Book of 2 Corinthians - Ch. 9, Vs. 1-Ch. 10, Vs. 7 (05/13/2001)

Park Meadows Church

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May 13, 2001

Bro. Otis Fisher

00:00: 2 Corinthians, the ninth chapter. For as touching the ministering of to the saints, it is superfluous for me to write to you.
00:23: For I know the forwardness of your mind, for which I boast of you to them of Macedonia, that Acacia was ready to give a year ago, and your zeal hath provoked very many.
00:38: Yet have I sent the brethren, lest our boasting of you should be in vain in this behalf, that, as I said, ye may be ready, ready to take up the offering before he ever arrived, lest haply, if they of Macedonia come with me, and find you unprepared, we that may say not, ye should be ashamed in this same confident boasting.
01:27: Therefore, I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren that they would go before unto you and make up beforehand your bounty, whereof you had noticed before that the same might be ready as a matter of bounty, and not as of convenience, but covetousness.
01:53: He was concerned that they would give a freewill offering, not one,
02:00: Corinthians 9, not one that would come because somebody else gave or because they felt coerced into giving.
02:11: But this I say, he which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
02:23: Bill, what's that mean? That means a blessing. What does the whole verse mean?
02:31: It means that God's blessing. Alright, Dennis, what do you think it means?
02:43: It means, how do you deal out what you deal back to others, to the government people, the doctors, the physicians, the government people?
03:00: Alright, does God give to us according to what we give? Does he give to us according to his riches?
03:22: Clarence? He gives according to his riches, or we receive more than the
03:33: Spirit in our heart. Alright.
03:39: Alright. Alright. Jesse, do we influence
03:57: God, any? That's right.
04:05: So that that he was going to give, he will give, but we will receive according to how we perceive it.
04:16: If we think God is giving very benefully, very bountifully, then that's the way we will receive.
04:27: But it does not change God, any. But this
04:32: I say, he which sows sparingly. So, if you're going to sow just a little bit, then you're going to look at everything the same way, and give just a little bit.
04:50: Every man according as he is purposed in his heart, so let him give, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.
05:02: Every man according as he is purposed in his heart. Greg, what does that mean to you?
05:28: Alright. Does he want us to, well, let me make my next statement.
05:40: Alright. That's right.
05:51: Absolutely. And you can't make yourself want to, can you?
06:00: You can? Then you wanted to before you began.
06:09: God does not want one penny from you if you would rather keep it to yourself.
06:20: The benefit of giving is lost to the giver when he does it with a grumbling heart.
06:27: And as he does not do the duty of the duty in the spirit of duty, even that which he did is an abomination to the
06:38: Lord. If you give it grudgingly, if you give it because somebody else gave it, if you give it because you think that it's expected of you, if you give it because it's the right thing to do, worldly,
06:56: God would rather not have it. God doesn't need it in the first place, does he? Who needs it?
07:05: We do. But we need it with a happy heart. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
07:24: God is able to make all grace abound toward you.
07:30: Do you believe that? As it is written, he hath dispersed abroad, he hath given to the poor, his righteousness remaineth forever.
07:46: He sows much, not merely at home, but abroad. Now he that ministers seed to the sower, both minister bread for your food and multiply your seed sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness.
08:07: He that ministers seed to the sower. Who is that? Greg? What did somebody else say?
08:27: God. How does he do that? Greg?
08:42: All right. David, how does he minister seed to the sower?
09:09: Do we have anything other than the word? All right.
09:21: Seed to the sower. Both minister bread for your food and multiply your seed sown.
09:28: How does he do that, Dennis? Give us the increase of your righteousness.
09:42: All right. And increase the fruits of your righteousness.
09:49: Verge, explain that. If your brother always feels like this, we should improve it.
09:58: We learn more from him out of his word. Is that the fruits of your righteousness?
10:24: Did I catch you on high center? Yes, brother. What he said is that you're doing good in sharing those lessons and talking about our work.
10:48: It's like when we witness something, I know that our witnesses come changed by salvation.
10:55: But when we witness it with other people and share it with them, where do we get this faith from?
11:01: And I'm saying that I don't know if that's what we're going with it. We're increasing the feeling that we're getting it not from somebody else, but we share it with others and we get a good feeling about it.
11:13: And I would say that that's absolutely right. That's right. Therefore, in every sense, is every sense, it is
11:24: God who ministers seed for the sower, multiplies the seed for sowing.
11:30: And as all of this property properly comes from God and can exist only with him, does he have the right to tell us how to dispense it?
11:48: Yes. Only God can tell you how to dispense it.
12:01: Being enriched in everything to all bountifulness, which causes through us thanksgiving to God.
12:12: Now, are we all enriched in everything? Bill, we are.
12:26: Absolutely. Even when we think we're not, we are.
12:36: Why does God give riches? Jesse? Either one.
13:00: All right, that's first. To bring glory to God and relieve the poorness of others.
13:11: Why does God give riches? To bring glory to himself. For the administration of this service not only supplies the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto
13:28: God. When you give to a person, to a church, are you not blessed more than the giver, than the one that received?
13:43: Sure you are, if it's done in the right spirit. If it's not done in the right spirit,
13:50: God doesn't want it. Blessing there.
14:08: Yes, absolutely. Blessing there. That's right. Whilst by the experiment of this administration they glorify
14:32: God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and to all men.
14:43: And by their prayer for you, which long after you, for the exceeding grace of God in you.
14:52: They had the means of charity, those that gave. And the feeling and charitableness of heart, those that gave.
15:04: But God was the author of it. God is the one that gave you the cheerfulness of heart.
15:12: He is the one that gave you the means to give. He is the one that should receive all glory for it.
15:22: Any disagreement? Thanks be unto
15:30: God for this, his unspeakable gift. Now Bill, what was his unspeakable gift?
15:58: Specifically, saying that everything that we are,
16:06: All right. That's right. He chose us.
16:15: That's the most astounding thing that I know.
16:20: That he chose me. It is most evident that it is the work of Christ in them.
16:33: And not Christ himself, which is intended here. Is that the last?
16:42: Yes. God was pure because of nature.
17:19: In verse 7, every man according to his purpose and in his heart. We're looking at a human viewpoint.
17:27: Then when you go into verse 8, in verse 9 and 11, see that he's praising.
17:35: And God is able to make all praises bound for you. In verse 9, as it is written, it is
17:42: God that disperses the sea. In verse 10, how he that ministered his seed, his sword, it is
17:49: God doing this again. And he multiplies the seed that we sow and increases the fruit of our righteousness.
17:57: It gives a human viewpoint. In verse 6 and 7, it's been a whole rest of the chapter showing that God is sovereign and that it is really
18:06: God working in us and does it all. And that's why it ends with thanksgiving to God for his unspeakable gift.
18:13: The religious world today has lost this concept. The church thinks that we're doing everything.
18:21: And that's why we have all the programs and all the ideas and books being written about how to do this, that, and the other, how to reach people, how to build huge churches.
18:32: And all the last part of this chapter shows how that's done. God does. Otherwise, it's not real.
18:41: We were just talking about this a moment ago. Each day is a gift of God. Each day, each hour, each moment is a gift of God.
18:55: Each prayer, each breath is a gift of God. Yes. Yes.
19:04: Good. Glad to have you here.
19:13: From Kentucky. And just came over here to go to church.
19:23: Well, the last verse, thanks be unto
19:29: God for his unspeakable gifts. I want you to realize something.
19:36: I've discussed this with a few of you. It's most evident that it is the work of Christ in them and not
19:46: Christ himself. Jesus came into this world.
19:55: He was the word. He was the life. He was the light. But Jesus did not have that light as of himself.
20:10: It was in him. It is...
20:17: Well, light here means chandelier. He carried that light.
20:24: It was given to him by the Father. Just to take Jesus by himself did not have that light.
20:32: It's impossible to take him by himself, but if you could. So, he brought that light to the world.
20:44: Now, to receive the light, you have to accept him. You have to receive him.
20:50: You cannot receive the light without him. This, thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift, his first salvation, first choosing, then salvation as a choice that was never made because we were the only people in the world until Satan's people came.
21:20: It was very evident that Jesus Christ, by the foreordained counsel eons ago, was set aside as the
21:36: Lamb slain. So, there was preparation made for sin.
21:42: By the way, did sin come into the world against God's will? No. It's important that you understand that.
21:54: It did not come against his will. It came for growth. So, everything points to this light, this life in Jesus Christ.
22:09: Now, let's go to chapter 10. Now, I, Paul, myself, beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent, am bold toward you.
22:31: Paul, just like any other man, he worked and got his hands dirty. You might say, not knowing
22:37: Paul, he is no apostle. It'd be hard to look at him and tell that he was an apostle.
22:48: By the way, I have to drink coffee to keep my voice going. You might say, look at him, he's a tentmaker.
23:00: He's a pharmacist. He's a teacher. He's no apostle.
23:07: In fact, some people would look down on him. He got dirty. He stunk.
23:15: Tentmaking was a very, very nasty, dirty job. He writes in the meekness and gentleness of Christ, our
23:25: Lord did not look at difference in the artist as the artist would have looked at you.
23:34: So, Paul writes to them and says, don't let looks fool you. Paul had the authority of an apostle.
23:44: I know a church that the pastor loved the word of God. But some of the people did not.
23:52: It wasn't this church. But they carried a big
23:57: Bible. I did not know what was in it. They did not believe the word of God.
24:06: If a pastor preached the word of God and does not cater to such a group, believe me, he is in trouble.
24:14: The average church is in trouble. And that's the devil's method.
24:21: Carry a big Bible so much that it leads you to lean to one side.
24:28: Dennis? I've seen a church like that. I haven't seen one in Rome. But I beseech you that I may not be bold when
24:43: I am present with that confidence. Wherewith I think to be bold against some which think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.
24:54: Paul had the problem all of his life, Christian life, of being accused of walking according to the flesh.
25:04: There were those that put out letters against him, that spoke against him,
25:12: Paul did not come as an ordinary man who was dependent upon the principles of the natural.
25:22: He didn't come to Corinth to put on a Madison Avenue campaign. He didn't come at the invitation of a
25:31: Christian. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.
25:40: He didn't spend his time putting down everything.
25:50: He didn't take up any popular issues. Though we are mortal like other men, though we dwell like them in mortal bodies and necessarily must devote some care to our temporal wants.
26:07: And though being in the flesh, we are conscious of imperfections and frailties like others.
26:14: The sense is that he did not claim exemption from the common wants and frailties of nature.
26:23: The best of men are subject to these wants and frailties. The best of men are liable to error.
26:32: The best of us sin once in a while. The best of us miss the mark once in a while.
26:42: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
26:53: What are these strongholds? Dennis. All right.
27:16: What's our first weapon? All right.
27:25: Jesse, what's our first weapon in this war? Word of God and prayer.
27:36: The second is what? What do we have in our arsenal that the others do not?
27:50: Faith. The Holy Spirit, which includes faith.
28:00: Then another weapon is prayer. So, the first weapon is
28:06: God's Word, the second, the Holy Spirit, and the third, prayer. With those, we can conquer the world.
28:13: Not physically. Yes. Yes.
28:41: Through God to the pulling down of strongholds. They'd be strongholds as far as we're concerned, physically.
28:57: But spiritually, this is a spiritual battle. Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
29:21: My whole sermon can be taught right here. Casting down imaginations, every high thing, all the proud and lofty thoughts of men which lead them to exalt themselves against the gospel.
29:39: Casting down imaginations. What is imagination?
29:47: Diane? All right.
30:09: The wisdom of the earthly wise. Is that all there is to imagination,
30:19: Bill? Whether it's scientific principles, whether it's government, whether it's businesses, whatever it is, it's those things that you have put together in your mind and you accept those as the truth rather than what the truth really is.
31:07: All right. Yes. Yes.
31:15: But it's more than that. I want all of you to think about a statement that you heard.
31:24: Just maybe it was part of a statement, maybe it was all of a statement, but that's all you were privileged to hear.
31:35: And you started imagining the outcome of that. Like, well,
31:48: I can't get away from personal, but like a man that you heard that he lost his job.
31:57: He's 55, 56 years old and he lost his job.
32:05: Now, you immediately begin to wonder what he was going to do. You thought about his wife very ill.
32:17: How's he going to pay the bills? Then you extrapolated that into he's going to have to sell off this and that.
32:27: And he's going to have to do this. He's going to have to go on relief.
32:33: He's going to have to use up his savings. And that goes very quickly. And it goes on until you're a nervous wreck.
32:43: When all the time it was made in jest. Didn't mean anything.
32:49: That's imagination. But you imagine what's going to be.
32:56: Any of you ever do that? So, if it's a lie to begin with,
33:29: I think the important thing is to go to the truth again. And bring light and truth.
33:36: And if it's then exposed as truth, then it's over. But if it's never shown as anything different,
33:43: I think God allows you to pray for that. It happens. Well, he does except it was a lie to start with.
33:52: Well, that's what I'm saying. If you know it's a lie to start with, then it needs to be exposed. You need to bring it to light and correct it so that there's no concern.
34:02: This correcting was done in your own mind, though. Don't bother other people with it.
34:09: Don't go to somebody and say, well, now, what are we going to do? He's going to lose his job.
34:14: He's this, that, and everything. Don't do that. Just keep quiet. Casting down every imagination that becomes a job.
34:29: And every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, that's the measuring stick.
34:36: Is it against the knowledge of God, that that you know? Well, I think that's the real test of the casting down of imaginations.
34:49: It's not something that's not true. And we can embellish something that's totally wrong.
34:58: But when something is accurate, we know something is true, and it is true.
35:04: What we think is that we know the outcome of the future.
35:10: We know that this is what's going on now, and we think that we know what's going to happen as a result of that.
35:17: And so we start imagining the progress of time, what's going to happen. And we can't do that.
35:23: That's one of the things that we do. That's one of the things we refrain to do. We refrain to look at conditions now and make projections into the future.
35:34: And when you do that, and that's sort of stepping into God's realm, you are saying, this is what the outcome of that is going to be.
35:46: You just have to believe that the outcome is what it's now, rather than in your imagination that it's what it is now.
35:54: Because you don't know what now is going to be. That's so true. And bring it into captivity, every thought to the obedience of Christ.
36:16: Just the obedience of Christ. Obedience. Clarence, what's obedience mean?
36:36: How are we going to know, Greg, how to obey
36:42: God? By studying prayer.
36:47: You cannot get it by studying You cannot get it by prayer alone. You cannot get it by reading the
36:54: Bible. It has to be absorbed. Yes.
37:13: How to be obedient in that situation may mean to keep quiet. It may mean you go to them.
37:20: It may mean a lot of things. It may mean lots of It may mean lots of things.
37:33: It may mean lots of things. It may mean lots of things. It may mean lots of It may mean lots of things.
37:50: may mean lots of things.
38:19: It may mean lots of And you must He made it. He's not thinking that, so I ask you to give me the mind of Jesus Christ right now and think this might be good if you were in that situation.
38:34: If that is great spiritual warfare technique and it works, and then if it's all from God, it will vanish.
38:41: It will leave you alone. That's right. You'll be free from it and you've activated it and brought it up to the obedience of Jesus.
38:50: That's right. Let me ask you a question. If you actually think like that, then it lessens every thought you're saying.
39:00: You better find someone else. Well, don't make yourself. Don't make yourself.
39:06: You did that by you. Oh, well. I'm just going to say. Oh, you're just going to say.
39:11: If you have positive thoughts about everybody, God's going to be with us too. He's saying, okay, that God's going to be with us.
39:18: Is that true? More benefit from this. You know what I'm saying? I mean, because you've got to be resolved with wisdom.
39:28: Yeah. The primary answer is that if I use it, if it's from God and it comes to you, it will build you.
39:38: Right. So if it comes from God and he's saying, okay, he's free, that person is being too demanding of me.
39:46: That's building me because I can see and have enough wisdom to discern that maybe that guy doesn't see it.
39:54: I'm not going to go to him, but he doesn't see it and he's being too demanding of me. I'm not going to fall into that trap.
40:00: Okay. Okay. Did you all get that settled? Yes. I couldn't hear half of it.
40:10: I hate it when I can't hear. In this spiritual battle, the warriors are successful.
40:22: God did get the victory. Anytime we're successful, he gets the victory.
40:30: And having in readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled, when you are obedient unto the
40:41: Lord, you will revenge or you will do away with lots of disobedience to cover sin.
40:59: Sins that would never be in existence is the love of God.
41:05: Because we love him, we didn't go off and sin a world full of sins.
41:12: To revenge, punished by virtue of our apostolic authority, your obedience is fulfilled when you are true to Christ and his cause.
41:25: Have had opportunities to prove yourself by your obedience.
41:33: Do you look on things after outward appearances?
41:39: If any man trusts to himself that he is Christ, let him of himself think this again, that as he is
41:48: Christ, even so are we Christ. Do you look on things after the outward appearance?
42:00: Too many times we see a glimpse and we form a whole theme.
42:09: We see a glimpse and we can project the whole ballgame.
42:16: I remember years and years ago when I was on the sideline working sound at a cowboy ballgame.
42:28: I couldn't see the game because of all the people in front of me. But I saw one little glimpse.
42:38: This is where the man wasn't standing. And the cowboy went by with the ball under his arm, his feet out straight, but he was on his head.
42:51: Now if I took that and built the whole ballgame on it, it would be rather ridiculous.
42:58: But that's what it means. We just see a glimpse. So we embellish and build and work everything out according to what we saw.
43:08: You can't do that. Do you look on things after the outward appearance?
43:16: Dennis, should we? Why do we?
43:27: I'm not here to volunteer. It's because we are here.
43:34: It's because we've seen things. The world has taught us that a man or woman that's done well and financially prepared would be somebody for, rather than be violated and possibly killed.
43:55: What are we doing when we judge people like that? What else are we doing?
44:11: What else are we doing? What else are we doing?
44:15: What prize? What are we doing when we...
44:50: ...is given by the Father to Jesus? Not even the
44:57: Lord, not even God, judges. The judging is done by Jesus.
45:04: So when we judge, we are placing ourselves in God's, in Jesus' place.
45:09: We are trying to take back who Jesus is and give it to ourselves.
45:15: That's our calling. And that's what makes us the most jealous of others.
45:46: I've never said about the poor people in my parents' home that they were rich. And that's why whenever we gained anything,
45:52: I thought for a long time, unless I gave it away, that I had a lot to answer for.
46:00: So we were taught the opposite. And this is part about giving. I was taught if you can't give it away, then maybe you shouldn't have it.
46:11: Because the Lord gave it to us to benefit the family. Now that's not nothing,
46:17: I just thought today. And I just thought that as a child. ...over
46:46: the hill was doing. I think that was better. But those times are gone.
46:55: Let's stand and Dennis dismisses, please. Lord, we thank you for this morning.
47:08: We study your word here. We learn so much about you again. We expect you to think so much of us as you did us.
47:17: We pray a lot for you. We thank you for all that you have given us,
47:24: Lord. We thank you for your holiness. We thank you for all the glory.