Good morning. We're going to be looking at a few verses in the book of Acts, chapter 4, starting in verse 32, and then going through Acts 5, verse 11. You'll have to follow along on your phone or on one of those Bibles. We're not going to have it on the screen today. So I'll be at the Scripture in a minute.

But I want to tell you, I've never. As I was looking at the Scripture, a few thoughts hit me. I've never had to stand by an offering plate and call somebody a liar. You'll know when I read the Scripture, what we're talking about. I've never had to conscript people to be grave diggers at a church service.

I'm glad for that. Like, that's not a flex. It's just something. As I read this, I'm like, that's never happened here. I've also never sold my house or anything significant and given 100% of it to God.

I didn't lie about that. But that's what happens in this Scripture. But I've never done that. I've never had that level of, like. What would I call it?

Like, you know, just kind of financial openness where I'm like, God, I'm gonna sell this and give 100% of it. I might just be like, lord, if you can help me sell this, I'll give 20%. He's like, not really impressed, you know, like, whatever. He's like, you know, my son died for you, right? Let's look at the Scripture in Acts, chapter four.

And by the way, I want to point out that just a couple verses before this, what had happened in the preceding chapter is the apostles were kind of, like, told to shut up. They were said, like, don't preach about Jesus anymore. And they're like, well, should we listen to men or to God? You decide which is the right thing to do. We'll listen to God.

Thank you very much. They thanked God that they were worthy of persecution. That means they were doing their job right. Jesus had said, if you're my followers, you'll be persecuted. And they were like, thank you, Lord, that we are worthy of that.

And then they showed back up to the believers. They prayed together. The place where they were assembled shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Now they'd been filled with the Holy Spirit. They were, like, topped off.

You know, it's like every week you fill up your car on Monday, but Wednesday comes around and you're like, okay, I'm not out of Gas. But man, just in case, you know, stuff happens, like the prices have been fluctuating, you know, is it 420? Is it 460? What is it going to be today? Tell me, top it off.

But they were topped off with the Holy Spirit. It's like, it's not that they used him up, they were just, they were like, you know, as they were ministering, God gave them more gifts, more filling of the Holy Spirit for the ministry that they were doing. And so they began to speak the word of God more courageously. So here's the result of that. Chapter 4, verse 32.

The group of those who believed this is almost unheard of in churches, by the way. They were of one heart and mind. Like we could spend some time on that. We could spend some time on how important that is within the local church. Because you know, not everybody is the same.

Not everybody in this room is the same. Not everybody enjoyed the same provisions and conveniences last night. Not everybody has the same walk or the same age or the same family or whatever. But these people were of one heart and mind. So no one said that any of his possessions was his own.

Ooh, you know what that word is? The stewardship is recognizing that I don't own this. God owns this. I am just the manager of this while I'm walking here on this earth. So these people recognized that.

They recognized that none of the possessions that they had, nothing that they held, nothing that they possessed was his own, but that everything was held in common. In other words, they had a pool, they would pay into this and if there was a need, that need would be taken care of. It's not communism. That is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Communism.

The government forces you to do it. If you excel. They're like, oh well that doesn't belong to you anymore. These people willingly gave it because they realized it was a gift from God. So they held everything in common and with great power.

The apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was on them all, for there was no one needy among them. Some of you are saying, please Lord, let it be so. Those who were owners of land, here's why. Those who own the land or houses were selling them and bringing the proceeds from the sales and they were placing it at the apostles feet. I guess that's a weird place for an offering basket, but that's where they had it.

I think it's more of a metaphor. You know, it's like surrendering it as saying, here, this isn't mine. It Never was mine. Use this wherever the need may be.

They were placing them the proceeds of the sales at the apostles feet. And the proceeds were distributed to each person as anyone had need. So Joseph, a Levite, who was a native of Cyprus, called by the apostles Barnabas, which is translated son of encouragement, he sold a field that belonged to him. He brought the money and placed it at the apostles feet. Now a man named Ananias, together with Sapphira, his wife, sold a piece of property.

He kept back for himself part of the proceeds with his wife's knowledge he brought only part of it and placed it at the apostles feet. But Peter said, ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for yourself? Part of the proceeds of the sale of the land before it was sold, did it not belong to you? And when it was sold was the money not at your disposal? How have you thought up this deed in your heart?

You have not lied to people, but to God. When Ananias heard these words, he collapsed and died. And great fear gripped all who heard about it. So the young men came, wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, but she did not know what had happened.

Peter said to her, tell me, were the two of you paid this amount for the land? Sapphira said, yes, that much? Then Peter told her, why have you agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door and they will carry you out at once. She collapsed at his feet and died.

So when the young men came in, they found her dead and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear gripped the whole church and all who heard about these things. And some of you are saying, seriously what you read that and you're like, are you for real this happened? You know, I was doing some of my studies and my research and there were people actually asking the question, did Peter kill these people? It's like absolutely not.

There's nothing in the text that even suggests that. But Peter knew what was happening. If you read in the context of everything, you see that the power of God was upon them. The Holy Spirit had filled them. And so they.

Peter was recognizing what God was doing, what God's intentions were, what God's desire was for the church. And as Peter saw this and he sees what's going on, the Spirit gives him that little bit of discernment to see that these people are lying. It's not that they didn't give enough money. It's not that they didn't give 100% of it. The problem was that they came in and they wanted to put on a face.

They wanted to put on a front and say, look how good I am. I'm on board with this trend of selling property and donating the money. But they didn't have the. The heart for that worship. And so what I see here, the biggest thing in all of this, is that foundations are important.

The foundation that the church was being built on was an important one. And we have to lay those foundations very carefully and very properly. This goes for your personal life as well as the corporate life of the church. In your personal life, you need to lay some spiritual foundations. Jesus Christ talked about this.

He said that there's a foolish man that builds his house on the sands. And you know why? Like, sand is easy to dig. It's easy to move. You know, it might be relatively flat and just kind of, you know, like, hey, I can build a house right here.

But in the kind of geography, the geographical layout of the land, just like we had all that rain last night, when the rain would come and it would wash down the hills, you might think you're in this nice sandy area that's dry, but it turns out you're actually in a dry wadi or riverbed, and that water is going to come rushing down, and if you're caught in the flow of it, you're gone. And so the picture is this house that you build on, the foundations on sand just being wiped away. It's not that building a house on sand won't ever work. We do it in Florida plenty. Like, we make it for the most part, unless there's, I don't know, a sinkhole or something.

But, you know, we can build on sand. That's not the issue he was talking about. The places where you found this sand was, you know, was where your house could get washed away when the simplest of rainstorms comes in. But he says, dig into the rock, drill into the rock. Put your foundations on something immovable.

In your life as a believer, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you said, lord, you're my savior. You're my Lord. You need to say, okay, that's my first foundation. That is the first place that the foundation rests is on Jesus Christ. But as you build from there, there's going to be things that you need to incorporate into your building materials.

You need honesty, you need sincerity, you need generosity, you need. You need faith. And as you build Your life up in Christ. Those things will be added to your structure, to your foundation of your Christian faith. What we see here is that corporately, the Christian church that was meeting together, by the way, we believe, we think.

We're pretty sure they were meeting in an area on the temple complex. And that temple complex, I encourage you to, like, make a note on a piece of paper in your sermon companion guide to look this up on your own. There is. Because I could put pictures up here, but it really wouldn't, like, do it a whole lot of justice. You wouldn't be able to see the detail.

So I just decided to tell you, Google it. You can. Or, I don't know, we kind of stopped doing Google. Now it's all AI, like chatgpt it, I guess. So we gotta change our vernacular.

So the temple complex was very large. I think it was like 29 acres. It was pretty big. And there was the temple building, and part of it, there was different courts for different groups of people. But kind of behind the temple there was this area called Solomon's Colonnade.

And when you read a little bit further, you see that that's one of the places that Peter and the apostles were kind of holding court, spending time. And so what we see is the first Christians, the first believers in Christ were Jewish people. For actually several years, they were mostly Jewish people. We saw that the last couple weeks with. With Cornelius last week, you know, the first Gentile believer, first gentile convert.

We've kind of gone backwards in time in our scripture, if you've been following along, by the way. But I had a reason for that, that I forget the reason. I wrote this in July. But anyway, this idea here, going back before anybody, before Samaritans, Gentiles, anybody's accepted Christ is Jewish people. And they still attended Jewish prayer times, Jewish services at the temple.

And the first group of Christians were meeting in one of the buildings on the temple complex called Solomon's Colonnade. It was a big room with a lot of columns. You know, that's what a colonnade is. And they probably had different rooms built in there. And so they.

I don't know if they had to, like, book it every day or every week, or if it was just first come, first serve. I don't know how that part of it works. But they're in there, and this is where the group of believers knew to assemble and they knew where to come if they needed help, if they needed assistance, if they were donating money. And as all this is going on, there's other places in Acts where it says that there were others who hadn't joined the fellowship of believers, but they were in continual awe and just wonder about what was going on with this group of believers because they saw the generosity. They saw how much they cared for one another.

They saw that, as we'd read, there was no one among them in need. That didn't mean there weren't needy people. It just means that their needs were met because there were some that could give, there were some that needed, and they pitched in and they took care of each other. And so as they're doing this, what we're seeing is that one of the foundations that's being laid is this complete and utter generosity, this complete and utter openness and transparency. And I just love that there's this idea of just kind of unity in the body in such a way that I've probably never fully witnessed in my life.

And most churches have a struggle. At some point, they'll go through a time where everybody's getting along really well, and then somebody will say, why does he do such and such. Why does she get to do all this? I don't know why we care, but we seem to. And so this tends to get in the way.

But what's really happening is we're looking at these foundations and understanding they have to be laid properly and put the proper things in place. There was this time, way back in the Old testament, in Leviticus 10, verse 3. And in Leviticus 10, God has given them rules up to this point for how the people of Israel were to worship God through his servant Moses. He's given them these laws. And as he gives them these laws, he says, this is how I want you to worship me.

And it wasn't simple. It was quite complex. But the simple part was, obey God, do it his way. Everything goes well for you. If you start trying to say, I'm going to do it this way, you begin to have problems.

So Moses, brother Aaron, Moses is kind of the leader of the people. His brother Aaron is the high priest. And his two sons, he had four of them, I think two of them, the oldest two, were supposed to be the priests that carried on the daily ministry, working at the sacrificial altar, doing all these different things. But one of the things that they were supposed to do was burn incense every day before God, before the Ark of the Covenant. And all this stuff in that area, not in that room, but just kind of in the court outside of it.

And it doesn't exactly explain it, but the Scripture says that they offered up strange fire. Now, that could mean that they thought incense had gotten a little too expensive and they were going to get a cheaper version of it. It could be that they had incorporated an old pagan practice that they had learned in Egypt maybe. And they wanted to say, well, the Egyptians did it this way and it worked well, so why don't we incorporate that into our church? In other words, they were watering down the pure doctrine of God, the plan of God, the teaching of God.

They said, no, we want to do it our way. And God struck them dead. God struck the two sons of Aaron dead. And then this part's almost hilarious. He says, now don't cry about it, Aaron.

Like what? Like, yeah, your son's disobeyed. It was time for them to go. Fear gripped the people of God at that point. Fear gripped the people of God.

And they said, we can't play around, we can't mess around when it comes to worshiping and obeying and serving God. So with that kind of background in mind is how I read this and I see this and I look at where the church was. And they had been persecuted. They stood up amidst those threats towards their freedoms. And instead what the apostles did is that they preached boldly.

And as the people gave generously, God continued to actually give them more boldness in their proclamation of the gospel. They weren't worried about what people would think or what the rulers would try to do to punish them. They just went ahead and went forward with that teaching. And then God also accompanied that by great signs and miracles. People were healed, demons were driven out, people were blessed financially and all these things were happening.

But then we see this guy named Barnabas, Son of encouragement. That wasn't his given name. That was the nickname they gave him because that was his reputation. It's like that would be to say like his father was just straight encouragement. And he got that from his dad and he's living it out now.

That was kind of the point of that nickname. And so Barnabas is known for being the guy that just kind of helps prop ministry up, that helps support ministry, that helps make it happen. And as he's doing this, there's a couple clues in here that tell us something about him. Says he was a Levite. Who knows what the job of the Levites was to do anyone work in the temple, assist the priests.

Yeah, yeah. So they're supposed to. They help with the ministry in the temple. They help serve the help, accompany the priests doing the things so that the priests are able to do the ministry that they're supposed to do. It's a supportive role that the Jewish people couldn't do without.

They also received their livelihood. Their needs were covered by the tithing and the offerings that came into the temple. And they were supposed to be supported by that work and that ministry. They didn't have an inheritance of land when all these other tribes. There were 12 tribes in Israel, the other 11 tribes, they had their family inheritance, the land that got passed down from generation to generation.

The Levites weren't given an allotment of land they were to be prepared for. There were places in all the cities for them to live. But yet this guy owns a field. What do fields do? They grow crops or they have animals on them, or both to make an income.

Something's wrong. Something has fallen apart in the Jewish faith and the Jewish culture of worship where this man had to own property to support himself. This shouldn't have been going on. And yet somehow he had gotten ahold of a field. Somehow he had to work this field.

So now where he's supposed to be doing ministry, here he is working this field, and he's doing this rather than being devoted full time to the ministry. Now I want to say that the Christian church is getting it right. They're building this foundation. And the apostles were focused on preaching. Not just preaching like, I'm up here doing a sermon.

They were. Their main job was for them to declare the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I gotta say, that wasn't popular in their day any more than it is right now. People, when you tell them, like, yeah, I believe in Jesus, they're like, you believe in all that? Like that virgin birth and that resurrection from the dead?

Yes, yes, I do. Yes, we do. That's our answer. If somebody asks you that, your answer is yes. If you still are, like, I don't know if I believe it.

Cool. Like, you will. And when I say, you will, what I mean is the more you dig into it and the more you realize that there's actually more, like, evidence outside of the Bible. There's tons of evidence to show the resurrection of Jesus Christ that will accompany your faith as you say, lord, I believe you. There's things that I don't understand.

There's things that I can't back up. But I trust your word and I trust who you say you are. And, Lord, just help me, as a man said to Jesus, help me in my unbelief. I have belief in you. Help me in the things that I just don't yet fully have the faith to believe.

And so the apostles were able to carry on the ministry faithfully and boldly in a way that wasn't popular amongst the people. And yet great awe and reverence was there. They were supported by those who gave to the ministry, to the church, and they were able to do the work that they were called to do. And there was the ability to bless those who were in need. Now, Barnabas, being a Levite, should have had his ministry at the temple or the synagogues, and his livelihood should have been cared for, and it wasn't.

So he owned this field. So that tells us that something had fallen apart in their religious system of some kind. But what he did was he said, I'm going to take a step of faith. I'm going to trust in God and I'm going to give myself not to this field, but to the service of Christ in his church. I'm going to sell this, I'm going to bring the money to the apostles.

And, like, he has no backup plan on this one, just faith. So he's this man of encouragement. He's this man that says, like God, I'm not just going to encourage other people. I'm going to trust in you. And so he does that.

He trusts in God and he brings the money and gives it to the apostles and says, it's not mine, it never was mine, and it's not mine to do with anymore at all. And this is whoever needs it. It's up to you guys. They were faithful in this. And so he.

He trusted them to do whatever was right. Barnabas wasn't the first person to do this according to the scripture, but he was just kind of noteworthy in this aspect. And it seems to be that Ananias and Sapphira, I don't know if they were wealthy. I don't know if they owned, like, multiple houses and they just sold one of their vacation properties or what the deal was, but they sold a house. I don't know how much houses were going for back in the day, you know, first century Palestine, Jerusalem.

But whatever the number was, they sold it and they brought some of the money to the apostles. Now it's okay, like, you're allowed to do that. Peter says, wasn't it your property? Wasn't it your money, even after it was sold? And you could give however much you felt like giving, but you have agreed together, you and your wife, to lie to the Holy Spirit.

Now there's two people you can't lie to, mom and God, like, you know, they both know I was embarrassingly old before I figured out how my mom knew what was going on. I'd be like, mom, how did you know? As a little kid, she's like, mommies just know. And I realized it's not the eyes in the back of the head. It's when the house is quiet.

When the house is quiet, you're like, what's going on? They're getting into trouble, you know? And so, yeah, I was probably a father when I figured that one out. But anyway, it's like, oh, I get it now. You can't lie to the Holy Spirit.

And Peter's like, the problem wasn't the amount of your gift or what you gave or when you gave it. The problem was that you thought you could lie to God. And there's plenty of times that we think we can lie to God. Not just about money, about all kinds of stuff. I mean, sure, sometimes it's money.

We're like, God, I'm generous. I tipped you today. He's like, thanks, I didn't realize I was your waiter. You know, like, you know, we treat God like the drive through at McDonald's, where we're like, okay, I want this and this and this from you. Okay, got it.

And we get up to the window and we're like, hey, where's my stuff? You know? Or like their ice cream machine. I joked one time when I ordered ice cream, and they're like, yeah, we can do that. Like a McFlurry.

I'm like, it's not broken. You know, it's always broken when I want these. I'm like, I was just kidding. I didn't really want one. I was just seeing if the machine was working.

But we get up to the window, we're like, God, I thought I asked for these things. Are you broken? Is something wrong with you? He's like, no, you can't treat me like that. Don't treat me like the drive thru or a vending machine.

Don't tip me like a waiter. Like, if you actually want to give to me, like, be serious about it. Are you doing this out of, like, compulsion because you feel like you're supposed to, or are you doing this because you trust me? So Peter talks to this guy, he's like, ananias, you have lied. Like, you know God isn't going to handle that.

And he drops dead. And Peter's like, hey, could you guys come over here and take him away? So they do. A few hours later, his wife shows up. Why she came, I don't know.

It Might have been prayer time in the afternoon. She's going to prayers. She hasn't heard from her husband, but, like, they're not on, like, you know, trackers on cell phones and smart watches and all that. So she's thinking, no big deal. He'll be home later.

And she shows up to prayer service or whatever. And Peter's like, hey, hey, come over here. You guys sold your property, right? Yeah. Was this how much you got for it?

She's like, yeah, okay. These people must have had a great marriage. They had communication figured out. They agreed on something. How many of you married people are like, yeah, we agree on money, you know, none of you.

None of you. Like, you might say, yeah, honey, that sounds good, but nobody actually means that. They're like, I don't like that she's not letting me buy this, you know, like, I don't have enough guns or project cars or whatever, you know. Like, she's like, I do need another, you know, I don't know what pair of shoes, you know, or purse or something. I don't have the black shoes that go with this particular outfit.

Like, you have six black shoes, shoe pairs. Like, I don't understand it, but whatever. And so we just don't understand each other. So we don't agree on these things. We don't see the value or the importance of it.

But these people in their marriage, they had good communication. They decided to sell the property. They decided to keep some of the money and lie to God and the church about it. Don't have such, like, unity in your marriage that you agree to test God. That's where you draw the line.

You should learn good communication. You should learn good agreement, especially on financial things. That always tends to be a problem in a lot of marriages. And if you can figure that out, great. Just don't, like, use that as an opportunity to lie to God.

And so Peter, he confronts her too. She lies. He's like, okay, you're in on the lie, too. And he's like, hey, you see those guys that are walking up? Yeah.

They just buried your husband. They're gonna bury you, too. She drops dead. They carry her out. These guys didn't even get a union.

15 minute break. You know what I'm saying? Or, I don't know. Do unions get 30 minutes? I'm not sure.

I've never been in one. I grew up around Flint, Michigan. I knew a bunch of union auto workers, and we just always gave them a hard time, like, constantly, because they deserved it. Anyway. Those guys just didn't want to work and they wanted.

Anyway, I'm sorry. No offense, really. It was just my roots are coming back out on that one. I'm sorry. As we look at this going back to foundations and how important they are, we might say, like, why did they have to die?

They didn't even get a chance to repent. Neither did Aaron's sons. That brought strange fire before God. He had been very clear on how he wanted his people to be. And there was no room in the church.

This is the baby church. This is the new church. Everything is just starting out. There was no room. What do the kids say these days?

Like, no cap. You know, like we used to say, like, no, don't front. You know, like fronting, like putting on a front. Putting on a thing. You know, say, like, no fronting.

And then we would say, like, no cap. Now that's when kids, you know, they do a little ball cap emoji or young people younger than me, I'm getting old, which means, like, I'm not like, putting a cap on. I'm not covering anything up. You know, it's sincerely, basically. Sincerely is an old phrase that means the same stuff it was when they would have a sculpture, like a stone sculpture, and have little divots in it from the imperfections in the stone, and they would put wax in those to make their sculpture look perfect.

Sincere means without wax. That's like the literal definition of sincerely, meaning without wax. It's all the same word, but it basically means, like, listen, don't try to act a certain way when there's something in your heart that's a different way. When you come into the house of the Lord. What we're talking about here is worship.

Like, it's not just money. It's not just giving. It's not any of those things. All of this is worship. And yes, your money is a tool of worship.

How you use it, how you view it, how you hold onto it, or how you give it away, you is about worship. And it's trusting God with faith. And that if you are giving. I've said it before, I've never known anybody to go broke from giving too much money to others who are in need. Anyone.

Some of you haven't tried God in that either. Some of you haven't tried giving more and more and more. But I promise you, when you do begin to do that, you'll find that God keeps blessing you. And you don't always know how or where it's coming from, but you recognize, like, I gave all this away. And yet my needs are still met.

And this is what God was doing in the local church, in the gathering of believers. And so as they're doing this, as they're giving, not necessarily to one another, although they might have done that, they're giving to the storehouse, which is an Old Testament principle, that you would bring the tithes, God said, into the storehouse so that his treasury would be full. And that way, when there's a need, it just comes out of there. And there's always people putting in on top, and there's always people pulling out of the bottom. I'm picturing, like a grain silo.

It's always being refilled. That's the storehouse principle. And God said, as you give what you're supposed to my treasury, my storehouse will be full to overflowing. In other words, you're not going to run out of money by being generous and giving to God. But what will happen is if your heart of worship is so, so fake, if you're making it up so much, if you're just saying, you know what, I'm going to kind of do it however I want to do it, and tell God that that has to be good enough.

That's what doesn't fly. So God is telling them that you have to have this sense of awe and reverence, not just about the miracles that I'm doing, but also in your own heart of worship. You can't just show up in church and expect that whatever face you're putting on, whatever front you're putting on, that whatever mask you're wearing today, that that's something that God can't see through. You can't just assume that God is going to be like, oh, okay, cool. That's how you want to go today.

That's fine. You have to get on your knees before God. This is the foundation we're talking about. Submit yourself and your plans to him and say, lord, what do you want from me today? Do I have something in my life that needs to go away?

Sure, they sold property, but it might be something in your life that is incongruent with the Christian life. Because, you see, it's so easy to say jesus is my Savior. My prayer is that you can testify to that today that you can say, my Savior is Jesus Christ. What I know is not 100% accurate is that everybody who claims Jesus as savior does not allow him to be Lord. See, Lord is a different thing.

It's like the next notch above that that says, okay, now I have to do what you tell me to do. The best example that I know of that lived this out and left us this example with much testimony in his writings is the apostle Paul. We met him in the Scriptures a couple weeks ago. Started out as Saul of Tarsus, later becomes known as Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ. He referred to himself as a doulos.

Doulos is a Greek word that means a bondservant. Now, there were certain types of servants who received a salary or an income, and they just kind of worked for someone. Your job might. You might think, I'm a slave to the company. You know, maybe that's quite accurate in the way that some people were slaves or servants back in the day.

But a bond servant is one who has totally sold themselves out to the ownership, another person to serve them for life. And a due loss is an honorary thing. It's something that you would. That you would wear with honor. But you don't have your own autonomy to do what you want.

You have to answer to your master. And Paul called himself a bondservant, a doulos of Jesus Christ. He's saying, I go where Christ calls me to go. I do what he calls me to do. I say what he calls me to say, even if it means my very life is taken from me, which at one point it finally was.

If that's what it takes, then I'll do it. There's a place in, I believe it's 2nd Corinthians where Paul talks about all the things that he did in service of Jesus Christ to build up the faith of those that he administered to. He talks about times where he was beaten, stoned, thrown in jail, been on shipwrecks, and floated, he says one time, like a day and a night adrift in the open sea. That's scary stuff. And you don't know whether you're getting out of that or not.

He's been bitten by snakes, he's been threatened, and all these different things over and over and over again. And he says, I do all of this to serve the church. I do it for you. He says, maybe not in that direct verse, but he talked about how he would gladly spend and be spent for the church. He would spend everything he has, including his life, for the church of Jesus Christ.

You see, the foundations of his life were built on fearing God, on giving everything that he had to God and living for him so that others could benefit and grow in their faith. Because of Paul's sacrifice in his life, he did all that as a servant because Jesus Christ was His Lord and master. So many of us haven't yet allowed Christ to be Lord. You haven't allowed him to direct your steps, to guide you each and every day. You haven't allowed him to require things from you, to remove sin from your life, sometimes painfully, to take away bad habits, addictions, things that you've been clinging onto and saying, this is what I want in my life.

I'm hanging onto this. And then all of a sudden, he says, no, I want that from you. I want to take that from you. And you're like, no, this is mine. And you start closing up and you start telling Jesus no.

It's never a good look to say no to Christ. And so as you learn to submit to Christ as Lord, we see in the Scriptures what begins to happen there. That as you submit to Christ as Lord, and you take whatever comes your way, whether it's persecution and hardship or whether it's provision and blessing, whatever it might be, anywhere in between, as you receive that from Christ, you start to grow and you say, lord, whatever you want for me, I'll take it. You begin to see the power of God at work. You begin to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

You see, they have been filled with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, but now, as they are obedient, he gives them more. It's like he said, you're responsible with the Spirit that I've given you. I'm going to continue filling you with my Holy Spirit so that you can continue boldly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ, meeting the needs of others, and just generally growing more and more followers of Christ with the good news of the Gospel. But you can't sneak into church or Christian fellowship and fake it. You can't sneak amongst the people of God and say, oh, well, this is good enough, right?

Jesus told a parable. It's one of the harder ones to decipher or understand. A parable is a story that is told with a specific point or message, but it's not, like, just obvious. You have to dig into it to understand what the message is. And Jesus tells a parable of a guy that's going to have a wedding, and he invites all these guests, and they don't show up.

So he invites some other people, and they don't show up. So he tells his servant, go out and get, like, the people that are down in the gutter. He says. Their terminology is the highways and the hedges. Just go out way into the country, like, basically pick up the day laborers, the workers, the people that never get invited to a party or anything fancy and go bring them in.

Because I want my banquet to be full, I want my wedding party to be full. And so everybody comes in and what you would do when you would show up is you would be given wedding clothes. Take off your dirty rags, take off your dirty clothes, and you would be given wedding garments to put on. And so there's all these people milling about. They're like, wow, this is great.

I've never been in a place like this. This is really nice. I don't know what they said, he doesn't tell us, but they're milling about. And then there's this one guy that doesn't have wedding clothes on. And the master of the banquet says, hey, friend, how did you get in here dressed like that?

Now, it certainly wasn't a problem with the clothes he was wearing. God doesn't actually look on our appearance. We learned that with King David. They were gonna. Samuel was gonna go anoint a new king over Israel.

And he, he's directed by God to go to this house of a guy named Jesse, go to his house and anoint one of his sons. So he goes there and he's like, hey, show me your boys. And he sends the first one in. He's like, look at him. He's like, he's tall, he's strapping, he's a strong guy, he looks like a king.

And Samuel's thinking, it's a good king. And God's like, nope, not him. I'm not looking at the outward appearance that you're looking at. I'm looking at the heart. So they pass like seven sons by, and God's like, no, none of them.

And Samuel's like, is there anyone else? He's like, well, yeah, there's David, but I mean, they didn't say they hated him. But he's like, he's out tending the sheep and we didn't even invite him to the party. It seems pretty, like, pretty rejected, you know, he's like, samuel says, we won't even sit down until he shows up. Get him in here.

They get him in here. He's a shorter guy, depending on how you read the translation. He's either kind of rough looking but still handsome, or he's just a hard to look at guy. We don't really know, but. But he bring him in, and here's David, and he's been tending the sheep.

Shepherds didn't smell great, they weren't clean. Like, he's just not. Not necessarily what they're looking for in this room, they've rejected him and left him out to the pasture. And Samuel says, this is the guy. Because God said, I'm looking at what's in the heart.

So certainly it's not about what we wear. But in this parable of this wedding banquet, this guy had slipped in, trying to act like he belonged, like he was part of it. But. But he tried to come in on his own terms. He refused to take off his old garments and put on the wedding clothes.

You see, what Jesus was saying in this parable is that if you want to accompany the fellowship of believers, those people of faith in Christ, you've got to come in and you've got to allow God to strip off all of the old stuff that was you. Not that he removes your personhood or your individuality, but he strips you of all the stuff that doesn't belong, the stuff that he didn't create you to be, who recognizes that there's things in your life that you weren't created for. There's things in your life that you need gone, that only God can strip from you, that only God can take off of you. And rather than leave you there exposed and naked, he gives you a new garment. In the book of Revelation, it talks about the saints who persevered in their faith, having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and it bleaches them whiter than snow.

Only Christ's blood can do that. And so you can't come into the Christian fellowship and fake it. You have to claim not only Jesus as Savior, but as Lord and master. So worship God with your giving. Worship God with your devotions, your time that you spend in prayer and reading the scripture.

For the 62% of you that don't open the daily text, yeah, I can track that. That don't open the daily text, that have the devotions, I'm not offended. I don't care. It's a tool that's useful for you. I only spend a few hours every Sunday working on that for you.

No worries. I'm not hurt. It's fine. I'm glad to do it for the 30, you know, whatever percent of you that do open them. And it's not anonymous, I actually know, like, I could.

I don't write the list down, but it actually tells me who doesn't open them. By the way, it's a great tracking tool, so. I love analytics. I love website analytics. YouTube analytics is so much fun.

Yeah, exactly.

Worship Christ in your devotionals. Set a good foundation in those things, but don't take devotional time lightly. I hope that the devotional that I send out to you each day is. Is just a starting place for you. Because honestly, you know, it's like, if you eat, if you're like, I've got to leave, I'm late for work, or I'm late heading out the door, I'm just going to grab one of these little breakfast bars, folks.

That isn't going to carry you very far today. All right? Like, you need meat, you need solid food, you need nutrition, you need to fill yourself up. We've got to do that in our lives. Get into the Word of God.

When you start reading the Word of God, it begins reading you. When you start reading the Word of God, he starts revealing things in you that as your Lord and Savior, he wants to remove or to polish or to get rid of so that he can shine you up and make you into the person he created you to be. You need a good foundation personally in your life when you come to church. You need honesty. Sure, you don't have to share with everybody around, like, the deepest, darkest things in your life, but.

But as you open yourselves up to one another, we begin to see what the early church saw. Community, unity within the body of Christ, Fellowship, meeting of needs. We have people here that we love that have needs. Many of them are financial. Some of them are material or physical of some kind.

We want to meet those needs. Allow Christ to be your Lord and your master. Worship God with your givings, your devotion and your heart, and most of all, your honesty and authenticity.