Vision Sunday PM_Refresh 2022

Speaker 3: Take your Bibles if you have them and turn to the book of Mark. We have one message left in our Ahab and Elijah series, but we'll have to wait till next week. Tonight, we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about something just a little bit different. Mark Chapter Number 12 is where we're going to be. Mark Chapter Number 12 verse number forty one. We're just going to read a couple of verses tonight. Mark Chapter 12 verse number forty one. I know you just sat down. But if you're physically able and you don't mind, join me in standing in honor of reading God's word. Margaret Ball, verse number forty one. Very powerful couple versus the Bible says this says Jesus sat over against the Treasury, beheld how the people cast money into the Treasury and many that were rich cast in much. There came a certain poor widow and she threw in two mites which make a farthing called under him his disciples and say it unto them, Verily. I say to you that this poor widow has cast more in than all the which have cast into the Treasury for all they did casting of their abundance. But she, of her want did cast in all that she had

Speaker 2: even all her living. Let's pray or help us now as we look into your word as that, you would give me the words you'd have me to say, you know, the folks that are here to listen, apply it to hear their lies for it's in Jesus name. I pray. Amen. Thank you. May be seated. This poor widow has cast more in than all day, which have cast into the Treasury. I know what you're thinking, and in fact, I'm quite impressed that so many of you came back after it was announced that tonight would be on a stewardship type message.

Speaker 3: You perhaps came all geared up. Maybe you even left your wallet

Speaker 2: at home so you would not be pressured into parting with more money

Speaker 3: than was needed? Maybe you thought great. Here we go. He's going to try and squeeze us for more money. Well, the beginning of the year is obviously a good time to just think about and consider our finances over the last year, maybe

Speaker 2: you look back at your bank account to just see your income or

Speaker 3: your expenses match up. Was it a good year or was it a bad year?

Speaker 2: Perhaps you're looking

Speaker 3: forward to things that you hope to accomplish this year

Speaker 2: and hope hoping that maybe you can get that project onto this project and make this purchase or that purchase? But, you know, everybody seems to be wanting more these days, the economy wants more of your money to buy things that used to not cost as much.

Speaker 3: The government always wants more of your money

Speaker 2: to pay for things like a $4000 hammer or a study on why people pick their noses. You know?

Speaker 3: The word more is usually used in two sentences. Two senses it can mean an increase or a contrast in quantity. I did some study and found out that when Jesus died, there was approximately a hundred and ninety million people

Speaker 2: on the Earth. One hundred and ninety million people. There's more than that just in the United States, quite a bit more than that. When the Baptist Tabernacle was started back in nineteen fifty five, there was an estimated two point

Speaker 3: seven billion people

Speaker 2: on the Earth. Last November,

Speaker 3: we passed seven point nine

Speaker 2: billion people on this planet, so you can imagine probably eight billion if it's not already in the rearview mirror. It's all it's coming up very quickly.

Speaker 3: When Jesus told his disciples in Mark, 16 15, to preach the gospel to every creature they had almost. Well, I'll see

Speaker 2: you do the math. Two hundred million, that's point two if we're at seven point nine.

Speaker 3: That means they had seven point seven. Am I doing this right? Billion people less to preach to than what we have. I hear a lot of preachers say a lot of times. Oh, we've got so many more tools at our. Ah ah, just Ardern's disposal. And we've got the internet and we've got video and radio. We have cassettes and we don't

Speaker 2: have those anymore.

Speaker 3: We just got a lot more opportunities for getting the message out than they did.

Speaker 2: I say, yeah, but we have a lot more people to reach than they did to. According to The Joshua Project, there are three and a half

Speaker 3: billion

Speaker 2: people in the world that are completely unreached with the gospel.

Speaker 3: And when somebody says someone that is unreached, that doesn't mean they are unsaved, three and a half billion people that are unreached means that

Speaker 2: there are three and a half billion people

Speaker 3: who have never even heard the name Jesus. They've never heard a clear explanation

Speaker 2: of the gospel. There are unreached. Three and a half billion people.

Speaker 3: How many people on this Earth are not only unreached but unsafe? See, there is more

Speaker 2: to do for God now than there has ever been. So as we look to the upcoming year and this idea of more to do,

Speaker 3: I have to ask the question How are we as a church supposed to respond to this ever growing task that is before us? To answer this question, we need to examine this one small act that Jesus categorized as someone who did

Speaker 2: more than anyone else. A Zimbabwe familiar with inflation, how much it has gone up.

Speaker 3: How are we going to do more this year with honestly less than we had last year? How's that going to work?

Speaker 2: I was looking we're we're preparing for the year in business meeting. We all know about the vision giving last year. They came close to two hundred thousand dollars, I thought in my.

Speaker 3: Lack of faith that is vision giving went up than

Speaker 2: general offerings would go down. That's just what I assumed would happen. In fact, what did happen was our general offering separate from vision almost went up a hundred thousand dollars over the year before, which is amazing

Speaker 3: because here are the people of the church we're doing more than they ever had. And yet in this area, but there were also increasing in this area over here. It doesn't make sense. You guys now have bills. Do you not eat?

Speaker 2: I don't know how you're doing this. God, I must be God. How are we going to do more? With less. Well, we look at this story here in Mark, Chapter 12 and the location of our story.

Speaker 3: Like, I hate to say story, I take it back. It's not a story. It's a it's an episode. It's an occurrence. It's something that happened when I say a story. You think I can the beanstalk, but it's not a story. It's not fictitious. This is something that happened. And so the location of our passage, like many of the passages from Jesus life is the temple. And if you can picture the temple as one of the most grand buildings and structures that you've ever seen, massive, massive stones made up the the floor of the temple. I mean, just just ginormous. So much so that one person couldn't even begin to think about budging. One of these stones there just absolutely huge. It's it was a building that was constantly in progress of being constructed and expanded throughout Jesus' life. It was not a finished product. It was something that was being worked on as Jesus was there. And so if you're trying to put yourself there in the temple with Jesus, you have to have in your head the background of stone cutters and masons and hammering and men working and lifting and all these other sounds that go along with construction. But here is Jesus in verse number forty one. And if you were to look at the entirety of Mark Chapter 12, you would see that Jesus is here, and this is just days before his crucifixion. This is the very end of his ministry, but he's here and he's been teaching all all day. And so in verse or forty one, we see that Jesus takes a little bit of a break he needed to refresh himself. And so he goes and he sits down over against or over near the Treasury. He's been dealing with all types of questions from all types of people throughout the day. And you're familiar with Jesus ministry. He was always surrounded with people who just loved him and just wanted to be an encouragement to him. They were never looking to trip him up. They just wanted him to succeed.

Speaker 2: No, no. It was kind of like being a teacher in a high school classroom, you know? I mean, they're like, so like, could Jesus build a rock that was too big for him to pick up? It's questions like that. You didn't seem to think that was funny. That's that's a real thing.

Speaker 3: You know, he's got the Pharisees. The Sage sees the scribes, the lawyers. Everyone wants to see if they can stump Jesus. So now he tries to find a quiet, inconspicuous spot with his disciples, and he finds this by the Treasury. And it is not by chance that Jesus chooses this place. I believe it's because he has an appointment to keep there. There is a lesson that Jesus not only wants to teach his disciples, but he also wants to teach us because he's preserved it for us in his word. The Temple Treasury was where the people of Israel came to pay their tithes to God. The temple had several boxes with funnels for the people to drop their money into Alfred Anderson, who is an

Speaker 2: authority on

Speaker 3: Hebrew culture during Jesus's time. He said that these boxes would have looked like a trumpet. So if you can

Speaker 2: imagine, we would probably say it looked like one of those ashtray collector things that you would see outside.

Speaker 3: It had a nice, broad base that went up into a narrow neck with a small hole at the top so that you would you would pour your money into it and there would be a broad

Speaker 2: base for it to collect all of it. So you're getting an idea of what this would look like, these boxes.

Speaker 3: There would've been different boxes for different designations for the

Speaker 2: people to give to you. So you can look at the back of our offering

Speaker 3: envelopes and you can see ties, missions, building other. They would have had something similar to that. So, you know, they'd have upkeep of the temple facilities. Donations to the poor, provision for the priests and Levites. And you would give to the different funds that you wanted to support. And so Jesus and his disciples are sitting there and they're right across from one of these boxes. And as I picture them in my mind, they're resting. The disciples are probably, you know, maybe shutting their eyes a little bit.

Speaker 2: Not not to sleep, just to rest, right? I mean, that's what you guys do when I'm preaching. You're not sleeping, resting your eyes, they're resting.

Speaker 3: But Jesus is there and he's watching. He's watching the people come and go

Speaker 2: and and

Speaker 3: to think about what Jesus is thinking of as he watches, these people come and go. I mean, Jesus has watched each one of them from the time they were a little baby to the point where they are now. He knows everything about them. It's like he what. He looks at them and, you know, like, it's virtual. It's not like if it was virtual reality and and their Facebook profile popped up.

Speaker 2: Every person you know, becomes Clarence and being, there's everything about Clarence, and here comes brother Alan and Bing. There's everything about

Speaker 3: whether Alan Jesus knows everything about these people. He's watching and

Speaker 2: waiting for something.

Speaker 3: What is he waiting for? What is it that is going to happen that is so important that Jesus has to take time out of his limited time left to sit here and watch and wait?

Speaker 2: Jesus, his disciples are.

Speaker 3: Watching as many people come to these places of giving, aren't you to try and picture the events that lead up to what we know is going to happen here? Come people and the Bible tells us inverse number forty one that many that came were rich and cast in much.

Speaker 2: Giving your tithe was a big deal. We don't really understand their culture because it's not our culture. I mean, we're all like, you know, in the offering plate because by. You know, and you don't want to look. You don't accidentally see what somebody else put in there. Come on, somebody else, write it. You're like afraid you're going to someone

Speaker 3: who didn't put their envelope on the right side down.

Speaker 2: You're going to see what they gave. Get that out of here. That's why I like online giving, you know, does it automatically? You're good to go. You haven't set up online giving. You should talk to you, miss Tammy. She can help you get set up, you know.

Speaker 3: That's not the way they did things. Giving your tithe was a huge deal in many of these people only gave once a year. And so for most, that one time was this week, the week of Passover, which is when this passage takes place. And you wanted to make sure if you only had one chance to give, you wanted to give right. Probably the closest thing you and I can think of when it comes to their attitude towards giving is a VBS kid during the Pinney March. OK. I mean, you know what it's like during Vacation Bible school, when that one kid comes up and they've got a bag full of money. You know, it was like, Oh yeah, boys are going to win because they always do.

Speaker 2: At least one brother, Willie, helps us. Bringing that car wash money.

Speaker 3: They come up, you only got one chance and you're rich, you want to

Speaker 2: make sure people saw how much you gave.

Speaker 3: If you can imagine pouring those coins into that, that trumpet shaped container, it would have made quite a bit of noise. You know, and so you'd come over here and you'd pour into one fund and then you'd come over here and you'd wait. You'd make sure what I was looking. You'd wait for a little quiet moment and you would disrupt the quiet by pouring

Speaker 2: into the next fund, you know, and everybody say, Oh yeah, oh, praise God. Yes, praise God. Yes, sir. It was a big deal. It's kind of gross if you think if you think about it the way they did this, but that was their their culture and. And so, you

Speaker 3: know, for those who didn't have as much, you wanted to do something to

Speaker 2: make sure it looked like you were giving

Speaker 3: as much. And so what they would do is they would they would literally go and get their donation in the smallest currency available so that they can make the biggest show with the smallest amount of money. Don't you love those news stories about people who pay ridiculous bills, all in pennies? You know, like a $200 parking ticket and they pay it in pennies. There's actually a guy that's under

Speaker 2: he is there. He's been

Speaker 3: investigated for a crime because he tried to pay one of his employees their last paycheck

Speaker 2: in pennies, and he dropped it off on their driveway. And so there's like, you know, labor laws in that kind of stuff anyways.

Speaker 3: Not always the best thing to do, but these people, they'd go and they'd get, you know, 500 pennies, so to speak, and and make the donation so that five dollars look like they were given quite a bit. And so who knows, while Jesus is watching how many grand displays they witness that day, but don't, you know, Jesus

Speaker 2: isn't impressed with any of them.

Speaker 3: Not one of those rich people that came and just made a huge showing of their giving made

Speaker 2: Jesus go, Wow, you guys look at this guy. Look at what he just did, man. Let me tell you, that just makes my heart go aflutter. Nobody.

Speaker 3: There were some rich people, according to the Bible, who gave much. After watching for a while, Jesus sees the person that he's been waiting for. Have you ever been at like

Speaker 2: a school board meeting or a city council meeting where there's one microphone and there's a line of people that want to get up to the microphone? You're seeing that. You know, and you can see the line moving and persons getting closer and closer to the microphone, we'll

Speaker 3: kind of imagine that with these these boxes. You've got lines of people waiting to give. And Jesus is looking in there in the back of the line. He sees this, this this woman that is standing there and the Bible describes her as a poor widow woman.

Speaker 2: Here, among the hustle

Speaker 3: and bustle of the crowd, this woman stands out to Jesus because this is the person that he has been waiting for for who knows how long. While others in the temple are wearing their elaborate best to put on a show for everyone else to see, this woman is wearing perhaps plain clothing because it's the best that she has, while others had purses that were bulging with their gifts. This woman comes up to the offering box carrying

Speaker 2: seemingly nothing,

Speaker 3: while others spoke loudly to one another and boasted of how good of a year they'd had. This woman makes her way in silence.

Speaker 2: She's not on notice, though. Is Jesus Caesar?

Speaker 3: I can imagine Jesus calling his disciples to him to watch what is about to happen. There'll be times where me and my brothers would find

Speaker 2: a pile of dirt, you know, somebody would get some dirt delivered in the neighborhood. They were maybe leveling something out. And so

Speaker 3: we would say, Oh, well, this is obviously supposed

Speaker 2: to be a ramp for our bicycles. And, Joe, when remember this, he was too little, we left him at home, but me and Michael would go and do these things, and I can remember one time somebody

Speaker 3: dumped the pile of dirt at the bottom of a of a little ditch. And so you went down the ditch and as you came up, the there was the pile of dirt. So it was like perfect for jumping. And so we were having a grand old time going down

Speaker 2: the ditch and up off the mound of dirt. We were with my friend Jordan, and we're seeing who could do the best trick, you know? And so we told Mike, we said, Hey, Michael, you ought to try to do a backflip on your bike. Michael is not usually gullible, but for some reason peer pressure and all, he decided to go for it. And so Micah gets a

Speaker 3: nice head of steam on the on the road. He's peddling really hard. It goes down, the ditch, goes off the ramp and he's doing pretty good. He gets that bike all the way over. The wheels are up in the air and he is on the bottom. And then he just stops. I don't know how he he just didn't have enough momentum or what. He gets halfway around and falls down on his back and the bike crushes him.

Speaker 2: Well, he was OK. He wasn't really hurt, but it was super funny. And we all laughed at him.

Speaker 3: But, you know, when somebody is going to do something, Don, like that, everyone else gets around like, let's

Speaker 2: watch and see what happens. It's another time Mike tried to do a backflip on the trampoline. They actually backflip right off the trampoline and landed on his back. It's amazing. My kid can still walk. But anyways. Hmm.

Speaker 3: But Jesus calls everyone together to watch this woman as if something really cool is about to happen. And so imagine the letdown when when the disciples watched not really understanding what was going on in this woman takes out two nights.

Speaker 2: And drops them into the box.

Speaker 3: Symbols don't understand. Jesus knows what this means, Jesus knows what is going on here, and it's important for us to remember this woman is not some fictionalized metaphorical invention to make a point. This is a real life woman who lived a life, obviously with some hardship. I mean, this is a person that you and I believe we'll get to meet and talk to someday in heaven. This woman

Speaker 2: that dropped in two months,

Speaker 3: we don't know her, the disciples don't know her, but Jesus

Speaker 2: knew her. The disciples probably wouldn't have even noticed her if Jesus hadn't drawn their attention to her.

Speaker 3: But Jesus knew the pain that she felt. Jesus knew the loss that she had experienced through the death of her husband. He knew the struggles that she faced on a daily basis just to meet her physical needs. He knew that the two nights that she grasped in her hand represented everything she had to live off of.

Speaker 2: Once you look at the last word of Chapter 12 version or forty four

Speaker 3: says she is cast in all that she had even all her

Speaker 2: white living. If you're in my Sunday school class, the book that we're going through has talked about the different words for life in the New Testament. There is like, you're alive, so that's life that is in you. There is life as in your inner life, your psyche, your mind.

Speaker 3: But then there is bios,

Speaker 2: which is your physical. Upkeep and living

Speaker 3: when he says that she dropped in all of her living, he says she dropped in all of her bios. This is everything she had to support herself.

Speaker 2: She gave to God. Disciples may not have been

Speaker 3: moved as they watched her gift, but Jesus was because in the eyes of God, that woman had given more that day than

Speaker 2: anyone else. When Jesus broke the silence with those words in verse, No. 43, barely I saying

Speaker 3: to you, this poor widow hath cast more in than all day which have cast into the

Speaker 2: Treasury. The disciples had to be puzzled. They look at Jesus like. No, you're a carpenter, but don't

Speaker 3: you know how to count? I know you're from from Nazareth, and that doesn't get you a very good rap, but can't you tell? She did not give as much as everybody else.

Speaker 2: Jesus. They don't have to say those things,

Speaker 3: Jesus senses their confusion, and he reveals to them in verse number forty for the lesson that he has for them and by extension, the lesson that he has for us. He says to them, So listen for all day, all the others, the rich you cast much all day did cast in of their abundance. You see, God's standard of more is different than man's standard of more. The rich gave out of their abundance. They had much to give and though their gift was large, it was not a sacrifice. They gave much knowing that they had much still at home for themselves. Their gift was not more than the widows. But the widow he says she gave of her want and did cast in all that she had even all her living. See, she had nearly nothing. And so her small gift was a huge sacrifice. She gave all she had for God. Her gift, according to Jesus, was more than anyone else is that day.

Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing?

Speaker 3: How God sees things is so

Speaker 2: different from how you and I see things. I I called one of my former pastors, we were just discussing different things and and we were talking about our church here and how good things were going and and just different things. I was asking him about the church that he pastored. He said, you know, we were entering into a building program and the the consultant that we had hired the designer that was going to help us work through this, this program. He said, We want to we want to have a meal for your ten top givers and I'm holding up five. How about this? Your ten

Speaker 3: top givers? They can come and we'll we'll really treat them right. I mean, we'll feed them steak and lobster, and we'll just have really nice silverware and we'll present the vision and the plan and get all of them on board because they're the ones that are really going to get

Speaker 2: this thing going. And I told the guy, No. We're not doing that. We're not. See, we got people in our church who are. He said, that's not me who are lawyers and doctors.

Speaker 3: Successful businessman. To give one hundred thousand dollars in a year is

Speaker 2: no big deal for them. They've got a lot of money in the bank. We've got some teachers, some widows, some senior adults on a fixed

Speaker 3: income who give as much as they can. They have just as much a right to be in the know as to where this church is going as the

Speaker 2: ones who can give a lot of money. I think that's the attitude that Jesus would have had. Jesus didn't call out the 10 top givers in Galilee and say, Hey, you guys are going to be the ones to follow me. Called fishermen. We gave over one. Jesus wanted his disciples to realize the value of an offering is not determined by the amount given, but by the sacrifice made. It's not how many decimal point or decimal points is, not how many zeros there are. It's the amount of sacrifice. See, this woman had done more, not because she gave more money than anyone else,

Speaker 3: but because what she did was more of a

Speaker 2: sacrifice than anyone else. Think about it this way. The staff here spends more hours at this church than anybody else, right? I mean, we work here. We're here sometimes 60 plus hours in a week. Does that mean that our contribution is more than any one church member? I'd say no. I mean. We've got to be here hours, so many hours a week. Like I said, it's morning, your paycheck isn't dependent upon you being here, you're here out of the goodness of your heart.

Speaker 3: You're here out of desire to serve God.

Speaker 2: And you know, I think about the Sunday school teachers who work

Speaker 3: every day of the week and then they have to find time to study on a Saturday or on a weeknight, give up time with their family. You know, when I write my messages.

Speaker 2: During the week when I'm at work. You know. I'm not sacrificing family time to write a message, but our Sunday school teachers are. They're going above and beyond.

Speaker 3: They're sacrificing in order to do these things. You see, sacrifice and giving is not just something that applies to money,

Speaker 2: it applies to time. You know, for some people, it's no big deal to get up here and sing a special. They're super comfortable doing that. It's not a big deal for me to come up here and speak to you. I know some people are deathly afraid of public speaking. I'm not. How many times have you seen me stand up here and sing a song for you? Yeah. Zero, the answer is zero, Titus. See? Tonight, I want you to think about the application for this passage in this way. You see, all of us are at different times. Both the rich man and the widow in this story. We're not all rich in the same way. But we are all rich.

Speaker 3: We all have been given gifts and talents by God. There are things that we have in abundance that others have in scarcity

Speaker 2: said, Well, I may have an abundance of time. I'd sure like to trade that out for an abundance of money. Don't read this story and see a distinction between you and everybody else. Don't read this story

Speaker 3: and say, Oh, I'm the widow, oh, they're the rich men.

Speaker 2: Because we are all both.

Speaker 3: Depending on the measure with which you give back to the Lord, it will determine who you most identify with. If you identify with the rich men, then you give out of your abundance. And it could be money, it could be talents. It could be time. But I mean, you know, we all make different amounts of money. We all have different levels of time.

Speaker 2: If you're a young family here

Speaker 3: with little kids, then you know that your time may not be as open and free

Speaker 2: as someone that's an empty nester. Right. You have teenagers and you're trying to take those teenagers here, they're hither and yon, I mean, you're just like a. You might as well put an uber sign on your car because it just seems like you're always taking them somewhere else. You don't have as much time right now.

Speaker 3: We go through different stages of life. For some people, a lot of money for them is a small amount to someone else. The measure of your giving is not the amount compared to someone else's giving, the measure of your giving is based on the amount that God has prospered you.

Speaker 2: So the task before us, we're going to reach the

Speaker 3: world as it continues to grow. The mission field is always growing. And if we're going to make a dent in it. Then it's going to require sacrifice. Could be time.

Speaker 2: Some people have more time available than others, as I was preparing this, I thought of our kitchen ladies. We have a lot of ladies to help in the kitchen. Not all of them to the same extent.

Speaker 3: Some of our ladies are retired and so they

Speaker 2: are able to come

Speaker 3: early. Others are not retired. They still work a job and so they come straight from work in order to help prepare the meals. All of our schedules are different. The giving of time to God will not be the same for everyone.

Speaker 2: You know. We should be concerned. If we only give time to God. And we have nothing else to do. We do that and we're like the Richmond, well, I've got it in abundance, so to give God a little bit. No big deal. If God always loses in the battle of your schedule. And you probably identify more with the rich men than the widow when it comes to giving of your time. Could be money, it could be time, it could be talent. Perhaps you are comfortable standing in front of people. But for some reason, you're holding back. On using your speaking abilities for the Lord, maybe you are able to play the piano. That's Alicia Mystery. The names aren't on these peanuts. They don't belong to them. Grateful for Miss Paula. I was thinking them as follows You're getting up there. How faithful you've been to play off offertory since you started coming here. Perhaps there are other people in this room who have musical

Speaker 3: abilities, I'm so thankful for the

Speaker 2: for the start of our orchestra and the people that have been coming up here and it was good to have Chino back up there finally recovered from his arm injury. I can't wait till that first special to hear that again. They have. Men and ladies up here playing their instruments. You've got an instrument. You like the Richmond? We like the widow. When it comes to using your talents for the Lord. You only serve God in the areas where you're comfortable. Or are you willing to make a sacrifice? So if we want to be

Speaker 3: like the widow, then we need

Speaker 2: to move beyond our comfort zones.

Speaker 3: We need to be prepared to make a sacrifice. If it's money, that means I'm going to give more than I'm comfortable with. If it's if it's time that I'm going to spend more time with God, even if it inconveniences my schedule, I haven't said this in a while,

Speaker 2: but I like saying it's really, really true. People are going to do what people want to do. If it's important to you, you'll find a way to fit it into your schedule.

Speaker 3: That applies to any thing.

Speaker 2: Bible reading prayer. Church attendance. Family time. Physical fitness. You can see how important that is to me. Time talents for women to serve God with my life. To do it, even if it requires me to serve in an area where I'm not very confident in my abilities. See, God is not so much interested in the amount of money you give, the amount of time you spend, the amount of ministries you're involved in. He's more interested in is seeing what are you willing to sacrifice for me? This year. Many of us, many of you will. Have less money to spend because of the economy. Things are going to tighten our church as a whole, even though offerings are up.

Speaker 3: It could be that we will have less money available to us because of the

Speaker 2: price increases on everything we have to buy toilet paper, cleaning

Speaker 3: supplies, food for the Wednesday night meals, the prizes for the kids curriculum for the kids, everything is getting more expensive.

Speaker 2: You know, we think about what it costs us to do ministry 20 years ago, it's not even comparable to what it costs us to do ministry today. My dad and I would talk sometimes when we were home for four new years. I asked my dad, how much did you pay for your first house? I think it was like a six hundred square foot house. Joe, I don't remember you were in on that conversation or not. He bought the house in nineteen eighty seven brand-new.

Speaker 3: They built it. Seventy nine

Speaker 2: thousand dollars. Now some of you are even older than that, you can remember spending far less than that.

Speaker 3: Seventy nine thousand dollars for a six hundred square foot house in a neighborhood.

Speaker 2: No yard. Know how much that house is worth today. Three hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. Dad, why did you get rid of that house? It just it costs more. Kind of a bummer when you think about it, more people to reach. We really have less money to reach them with. Fields are white under harvest. Like we said on Wednesday night. The end of all things is at hand. Said this morning, we want to build up our savings, not so that we can hoard it so that we can invest it in the future of our church. What are we hoarding money for? Is there a need? Yes. There's a big need. Billions of people that need to receive the gospel. This year. I've told you we're not looking to do a big building project. Don't let that make us think, oh, my giving isn't as important this year. We really pushed hard last year this year. Yeah, we miss here and there. It's OK. We're trying to prepare for the future. God is. Watching us. To see how much we're willing to sacrifice for him. How much we want to keep for ourselves. Let's be honorable before the Lord and our giving. When it comes to money, time and our talents. All right. Definitely, father, we think for this day. Thank you for the story of the widow woman. Gave everything she had to you. I wonder if when we get to heaven Lord, you'll be able to tell us how you provided for her after she gave you all that she had. What did you do for her to meet her needs that week or that month, whatever it was that she'd given to you? Or how did you take care of her? I have no doubt that there are people in this room all over this auditorium who have. Stepped out on faith, sacrificed for you. I'm giving of themselves or their possessions. There are probably many testimonies, Lord, that people could share of how you miraculously provided for them. Well, I'm grateful for those times in my life. Got a prayer that she'd help us to be like this with a woman that we would give sacrificially. We would not be like the rich man who gave of their abundance knowing that they had plenty more back home. I pray that we would trust you. We would invest in your work. You would allow our church to be able to do more for you. Get faithful, faithful giving of your people Jesus name, they ask these things. Amen,

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