Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Father, we are blessed constantly by your goodness toward us, your loving kindness that you extend toward us in spite of our inherent unworthiness. Father, we praise you for that. We pray that you would bless this time as we study what your Word has to say about your church and the activities that she is involved in.
And Lord, would you bless our time. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, last week we continued speaking about the church and I think we managed to talk about baptism. I don't know what else we did, but that was pretty much it.
And before we conclude talking about baptism, I just want to read one more little section of Scripture. And I think this pretty much gives us a picture of what baptism is to be. It's in Romans 6. And as MacArthur says in his notes, this isn't water baptism, but it's the metaphorical, it pictures what takes place, what has taken place.
Or do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ Jesus, or all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
And that's the picture. We are plunged into the water to symbolize Christ's death and then we are raised to newness of life. So, baptism. When we mentioned baptism as a means of grace, we're going to be talking some more about so-called means of grace this morning.
We're going to be talking about communion. And we have several views about communion. We'll be going into those a little bit. First, transubstantiation, the Roman Catholic view. What does anybody know about transubstantiation?
Other than that is a long word. Paul. Okay. They believe the bread and the wine actually turn into the body and blood of Christ. Let's look at John 6. And this is just, you know, I don't know if you've ever met, run into a Roman Catholic apologist.
But it is a frustrating conversation to have, to go to John 6 and to try to reason with them from the scriptures. John 6, verses 53 and 54. And who has that? Dr. Bruce. Okay, and they say, that's it. Done deal.
Wafer becomes the body, the flesh. The wine becomes the blood. And that's what Jesus was saying here. And you can see it right there. You have to eat his flesh. You have to drink his blood. Any problems with that?
Bruce. Okay. I think that's certainly true. I think it's pretty clear he didn't mean them in a literal sense. In fact, if we go back to verse 32, same chapter. Jesus then said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven.
And when he said that, you know, I am the bread, did he literally mean that he was bread? No. Verse 33, for the bread of heaven is that, or the bread of God, is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.
Did he literally mean he was bread? The answer is obviously no. So, I mean, there are a number of figurative statements that are made in this discourse, and they say they're literal. They have no capacity for separating these two things.
I make note in here in John 19 .30 that, you know, Jesus said, it is finished. And what I'm referring to by that, well, let's go in and let's talk some more about transubstantiation. In fact, let me just give you briefly what these different views are.
Second, consubstantiation, the Lutheran view, which means that there is some beyond figurative, beyond symbolic presence of Christ in the bread and in the wine. There is some spiritual containment of the body and blood of Christ.
And the example they like to give is, a sponge is not water, but a sponge can contain water. And they would say the same of the bread of communion, that it is not the body of Christ, but it contains the body of Christ.
The Reformed position, that of many Presbyterians, would be that communion confers some grace, that it is a means of grace, meaning that there is some kind of spiritual benefit to taking the wafer and partaking in the wine.
Our position here would be that it is symbolic. And we're going to go through each of those a little bit more this morning. And then we'll get back to this. This is what you call an excursus, which just means we're going completely off the rails.
No, it just means we're going to go talk about different things here, go into them a little bit more substantively. Like we said, transubstantiation means that they believe it actually becomes the body and the blood of Christ.
And this happens at the very moment the priest says, this is my body, during the celebration of the Mass. The action of elevating the bread and pronouncing it to be Christ's body can only be performed by a priest.
And that's why, what do Catholics do? Since we have many Catholics in here, what happens when the priest raises the Eucharist, the wafer? What's that? They bow, they kneel, they worship the wafer. I don't know how else to say that.
Every time the Mass is celebrated, the sacrifice of Christ is repeated. But they believe that in some sense he is re-sacrificed. It is known as a real sacrifice, even though it is not the same as the sacrifice he paid on the cross.
Listen to this from Ludwig Ott, who wrote a book called Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. He says, Christ becomes present in the sacrament of the altar by the transformation of the whole substance of the bread into his body, and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood.
The power of consecration resides in a validly consecrated priest only. The worship of adoration, Latria, must be given to Christ present in the Eucharist. So when the priest holds this up and he says, this is the body of Christ, they are to, what are the two different, where is my Catholic expert here this morning?
There are two kinds of veneration or worship. There is Latria and what is the other one? Dulia. And so Latria is kind of, is that the big one or the little one? Yeah. Okay. So they venerate this, but they don't worship it like it is God, but they do give some honor to it, and that is why they kneel and what not.
This is interesting. The church for many centuries did not allow the lay people to drink from the cup of the Lord's Supper. Why not? Because they feared that the blood of Christ would be spilled. So they only allowed them to eat the bread, Stephen.
So he says they couldn't, prior to Vatican II, if the wafer was dropped on the floor, only the priest could pick it up. I mean, we're talking about, they take this seriously that this is the body of Christ and the blood of Christ.
Listen to this. As a propitiatory sacrifice, which means what? A satisfaction for the wrath of God's sacrifice? The sacrifice of the Mass effects the remission of sins and the punishment for sins. As a sacrifice of appeal, it brings about the conferring of supernatural and natural gifts.
The Eucharistic sacrifice of propitiation can, as the Council of Trent expressly asserted, be offered not merely for the living, but also for the poor souls in purgatory. The remission of sins and the punishment of sins.
The wafer. The cup. What does that say about the death of Christ? What's that? Over and over again that it's really not enough. That it has to be done over and over and over again. When Jesus said, it is finished, that seems to be in conflict.
He meant the sacrifice. His work was done. They don't do that. In response, this is interesting. This is Wayne Grudem. He says, in response to Roman Catholic teaching, we need to keep in mind that Jesus frequently spoke in symbolic ways.
He said, for example, I am the true vine. Did he mean he was a vine? Or I am the door. Did he mean he was a door? No, and he said, I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. Or I am the bread which came down from heaven in John 6 .41.
And in a similar way, when he said this is my body, he meant it in a symbolic way. Same, same, same. Okay. Roman Catholic view fails to recognize the clear New Testament teaching on the finality and completeness of Christ's sacrifice.
Bingo. It was done. Finished. When we realize that Christ's sacrifice for our sins is finished and completed, it gives us great assurance that our sins are all paid for and there remains no sacrifice yet to be paid.
But the idea of a continuation of Christ's sacrifice destroys our assurance that the payment has been made by Christ and accepted by God the Father and that there is no condemnation now facing us. Again, Grudem notes that it seems to be a return to the old covenant where the sacrifices had to be repeated over and over and over again.
Exactly what Hebrews 10 tells us has been done away with. And with regard to the teaching that only priests can officiate the Lord's Supper, the New Testament gives us no instructions like that, gives no restrictions at all on the people who can preside at communion.
The second view, the Lutheran view. Martin Luther rejected the Roman Catholic view of the Lord's Supper, yet he insisted that the phrase, this is my body, had to be taken in some sense as a literal statement.
The example given, like I said, was the sponge filled with the water. One Lutheran scholar said this, What is the sacrament of the altar? It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine for us Christians to eat and drink, instituted by Christ himself.
So they have this concept here. Luther taught that the ubiquity of Christ's human nature after his ascension, that is, even though he was gone and seated at the right hand of the Father, that he was present everywhere physically or ubiquitous.
But theologians ever since Luther's time have suspected that he taught the ubiquity of Christ's human nature, not because it is found anywhere in scripture, but because he needed to explain how Christ was somehow present in the elements.
That's consubstantiation. That's the Lutheran view. The third one, the symbolic view, in distinction from Martin Luther, John Calvin and other Reformers argue that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper did not change into the body and blood of Christ, nor did they somehow contain the body and blood of Christ.
Rather, the bread and wine symbolized the body and blood of Christ and gave a visible sign of the fact that Christ himself was truly present. This is kind of more than what we would say here. Yet Calvin was careful to differ both with Roman Catholic teaching and Lutheran teaching.
He said this,. But we must establish such a presence of Christ in the supper as may neither fasten him to the element of bread, nor enclose him in bread, nor circumscribe him in any way. So, not actually present.
Today, most Protestants would say, in addition to the fact that the bread and wine symbolized the body and blood of Christ, that Christ is also spiritually present in a special way as we partake of the bread and wine.
So there you have more of that concept of, it's a means of grace. So, and we here at Bethlehem Bible Church, we would take what we call, what we would think of as the biblical position, that it is symbolic only that we are meant to focus upon Christ in that time, but that he is not present in any way, whether it be the elements being transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ, that they're somehow present, but not a complete transformation, or that there's a spiritual presence in the elements.
We don't believe any of those things. Now, who should participate in the Lord's Supper? Who should take the Lord's Supper? Believers. Believers. It's interesting, a few years ago, and this is not inside scoop, this is not scurrilous, R .C. Sproul Jr. was defrocked from his denomination.
This is available on the internet. This is not that big of a deal. It sounds bad, but it's really not. He was defrocked by his denomination. Why? Because he said, wait a second, if we're going to baptize babies, if we believe that that is a means of grace, a means of bringing them under the protection of the new covenant, then why would we deny communion to them, which is also a means of grace?
So he started giving babies communion. And his denomination said, you can't do that. And he said, well, it's consistent. And so they defrocked him, kicked him out of the denomination. I think he has a decent argument.
If you're going to say, and I don't believe this, but if you're going to say that baptism is a means of grace, that communion is a means of grace, why wouldn't you give it to your children? It makes sense if that's your belief.
But only those who believe in Christ should participate in it. Many Protestants would argue from the meaning of baptism and the meaning of the Lord's Supper that ordinarily only those who have been baptized should participate in the Lord's Supper.
Why? I think Pastor Mike says this fairly frequently. Why would that be? Because if you say you're a believer, and the first step of being obedient in your life as a believer is to be baptized, then why would you take the Lord's Supper knowing that you have not been obedient in baptism?
Let's see. Finally, let's talk about self-examination. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11,. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.
Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. And so he is, in this context, 1 Corinthians 11, he's rebuking the Corinthians for their selfish and inconsiderate conduct when they come together as a church.
But it is a time of reflection, a time to kind of do a moral inventory, as it were, and to make sure that we're not harboring some sin, whether it be some anger towards someone else or some sin that we are in the habit of committing.
We need to repent of those things before we come to the Lord's table. And again, as we said, there are really no guidelines for who should administer it. We do, you know, true or false, Protestants have traditions.
It's true. I mean, why do we have the order of service we do? Why don't we have preaching first and then some hymns and then prayer and reading of Scripture to close? Why don't we do that? Well, because we have a tradition here.
And in the same way, we kind of have a tradition about who's going to do communion. That's just the way it is. When I was in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, when I was 12, I became a deacon, and being a deacon meant that you passed the sacrament around.
That's what we did. Of course, we only used bread and water, but that's a whole different thing. Didn't want to cause anybody to stumble, so we used water. Then we had, as a teacher, it's an office. As a teacher, which I was at the age of 14, even though I couldn't have taught anything, what we would do is we would tear apart the bread before the service started, and we would make sure everything was all set up, and we would cover it.
And then as a priest at the age of 16, one of the things that priests would do is we would pray for the, we called it sacrament, we would pray for the sacraments, and we had a word-for-word prayer that we had to do.
And if we didn't get it exactly right, we had to say it all over again. And sometimes it could go four or five times, and sometimes you're not really sure, and so you'd look up at the bishop and he'd go, or, you know, and so you had to go again.
And it could get a little embarrassing. I don't know what that has to do with anything, but there you go. A little inside scoop. All right, so we've talked about, we're talking about what does a church service contain.
Well, it needs to contain, on different occasions, baptism, communion, but it also needs to have public reading of Scripture. Let's look at 1 Timothy 4 .13. Public reading of Scripture. I think someone, I don't remember who it was, somebody told me that they were so impressed by the fact that they came to our service and the Bible was read.
I'm going, there's a concept for you. Who knew that when you went to Bethlehem Bible Church that they were going to read the Bible? Who has 1 Timothy 4 .13? Stephen. Okay, so Paul writing Timothy on how to run a local church says, you know what, this is what I want you to do.
I want you to read Scripture publicly. I mean, there's a tradition of that. I think many of us were around when Steve Lawson preached his Bring the Book sermon. We need to have the Word of God read to us.
We need to have it preached to us. We need to be exhorted from it. We need to be sitting under the Word of God. Church service should also have public prayer. Let's look at 1 Timothy 2 .1 -4. And who has that?
Brian. Again, talking about the church and how it should be run, listen to what one of my profs says, Dr. Roskup. He says, following up on the charge he commits to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1 .18, that the entire letter develops, Paul offers a parenthesis here, verses 19 and 20, stating what a basic or first of all, what needs to be done to carry out that charge.
And then he says that Timothy and all believing men should be enlisted in a ministry of prayer. This is what he wants. He wants the men of the church to be praying for all these different sorts of people.
Kistemacher notes, so the apostle urges his representative to see to it that wherever in the Ephesian territory God's people may gather for public worship, kings and all that are in high positions be remembered in prayer.
In fact, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made in behalf of all men. So whenever we pray, we want to pray, or whenever we gather together, we want to pray for all these sorts of things.
It's a good thing to be in prayer for your government. It's especially a good thing to be praying for your government these days. These are trying times. We need to remember our leadership in prayer. So we need to have prayer.
We also need to, D, have preaching of scripture. What kind of service would it be? Somebody was just telling me, and this was quite some time ago that this came out, that somebody, oh, it was last night.
Was it you who was telling me this, Bruce? Somebody was saying that sermons needed to only be 20 minutes or something like that. Where was that from? Haley's Bible Handbook. I mean, that was 100 years ago.
He really set the stage for what was to come. He said anything that could be said in an hour could be said in 20 minutes. I guess if you talk really fast, I don't know. You know, Pastor Mike's been accused of giving you two sermons for the price of one.
I guess maybe that's the idea, just speak really fast and get a bunch of that in there. This is a very familiar passage to us, 2 Timothy 4, 1 and 2. Who has that? Yes, sir. I think I heard some time ago about a man who was called to be the preacher for a congregation and came in that morning and he just said, you know, God told me not to preach this morning.
I'm pretty confident he didn't tell him that because he's revealed to us that this needs to happen. Paul gave Timothy, by the authority of God, the most solemn charge that he must preach the Word. If we don't get together for the purpose of hearing the Word of God taught, then why are we getting together?
If we aren't getting together to hear the Word preached and applied to our lives, to use the Word of God like a scalpel on our hearts, then what are we here for? That is an absolutely essential part of any service, is the preaching of the Word of God.
Singing praise, let's look at Colossians 3, verse 16. Who has that? Colossians 3, verse 16. I do. Let the Word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
Listen, when the church gets together, we are here to worship God. And part of worship is the singing of His praises. We talked about the reading, we talked about the praying, we talked about the preaching.
But when we get together, God loves music, He gave us music, and He wants us to sing about Him. I listen to a lot of different kinds of songs, and I'm amazed at the number of Christian songs, I think Charlie calls them girlfriend songs, but they sound like, if you close your eyes, you'd go, well, it sounds like it's all about me, or it sounds like it's all about my friend, or it sounds like it's all, but it doesn't really exalt Christ, it doesn't honor God.
And those are the kind of songs that we should be singing. F, here's something we don't often think about being an act of worship, is giving. Giving, let's look at Philippians 4 .18. Philippians 4 .18, and who would read that, please?
Pretty. Who's back? Now, just look at the way he says that. A fragrant aroma. What does that bring to mind when we think in terms of the Scripture? I mean, we might think, hey, that's what I get when I walk into Macy's and I hit the perfume aisle, is a fragrant aroma.
What's the Scriptural picture, though, of what a fragrant aroma is? Sacrifice, right? And he even says that, an acceptable sacrifice. It is a pleasing aroma to God. The sacrifice is made, and it arises to God, and he says, I am satisfied with that sacrifice.
In fact, he says here, it is well-pleasing to God. And so, I think our concept of worship has been somewhat watered down. Everything that we do at a church service ought to be, toward the glory of God, ought to be an act of worship.
And, in fact, that's what Paul is describing when he says, talking about the gift of the Philippians, through Epaphroditus, he gave Paul, or they gave Paul, well, he says here, I received everything in full and have an abundance amply supplied because of what they gave, the church gave through Epaphroditus to Paul for his ministry.
It is a blessing to be able to give. Now, let's talk a little bit about giving some more, about a perception of visitors. I write there, pressure and obligation. You know, when that offering plate comes by, oh, the pressure.
Maybe I'll throw a five spot in there. Is that the concept? You know, pressure. We're all supposed to look around and make sure, you know, imagine that. The offering plate comes around, and, you know, there's only one offering plate, first of all.
This would be the ideal thing, right? And, like, there's a camera hovering over it, and it just follows from person to person, and, you know, it's on the big screen, and we're all just watching, you know, seeing.
That wouldn't be worship. That would not be worship. But, you know, as unbelievers, I mean, I remember the first time I went to church, and I'd never seen an offering plate because they have a different system than the Mormon church.
I'd never seen one, and I thought, boy, that's really odd. Let's talk about tithing a little bit. You probably know this. Tithing is 10%. Where is tithing commanded in the New Testament? Yeah, it's really not.
And if we were to do a study in the Old Testament, we'd find out that it's somewhere between 27 and 37%, depending on how you interpret things. But it's a lot. And the reason why it was so much, tithing does mean a tenth, but they had different tithes.
So they had to pay them, you know, and sometimes tithes were only every four years. There were different offerings for different times. But that's how they ran the government. That's how they took care of the poor.
It was their welfare system. It was everything. So we don't live under tithing. And, in fact, what I say there, I quote the great theologian Bono. What? People are laughing. Because he said on one of his albums, you know, he said he was talking about televangelists.
And then he said, the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister. And he's right. You know, what does the Bible say about God? Psalm 24 says that the earth is the Lord's and all it contains. What's that?
The fullness thereof. I mean, does he have the cattle on a thousand hills? Which means what? He's limited to the cattle on a thousand hills? No. Again, it's symbolic that he owns everything. Everything belongs to him.
So he's not short of cash. He doesn't need your money. I remember once when we were in California having a man who had left Grace Community Church and then come back. And he'd been gone for a couple of years.
And I said, you know, what happened? He said, well, you know, I just had this sense that people were concerned with how much I was giving. And I'm like, you don't know anything. I mean, when I was in the Mormon church, every year they would call you into the bishop's office and you would do something called tithing settlements.
And, I mean, it was a big deal. You had to set up an appointment and everybody would be there. Not everybody in the office at the same time. But, you know, you would all kind of line up outside and you'd go in for your 15 minutes and you'd tell the bishop whether you were a full tithe payer, meaning 10 or not.
No pressure there, right? And it was only your means for getting the temple and all these other things. No problem. No big deal. And I said to this guy, I said, no one knows how much you give. Nobody knows if it's 2%, 1%, 20%, 50%.
It's between you and the Lord. It's between you and the Lord. Only you and the Lord know whether it is a pleasing sacrifice or whether it's not anything that you even give any thought to. And that's really the second point here.
It's a matter of the heart and a matter of priorities. That's the issue. That is the issue. Let's look at 2 Corinthians 9. And who has verses 6 to 15? Who has that much wind? Joey. Yes, sir. So here's the picture, right?
The plague comes by and you go, no, no. You know, I mean, if there's any compulsion, if there's any, you know, reservation or sense that you don't want to do it, don't do it. God loves a cheerful giver.
If we, well, again, 2 Corinthians 9, 7, each one must do just as he has purposed in his heart. So what do we do? We sit down and we pay our rent, our car payment, credit cards, plan out how much we need for food, entertainment, kids allowance, our vacation fund.
We subtract all that and the Lord gets his $2 .50 a week. I think, and I'm only saying that because I think sometimes that's how we view it. You know, I have to do, I have to take care of my needs first, and then God gets what's left.
And that's not the right attitude, but it needs to be planned out. It says, look, again, just as he has purposed in his heart, there needs to be a plan. And then it's not something where we wrestle with it.
The easiest way to go is if you decide what is sacrificial and then you make your budget work around that. I think you'll be surprised at how well that works. And again, as I note here, do so with joy.
If not, it is not worship. In other words, imagine sitting there singing, going, you know what? I'm singing this song, but I'm really mad at God. Are you worshiping? I'm listening to this sermon, but I don't really care.
Is that worship? I'm praying, but I'm a million miles away. Is that worship? None of those things we would say is worship, but somehow we think it's okay to come to the altar, as it were, to give our gift, as it were, and to not think of it as worship, to not think of it as really returning to God what he has given to us, giving him back a portion of what he has given us.
Often we don't think about it. The offering plate comes by, and whatever we have in our wallet is whatever we give, you know, the wallet plan. That's how I plan my giving. Whatever's there is what I give.
That's not planning. I'm not after anyone. I'm just saying we need to think more seriously about this, just as we would anything else. It is part of, it's a reflection, really, of how we perceive what God does for us.
If we see all that we have, all that we earn, as what, in fact, we earn, what we deserve, what we, through our toil and sweat and labor, have obtained for ourselves rather than as a gift of God, then we may not approach this correctly.
Any questions about giving? Any additional thoughts on giving? Well, I would agree. I would agree with at least 100 with the first part and mostly with the second part. I would agree with the first part in the sense that if I got to the point where I said, you know what, I'm not a joyful giver, well then, what is my, what should I do?
It's not, it should be a question of realizing that I am in sin there at that point, that I don't have my priorities right, and that I need to repent. And maybe part of that repentance, part of that changing my mind is to continue to give anyway and to just continue to work on my attitude.
But, you know, if God loves a cheerful giver, then we need to be cheerful givers. And if we're hanging on to things more than we ought to, then it says something about our, I mean, ultimately that is a form of idolatry to say, I value this thing, whatever it is, more than I do the Lord, John.
That's a good question. And I'd certainly welcome anybody's thoughts on that one. I think if you look at how much you give and you think, and you can think to yourself, well, if I wasn't giving that, what could I do with that money?
And then you start realizing that you could probably do a lot with it, then it's probably pretty sacrificial if you think, well, you know, if I took all the money I gave to the church and we spent it on something else, that would be a really great night out at McDonald's.
Then it's probably not. And you know what? It all depends. You know, people say, well, here's an example. I mean, I know there are differing views on this, and I'm not going to come down on one or the other.
People say, you know, you need to give out of, there are people who say 10%, and I think 10 is a fine guideline. I've said before, if Bill Gates was here and he gave 10%, then I'd have to slap him around.
But if it's, and people say it has to come from your gross, well, think about this, and I'm not suggesting this day will ever come about, but if the government started charging you 95 of your income off your grosses taxes, and then you had to give 10 of your gross income as tithing, then where would that leave you?
Yeah, minus 5 a month. That would be sacrificial giving that would put you right in jail. Might not be the best move. So I mean, what is, and I think it's really a matter of conscience, but you have to, it has to be something where it forces, in my mind anyway, a sacrificial giver is someone whose lifestyle is at least somewhat altered by how much they give.
Yes. Well, I think that's right. I mean, I think that's right. I think though that, let's put it this way. If I cheerfully, if I'm making $200 ,000 a year, and I cheerfully give $10 a week, I just don't, you know, I mean, so I think I agree with you, but I think there has to be some kind of sacrifice involved too.
But not to the point where it just, you know, again brings about grumbling or whatever. I think it is a matter of conscience. I think it's a difficult thing to come to, but I think we have to understand that, you know, I mean there are many principles.
To whom much is given, much is expected. Now that goes with knowledge. It goes with a lot of things. But again, I think if you're making $2 million a year, and you're giving 10%, well, that might be good.
It might not be good. I mean, you know, again, that's between you and the Lord, but it's hard to put a hard and fast rule on that. Any other thoughts? Yes, Sam. Well, we certainly want to be sacrificial.
So I think we, you know, also even as a church, the elders, as we've been planning for this coming year, we want to make sure that we're good stewards. You know, we want to set an example for the flock to be not only good stewards.
We want to set an example that we are anticipating great things. We want to show that we are willing to kind of step out in faith, not in some too mystical sense, but we do believe that God is able to provide for all of our needs.
But at the same time, let's say, for example, a man gives, you know, just says, you know what, I'm going to give everything that I have to the church. Well, his first obligation is to what? Provide for his family, because if he doesn't do that, he is.
So, I mean, there are a number of principles to balance out. But certainly we want to make sure, I mean, even that 2 Corinthians passage that we just read about, you know, I mean, here's the question, can we out give God?
You know, if we say to ourselves, well, you know what, I'm giving $20 a month, and if I gave $40 a month, I'd be in debtor's prison. I don't know. I can say that I think for a lot of people, what it really does is they increase their giving.
It forces them to budget, to look at things and determine whether they really need to do those things or whether those are just desires. So it helps in that sense. Elaine? Right. So sometimes it can be just as simple as cutting back on the luxuries.
I mean, we do live, you know, it's just so amazing to think back a few hundred years where life was really all about survival, you know? And now, I mean, even other countries, people come to this country and they go into a grocery store and they can't believe, wait a minute, you don't just have peanut butter, you have 18 kinds of peanut butter.
You know, what kind of place is this? And they just can't get over it because there's so much abundance here. So I think that's absolutely true. Any other thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. Michael. Anybody who wants that Excel spreadsheet?
See, Michael. Paul. No, I just. Okay. Okay. I never heard of that one before. It's housing, food, clothing, transportation. Divide by five. Now, see, I don't drive that many miles, so I think it would actually decrease mine.
That's right. Paul. That is a great question. And what about, you know, giving to other aspects besides the church? And I'm not here, you know, to make a pitch for the church. I will just say this, that my own personal conviction, and I believe if you think about the biblical model, your primary giving should be to the local church.
Why? Because those are the ones who are going to give an account for your souls. Those are the ones who preach you the word and that sort of thing. And really, when you give to the local church, you are impacting the local area.
So, I mean, my own personal conviction has always been, we do give to other than the church, but it's really pretty small in comparison to what we give to the church. But that's a good question. I mean, for example, we have a Compassion International child.
We have a couple other things that we do. So, Steve. If everybody tithed, I think our church would have a lot more money. Anything else? All right. Yeah, I think that's a good one. Yeah, he likes an obedient one.
I like that. That's good.