The Gift Of Righteousness

The standard God sets for us to gain eternal life is very high.

So high, there's no way we can ever reach it. That's why He's given a gift to every child of God, in which He imparts the very purity He demands. Stay with us as we learn all about this marvelous gift. From Chicago, we welcome you to The Moody Church Hour, a weekly service of worship and teaching under the ministry of Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Today, we bring you another in an eight-part series on the inheritance of the redeemed. Later, Erwin Lutzer will come to tell us about the gift of righteousness. Dr. Lutzer comes now to open our time of worship.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Moody Church. Of all the places where you could be this morning, this is God's time and place for you. And as we thought about this service, as we prayed about it, and so much music that has been so much time invested in the music, we are here to bless you, but more importantly, to honor God. Let's bow together now in prayer. Father, open our hearts, open our minds, we pray, to receive all that you have for us.

We ask that you'll help us to put away all of the distractions of life. And may, in a very special way, this be your hour for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. My hope is in the Lord, who gave himself for me. And may the price of all my sin at Calvary. For he did die, for he lives. And ever-lasting life and might he freely lives. His grace has handed all, his life unto me. And recognize his work, love, love, and Christ we sing.

For he did die, for he lives. And everlasting life and might he freely lives. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Messer, And wonder how he would love me, A sinner, a man, a king. Singing how marvelous, how wonderful that my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me. He took my sin and my sorrows.

He made them his very own. He bore the burden to Calvary and suffered and died alone. Singing how marvelous, how wonderful that my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me.

In painful lengths of glory, his grace my last shall see. To be my joy through the ages, to sing of his love for me. Singing how marvelous, how wonderful that my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me. How marvelous, how wonderful that my song shall ever be. How wonderful is my Savior's love for me. Jesus, your Messiah, King of all the days. Blessed and Redeemer, United in love, for the rest enforce thither. The ransom from heaven, Jesus, Messiah, Lord of all. He became sin, who knew no sin. He might be done, his righteousness.

He humbled himself and carried the cross. Love so amazing, love so amazing. Jesus, Messiah, King of all the days. Blessed and Redeemer, United in love, for the rest enforce thither. The ransom from heaven, Jesus, Messiah, Lord of all. All our hope is in you. All our hope is in you.

All the glory to you now. The light of the world, Jesus, Messiah. King of all the days. Blessed and Redeemer, United in love, for the rest enforce thither. The ransom from heaven, Jesus, Messiah, Lord of all. Oh, Jesus, Messiah, Lord of all.

Amen. Let's give God praise. Father, we thank you today for Jesus, the Messiah, Lord of all.

Name above all names. We worship him today. We love him. We desire to serve him. Grant, O God, that those who do not know you yet personally may understand the wonder of his grace and his mercy toward us. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

You may be seated. And can it be that I should gain any interest in the Savior's blood? Mighty for me who cause his pain, for me moving to death pursue. Amazing love, how can it be that God, my God, should strive for me?

Amazing love, how can it be that God, my God, should strive for me? All my embrace and spirit, it's late. That's not in Satan and nature's sight. By thy diffusion with me pray, my God, the dungeon, its painful light.

I've chased them off, but my heart was failing. I close with the Lord and follow him. O condemnation now unguarded, choose your host and go in, in this life. I'll lie within my living head and go old in my heart, just as divine. O God of royalty, eternal God, and make the crown through Christ my own. Amazing love, how can it be that God, my God, should strive for me? I invite you to follow along in your bulletins as we read Philippians chapter 3, where Paul describes moving from confidence in his own good works to the riches of God's grace.

Please follow along with me in the bold print of your bulletins. Would you please stand? This is God's holy word.

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ. The righteousness from God that depends on faith. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death. That by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. This is the second in a series of messages titled the inheritance of the redeemed.

The blessings that are ours because of our faith in Christ. If you missed the first message, which was on predestination, I encourage you to get a copy of it, to listen to it, because it is very foundational. But today's message also is so extremely critical that I personally think about this gift that I'm going to introduce to you almost every single day.

In order to understand the importance of this gift, let me ask you a question. What does God think of you today? Is he happy with you?

Is he mad at you? Because you began to read the Bible through this year and you've blown it already. We begin well and then we fail or you sin this week and you feel somewhat distant from God because life hasn't gone well and you haven't reacted well to it. What's God's opinion of you today?

Now, before I introduce you to this gift, I do need to give you a little bit of background, so stay with me. And then once we get to the gift, you're going to understand exactly and it's going to be as clear as Route 66. You remember, ever since the beginning, God has wanted to communicate with mankind. I mean, we're talking even about the Garden of Eden. And we're speaking about the fact that Adam and Eve sinned and they used some leaves to try to hide their nakedness.

And God says, no, I'm going to give you better clothes. I'm going to give you actually the skin of animals. Where did God get the skin of animals?

Well, obviously, he killed some animals. What he wanted to say right from the beginning is that there is no forgiveness. There is no covering of sin without blood and there is no such thing as a cheap covering. And so after that, he began to connect with Adam and Eve. But everybody knows that those animals' skins were not the final covering for sin by no means.

They were only symbolic. And then you get to the time of the tabernacle and you discover that God had all of those sacrifices that we struggled to understand. And in the tabernacle, there were two compartments, the holy of holies and the holy place, and how the priest could only go into the holy place on one day a year. And God was saying, I'm everywhere.

I exist everywhere. But I especially exist here because I want you to understand my holiness. Because, you see, here's the problem that God had. The problem was that he was communicating with mankind, who were sinners, and he had to have a way by which that could be done without either compromising his holiness or contaminating himself. So in the Old Testament, he had fellowship with people. He put their sin away, but not finally. There was no payment for the sin back then.

And yet he was connecting with people. And years ago, atheists wrote a tract in which they wanted to make fun of God. And they said, oh, look at the people of the Old Testament with whom God hung out. I mean, you know, you begin with Abraham. Well, Abraham lied. And he's called a friend of God.

The argument of the atheists was simply this, that a person is judged by the company he keeps. Jacob was a cheater, and yet he was communicating with God. And God actually had him in the line through which Christ would be eventually born. I mean, you go through the Old Testament. Moses lost his temper and became very angry, and yet Moses had spoken face to face with God as a man speaks with his friend. And then the classic illustration is David, murder and adultery, quote, a man after God's own heart.

Oh, really? The atheists were saying, what kind of a God considers these kinds of people as his friends? They had a point. For 4,000 years, there was a scandal that was building, and that was God was forgiving people, and there was no final payment for their sin.

There was justice being set aside so that he could connect with them, but there was no way that they could be finally and totally redeemed. And with that background now, I want you to take your Bibles, if you would, please, and turn to the third chapter of the book of Romans, Romans chapter 3. And even as I mentioned the text, I'm glad that there is some wrestling throughout the congregation. That means you have a Bible, or you can use the one that is in the seat in front of you. And some of you, of course, there will be no wrestling, no noise, because God bless you.

You've brought your phone, you've brought your iPad, you've brought your jackhammer, you have everything that you need. No matter what you're using today, I want you to look at the text. Look at the text.

Put your finger on the text. In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul is talking about how all of us are sinners. He begins with the pagans, and everybody says, yeah, for sure they are. Then he goes on to the Jewish people, who thought that they were a cut above the pagans, and he proves that they are sinners too.

And by the time you get to chapter 3, verse 10, he says, there is none righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. You say, oh yeah, I sought God.

Yes, you did. That's why you had to listen to the previous message on predestination, because God sought you. That's why you sought God. On our own, we would never seek God.

And so he goes on through, and what he's basically saying is that we are part of a very corrupt tree. And we try to wear a mask, we try to make it look good, and we sometimes do, quote, good. But at the end of the day, it says in verse 18 that there is no fear of God before their eyes. In other words, we know God is watching, and we really don't care what we do. So Paul concludes here in verse 19, now we know whatever the law says. It speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world, he says, is accountable to God. And everybody comes up guilty. God is so holy, and we are so sinful, that even our good acts are tainted.

We help a woman across the street, and we can hardly wait to tell somebody how wonderful we were, and what we did that day. And so he concludes for verse 20, chapter 3, by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. By the works of the law, nobody will be justified. And now Paul goes into one of the most important passages of scripture.

I wish I could comment on it phrase by phrase, but we're going to get to the basic point very quickly here. But now, verse 21, the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Thank God it's apart from the law, because through the law, there is no righteousness of God. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there's no distinction, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and that is sin, by the way.

God's standard is his glory. So how far are we able to shoot with our arrow to see if we can hit the glory of God, and we constantly miss it? I've told you before the story of a man going through a farmyard, noticing on the barn all of these circles, all of these targets, and in the middle of each one an arrow. So he commended the farmer for being a good marksman. The farmer says, that wasn't done by me. That was done from a boy from the village who isn't that bright.

And what he did is he shot arrows into my barn, and then he painted the targets around them. And we aim at the glory of God, and we say, I've reached it. The answer is, no, you haven't. You've reached your own target, but not God's. Now notice, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now, verse 25, everyone listening to this, you may be here today as a teenager. If you're going to live the Christian life, you are going to need to understand what I'm going to tell you now, and in the rest of this message. You'll notice it says in verse 25, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. I'm so excited about this message.

I'm stumbling over words today. It's another reason why you ought to have it open in front of you. Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

Why? This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he may be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus.

From infancy, probably, you have been told that Jesus died for sinners, and he did. But that's not the first purpose of the cross. God put forth Jesus, which reminds us of the fact that salvation is of God. God put forth Jesus.

Why? To declare God's righteousness, Jesus died for sinners, but we must understand that Jesus also died for God. Jesus died for God.

So that God could be acquitted, I should say, he could be set free from the scandal that we've talked about. Having fellowship with Old Testament saints without a final sacrifice, it talks here about the divine forbearance of God. God says, I'm going to save them on credit, I'm going to take their sins, set it aside, have fellowship with them. But a redeemer is coming who is going to pay their debt, as well as the debt of all those who will eventually believe on Jesus. So Jesus died for God to vindicate God's righteousness and to legally get him off the hook and to explain.

What about the Old Testament people who were saved, enjoying God, without a sacrifice? And you'll notice it says that God set him forth to be the propitiation for our sins. Now, that word means the turning away of God's wrath against sin.

But I don't want you to think of the Father being harsh. He's the one that demands a sacrifice, and the Son is the kind one who goes to the cross. Redemption was planned by the Trinity. It is God who loved the world, and therefore he gave his only begotten Son.

God, the complexity of his emotions, both as one who is just and as one who is loving. So Jesus comes, and he is the propitiation for our sins. And in a message some time ago, I emphasized that this is very different than the pagans.

You can go online and people will say, oh, Christianity is just like all the other religions. They had their sacrifices too, and they did. The difference is this, that in Christianity, God becomes the sacrifice. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. And so it is God who purchases the redemption. It is God who comes and vindicates God the Father, the mystery of the Trinity. Now with that background, I'd like to introduce you to the gift that is given to all who believe on Jesus, the transforming gift that will impact your ability to live the Christian life from here on out.

The gift that I am referring to is the gift of the righteousness of God. In order for us to get into that, because Paul uses that word here, and of course in the book of Romans elsewhere, I do need to refer one more time to Martin Luther and his struggle. You see, what Luther was doing was he was living in an era in which it was believed that if you did enough good works, God would see you good enough to save you.

The question was, how many good works do you have to do? He fasted until sometime people thought that he might die. Rebecca and I have been in the cell in which he was there.

It's like a cell in the monastery in Erfurt, hard floor. He slept without blankets to try to mortify the flesh. He confessed his sins up to six hours at a time, but his conscience would not be silenced because you don't know how high God's standard is. You go through and you do all these confessions and then you have to start again tomorrow because it's like mopping the floor with a faucet running. I mean, new sins and maybe you forgot some of them. Despair. Then he began to teach the book of Romans.

You know the story. He gets to chapter one and it says, in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed and he looks at the righteousness of God and hatred against God wells up in his heart. Oh yeah, that's my problem is the righteousness of God. If he wasn't that righteous, well then maybe I could attain to his standard. But he's so righteous. Love God, said Luther, I hate him.

He's given us an impossible standard. But as Luther began to look in Romans one and then got to Romans chapter three and chapter four, he began to realize something. Righteousness is an attribute of God, but it is also a gift given to sinners. And look at what it says in chapter four regarding Abraham. This was true also in the Old Testament. Verse three, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. Abraham certainly wasn't righteous, but he was credited with righteousness because he believed. Paul wants to show that what he's teaching was consistent really with the Old Testament. And then when he gets to chapter five, you'll notice that the text says here very clearly in chapter five that this is gift righteousness. Verse 16, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification for if because of one's man's trespass, death reigned through one man, and much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, there it is, reign in life through Jesus Christ. So what I'd like to do today is to give you three or four characteristics of this gift of righteousness that is legally conferred on all who believe on Jesus so that now we can reach God's standard because God gives us what we need to do that.

Let me give you those characteristics. First of all, obviously it's a free gift, obviously because it's the kind of righteousness of which you and I have none. We can't contribute to it.

We can't do anything about it. God took our goodness and he put it on the shelf and across it he wrote unusable. You can't use your goodness. It's all tainted with sin. And so what I do is I set aside human goodness as unusable. If there was something really, truly holy and good about us, God would have to acknowledge that. But in the book of Romans, it shows that there's nothing to acknowledge. So God says, I set aside human sin and now what I'm going to do is independent of human beings. You see, the righteousness of God is not just human righteousness lifted to a higher power.

It's entirely different. It has to be a gift. It is a gift that is unearned. It is a gift that we can never repay, but there's something else about it because it's a gift. God doesn't find it more difficult to save big sinners than lesser ones. God saves some terrible sinners. There could be some people listening to this message and you know the things that you have done.

I would think that since this message goes in different parts of the world and on the radio, I'm speaking to people who know right well that they are criminals. And you're saying to yourself, can that righteousness be applied to me? And I say, absolutely, because it's a righteousness independent of human works.

It's much better to live a good life than a criminal life. But as far as righteousness is concerned, God gives the same righteousness to everybody. God can receive you. So it has to be of necessity a free gift. That's why it's called gift righteousness in Romans chapter 5. There's a second characteristic of this gift, and that is that it is a perfect gift, obviously, because it's God's righteousness. You see, because it belongs to him and he says, I'm conferring it on you, I'm crediting it to your account.

I'm crediting it to your account, therefore your debt is fully being paid by me. Of course, it can't be improved upon, nor can it in any way be diminished. It is as perfect as God. See, Luther knew something that his generation lost and our generation certainly has lost, that in order to get to heaven, you have to be as perfect as God. Well, that's difficult to do in ourselves, isn't it?

Lives look at your husband and say, on that basis, you're not making it. So it is a perfect gift. It is God's righteousness. Third, it is a permanent gift.

It's permanent. Once received, it takes you all the way to heaven. If I may one more time refer to Martin Luther, was he saved during those days when he was confessing his sins?

Of course not. You see, because as he confessed his sins, the next day he was loaded again with new sins and you really don't know where you stand. Salvation does not come through confession. Can't remember all your sins, even if you did.

As I've already emphasized, tomorrow's another day with brand new ones. Where do you go? But once he understood that salvation was a free gift, that is to say that the righteousness of God was credited to him, and that it was his permanent possession through faith in Jesus Christ, now it freed him. And one of the doctrines that he gave up soon after was purgatory, because purgatory said, nobody dies good enough to go to heaven, so there are the fires of purgatory that finally purge you so that you can have entrance. And he says, if I'm clothed in the righteousness of Christ, I go from this life to the next, and I'm deposited in heaven as if I am Jesus. And if you know Christ as your savior, when you die, you'll be welcomed into heaven as if you are Jesus. And I'd say that that's really good news for sinners, isn't it? Wonderful.

I think it's wonderful somebody says over there, yeah. Now, if you're not a sinner, well, talk to me later and I'll give you a little bit of help. It is therefore a permanent. It says in the book of Hebrews, he has perfected forever those who are sanctified. But also, I want to give you another characteristic, and that is a sanctifying gift. It sanctifies us. You see, because it could be somebody's listening to this and he says, oh, well, if I receive Jesus, I can just do anything I like. By the way, when somebody says that to you, there should be a part of you that rejoices because they understand. They're beginning to understand the gospel. It's the natural, unsaved response to the gospel. Now, Paul is going to argue that should we therefore continue in sin because grace abounds, absolutely not. But you see, it is this truth that sanctifies us. I read in chapter 5 that we reign in this life by the free gift of righteousness.

How does that work? Do you remember the story Les Mis, Victor Hugo's book about Jean Valjean? He breaks out of prison and he's looking for a place to stay and nobody will have him. And finally, a bishop takes him in and the bishop is very kind to him, ends up giving him a nice warm bed with clean sheets. But in the middle of the night, Jean Valjean wakes up, tiptoes through the bedroom of the bishop and steals the silverware and leaves.

Later that morning, Jean Valjean is caught by a guard. He brings him back and the guard says to the bishop, he says you gave him these spoons. And all that the bishop has to do is to say, no, I didn't. And Jean Valjean goes to prison for the rest of his life. But do you remember what the bishop did? The bishop said, oh, yes, I gave him the spoons.

In fact, I'm angry with him because here's some candlesticks he should have taken too. Well, the guard has to just walk away. And then the bishop says to Jean Valjean, and I'm paraphrasing here, with this act of grace, I bought your soul for God. And from then on, Jean Valjean began to live a different life. Now I know that the illustration breaks down because we can't just begin to live a different life without the power of the Holy Spirit, which incidentally is the next message in this series. But still, grace is transforming. Grace motivates us to, in light of the fact that we have God's righteousness, we have now a desire to live righteously.

We can never attain the righteousness of God, but we want to live righteous lives. And yes, we do confess our sins in order to restore fellowship with God, but not in order to begin somehow all over again. We do it because we are his children.

Your children have permanent love and acceptance from you as parents, but when they misbehave, there's some confession that has to be done. And that's why we pray that the church would confess and that the church would repent. But still, we repent from the standpoint of strength. You see, the reason that this means so much to me is there are mornings when I wake up when I don't necessarily have a heart hot for God. Have you ever had a morning like that? Have you ever had a morning where your failures seem to overwhelm you, and you really feel quite bad about what you've done, but what's been done has been done? Where do you go from there?

What do you do? You say, God's mad at me? No, what you do is you say this. There is a prayer I came across this week.

It says, in Christ, there is nothing I can do that would make you love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less. Wow. So God still loves me? Yeah. I'm still represented before the throne. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is still my gift covering my life?

Yes. I think it was Ludwig von Zinzendorf. I love that name. Don't get to say it too often. Who said, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness, my beauty, art, my heavenly dress. I can get up in the morning, not because of what I've done, or because I've had a warm time in my devotions, though God knows we ought to have our devotions. But I get up in the morning because God is there. Jesus represents me.

The terrors of law and of God with me, they can have nothing to do. My Savior's obedience and blood hide all of my sins from view. My name on the palm of his hands, eternity cannot erase. Forever there it stands, a mark of indelible grace. You can get up in the morning because you are loved and the righteousness of God is credited to your account. Now there are some implications of this, obviously.

And for these, I look at the text. You'll notice it says this in verse 26. We already emphasized that Jesus was put forward as the propitiation of his blood to be received by faith for us. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time. And here's now the key phrase, that he might be just and the justifier of one who has faith in Jesus. God can be both loving and totally just, and he can acquit us because Jesus paid what we couldn't and gave us the gift of divine righteousness and credited it to our account. So God is totally just, and he's the justifier. Secondly, second implication is this. You'll notice he says, I love this in verse 27, well, what then becomes of our boasting?

It's excluded. You're going to come before God and say, oh, God, I am just so wonderful because I came to know your son and I'm so much better than the person standing next to me who's never believed, and I'm taking credit for the fact that I'm pretty wise in this business of salvation. But that attitude, I've never said this before and never planned to, but I will, you're kind of slapping God in the face. And that's why throughout all of eternity, we will continue to worship at the wonder of God's salvation and that he demands perfection and then supplied what he demanded and offered it to sinners as a free gift. I'll tell you, no boasting from us in heaven should be no boasting on earth. Who makes thee to differ from another? Or what is thou that thou has not received?

And if thou hast received it, why do you act as if it belongs to you? It's all a God, everything, no boasting. And finally, we see here that Jesus Christ is the one who is the Redeemer, not just for the Jews, but for everyone. Verse 29, or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not also God of the Gentiles? Yes, also of the Gentiles. Is he God of the people who attend Moody Church?

Yes, he's God of the people who attend Moody Church. There are not a lot of ways to get to heaven because there is no other Savior who paid the debt of those who believe. And some of you who are depending upon your works, let me tell you that if anyone ever says to your question, what do I have? You know, if you were to stand before God and God were to say, why shall I let you into heaven? If anybody says, well, you know, I'm a pretty good person, not only are they not understanding the gospel, but much more seriously, much more seriously, they actually are putting up a huge stumbling block to the gospel. They are more lost than the person who says, I have nothing to offer God.

I come with my need. And God has to do everything else. That person can be saved. As long as we cling to our righteousness, we can't. So in this broken world where we measure our spirituality by our industry and by our works, let's remember that it is given as a free gift. That is salvation to all who believe, the Bible says. Is God working in your heart today to believe that Jesus actually did pay it all?

D.L. Moody was in a meeting one time, and he said that a man stood up and said, it took me 42 years to learn three things. And Moody thought, wow, if I listen carefully, I can maybe learn them all right now.

I don't have to wait that long. The man said, the three things are this. Number one, I cannot save myself. My works do not contribute to my salvation. Second thing I learned is that God doesn't expect me to or think I can.

He, above all, knows better. And the third thing is that Jesus paid it all for those who believe. Isn't that good news in a fallen world? The gift of righteousness. God's righteousness that takes us all the way to heaven.

What a gift. If you have never received Christ as Savior, you may do that. We're going to be singing in a moment, but wherever you are seated, however you are listening to this, you can say at this moment, Jesus, I received that free gift because I know I'm sinned, and I come to a Savior, a great Savior for great sinners. Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit will take your word and do what we can't. You can open hearts.

You can convict of sin. You can show people the beauty and the glory of our salvation. And today, there are those who may be reborn into your kingdom. Help us, Lord, to rejoice in the salvation freely offered. We love you in Jesus' name.

Amen. Let's stand and sing, Jesus paid it all. On today's Moody Church Hour, Dr. Erwin Lutzer brought another in a series of eight messages on the inheritance of the redeemed. Some of the gifts God gives His children may seem intangible.

For instance, having the righteousness of God sounds theoretical. Next time, we'll learn about a gift that makes all the other gifts very real, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lockdowns, economic chaos, thousands dying. COVID-19 has changed all of us forever.

Agendas are flying as the press and politicians maneuver for advantage. The ultimate question, what is God saying to us through a deadly pandemic? Erwin Lutzer has authored a new book on pandemics, plagues, and natural disasters. And we'd like you to have a copy as our thank you for your gift of any amount to The Moody Church Hour. Call 1-800-215-5001. Let us know you'd like to support Dr. Lutzer's ministry.

We'll send out this new book right away. Just call us at 1-800-215-5001 or write to us at The Moody Church, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Online, go to moodyoffer.com. That's moodyoffer.com. Join us next week for another Moody Church Hour with Dr. Erwin Lutzer and the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago.