Amen.
As we transition here in chapter 8, we're kind of getting into the topic of a church blessing
another church financially.
That's kind of the subject matter that's being transitioned in.
And the Apostle Paul says here in verse number one, more brethren, we do you to wit of the
grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia how that in a great trial of affliction
the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded on the riches of their liberality.
The word here wit is that they want them to know they want them to understand the grace
of God and they want them to understand that Macedonia it's a near area to where they're
at in Corinth.
It's kind of north, it's the same general area, but it's a different section of Greece.
This is where he is traveled to after having visited them.
So he's gone off into Macedonia, he's going to come back through, and in some sense Macedonia
is almost like the northern portion of his journeys typically, he's taking these big
long journeys and kind of looping back and it's kind of in a sense you know where he's
going the most northern then as he returns is going to come back through Corinth.
And he's trying to say, hey, I want you to understand something about the church
or the churches in Macedonia and how they had a great trial of affliction.
So you know it's not like just one church in the New Testament suffered persecution, it's
pretty much just the theme of all the churches.
All the churches are suffering persecution, affliction, they're going through hardships,
the general consensus is people do not like the church, they do not like the people
of the church, it's not something that flows well with the world, and this should
be expected.
I mean the Bible says, yea, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer
persecution.
We see the first godly Christian in the Bible, Abel is slaughtered by his brother
Cain.
And so if you're going to be of this world, well you can kind of get along, but if you
are contrary to this world, if you're godly, if you seek the Lord, in many cases
you will be persecuted, you'll be hated, you'll be afflicted, and wherefore
because you're righteous, because your deeds are righteous and because theirs
are evil.
It's just that simple, they can't stand someone being better than them or
being more godly or being more righteous than them, and of course part of
being a Christian is to separate yourself and be more godly and righteous.
So the more separated you are, the more godly, the more righteous, the more
you're going to suffer persecution.
Really if you want to not suffer persecution as a Christian, then you
basically have to not be godly, and you have to not separate yourself.
What would this look like?
It would be the non-the-dom church today, the non-the-dom church doesn't
look really any different than the world, in many cases it doesn't act very
different than the world, and it's not even separated from the world in many
cases, considering the fact that a large percentage of many non-
denominational churches today have people that are not even saved.
And so it's not really going to be an institution, it's not going to be an
area where you see a lot of persecution, a lot of fliction, a lot of angst
against them, because they're trying to just conform to the world and act
like the world.
That's why you see roller coasters inside, that's why you see them
performing literal Hollywood movies for their particular services.
How much more worldly can you get than actually showing a Hollywood
movie for the service?
I mean, I can't really even understand, and it's kind of silly,
like even the movie theaters are struggling and failing, why would
the church think that this is a good business model?
I don't know.
But nevertheless, unfortunately, you have to realize that serving
God and being godly is not always going to be popular.
There's going to be some affliction, there's going to be some
difficulty, and these churches also suffered a great trial of
affliction, but it's like despite their great trial of affliction,
the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded under
the riches of their liberality.
So it's saying that even though they're going through a really
difficult time and a lot of persecution, they were still
very joyful during that particular trial of affliction, and it
knows this as an abundance of their joy.
So they're just so happy, they're just so joyful, they have so
much good fellowship, camaraderie, and it says they have a deep
poverty, meaning that they're not really a rich church, they're
not rich individuals.
So the church doesn't have much money, probably most of the
individuals in the church don't have much money, but notice
by not having much money and having a lot of joy, the Bible
says it abounded under the riches of their liberality.
Now, liberality would be generosity and giving.
So it's kind of funny how this works, because in verse two,
it's saying their deep poverty is causing them to be more
liberal.
Like how does that work?
How can you have not very much money, but you're giving a
lot of money?
I feel like there's a little bit of tension in the text
about this particular subject, and I want to address that
because this would just be my way of possibly addressing this
is perhaps they don't have a lot of money.
So in a sense, they're not spending it on things that
they could, and they're just end up giving it to this poor
saints in Jerusalem.
And we're going to prove that from the text here as a
Bible study, we're going to go through a lot of verses,
but I'm just kind of giving you my idea of this.
I think it could be similarly said, let's say like us,
for example, us as a church, in some categories we could
be considered kind of poor as a church.
If we're comparing ourselves to just big churches and
larger churches in the world, because you look at a church
like Gateway, they're running a $60 million budget,
well they would consider us very poor.
Obviously if you look at us compared to a small church
that's running 50, 60 people, we have a lot more
money than them.
So I don't know exactly what's the right comparison,
but I'm just saying in some context you could say that
our church wouldn't really have like just a ton of
money necessarily.
But if we did, let's just say we had millions of dollars
in the bank, well we might be tempted to just try to use
all that to just buy a nicer building and invest it
and then kind of do all this stuff.
But since we don't have millions in the bank,
we're not really even necessarily tempted with
whatever extra income we have to worry about a
building because we don't even have the down payment.
You know, we don't even have the extra money
or the extra funds.
So it's almost like by not having an expensive building
and not paying, I don't know, 30, $40,000 a month
on a building, then we have that extra money
to then fund maybe more soul winning or other things.
So it's almost like by not having some of the
greatest riches we could possibly have,
or having excess funds in a huge quantity,
then we can use our disposable income
more liberally potentially.
That's just an idea of how this could possibly look
or what this could possibly mean.
There's other ways to look at it,
but I really wanna focus on this word liberal
for a moment because in today's culture
being called liberal is a really negative thing.
When we think of a liberal,
we think of a blue haired feminist
that's supporting Lindsey Clancy.
And so, and of course that's true,
but why are these people called liberals?
What does that mean?
Well, let's go back in the Bible
all the way to Deuteronomy chapter 15
and just see what the Bible says about being liberal
because here's the thing.
The word liberal is actually a good word.
And it's a positive word.
So obviously I don't believe in quote bad words,
but there are words that are negative, right?
There's words that have a negative connotation.
There's words that have a positive connotation.
This is kind of a positive word.
But in our modern vernacular, for most conservatives,
we think of a liberal as kind of a negative word,
a derogatory term even potentially,
but it's not because of its etymology
and it's not because of what the Bible says about it
because being a liberal according to the Bible
is a good thing.
And we can't allow the world to hijack
the Bible's definition of words.
But at the same time,
we have to understand that there's gonna be differences.
The Bible being translated in 1611
is a different culture than in 2026.
And so sometimes words,
while having a little bit different understanding
in that culture,
they can be hijacked in a modern culture.
Another word like this would be in the book of James,
chapter two, verse three,
it says someone wearing gay clothing.
Well, the word gay in that particular verse
means something different than if you said,
hey, someone's wearing some gay clothing in 2026.
Now, typically, if you heard that,
you would think of someone as being like
a sodomite reprobate freak, okay?
And maybe being a tranny.
That's what you get in the imagery there.
Whereas in the Bible,
it's trying to say something that's wearing
happy, bright, vibrant clothing, okay?
And then again, the word gay would be happy.
It'd be happy, bright, vibrant, pleasant.
But that's like the opposite
of what a sodomite reprobate is.
So why is that the case?
Well, it's bad people will often take good labels
and use that and label themselves with this
so as to kind of shield who they really are.
Same way that they use the rainbow,
which is a good thing.
I mean, the rainbow is a sign from God.
A rainbow is a positive token from God.
It's supposed to be a blessing to mankind.
And then we see that same community using the rainbow
and trying to trash it and trying to make it
become a derogatory thing, a negative thing.
It's associated with evil, with filth.
Whereas it's a positive thing.
And so it's kind of like an unfortunate fight
that we have to go through in our culture
sometimes over words.
And again, with a liberal, it's the same thing,
that a liberal is a good word,
someone that gives generously,
but then we have the Democrat Party by and large
trying to take that label and call themselves liberals.
And so they're trying to make it seem like they're good.
And of course, why?
Well, in America, you kind of have the two-party system.
You have Democrats, you have Republicans.
Republicans are considered more conservative,
especially fiscally.
And you have Democrats that are considered more liberal.
But in the sense that, from a government perspective,
the government likes to tax us more heavily
and then, quote, create more programs
that they then call themselves liberal with,
but the problem is the government is not very good
at actually running programs.
They steal a lot of the money
that they're supposedly taking from us,
from the taxes, to fund these liberal programs.
And in many cases, these liberal programs
are not even actually helping people
that we should be helping.
They're helping the degenerates
and disgusting people of society.
And so a lot of people say,
oh, the liberals or the Democrats,
they are really generous with other people's money,
but they're not necessarily generous with their own money.
And see, that is the problem with our democratic system,
or I say democratic, I mean the Democrats specifically
in our political system is that they would love
to give everybody money that's not theirs.
And again, they're mostly not even giving money
to the people that they claim they are.
They're lining their own pockets.
They're shuffling it around.
There's a lot of fraud.
There's a lot of deception.
They just want the money to be taxed from us
and then they'll figure out a way to get to it.
But at the end of the day,
a liberal is someone that would, by nature, be generous,
and there's nothing wrong with that.
If someone was to give a lot of money away
or to help people, that's a positive thing, okay?
So in Deuteronomy chapter 15, the giver is 14.
Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock
and out of thy floor and out of thy wine press
of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee
thou shalt give unto him.
So you know, you have a servant
or you have someone that was working for you
and they're gonna be let free.
The Bible says, hey, you would furnish this guy liberally,
meaning you would be very generous
at whatever you gave to him.
Go to Isaiah 32, go to Isaiah 32.
The Bible says in Proverbs 11 verse 25,
the liberal soul shall be made fat
and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.
And again, the word fat in our modern vernacular,
we typically think of someone as being obese
or overweight, whereas from a biblical perspective,
fat is talking about a positive sense
of having abundance, of being blessed.
And so it's saying, hey, the liberal soul
is gonna be made fat in the sense that, hey, you give,
God's gonna give a bunch to you
and you're gonna be blessed greatly
and you're gonna be financially taken care of.
That's what it's trying to say.
Isaiah 32, look at verse five,
the vile person shall be no more called liberal
nor the churl said to be bountiful.
Again, this is crazy because of our modern understanding
of words, but again, why would the vile person
no longer be called liberal?
It's because it's saying that liberal's a good thing
as a positive word and society
is no longer gonna be upside down.
And notice, there's no new thing under the sun.
He's saying, hey, even back then, at that time,
the Democrat Party was considered liberal.
But you know what?
It was a false word used for them
because they're not actually really liberal.
And also the churl is not really a bountiful person.
It's just saying like,
these are the labels that people are giving them
but it's saying God's gonna punish them,
God's going to take them to task,
God's gonna judge them and no longer will that label
actually stick to these type of individuals,
he's gonna course correct.
And so of course, that's kind of the context.
It is in verse six.
For the vile person will speak villainy
and his heart will work iniquity to practice hypocrisy
and utter error against the Lord
to make empty the soul of the hungry
and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
Now this is what the Democrat Party
and our liberals of today are actually like
is they speak villainy, meaning they speak evil,
they're saying things that are wrong, harmful,
disgusting, they work iniquity.
Notice this, they practice hypocrisy.
They say they're very generous
but in fact they're not generous at all.
They're very selfish, greedy person
and whatever they're doing is actually harming
the poor person because notice it says
to make empty the soul of the hungry.
So he's gonna have hypocrisy
and he's gonna utter arrogance Lord
to make empty the soul of the hungry.
So all these liberal programs that we have in society
often what they do is they actually harm the poor
and they harm the communities
that they're supposedly trying to help
and they're not actually doing good to them.
You could think of like the Black Lives Matter group
which was supposed to like quote help black people
but all it did is it caused other blacks
to give money to this particular program
and the particular leaders of this
was like three lesbians or something
or like two lesbians and another chick or something.
It was like, it was basically two,
it was like three ladies, a couple of them were lesbians
and essentially they were just buying themselves mansions.
They're going out there and they're just,
they're getting hit pieces written for them by the media
and then they'll set up GoFundMe's
to just have everybody in their community give money
when George Floyd dies of an overdose from drugs
or something and then they basically just line the pockets
of these other, these black lesbians
which again what is being black
and being a lesbian have anything to do with each other?
They don't, they're not even congruent whatsoever
and so they're just lining their pockets
and all we did is we just made black people more poor,
we took more money away from them
just to line the pockets of the vile person,
of the actual reprobate and it's just like
that's exactly what the Bible is saying was happening
in the book of Isaiah in Jerusalem
where you had the vile people just lining their pockets
while taking advantage of the poor suckers.
All the people that think that, oh man,
I'm helping the cause, I'm helping black people
but in fact they're doing nothing to help them
and in fact they're kind of just stigmatizing
the entire black community if that was even a thing,
even more and making people despise them even more
and dislike them even more, it's not helping them,
it's not gonna help them get jobs,
you know they're destroying businesses
and of course they're destroying businesses
in their own neighborhoods which then by and large
creates food deserts in their own areas
and causes companies to get out of there,
it causes companies to raise prices in their areas
because it's just so expensive to be in an area
where there's high crime and theft
and it's just hurting them even more and more and more
and it's just showing the hypocrisy of this vile person
who gets the label liberal but they're not liberal at all.
It's a lie.
Says the instruments also of the churl are evil,
he devises wicked devices to destroy the poor
with lying words even when the needy speaketh right.
It's just saying look, I mean these people
they're just destroying the poor, they're harming the poor,
they're lying to the poor, they don't care
about these people, they create instruments
to destroy them called payday loans
or some kind of a payday cash loan system
or planned parenthood where they're just literally
targeting black areas to put planned parenthoods
to cause them to have more abortions
to just try and destroy and weed out
these people from society which again Margaret Singer
and other eugenicists, their goal was to eradicate
black people from America, that's why they have birth control,
that's why they have organizations like Planned Parenthood,
I'm sorry Planned Parenthood
and they basically just wanted to destroy
whole groups of people and they do it with lying words.
Yep, they're considered liberal
and isn't it funny the same people doing this to them,
you can't even get these black people to not vote for them.
Isn't that crazy?
It's crazy how people just fall for lies
and they basically vote in their own destruction.
There's so many people that are just voting for
and asking for their own destruction,
they trust in oppression, they think like
I need more handouts, not realizing the handouts
is what's destroying them.
Not realizing that the people that are giving them
the quote handouts don't actually care about them,
don't actually love them, would never give them
a dollar out of their own wallet,
but rather just want to continue to tax other people
and give away their money for free
while they're lining their own pockets.
And it says verse eight,
but the liberal devises liberal things
and by liberal things shall he stand.
So he's contrasting in verse five
a vile person that gets the label liberal versus
verse eight an actual liberal.
An actual liberal is someone who devises liberal things
meaning what he creates actually gives people money
and actually blesses people,
whereas the churlish person is creating instruments
that destroy the poor with lying words.
So he's doing the exact opposite
even though claiming the title.
So an actual generous person is trying to help poor people
and give back to the poor people
and do good on the poor people
and then notice it says by liberal things shall he stand.
So God's the one looking down from heaven.
He'll notice who's actually liberal,
who's actually generous and he'll take care of that person
and that person will continue to be standing upright
and doing his thing.
Whereas the guy who is actually destroying
and taking advantage and ripping people off,
he'll get destroyed, he'll be taken down a notch.
And so we wanna make sure that we don't think like
well, why don't we just do what they're doing
and rip people off too?
Why don't we just take advantage of the poor as well?
Why don't we create our own system
of high interest loans
and why don't we create our own
used car salesman schemes
and why don't we create these credit card schemes
and all this stuff
and why don't we just take advantage
of these poor derelicts ourselves?
And it's just like, well, because God's gonna punish you
and judge you for that.
And the person that's actually generous,
God's gonna make sure he continues to be generous
because you know what?
God wants to fund the generous person
so that he can keep helping the poor person
and God cares about the poor people.
Go to 1 Corinthians 16,
go to 1 Corinthians 16.
It reminds me of being at Wells Fargo
just because they were like the most evil institution
that I was aware of at the time.
And just how much there's ripping off poor people
with overdraft fees.
And please don't constantly get feed to death by a bank.
If you're a young person,
make sure you're not taking more money
out of your bank account than you have
because the bank will charge you $35, $40, $50
every time you go over.
In fact, Wells Fargo specifically has a policy
where they try to reverse engineer your transactions
just to charge you more fees on purpose.
Okay, so it's like, you have,
because they'll say like,
oh, we have all these transactions
pending over the weekend.
And so instead of us actually going through
and identifying them from a chronological order,
we're gonna go ahead and take the largest items
and pay them first and we'll just change the order
and just kind of change how it worked.
Well, this can really screw some people up.
I would see it.
Somebody would, over the weekend,
they would go out and they would just get like a dollar
Coke and they would get like $2 this
and they would just go to the movie theater for seven bucks
and then they just have like 10 transactions
that are all like less than 10 bucks.
And their mortgage is gonna hit on Monday
and they didn't realize that they went over by like 50 bucks.
So they went over by 50 bucks.
So it would have been just one overdraft fee
for when their mortgage hit on Monday.
But they'll say, no, no, we wanna make sure
that your mortgage gets paid.
So what we did is we took the mortgage
and we put it first and then the next largest
and the next largest.
So then because you went over by 50 bucks
and you had 10 transactions, it'd be like $2 Coke
is now a $50 Coke.
And your $1 Coke, now it's a $51 Coke.
And they would just sit there and hammer it.
So someone would come in and they'd say,
hey, I'll pay the $35 for going overdraft
but I don't have $600 because of what you just did to me.
I don't have $300 because of what you just did to me.
And it was just, it was just nasty.
It was nasty, it was evil.
And of course it wasn't like,
oh well, we wanna make sure your mortgage gets paid.
They were gonna pay it no matter what, okay?
The bank wasn't really worried about it.
They were just figuring out a way
to chew you even harder.
And it was gross and it was disgusting
what they were doing to people,
preying on people, taking advantage of people.
And of course our manager would never be in the store
on purpose just so she would never have to do
a reversal on the overdraft fees.
And we ended up finding out that the managers,
for Wells Fargo, they got bonuses paid out
specifically on the percentage of the overdraft fees
they collect at their branch.
So of course they don't wanna be there
and they don't wanna reverse them
because that's how they get paid out.
They had to have like 92.5% collection
on all the fees recorded in the system
in order to get a bonus.
And it was like, we hit like 91% or something.
I know, we hit 91%.
So our manager and like our district managers,
like all the managers are showing up
and they're just like really mad
that we only got 91% of our overdraft fees.
It's like, good night, how evil is this institution?
But I'm telling you something,
you know the bank is not a liberal.
The bank will come after you
and the bank is not there to be your friend.
And hey, you know, you should have a big buffer
in your checking account, your savings account
and stuff like that.
So you make sure you never go on the overdraft
because they will take all of your money.
And I just remember talking to one of my managers
about it when someone was getting like ripped off
in the tens of thousands.
They had had over $10,000 in overdraft fees
in a particular year.
And I was saying like, hey, we need to help this person.
And they were like, hey, if you call this person,
I'm gonna fire you.
And I said, they said, because if you call them,
they're gonna be mad at us
and they're gonna want us to reverse some of these fees.
And then we're gonna not hit our bonuses,
you know, we're gonna have all these consequences
or whatever.
And I was just, I was like thinking like,
yeah, but this is just evil, we're doing this person,
like we're just taking all their money,
it doesn't make any sense.
And she's like, well, you know what?
It's their fault for being stupid
and just not paying attention or whatever.
And it's like that, that's the justification of these people.
It's just like, oh, well, they're poor because they're stupid.
Oh, they don't have money because they're dumb
and they're foolish and they're making bad decisions.
So then they just take advantage of them.
And you know what?
That's the wrong attitude.
It's a wicked attitude.
It's an evil attitude.
And you don't just take advantage of someone
just because they're stupid or because they're poor
or because they are in a bad situation.
But of course, that's what the rich do
is they love to just take advantage of the poor
and the weak and the widow and anybody they can
and they just rip them off, reverse mortgages.
Evil as hell, I'm just telling you.
It's just anything they can do
to just get their hands on money.
And it's just gross the system that's been created.
Instruments created to oppress the poor and destroy them.
And so, you know, we as Christians
need to be the opposite.
We need to be liberal.
We need to be creating devices and instruments
that bless people.
And you know, from a church perspective,
you know, we believe that we're an independent
fundamental Baptist church.
We answer as a church to no other earthly institution.
You know, our hierarchy in a sense
goes straight to the Bible and to Jesus in a sense.
So like our church is answered to the Bible
and answers to the Lord Jesus Christ.
There's not a human body or some earthly body.
There's not the Southern Baptist Convention
that can come and take us to task.
There's not some episcopacy.
There's not some ecumenical council.
There's not some group.
There's not some bishop.
There's not some pope.
There's not anybody that can exercise authority over us.
We are an autonomous church.
We're independent in that sense.
But does that mean that we should have
an independent mindset that if another church
is in need or they have some kind of a burden
that we shouldn't consider them
and wanna bless them?
No, we shouldn't be like that.
Hey, we're independent from an autonomous perspective.
We're independent from a polity,
from a governing perspective.
But at the end of the day,
we're still a part of Christianity
and we should just love other churches too.
And we shouldn't just be so independent
that we don't care about other churches
or we're not paying attention to other churches.
We should still love other churches.
And here in 1 Corinthians chapter 16,
look at verse one.
Now concerning the collection for the saints,
as I have given order to the churches of Galatia,
even so do ye.
Think about what Paul's saying.
He's saying, look, I'm gonna get some money.
I'm gonna, we're gonna collect money for other Christians.
And notice I told all the churches in Galatia
that they're gonna do it too.
So it's like all the churches of Galatia are raising money.
The church is in Corinth raising money
and we learn from 2 Corinthians
that the churches in Macedonia are collecting money.
For who?
Well, we'll keep reading.
He says, upon the first day of the week,
let every one of you lay by him in store
as God has prospered him.
There will be no gatherings when I come
and when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve
by your letters, them will I send
to bring your liberality onto Jerusalem."
So the whole point is like Jerusalem
for some reason is having like severe poverty.
There is a part of Acts where there's a testimony
of there's gonna be a dearth in that portion of the world.
I don't know if the timeline is exactly right there
or not if it's related to the dearth,
but there's some poverty that's afflicting
this group of people.
And so the apostle Paul on his journey
is collecting money from all these different areas
and they're gonna come and bring this as a gift,
as a blessing unto the saints at Jerusalem.
And so they're collecting and raising money.
Now, some people would falsely understand this
and they would say like,
oh, see there's no tithing in the Bible,
in the New Testament, you just give money if you want to.
That's not the context of this.
This isn't the tithe,
this isn't money for their church even.
This is money for a completely different group.
So this has nothing to do with the tithe.
The tithe is the Lord's number one
and tithing goes to your church.
And if we have this attitude of we don't give money to church,
we don't tithe, we just randomly collect money
for other churches every once in a while,
well then how the heck are we gonna
actually have a church?
How are we gonna actually function?
Like that would be silly to just take this passage
and then use it as a proof text
that tithing doesn't exist in the New Testament.
It's just a different subject.
It'd be silly because it's not what's being brought up.
This is not, they're like,
oh, well we just collect money every once in a while,
you know, just because.
It's like that's not what this is talking about.
This is specifically a gift to a specific church
that's separate from what the tithe would be
or what their church is doing.
That is the context.
It says in verse four,
and if we meet that I go also,
they should go with me now,
I will come under you when I shall pass through Macedonia
for I do pass through Macedonia
and it may be that I will abide, yay,
and winter with you that you may bring me
on my journey where the story goes.
So he's kind of bringing up,
hey, I'm going through Macedonia,
then I'm gonna come see you.
Same thing he's bringing up in 2 Corinthians, okay?
So again, what's the liberality
that's mentioned in verse three?
That's their generosity, their generous giving,
and who is it targeted for,
the saints at Jerusalem, another church.
So is it wrong for a church,
is it wrong for our church to give money to another church?
No, not at all.
That would actually be biblical.
Now, do we have to?
No, there's not an obligation
and he's gonna tell us in 2 Corinthians,
go back to 2 Corinthians if you haven't gone over there,
but he's gonna tell us that this isn't a commandment,
this is being liberal, being generous.
Being generous is not a commandment,
it's a free will decision.
In the Old Testament you had
what's called a free will offering.
A free will offering is that of which
you don't have to give.
You're giving it of your own voluntary free will,
you just wanna give something to the Lord
and so you would just bring some kind of an offering.
So in the Old Testament you had the tithe
and then you had free will offerings, okay?
That's the same concept we have here in the New Testament.
You have the New Testament tithe
and then you'd have what was considered
a free will offering.
And what would be a free will offering?
Well, of course this could be given to your church,
it could be given to a different church
and then I would say in a similar way
it's kind of like almsgiving just to the poor in general.
Whoever you seem to know or like
or you wanna help out, you wanna bless somebody
and you just decide to give them some money,
that is a free will offering.
You don't have to do it.
We see a free will offering given
by Ananias and Sapphira in the book of Acts
and they die not because they had to give that money
but rather because they lied into the Holy Ghost about it.
So one of the principles that we should learn
from free will offerings is number one,
you don't have to do it.
And number two, if you do do it, don't lie about it, right?
Because it's not about the praise of men
and that's why the Bible tells us in Matthew
and Jesus emphasizes like whenever you're doing
your almsgiving, let not your left hand know
what your right hand's doing
and that it should be kind of done in secret.
And again, I'm not saying it has to be like
you're a ninja and you sneak into someone's house
and lay money down on their counter
or something like that.
I don't think that we have to be over the top.
Isn't the spirit that you're not blowing a trumpet
and letting everybody know?
And isn't it that like at the church,
not everybody knows, I mean,
Ananias and Sapphira, everybody knows their money
but if you were doing what was right,
not everybody would know that you're giving the money.
So again, there's nothing wrong
with giving money to a church.
There's nothing wrong with even technically being public
but if it's gonna be public, you better not lie about it.
And then in general, you should probably be,
if you're giving almsgiving, it should be done in secret.
You shouldn't be trying to do it for the praise of men
or seeking the praise of men.
That would be the wrong attitude.
It's similar to the Old Testament,
free will offerings, not something that's the tide.
You know, I hear this lie often
where they'll say, oh, well,
tithing's done away in the New Testament
because in the Old Testament it was 23.5%.
Who's heard this kind of weird crazy,
okay, no one, all right, me.
It's like, they'll be like, well, technically,
if you did all the tithing in the Old Testament,
it's like 23.5%.
The word tithe means 10th.
It's kind of weird that they come up with this idea
of 23.5% or something like that.
That's just some derived Jewish understanding.
I'm sure the Jews think the tithe is 23.5%, not 10.
I'm sure a Jew came up with that.
But let me explain it.
The tithe is 10 because that's what it means, right?
The free will offering would just be over in abundance,
whatever you feel that you can deliver.
And of course, that is kind of the context.
Now, in verse three, he says,
for to their power I bear record,
yea, and beyond their power they were willing
of themselves praying with us,
or praying us with much entreaty
that we would receive the gift
and take upon us the fellowship
of the ministering to the saints.
Now, he's saying, look, I'm gonna testify, excuse me,
of their power, meaning their ability to give.
And it says, and beyond their power,
they were willing of themselves.
So he's kind of like almost saying like,
whatever they had to give,
they kind of seem to give more
than what it even seemed like they had to give.
Like that's how generous these people were.
And of course, you kind of see in verse two
the riches of their liberality.
There's an example of this.
What about the woman who gives her two mites?
Now, when Jesus Christ is commenting on this,
he said that she had given all of her living.
So that seems to be more than what she should be giving
or what is reasonable,
but it's just like the riches of her liberality.
That she just loved the Lord so much
that she literally cast in all of her living
in that particular moment.
Now, you know, I don't know her situation.
I don't know what's really going on.
I don't think that she's putting herself
in a financial burden to necessarily do that,
but it could just be that, hey,
she just had, this is all the money she has
and she's just decided to give it to the Lord.
But I don't think that she's like maxing out
her credit cards or doing something financially foolish
to bless the Lord.
It's that she has this money
and she's just giving it to the Lord
and the Lord's gonna take care of her.
Maybe she's living with someone,
her son or a brother-in-law or whoever
and they're taking care of her needs.
She has a little bit of money
instead of spending on herself.
She's like, I'm just gonna give it.
And she's like, hey, this is all she had
and she gave it to the Lord.
Because in this chapter, it's gonna make it clear
that you shouldn't be giving money
that you don't have to give.
But there's kind of like abundance
and then there's kind of like,
maybe a reasonable portion
and it's like they're giving even just more
than just their abundance.
It's like they're even tapping into maybe
their own personal funds
of what they would like to buy
for themselves selfishly or something.
They're just like, hey, I'm just gonna give this
to the saints at Jerusalem.
It says that they wanted to be a partaker
or a fellowship of the ministering to the saints.
They don't wanna be left out.
It's like, hey, we're taking a collection for Jerusalem
and they're like, well, we wanna be a part of that.
We don't wanna be taking,
we don't wanna be missing out on this opportunity
to bless them and to help them in their time of need.
And so they want to be a partaker
in a fellowship and notice that they wanted
the apostle Paul and his companions to receive the gift.
So they're like, hey, we're giving this money
and isn't there, there could have been, we don't know,
but based on the language here,
there could have been a little bit of a standoff.
Like, hey, we want you to take this
and he's like, well, I don't know
because you guys are so poor
and they're like, no, we insist, take it, okay?
And there's a lot of aspects to giving and receiving.
I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong
with an initial refusal potentially,
but if someone's insisting,
I believe you're supposed to take it, okay?
That would be the right thing to do.
You don't wanna refuse receiving a gift from somebody
that's trying to do the right thing that's trying to bless.
So you could kinda see there's sometimes
that little bit of standoff,
but then you just go ahead
and basically receive the gift
or you go along with what is being offered.
Someone's like, hey, let me get that
and you're like, no, I'm fine.
And then they're just like, okay, move on
and it's like, move on.
But they're like, no, no, I insist.
It's like, it'd be rude to not receive that or to take it.
I'm not saying you have to initially refuse.
They could be like, you want this?
You're like, yeah, like, let's go.
And that's a good attitude.
It's a good attitude to receive gifts.
Don't be someone that's so prideful
that you can't receive a gift.
And if someone's insisting, you know, take a gift.
You know, I would only refuse a gift
if it's just like, you know,
it really is not something that I should receive
or just it doesn't make sense.
There's not appropriate or something.
But if it's something that can be received,
you should do your best to try and receive it.
Be thankful for it.
And hey, this church is wanting
to bless the saints of Jerusalem.
Hey, I don't know if you guys should.
It's like, we insist it's all right.
We're gonna receive that gift
and you're gonna get to partake
and be a part of the fellowship of the ministering
to the saints.
He says here in verse number five,
and this they did not as we hoped,
but first gave their own selves of the Lord
and then the us by the will of God.
So he's saying, you know, they're doing this
not because we were wanting this to happen,
but they just love God so much.
And, you know, they wanted to do
whatever the will of God is in verse six
and so much that we desired Titus
that as he had begun,
so he would also finish in you the same grace also.
So just as these guys blessed us,
we were also desiring and hoping that Titus
would be able to come back to your church
and take the same collection.
So just like these guys were so happy
to bless the saints of Jerusalem,
we wanna send Titus so that you guys can also bless them.
Verse seven,
therefore as you abound in everything
in faith and utterance and knowledge
and in all diligence and your love also to us,
see that you abound in this grace also.
I do wanna mention that in times past
in reading this chapter,
the language is kind of dense
and you know, I struggled to understand this chapter.
So in times past, I kind of misunderstood
what the language is saying here.
I kind of thought that it was saying like
they were sending Titus to like preach for them
and then they're like sending money
as like a trade-off,
but that's just not really what's in view.
That wasn't really the right way to look at it.
Titus is simply the person responsible
for collecting the money physically
and taking it to Jerusalem.
And here what the apostle Paul is trying to do
is he's trying to get this collection from everybody.
Now it makes sense why they would want
to do this kind of stuff.
Obviously when you talk about money,
everybody gets squeamish and uncomfortable.
But for the apostle Paul,
he cares about the work of the Lord thriving
and doing well and he understands
that Jerusalem is in need.
So instead of just like one church blessing them,
he wants all the churches to bless them
so that they'll then get the max reward,
the max benefit of the blessing from all of these saints.
And then the work of the Lord is gonna thrive
and it's not gonna be diminished
or it's not going to be hampered by his refusal
to collect money from everybody
or to let as many people participate as possible.
And there could be a temptation, people are weird.
There could be a temptation for someone to say like,
I wanna be the only person helping them financially
so that I get all the credit or I get all the glory
and or someone could decide not to wanna offer
this opportunity to people for the reason of like,
oh, why do you want to get money from everybody?
There's all these different agendas
and things that people will put on you about money.
But Apostle Paul's trying to make it clear like,
hey, I love the saints of Jerusalem.
It's more blessed to give than to receive.
This is a good opportunity.
We want all the churches that are willing
to participate in this, to participate in this.
Titus is a good guy and we're collecting money
and give it to him.
You can also see why in this greater epistle,
there's a lot of accusations against Paul.
Why?
Because there's probably people saying like,
oh, they're collecting money for themselves
or hey, I don't know if they're digging into that money.
Anytime money's involved, accusations, slander,
railing, people getting upset.
Of course, people that aren't working hard,
people that are reprobate, whatever.
They'll come up with all kinds of excuses about money.
They get all offended about money.
They don't want anybody to have money but themselves.
Think about Judas.
Judas is the one who's always getting upset about money.
But why?
Because he was a thief and he's taking what's in the back.
He was really mad about money being spent on Jesus.
Just this oil and this ointment being put on Jesus.
He got so mad about it that he betrayed him
to the Pharisees.
That's how mad he got.
He got so mad about it that he allowed the devil
to enter him and to become demonically possessed
to then betray the Lord Jesus Christ,
betray the innocent blood for 30 shekels of silver.
That's how mad he got about it.
And so when someone's getting really mad about money,
especially that's being used for churches
and for the things of God,
that's a big red flag for that person.
They wanna be like, oh, these people are bad.
It's like they're projecting in a sense.
And it's like, oh, why was this money wasted?
It could have been given to the poor.
Oh, Judas sounds like a liberal.
But he wasn't a liberal.
He was someone that hated the poor people
and was ripping off the poor people.
And he was a thief.
And you notice again, a holier than thou attitude
in many cases.
And it's like the person that's just constantly
making a big deal about money
and just always like obsessed with money.
You know, it's kind of a red flag.
And then you kind of wonder, it's like, okay,
let's talk about some modern day applications
for some of these things, right?
There was one person that I could point to
that said, this guy is talking about money the most.
Like, here's a guy where if you go on every single
one of his posts for his sermons,
the first thing listed is donate to our church.
And it's the only guy constantly raising money
and talking about money and making a big deal about money.
And it's just like, who is it?
Oh yes, it was Roger Jimenez.
And it wasn't like, it's not like what I'm saying,
it's just my opinion.
This is something that a lot of people noticed.
It was like, there's this one person
that's just always about raising money
and trying to talk about money
and getting all these collections at whatever.
And then we find out, oh, why was that happening?
Because he's taking half of the money that's being raised.
And that's after he's getting called on the carpet.
At first he was taking all of it.
Then it was just like half until basically it was exposed.
And then it's like, okay, well,
let's stop letting this guy be the money,
the guy holding the bag, okay?
Now again, I'm not saying that Roger Jimenez is Judas, okay?
Don't hear me wrong.
I think he's saved and whatever.
But anybody can get a bad attitude, a bad spirit.
And we wanna be careful about the person
that's just all obsessed about money and things like that.
But at the same time, there's nothing wrong
with raising money for other Christians.
And so that's why they love this vehicle
because they wanna be like, hey, let's raise money.
But the apostle Paul, if you think about it,
he's like, I'm not collecting the money,
I'm getting Titus to do it.
Yeah.
And in a modern day, if we're raising money for people,
it makes sense that it's like,
why do I have to be a quote clearing house
for other people or other churches?
I don't necessarily need to be that.
Maybe we just let it go straight to Titus
or we go straight to that particular person.
And so let's be honest about our situation
with Pastor Stuckey, we're not a clearing house for him
and we don't wanna be.
No verity about his church was acting
like a clearing house for them.
And that just gave temptation for them
to take money that they probably shouldn't have.
Well, let's just be honest.
They shouldn't have taken it, okay.
And in reality, it's like, hey,
we wanna help out that church,
but we don't wanna be the clearing house for them.
It's like, give money directly to them.
Go to soulwinningbaptistchurch.com,
give money directly to Pastor Stuckey
and to that ministry.
If you wanna bless them and support them,
and you know, we too wanna bless them and support them.
You know, and I don't wanna be like,
hey, we are the only church
that can bless them or support them.
I hope every church blesses them and supports them, right?
You know, we had like a Baptist by show,
we were trying to like encourage other people
and other churches to bless that particular work
because we just don't want that work to be diminished.
And let's just be honest, of new IV churches,
that church is probably one of the more poor churches
in the world because it's in the Philippines.
In the Philippines they don't have the same amount
of money to be able to bless their church with,
to raise.
I mean, they have a sizable church,
but it's just again, the people in that country
are poor in comparison to Americans.
And so it's like, hey, we're trying to raise money
because we don't want the work
to be diminished in the Philippines.
And we wanna help that particular work in the Philippines.
And you know, we're gonna kind of get into
this next subject, but it kind of relates
to the same topic is, hey, if we promise to help them,
we wanna make sure to deliver on that promise.
And that's what the church at Corinth did.
The church at Corinth is saying like, hey,
we wanna help the saints at Jerusalem.
And he's like, okay, well then y'all go ahead
and collect all that money.
That's what he's saying in 1 Corinthians,
chapter 16 that we read.
Go ahead and get it all collected and get it all ready
so that then when we come back through
or Titus comes through there,
he can gather that, he can get that money
and take it to them.
Okay, so it's like they're getting prepared
for what they claim they were going to do.
Like it's one thing to say, I wanna help you,
I will help you.
And there's another thing to actually do it.
And we probably all know that person
that said like, I'll help you financially
or I'll give you this money.
And then when you actually ask for it,
it's not there anymore.
Or they're not actually gonna step up the plate
or they're not gonna actually deliver.
Or you work for a boss.
It's really annoying when you work for a boss.
He's like, hey, in two years you're gonna get a promotion.
It's like four years later,
you're like, where's that promotion?
You know, it's just kind of like,
we don't wanna be that kind of person
where we promise the moon and we can't deliver.
He says in verse eight,
I speak not by commandment,
but by occasion of the forwardness of others
and to prove the sincerity of love.
So he's saying, I'm not getting money from you guys
as a commandment.
There is no commandment for you to give money
to the saints at Jerusalem.
But why am I doing it?
Because of the forwardness of others.
Because of what the Macedonians were like.
The Macedonians were so excited to give money
and they kind of like inspired me
to provoke other people to do likewise.
And then secondly, to prove the sincerity of your love.
Why?
Because they're saying like, hey, we wanna do this.
It's like, all right, put your money where your mouth is then.
Go ahead and prove the fact that you did wanna help them
that you were willing to step up to the plate
and actually do it.
He says in verse nine,
for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that though he was rich, yet for your sakes,
he became poor, that you might,
through his poverty, might be rich.
And here, and I give my advice,
for this is expedient for you,
who have begun before, not only to do,
but also to be forward a year ago.
So he's using Christ as an example,
like Christ has all these riches in heaven
and then comes down to earth as a humble servant,
dies on the cross,
to then give us the riches of becoming co-inheritors
with him, joint heirs,
and that we're gonna inherit and rule and reign
on the new earth with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so he had to become poorer
so that we could become rich.
And he's just saying by that example,
like we should have Christ's attitude and Christ's mindset
that sometimes we have to spend
and be spent for others to have riches.
So think about it this way,
going on a foreign mission trip
might cost you a lot of money
and you're gonna go somewhere though
and you're gonna give someone an eternal gift,
you're gonna get them rich spiritually
by getting them saved.
And so by you being poorer,
and I'm not saying you're literally poorer,
but you're just basically taking some of your money
and you're spending it on mission strips,
you can give riches to other people
and get them saved and the eternal gift of salvation
and it's a blessing to these other individuals.
I mean, if we just all said,
you know what, we're not gonna do that,
we're gonna just take all of our money for missions
and we're just gonna invest in the stock market
and we're just gonna keep compiling it.
I mean, we could have a lot of money over time.
I mean, a lot of people are doing a lot of mission strips
and we're spending a lot of money on mission strips.
I mean, we're talking hundreds,
probably hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.
If we take all the money we're spending as a collective
plus the church is spending as a collective,
we could be doing other stuff with that.
We could be building this great cathedral
with naked babies painted on the ceiling
and you know, whatever.
It's like, instead we're gonna just go
and give the gospel to people, right?
And again, the same with Christ.
Like Christ has all these riches in heaven,
but he became poor so that we could be saved
in the same way that sometimes we have to spend our money.
But you know what the Bible is saying
is that if you're a liberal person,
then God's gonna be li-
He's gonna give liberal to you.
He kind of like takes care of you
because you're taking care of other people.
So you think like, oh man, I'm wasting all my money
but then it's like God's gonna take care of you.
He's gonna take care of you now
and he's gonna take care of you in heaven for sure.
So it's just like, it's the best investment
you can make anyways because even if you invested
all of your money, I mean, think about it.
Let's just say you invested $10,000 every month
from now until you're 70 and you're like,
all right, I've got $50 million in my 401k and then you die.
What did it even accomplish?
And then like your kids are spoiled brats
and they just take your $50 million
and just destroy their lives on drugs
and alcohol or something.
Oh, that never happens.
Happens all the time.
Like, I mean, think about it.
You know, when I'm 70, I can't even really do any,
I don't know, I'm just like,
I'm like, what am I gonna do
with $50 million or $100 million
whenever you're 70 anyways, you know?
It's just like eat a gold plated burger, you know?
Have you seen those things?
They like wrap burgers in gold
just because they can't make food
any more expensive, I guess.
It's just like, you know,
they have to get a duck liver that's fat, full-graw, you know?
It's just like, why not steak?
You know, I was just like, hey, why not brisket?
It's like at some point saving money becomes frivolous.
Now again, I'm not against retirement.
I'm not saying don't have a 401k.
I'm not saying don't plan for the future.
But I'm saying this, like what's the point
in just laying up treasures on earth
where moth and rust, doth corrupt
and thieves break through and steal
rather than laying up treasures in heaven, okay?
And that's the whole point that's being stated here.
He's saying I'm giving my advice in verse 10.
He's saying this is expedient means this is good for you
who have begun before.
So he's like, you already gave some money
and it says not only to do,
but also to be forward a year ago.
He's like, not only did you kind of like
already maybe chip in some money,
you guys said like we really want to give more even.
We want to kind of like help the situation.
So it's like, you said you want to do it.
All right, it's time to do it.
Verse 11, now perform the doing of it
that as there was a readiness to will
so there may be a performance also out of that
which he has.
So he's saying, hey, let's do it then, perform it.
Give us the money.
Show me the money, right?
He says in verse 12, for if there be first
a willing mind, it is accepted according to that
a man hath and not according to that he hath not.
So God is looking down from heaven and saying,
hey, I like it when you are offering
what you have to give.
Some people would say, I'll give you a million dollars.
I just don't have it.
It's like, well, how generous of you?
If I had a million dollars, I would give it to you though.
Would you though?
You know, it's like that isn't accepted.
It doesn't really work.
It doesn't really mean anything.
Okay, what is accepted is offering what you do have.
He's saying, hey, what you have and you offer of that,
that's what God cares about and that's what God considers
and that's what's important.
Not what you would give.
Not what you hypothetically would like to give.
What you can give.
You know, the woman giving the two mites
is gonna have great riches.
It wasn't based on how much.
It was based on what she had
and what she was willing to give.
He says here in verse number 13,
for I mean not that other men be easy burdened,
but by an equality that now at this time
your abundance may be a supply for their want,
that their abundance also may be a supply for your want,
that there may be equality.
As it is written, he that had gathered much
had nothing over and he that had gathered little
had no lack.
So my misinterpretation of chapter eight
typically was kind of based on this statement,
which it's still a biblical principle.
It's just not necessarily what the text is saying about Titus.
But he's saying like, hey, there's kind of this equality
that they have a want and you're supplying it.
And then on the flip side, it's almost like
also may be a supply for your want,
that there may be inequality.
In some senses, Jerusalem is sharing its riches
of prophets, apostles, preachers
that are going out and evangelizing the world.
And they're supplying their want and their need,
whereas they don't have any money.
And so these rich Greeks are able to basically
collect all their money.
These Gentiles are able to give their money back
to the saints at Jerusalem.
And so there's equality.
He's saying it's not that we're just wanting
to enrich the saints at Jerusalem.
We're not trying to set up the pope here.
We're not trying to set up the Roman Catholic church
where if you go there, it's this lavish,
multi-billion dollar corporation
where they're just rolling in it.
And then every other Catholic in the world
is just this poor impoverished person.
No, he wants it to be equality.
And the equality is we're all kind of sharing in a sense.
Y'all are giving y'alls abundance
and then we're giving y'all our abundance in a sense.
It's like, hey, we're fat with preachers.
You're fat with cash.
Let's swap a little bit here.
And again, that's just my interpretation.
But the principle's for sure what the text is saying.
The text is saying that, hey, there should be this equality.
And it's not that we're just trying to enrich
a particular church or a particular institution.
We're just trying to kind of help those that are in need.
Now, if no one's in need,
we don't even need to give money to them.
We don't even need to raise money for them.
There's no point.
It's just like, hey, this particular group
is needing some money.
So why don't we chip in and try to help them
so there can be equality?
We're not trying to say like,
hey, let's bless a church in the Philippines
so that they can be rich.
It's to supply their lack.
It's to supply their want in a sense.
Not to try and just enrich one church over another.
We want them to be some level of equality,
some level of balance here.
And he uses an Old Testament principle applied here.
Notice, I love this because verse 15,
which is quoting the Old Testament,
it's kind of like talking about the manna.
They would like gather manna.
And if you gathered a lot of manna,
you ended up eating all of it.
And if you didn't gather much money
or you didn't gather much manna,
you ended up being satisfied anyways.
It was just like, it just kind of always
worked out somehow.
And it's just kind of what's interesting
is that that has nothing to do with this at all.
But then he's just using it to prove
that you can use biblical principles as Old Testament
in any way you want.
You know, it doesn't have to be like,
well, you have to know the context of this is manna
and this is the Old Testament,
this is the ancient Israelites and blah, blah, blah.
That's the Old Testament.
Yeah, well, the Old Testament, same principle,
applies in the New Testament about giving, okay?
And I mean, gathering manna has nothing to do with giving.
I mean, he's eating.
It's gathering food.
It's like the exact opposite of giving.
You're gathering, okay?
But he uses the principle here
and applies it in the text
because you can use biblical principles
to any way you want.
As long as it's obviously within the framework
of what the Bible teaches, right?
We understand that he's using this principle
that's a true principle
and then applying it in a new way or a unique way.
This is good preaching.
This is topical preaching.
He says in verse 16,
but thanks be to God,
which put the same earnest care
in the heart of Titus for you.
For indeed, he accepted the exhortation,
but being more forward of his own accord,
he went unto you.
And we have sent with him the brother
whose praise is in the gospel
throughout all the churches
and not that only,
but who was also chosen of the churches
to travel with us with this grace,
which is administered by us to the glory
of the same Lord in declaration of your ready mind,
avoiding this that no man should blame us
in this abundance, which is administered by us,
providing for honest things,
not only on the side of the Lord,
but also on the side of men.
So saying, look, I'm sending Titus.
I'm sending another guy
that has a great reputation of all churches.
They're coming here for this grace
to bless this other church.
Everything we're doing is honest
and the sight of all men.
It's for an honest purpose.
It's transparent.
It's transparent who's coming.
And again, it's transparent that this is not a commandment,
that you guys are the ones that promised it
and we're just taking you up on what you said.
I mean, doesn't that seem pretty clear
and pretty honest?
It's like, if a church says we want to give $10,000
and we need you to carry the check,
it's like, okay, we'll do that for you.
You know, what's not honest
is when you call Roger Jimenez
and you say you want to give large sums of money
to the Philippines church, can you give it to them?
And he says yes, and then he doesn't.
That's not honest.
That's not right, okay?
What would be right is for you
to actually transport the money legitimately
for it to be open, transparent,
for people to realize what's going on.
And again, it's just kind of sad
that these things happen in the world today.
But they do.
He said in verse number 22,
and we have sent with them our brother
whom we have oftentimes proved diligent in many things,
but now much more diligent
upon the great confidence which I have in you.
Whether any do inquire of Titus,
he is my partner and fellow helper concerning you
or a brethren being inquired of.
They are the messengers of the churches
and the glory of Christ.
Wherefore show you to them and before the churches
the proof of your love
and of your boast of our boasting on your behalf.
So again, he's just reconfirming,
these guys are good guys,
they're the messengers, give them the money.
Verse 24, show you to them and before the churches,
the proof of your love.
So he's like, prove to these guys
and all churches that you guys really love Christ.
You really love the saints of Jerusalem.
You really love the brethren.
And notice and our boasting on your behalf.
So the apostle Paul was kind of going around bragging
about the church at Corinth as being very generous.
He's calling them liberal.
He's like saying, hey, the liberal saints at Corinth,
look how generous they are.
They're promising to give all this money
to the saints of Jerusalem
and they love the saints of Jerusalem
and they love Christ.
And he's like, go ahead and prove that,
because I've been going around telling everybody
how much you love to give
and I've been telling everybody
that you guys have made these promises
and I've been bragging about you guys.
So go ahead and just do it
so that I don't look like silly
for having told everybody you're gonna give them this money
because it's really embarrassing.
It's really embarrassing as a messenger.
If someone came to me like, hey, I need some money
and you're like, you know what?
I know somebody that wants to give you money.
They told me they want to give you money.
And then you go, you're like, hey, they need that money.
And you're like, I'm not gonna give it to them.
Now you're gonna feel really embarrassed
when you have to go back and be like,
yeah, that guy wasn't gonna give you money.
I'm sorry.
It's like really embarrassing
about that particular situation.
And so, you know, if you make a vow,
if you promise to do something like this,
you're supposed to deliver.
You know, I just want to go to like,
go to chapter one.
I'll just read a couple of verses for you,
but the Bible says in Deuteronomy 23,
when thou shalt vow a vow unto the Lord thy God,
thou shalt not slack to pay it.
So if you promise to do something,
especially in a spiritual context, you better do it.
The Bible says, when thou vowest a vow unto God,
defer not to pay it.
That's Ecclesiastes chapter five.
The Bible says in Psalm 15, which we've been singing,
he that sweareth to his own hurt and changeeth not.
Meaning, hey, you make a promise,
you need to deliver on that particular promise.
Psalm 76, 11, vow and pay unto the Lord your God.
Psalm 116 verse 14, I will pay my vows on the Lord,
now in the presence of all his people.
Hey, you make an oath, you make a promise to other Christians,
you better make sure to deliver on that promise.
Don't go back on it.
Psalm 66 verse 13, I will go to thy house
with burnt offerings, I will pay thee my vows.
So you make a vow, you offer something to God,
a free will offering even, then you have to pay it.
Now, this is where you have to understand free will offerings.
A free will offering is truly, you don't have to give it,
but if you promise a free will offering,
then you do have to offer that to God.
So it's like, hey, I didn't have to,
but if you vow it, then you do.
Now again, think about this practically.
You live somewhere in Israel, you don't live in Jerusalem.
To offer a sacrifice, you have to travel to Jerusalem.
So you could be like, hey, I've got this sheep
that I've been raising and in six months,
I'm gonna go take this sheep to Jerusalem
and offer it as a sacrifice as a free will offering.
Well then you could say, I have a vow on it,
like this sheep is spoken for.
It's basically given to God.
And this is where this idea then gets twisted
by the Pharisees in the gospels
when Jesus Christ is bringing it up,
that they would say like,
someone's like, parents is coming to them
and asking for help.
And they're saying like, oh no, no, it is Corbin.
And again, that's a weird thing.
It is Corbin, meaning it's a gift.
Meaning like, hey, I've already vowed this to God
so I could never give it to you
because I've already promised it to God
and you're not allowed to go back,
even if it was a free will offering
on something you vowed, you're supposed to pay it.
But again, they were lying about it.
They weren't gonna really sacrifice it to God.
They were just saying that to get their parents off their case
and not actually honor their father and mother.
And again, the honor there was actually
in a financial context, not just a respect.
But it was saying like, hey, you should give money
to your parents if they are in need.
But they're saying, no, I've vowed this unto God
and I can't go back on that, I can't take that away.
So again, if you make a free will offering,
promise to God, you're supposed to deliver.
You could maybe argue, and it's not in the text,
this is just an idea, that that's what
Ananias and Sapphire maybe did,
is that they may have said like,
hey, we will give all of the money from this sale to God
and then when they sold it,
they kept part of the price back,
gave it to the church and that's how they lied
into the Holy Ghost is because they're saying,
hey, I was gonna give this.
But it's like, hey, when I go into the house
with my burnt offerings, I will pay you my vows.
And it's in the presence of all those people.
Like I'm not gonna lie about it,
I'm not gonna go back on it, I'm gonna keep that word.
And of course it's not a scapegoat to not help your parents,
it's to simply, because you actually love God.
James five says, my brethren swear not,
but let your yay be yay and your nay nay,
unless you fall into condemnation.
The Bible tells us not to swear.
And swearing in the Bible, not in our culture,
in the Bible is like making some kind of
over the top statement.
So it's like, you know, people will say like,
I swear to God or I swear on the Bible.
And instead of just saying like,
hey, did you promise this to God?
It's like, yes, that's the right answer.
It's like, hey, did you promise this to God?
I swear to God I did it.
You know, or I swear on the Bible.
You shouldn't ever do that.
Because it's basically pointing to the fact
that the person's lying and they feel uncomfortable
about the fact that they're lying.
So instead of just saying yes,
they use these over the top statements.
And again, not only are they lying,
they're invoking God in their lie.
They're invoking spiritual things
because, you know, men swear by the greater
to essentially affirm something that they've done.
And again, maybe it's possible occasionally
some people invoke this
because they're just trying to convince somebody.
But it's definitely a need to persuade.
And it's often coming from a place
of someone that's actually lying about it.
So you should just pay attention in this world.
When someone, you're questioning them,
you're trying to figure it out,
and they just immediately go to swearing.
You know, it's kind of a red flag,
like, oh, this person's probably lying.
This person's probably being deceitful
when they go and they start saying these kinds of things
invoking some other power.
You know, it's like Tyler Baker.
When he was getting fired, he's like,
I swear on the Bible.
You know, I didn't do this.
I swear.
It's like, why are you doing that?
You know.
But what did he say in 2 Corinthians chapter one, verse 17?
He says that his yea is yea and his nay is nay.
Okay, I'm not gonna read the whole verse here,
but he's trying to make it clear.
And again, that language seems a little bit confusing.
He says that with me, there should be yea, yea, nay, nay.
And he says in verse 18,
but as God is true, our word to you was not yea and nay.
Like, it's really confusing for me.
Maybe it's not for you.
But he's just saying like, when I said yes,
it was really a yes.
And when I said no, it was really a no.
You know, some of you kids know that your parents,
when they say yes, it can be changed.
And so you like, you just keep pestering them.
You're trying to turn that yes into a no,
or you're trying to turn that no into a yes,
and whatever.
And the boss is saying like, no, my yes is a yes,
and my no is a no.
Okay.
And he's like, don't try to like question the fact
that when I promise something, I'm gonna deliver.
And he's like, God never does this.
God is always yea and yea, yes and yes, no and no.
He's not gonna change or alter.
And the same way there's church,
hey, offering money to somebody needs to be yea and yea.
I'll just close on one last thought is, you know,
when I knew that things were getting weird
and trauma and stuff with, you know, the new IB
and I saw that pastor Jimenez, you know,
a former now was separating from us.
I just kind of got worried about the work
that's going on in the Philippines.
Just because I love, you know, the gospel
and I love soul winning and I love those, you know,
that stuff.
So I had reached out to Pastor Stuckey
and I just said, hey, I just wanna let you know
that like, if he separates from you
and you're just kind of left high and dry
or you're not getting finances or something,
our church would love to just support you
because we just love you and love your church or whatever.
But nothing came with that.
I mean, I just said that to him
and you know, it was really easy to say
but it's like several months, fast forward six months,
nine months, I don't know, timeline
but just fast forward a lot of time.
Then he's calling me and he's like, hey, you know,
like what are you sad or whatever?
It's like, well, we're not getting any money
and things are like shady and whatever
and it's like, can you help?
And it's like, yeah.
And you know, it'd be wicked for a church
to say like, hey, we'd love to help you
and then go back on that.
It's like, nope, yeah, we'd love to help you.
And not only us, we want everybody to help you.
We want all the churches to help you
because you know what?
We want the work to be thriving over there
and you know, Pastor Stuckey is a really good guy
and he's really sacrificial
and he deserves to be supported.
And that's why I'm really excited
about him coming and preaching for us
and I'm really excited to have fellowship with him more.
I'm excited to go back to the Philippines
and to work with them.
I'm excited to see the people that are in this church.
Obviously, of course, that's not to diminish
or take away from what our evangelists,
evangelists, Duncan or Bannock has been doing
and accomplishing over there.
But you know, we shouldn't just be selfish
and say, oh well, our church is doing good
and our evangelist is doing good
and nuts to you guys, you guys made your bed
with a bad actor, with a bad person.
You guys can continue to just fail
while we'll just continue to thrive and do our thing.
No, it's like, hey, we should try
to figure out an equality here
and we should try to bless them too
and try to do good to them too.
And we're on the same team.
Our church is independent, but we're on the same team.
And when you're on the same team
and you have a team mentality,
it's not always about you
and you're willing to help other people more.
And I hope that you won't have this attitude
of just despising other Christians or other churches,
even if they're a little different,
even if they don't always agree with us,
even if they're a weaker brethren
or whatever they put beans in their chili or whatever,
it's like, hey, we can still love them
and we can be graces to them
and they're still on the same team.
And we should just love other Christians
and love other churches and love the gospel
and wanna support them.
And it's not always about us.
And if you promise to help people, you better deliver.
Don't be someone that says,
that has this great swelling words of vanity
and promises the moon and promises
to do things for people
and you can't keep it.
Be careful what you vow to God
and be careful what you say.
And if you do vow something,
if you promise something,
make sure you do deliver on that.
Let's close in prayer.
Thank you Heavenly Father so much for your word.
Thank you so much for the generosity
that's demonstrated in this chapter.
Thank you for liberal people
and liberal Christians that exist in this world.
Thank you so much for those who love
to just bless God's people and bless churches.
I pray that you would help us to have a similar attitude.
The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver.
I pray that you would help us
that if we were ever to give,
if we ever felt compelled to wanna bless people,
that we would do with a cheerful and a happy heart
and that we would do it
because we just love the saints.
We just love God.
We love the gospel.
We love the work of the ministry.
I pray that those who bless the works in the Philippines
and they bless other churches and they bless the poor.
I pray that you would just be liberal with them, God.
That you would pour out a blessing to them.
And I pray that you would help us
to not have a bad attitude about money
but rather be cheerful givers in Jesus name we pray amen.