[9:10] You can do something. It's like there's a saying, when all is said and done, there's a lot more said than done. And we are meant to be doers of the word.

[9:23] To do justly. To love mercy. Our Lord says, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5 verse 7. And when he was rebuking the Pharisees, he said, Mercy was one of the weightier matters of the law.

[9:39] So the Pharisees, they had all the theology right, it would seem. Or, you know, they had the, all the structure right, all the, all the intellect right.

[9:52] But they missed some key things. And one of them was mercy. Matthew 23 verse 2. One of the weightier matters of the law. Don't miss that. Mercy. Because without mercy, there would be no hope.

[10:05] There would be no hope for you. No hope for me without mercy. And so, we should extend mercy to others too. Love mercy. And thirdly, walk humbly.

[10:17] Walk humbly with thy God. Walk humbly with thy God. It's a walk with the Lord, Yahweh. It's a walk with the Lord God, our Saviour, our Master, our Redeemer.

[10:32] It's a walk humbly with thy God. It's personal. Walk humbly with thy God. Is it thy God? It's relationship. It's personal.

[10:44] Martin Luther was asked, what is the first step in religion? Or you could say, in faith. What is the first step? He said, humility. Humility. When asked the second, he said, humility.

[10:57] When asked the third, he said, humility. And it's when we really come to the end of ourselves, isn't it? And we realise there's nothing good that any of us have done.

[11:08] There is none good. No, not one. No good man on the earth is the son of man. But through Christ we can.

[11:21] know his goodness. Imputed to us. Accounted. Credited to our account. Spurgeon said, humility is one of the chief qualifications for usefulness.

[11:36] Many have passed away from the role of useful men because they've been lifted up with pride and so have fallen into the snare of the devil. You can't be useful for God unless you're willing to take that place of service, that place of humility, that place of doing the humble things.

[11:56] God can use you then. We come to a place of acknowledging our total dependence upon the Lord to walk humbly with thy God.

[12:07] God, it's when we come to depend upon him and trust upon him. He is Emmanuel, God with us. God with us. Walk humbly with thy God.

[12:21] He walks with us. He treads the pathway of life with us. And where does most sin come from? It's S-I-N. It's in the middle, isn't it? That middle initial, I, I, like the devil himself, I will ascend.

[12:38] I will do this. I will do that. And he was cast down for his pride and valency. Are we prideful and boastful? Are we self-censored and selfish?

[12:53] Sin springs from pride, doesn't it? When you really look at it, when you really boil it all down to it, sin is self. It's man at the throne.

[13:04] It's man at the centre. Friends, we've got to crucify the flesh. We've got to die to self and to come alive to God. Humility means that we come to the end of ourselves and we realise it's everything about him.

[13:21] Walking humbly, how do we define it? It's direct opposition to pride and self-will. pride and self-will must be put to death.

[13:39] That even your own responding to his grace is no, there's no credit to you about even that. That even of your own responding, that it's entirely his kindness and loving kindness to you.

[13:54] It's entirely his mercy that gives you the opportunity to trust him. It's humility, isn't it? When we realise that I can only but bow my knee, my heart, my will and say thank you to him.

[14:09] That's when we become a Christian. It's when we trust him. When we trust him and we stop trusting ourselves. It's the person of Christ that worked within us. Humility.

[14:20] It's been said to great soul spiritually, we must first learn to kneel. It's when we come to the foot of the cross. It's when we come to him. We realise what a lost and hopeless case we are without a great physician of our soul to heal that dread terminal condition of our sin.

[14:42] And God resists the proud but he gives grace to the humble. Friends, just, I want to exhort today these simple truths and think of where you stand today.

[14:58] Are you a doer of the word? There's lots of people sitting in the premises but there's not too many standing on the promises. Stand on the promises and think of how can I do justly?

[15:14] What can I do? Not that my doing saves me but how can I serve? How can I respond to the need of souls?

[15:27] Could it be that you could be just a humble man who takes time takes his money and prints some tracks? And goes and delivers them?

[15:41] You know, we said goodbye to him last night by chance. Ralph was really quick to respond when I told him the hospital had run and this man was really coming to the close of his life.

[15:56] And, you know, just to think of it, if you look in the eyes of a man and you see the light in his eyes and then you know, as we all can maybe have reference points to that, the light goes out and he's with the Lord.

[16:14] We know this man is with the Lord, not because he did lots of works or because he was particularly faithful, but because of his trust in Christ.

[16:26] and Ralph can testify of this too, that he commonly would say, trust in the Lord and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin.

[16:42] That was his life's motto, that he would testify of that at every opportunity. And he was just walking humbly with his God. He was a humble man, nothing that you could really brag about, his mastering of English wasn't particularly good because he was from another country and his physical health wasn't very good, but he was willing to walk humbly with his God.

[17:13] He was willing to do justly, to do what is right and to love mercy. And what of you? Will you walk with God? Will you be like one?

[17:24] Of Enoch it was said that he walked with God and was not. Someone suggested that perhaps one day on Enoch's walk with God, that God simply said, listen, we're closer to my house than yours, let's just go there.

[17:39] And he was gone. We know loved ones, I know folk here today have lost loved ones, but they know where they've gone because they were his possession.

[17:52] They were his possession. Will you walk humbly? There's some humble people I'm humbled to be friends with here this morning. My wife in particular, she walks humbly with God.

[18:06] I thank God that she is willing to sacrifice her time with me many times. Friends, how can you serve him?

[18:20] How can you do justly? How can you love mercy? How can you walk humbly with your God? Let us pray. Dear Lord, we praise your wonderful name.

[18:30] We call you Lord. Not lightly Lord. We call you Lord because we want to serve, to live, to bow our will and heart, to come as obedient servants, to do justly.

[18:51] Help us to find ways to love mercy, to love your mercy to us, to love showing mercy to those we can, to love ways godly and precious, to walk in integrity and honesty and truth, to walk with you Lord humbly, to know you as our own saving master and Lord, that we can know you today.

[19:26] Help each one Lord in each individual way to respond today, that you might open our eyes to see what it is that we can do.

[19:39] Open our eyes Lord to see how we can find some way of living more closely how you want us to live.

[19:53] For your glory we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you.