1 Corinthians 16:1-12 More Than Merely Local

Recast Church Core Values and the Meaning of “Recast”

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his sermon series titled, First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filcik, I'm the lead pastor here and just really praising God for the team, the effectiveness of the team going to Greece, but also their return to us safely, so grateful for that.

And I'm really glad that we can be together this morning to grow in our faith. I hope that that's part of the substantial part of the reason that you're here is to increase your faith by taking in God's word, trusting it as true, and then going out and basing your life on it.

Not just to hear, come to a show, sing some songs together or something like that, but really to let the word of God get into you. I hope we're all stretching our understanding of who God is and how he rolls this morning.

And I just wanna point out, I say this occasionally from time to time, but I'm gonna dive a little deeper into the acronym that is our core values, our name, Recast. It does make up our core values. It's kind of got a double meaning of recasting the nets.

The fishermen, the disciples had fished all night, caught nothing. Jesus says, recast the net to the other side. They recast the net to the other side and in obedience to the Lord, they catch a haul. And so that's part of the meaning, but then it also stands for replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

You see that if you're not just merely paying attention to the donut holes, it's actually on the wall above that. Maybe you didn't notice that, but the donuts tend to get the attention on that. But in replication, what we mean by that is we're a gathered people who desire to see the work of God, what he's done in us, replicated in other people and in other communities.

It's always been kind of like both of those. We would love, by this core value, we would love to plant other churches. But in the meantime, until we find that church planter, which we've been looking for for years, in the meantime, we seek to plant the gospel in the lives of those around us.

And so that's what we mean by replication. In community, we desire to be a blessing to our immediate geographical setting. Now, for some of us, that's Matawan. For many of us, it's not. It's a different community, but we seek to be connected, not just in the church, not just to each other, but we value your involvement in your neighborhood, in your school communities, in your cities, in your village, in your townships, being an actual, literal blessing to those that are around you, doing what you can to serve those around you in your neighborhoods, your friends, and your coworkers and all of that.

In authenticity, we seek to be a people who are honest and humble in what we project toward others. No masks, but being honest and forthright with how we're doing. We wanna be a people receptive to each other's sorrow.

That means mourning with those who mourn, but we also wanna be those who celebrate well, celebrating and rejoicing with those who rejoice. We want you to be able to come in here and be honest. We don't want you to have to pretend to have it all together, because we know you don't.

We know we don't, and we know you don't, and so we don't want you to have to pretend that you're here because you're awesome and you're all clean and shiny, but we know that you have brokenness and you have need.

We like to think of this as more like a hospital than a museum, not a museum of wax models of saints, but a hospital for the hurting and broken. And so that's authenticity and simplicity. We have intentionally pared down our programming to three essential areas.

What we believe are essential, we wanna grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service, and so we have a Sunday morning program to hear from God and grow in our faith. We have community groups that meet during the week to grow in community, and then we encourage everybody to find a way, a pathway, a model, some avenue for you to serve in the way that God has put you together, and I believe that God having you here with your gift, there's some way that you can serve the body, and we've got some forms available on the app or online for you to fill out if you're interested in knowing how better to serve here.

But the stated purpose for simplicity is not laziness. It could lead to laziness, but that's not why we do it, because I don't know if you've noticed, if you've been around here for a while, we don't have a ton of programming, and that's with intention.

We don't have midweek programming for kids. We don't have that kind of stuff, and occasionally we get that question, but we wanna encourage families to have the bandwidth to engage the unsaved world around you.

We discourage a spiritual busyness to add to your already busyness. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? And there's a way that a church can roll that actually heaps guilt on somebody for not being at all the programs, at all the things, and all the stuff, and so instead we want you to intentionally bring your faith into your neighborhoods, your youth, your kids' youth sporting events, and wherever else God takes you in a regular week to actually have the bandwidth to be able to do that.

And then the last but not least, of course, is truth. As a core value, we simply mean that the Bible in all 66 books is the capital T Truth of God, where he has revealed himself in order to show us what he has done in history to rescue us.

And so we believe that this is the foundation, and is to be the foundation of the church, and that's why we keep coming back to it. So in line with truth, we always spend a good chunk of our gatherings working our way through the Bible section by section, and we find ourselves this morning in chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians.

And this text amounts to, the next two sermons are gonna amount to closing details, and it may seem strange that I'm gonna go ahead and preach two sermons on the closing remarks of Paul to the church in Corinth.

It's as if we're reading somebody else's mail, and I'm gonna preach a sermon on it. But there are all kinds of important things for us to grasp in this passage, and there is one unifying theme, actually, to this section of 1 Corinthians as he closes.

You see, Paul lifts the Corinthians' eyes up from a proud and arrogant local focus, and he identifies for them in a quite casual way that they are connected to the broader church community around the world.

We just sent a team and heard a report from a team that had the opportunity to go across the world and see other believers doing work there, and had an opportunity to minister to them. You see, what our problem is, and we can identify this in our personal lives as much as in our church life, a church can risk falling over by denying the foundation upon which it was started.

A church can become too full of itself, so can we, and a church can become arrogant in thinking that we are the best, we are the most wise, we are always doing things right, or even at the far extreme, we are God's favorite.

The theme of chapter 16 is subtle, and the details are specific to their time and era and their circumstances, so it will look a little bit like reading their mail, but the reminders to us as a church and as God's people are contemporary and needed.

There's something that we need to take on here now. Paul's driving the church in Corinth toward four things that we'll see in our text through the details of this section in this close to the letter. Here are the four things, and I'll mention these later after we sing some songs, and it'll come up again, so you don't need to jot these down, but a church is to exhibit a generous and unified heart.

A church is to acknowledge the larger, broader work of God. A church is to respect authoritative teaching and teachers. A church is to be glad for gospel ministry.

Wherever it is found.

So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians 16, one through 12. And yes, you heard that right, one through 12, not one through 11, but one through 12. I'm gonna take that one little paragraph there, that one verse paragraph off with this.

I think it goes well with it. So again, recast God's holy word. This is what he desires for us to take in, to hear, to meditate on, and to consider really together this week, and particularly this morning.

Starting 1 Corinthians 16, verse one. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper, so that there will be no collection or no collecting when I come.

And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter so that you may help me on my journey wherever I go.

For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you if the Lord permits, but I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord as I am. So let no one despise him. Help him on his way in peace that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers.

Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. He will come when he has opportunity.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you. Thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather in your name here in a church 2 ,000 years after this letter was written to the church in Corinth, and the things that you said to them are appropriate for us here and now to think and consider the bigger picture of the broad scope of what you're doing globally, to not get so hung up and caught up in our own little pet projects and our own first world problems and our own lives in the here and now that we neglect to see this great and glorious and majestic and awesome big thing that you're doing, that we are connected globally with a network of believers all around the world.

Your church is beautiful. Your church is glorious. Your church being the redeemed, those who are saved and rescued from their sins and are on a pathway to, as we've talked about in chapter 15, resurrection, on a pathway to eternity with you.

And so we rejoice in that, and I pray that you would give us a grander vision, a more glorious vision for the things that you are doing. Yes, gratitude and thankfulness for what you're doing right here in Matawan, right here in this congregation, but also a sweeping and glorious and beautiful picture that you have work to do all around the world and that you're doing it.

Father, I pray that that glory would not be lost on us, but would actually fuel the joy that we have here in this local place for the big picture of what you're doing and all for your glory, all for your honor.

And as we sing these songs now, Father, I pray that you would allow our voices in rejoicing and gladness for the gospel that unites us here in this room to also remind us of the unity that we have with brothers and sisters all around the world, from different countries and different nations and different tongues and different peoples.

And we are a part of this big, glorious thing, all worshiping our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that I pray, amen. Amen, all right, thanks again to the band for leading us and encourage you to get comfortable and keep your Bibles open to 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verses one through 12.

And as I say every week, if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, while supplies last, take advantage of those back there, whatever you need there. But do keep your Bibles open so that you could see and follow along and see that what I'm saying is coming directly from God's word.

We might not honestly have gathered together here with a lot of interest in a collection being taken up for the church in Jerusalem or the travel plans of Paul and Timothy and Apollos and many of us have bigger fish to fry and we might just be thinking, why would God have us here today?

But I am convinced that this is God's holy word that he guides and directs us. And so for some reason, maybe it's even just a diversion into thinking more thoughts about the Bible and more thoughts about that right now and less about ourselves, I don't know what that might be.

But here we are this morning at a text that would likely, we would all probably likely just brush over in our read through the Bible in a year kind of plan.

Or whatever, we would get through, oh, this is the end of the book.

And chapter 16 might fly a little bit faster in our reading routinely. As I mentioned in the introduction, we see a subtle theme of humility that Paul is calling the church toward. To recognize it and lift their eyes up to see that there's a bigger picture, there's more going on.

A church that never thinks outside of itself is a church that is at risk of becoming arrogant and insular and wayward. And so Paul highlights four things through the details of this section of his closing, saying this particular section, and there'll be more next week, but in a quite subtle way, Paul is calling Corinth to exhibit something that was not coming natural to them as a church because Corinth was, as he said multiple times earlier in this letter to them, you're arrogant, you boast.

So here are the things that a church is to exhibit, a church is to be. The first is that a church is to exhibit a generous and unified heart, verses one through four. Second, a church is to acknowledge the larger work of God, verses five through nine.

Third, a church is to respect authoritative teaching or authoritative ministers, verses 10 through 11. And lastly, a church is to avoid competition in gospel ministry, that's verse 12. So we're gonna see these first four verses that a church is to exhibit a generous and unified heart.

Paul is quite likely addressing something they already had written to him about, and the reason I say that is that there's a catchphrase here that indicates that he's answering a question. It's this now concerning, you see it in verse one of chapter 16, you're gonna see it again in verse 12, and that lets us, clues us in in the Greek language, at least, that he's identifying something that they've already talked about.

Now concerning the things that you wrote me about might be a good way to translate that. So they've already talked with him about this and he's responding to them. They have questions about the way to implement an offering that he's already brought up to them for the church in Jerusalem, and they're saying like, how do we do that?

So Paul's been organizing a relief effort in his travels and defining the players, that relief effort for the church in Jerusalem particularly, defining those players in this relief effort have a major impact on how we understand what is going on here in this text.

What is he calling this church to? You see, Paul's been organizing this collection among Gentile churches he planted in order to support the local church in Jerusalem, which was primarily a Jewish background church.

So you have Gentile churches taking up a collection to support a primarily ethnically Jewish church. And so the animosity, of course, I think you guys that have been kicking it around the church for a while and have read some of the New Testament, you understand there's a lot of ink spilled here about the bringing together of different ethnic identities, and particularly those religious Jews under their Messiah, Jesus Christ.

And so the animosity between Jews and Gentiles was baked into the cultural fabric of this era in which the New Testament was written. Cultural animosity, how many of you know this? Cultural animosity is a hard habit to break.

Like it gets in people and it gets in cultures and it multiplies in generations. And so it's something that often is passed down through the ages, and it's something that we really, really have to guard our hearts against.

And so there are two things at play in Paul encouraging this collection from Corinth, as well as he says in verse one that he's also encouraged it in Galatia too. Another, again, mostly and predominantly Gentile churches.

But he's encouraging generosity among the churches of God, that's the first thing, but also cultural unity among the churches of God to care for one another. It would be pretty reasonable if you really think about it, it would be culturally reasonable at this early stage of the church for the church in Corinth to ask a pretty pointed and direct but honest question.

What do we have to do with Jerusalem?

Is that not a logical question?

What do we have to do with Jerusalem?

Like why would we give them our money? Why would we give them our resources? What do we have to do with Greece, church? Why would we send a team to Greece? Don't we have plenty of fish to fry right here?

Don't we have plenty of things to do in our local community? Why spend the time to invest in other places? Why would we ever do that? And that would be a logical question for them to ask. And even further, of course, underlying that question is, let them take care of themselves.

Let them take care of themselves. But in this collection, Paul is highlighting that we belong to one another in Christ. We are brothers and sisters with more than just those in this room, but with a global church.

And while certainly, we certainly have an increased moral responsibility that comes with geographical proximity, we do have more responsibility to love and care with our time and our resources here in this body.

That is a reality. We have more responsibility here with those that we associate with. I wanna point out what is true and is important for us to grasp, and that's that we have more in common with a believer in Christ in Ethiopia than we have with our unsaved neighbor.

Let me say that again. We have more in common with a believer in Ethiopia than we have with our unsaved neighbor next door. That's what's true.

That's what's real.

You have more depth and more richness of fellowship and continuity in your thoughts and the way that you process things with a believer there who honors the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in their own language and in their own culture.

And so Paul encourages the church in Corinth to take up a weekly collection in order to set aside money for the need of the church in Jerusalem. And he tells them to do this. He tells them quite specifically on the first day of the week.

Now, there's a perfectly sufficient phrase in Greek that means to do it weekly, like do this every week, but he specifically tells them to do it on the first day of the week, and I believe he says this because this is the day that they met, and so they're taking up this collection as they gather, and he's encouraging the pooling of resources.

And further, by telling them to gather some each week on the first day of the week, each according to their own blessings, he says, he won't have to collect it when he arrives. He's not gonna take up precious time doing a collection, and I assume Paul also knew the offering would be more substantial if it was a product of weeks of giving, setting aside a little bit each week than if all of a sudden everybody's just forced to in one moment look in their wallet and go, I don't know what I got here.

Let's just give a little bit. So the giving in this context was to each person as he may prosper according to the English Standard Version. There is not a percentage given. There is not ever a percentage given in the New Testament, and despite the fact that many Christians, and I think it's okay.

I mean, many people will talk about a tithe, 10 or something like that. There is not a flat rate. There is not a percentage given. There was freedom to consider the way in which God has blessed each person for them to donate accordingly.

So it can be a sliding scale for each of us depending on how God has blessed us, but this is important for us to grasp, church. The model of giving in the New Testament should be carried over to the way that we give to God's work both locally and globally in the here and now.

The place of generous giving to God and his church, this is important. If you're tuned out, tune back in for at least just a second here. The place of generous giving to God and his church ought to begin in our hearts and minds with thoughts about the way that God has prospered us.

That's where it starts. It's gotta start not with some need out there, not with an advertisement, not with something we got in the mail, not with the guy on the TV saying, "'Sow your seed of $1 ,000.'".

Not with me up here talking like this because my skin is crawling right now talking about money in the church. It's not something that I love doing. So no, it's not about an advertisement. It's not about a campaign.

It's not about a push to try to wring more money out of each other. The place of generous giving to God and within his church ought to begin in your heart with thankfulness for the way that he has blessed you.

His generosity towards you breeds generosity toward others. Now historians identify that there's a particular problem that's likely to be the reason that Jerusalem needs an offering in this context. Historians identify that there was a documented famine in Judea around 40 to 45 AD, which would likely still be felt.

This might be seven or eight years later that this is being written. We're not exactly sure of the timeframe and all of that, but that by Roman documents, this famine is quite well documented. And so it's probably still being felt in Jerusalem, but we are not given in this text any insight as to why the church in Jerusalem was struggling, but they were.

Text tells us they needed help.

They needed help.

And so Paul is launching out into care for the church in Jerusalem. And so Corinthian Christians are being called to think of more than merely themselves here. Do you see that? They're being called to lift up their eyes and see more.

They're being called to concern for the church of God and where there is a specific need. So Gordon Fee, one of the New Testament scholars I checked in with this week, noted what I thought was helpful for us to pass along, and it is the subdued, matter-of-fact nature of Paul handling this giving.

So he doesn't have a gimmick, no selling bricks, no pledges of memorial plaques on items so that you can have your name there for the next generation to see that you donated that bench. No capital campaign.

No, what does he say here? Set aside money as you're able. Give as you're able. And I would commend the same for all of the giving here, for our general fund, and now the opening of an expansion fund.

We are drawing closer and hope to being able to expand this facility and get back to one service, knocking this wall out back this way and getting us all back into one service would be great. But consider as the Lord blesses you to set aside money in accordance with the blessings you've received.

You guys all know that I don't bang this drum frequently, but the text is talking about giving, so I'll talk about giving because I wanna be faithful to the text. But I've been encouraged, and I want you to know this.

I think it's good for you to hear this from me. I've been encouraged by other pastors and other ministry leaders over the years, and I even get advertisements regularly for campaign, capital campaign companies that specialize in helping churches.

Wring money out of you.

Like, can we just squeeze a little bit more? Could we give a little bit more?

Could we just squeeze that rag.

And see if there's anything more that drips out? I think it's disgusting. I'm not judging any other church that uses that. I'm just telling you that from my perspective and what I see in the word, that's disgusting.

Because you know what, church? Guess who the church is?

Us.

Us.

We're family.

We love one another. It's not the leadership squeezing money out of the congregation. Are you kidding me? It's us giving as the Lord blesses us and letting us see where that goes. By the way, to the glory of our God, we have enough money in the bank right this second to pay this building off.

It's, the property's ours, the house is ours. This is not, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is ours.

So to the glory of God, without a capital campaign, without trying to squeeze money out, without, I mean, this is the most, I think that, I think my wife could say, I think this is the most I've ever talked about money from this table.

I don't do it. And those of you that have been around since the beginning, you can understand that that's not the way that I roll, but the text is clearly about giving, and here we are. And I'm off my notes.

No, give, make sure that you give cheerfully as unto the Lord. And I refuse to allow some kind of capital campaign or paying for somebody to come in to teach our leadership how to get people to give more.

We are the church. We're not seeking to wring money out of each other, so just give as you're able. Give as an act of worship to God. And I'm not seeking to do a switcheroo on you, by the way, with the text.

The text is about supporting a foreign church, so now I'm saying, oh, please give to our local building. I merely highlight a local need, while I will also encourage you to support other ministries as you have opportunities.

I am quite confident that Corinth collected money for their local needs and ministry, too. Here they happen to be talking about a collection for another church. And in verses three through four, Paul explains his intention, rather his intention, to either write a letter of commendation to whoever the Corinthians trust, they are to select some men that they trust to carry the gift to Jerusalem.

And he's even willing to accompany the gift there if the church deems that advisable. So that's kind of what's going on in verses three and four. What you need to understand is that moving money in that era would have been risky.

Yeah, they didn't have brinks trucks back then, so it was dangerous work. Selecting trusted men and being sure that they know who to get the money to, who's the proper contact in Jerusalem, to get the money to the right places, that would have required logistics and connecting points and relationships and all of that.

So Paul's like, maybe it's advisable for me to go with them, in which case I'll go along and they can accompany me there. So here in this brief discussion about a relief effort for the church in Jerusalem, we see Paul pointing the Corinthians to see themselves as connected to other Christians in a spirit of generosity and unity.

And this makes me curious if it isn't time for us as a church to find some place to invest in. Maybe it's a church in Japan, we have some missionaries that work in Japan, but I love the idea of us helping to support a church in an area where there is need.

Maybe it's someplace that's spiritually dark where it's not very easy to support a ministry. And no, I'm not talking about supporting missionaries, I'm talking about supporting a church. I'm talking about the way that, and so just pray with me.

Maybe join me in prayer for God to grant us his focus for us to lift up our eyes beyond ourselves for the purpose of generosity and unity with our foreign brothers and sisters somewhere else in the world.

I think that'd be kind of a cool process. Not so much sending missionaries as much as supporting a church of people who love God in a foreign place. I think that that would be pretty cool. So pray that God would lead us and guide us in that.

And this carries us on to our next point with a little change in tack. It's related, but you'll see that it comes from a different perspective. And that is that a church is to acknowledge the larger work of God.

Not only are we, as a church, to exhibit a generous and unified heart, but a church is to acknowledge the larger work of God. In this section, Paul reveals his desire to come hang with the Corinthians for an extended visit.

He says, I wanna come stay with you for longer. He doesn't wanna merely pass through Corinth according to verse seven, but he wants to spend a more extended time. But he reminds them, I believe, with significant intention.

What he says here is very intentional. That they are not the only thing that God has going on. They are not the only church on Paul's plate. That they are not the only thing that God is working on. No, Paul says, I'm gonna first pass through Macedonia.

Well, where's Macedonia? It's northern Greece where there's the city of Thessalonica and Philippi and Berea, places where Paul planted other churches. And he has a desire to visit those churches and see how they're holding up on his way south.

He's gonna go north by ship up to the northern part of Macedonia and then head south by land down, probably through Athens and then to Corinth. And he's writing in the spring, but hopes to spend the next winter with them, he says.

And travel during the winter months was brutal during this era. The seas were usually closed off for travel for danger and the overland routes were not fun in the winter. So a lot of times, a person like Paul who was traveling and a traveling minister would hunker down someplace for the winter and find a place to kind of focus.

And so he's saying, I want that to be you, Corinth. But again, this can seem like so much reading of another person's mail, but what is Paul doing here? There's an intention by which this is recorded for our attention here this morning.

Drawing attention away from the Corinthians little self-made kingdom is the purpose. There's more going out here in the world than your local church is what Paul's getting at. And how often, how often do we need to hear this?

I think this would help us all to some degree with our own emotional and mental health. We can become so caught up in our first world problems that we begin to think that Chick-fil-A's closures on Sunday is a real problem, right?

It's a real crisis. We can tend to think our local problems are the real problems. And further, we can think that our church is the best church. It's the flagship.

This is the model.

This is the one that God is really pleased with. Paul says to the Corinthians, I wanna visit you, but I've got a lot of other churches going on out here. I love you guys, and I love the Galatians, and I love the Ephesians, and I'm gonna visit the Thessalonians on my way, and I'm gonna stop by Philippi reminding them there's a lot of churches out here.

There's a lot of others going on. I love how tentative Paul is about his travel plans, by the way, in this whole section. Like I mentioned, travel was dangerous, and there was nothing that was a guarantee in those days.

But he models for us a trust in God's will, even regarding his travel plans. Travel was sketchy and dangerous, but note in verse seven that he hopes to spend some time with them. And how does he end verse seven?

If the Lord permits. If the Lord permits. Paul is certainly demonstrating to us a trust in the Lord for his future plans. He makes the plans while recognizing the Lord's will in it. If the Lord wills, I will be able to travel to you.

And far from being a mere formula for our lives, we have a tendency to turn good thoughts and good practices into patterns, and eventually they become routine, and they become rote, so that everybody ends the prayer with, in Jesus' name, amen.

Without having any thoughts about Jesus, without having any thoughts of so be it, without having any idea what his name means, and we can have a tendency to turn things into mottos or slogans or just something that you say, so you could just end every sentence with, if the Lord wills.

Yeah, I'll have lunch with you next week, if the Lord wills, if the Lord wills, if the Lord wills. But that's not what Paul is intending for us to do here. Not merely a formula for our life, but it should be a hard attitude.

Should be a hard attitude, if the Lord wills, that brings our thoughts regularly back to the reality that God is indeed in control. We will not retire, we will not get married, we will not get a promotion, we will not close on that house, and we will not go on our next vacation without the Lord willing it.

Without his will. The sovereignty of God is not some esoteric argument intended to give the church something to argue about for the last couple of millennia. The sovereignty of God is meant to fuel our faith, our trust, our prayers, our dependence.

And on the flip side, the sovereignty of God is meant to defeat our arrogance and our self-reliance and to curb our trust in our own ways. Which comes pretty natural to me. I think it does to you too.

To see myself as the primary actor in my story. To see myself as the primary one who is working. To lean on these legs, to lean on these muscles. Not great, but to try to just depend on myself. When God is the one who I hope, at the end of my life, can be declared to be the actor.

He's got the lead role in the story of my life. Paul is writing this from Ephesus and the timing of this can be followed up. It really was interesting this week to read Acts chapter 19, starting in verse 21.