1 Corinthians 16 | Pastor Drew

Uh today we are closing out our series in Corinthians.

This has been something that we have gone through this week.

I mean this year.

We began back in about February.

We started a series in Corinthians, and so this will be the last message in this series.

Did not Elder Chris Robinson do a phenomenal job last week?

Hey, amen.

He really set us up well, and I am grateful for being able to come behind that and talk about now what that means in verse 16.

Please stand as we read the word of God.

Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also.

On the first day of every week, one of you is to put aside it and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come.

When I arrive, whomever you may approve, I will send them with letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem.

And if it is fitting for me to go also, they will go with me.

But I will come to you after I go through Macedonia.

For I am going through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may send me on my way wherever I may go.

For I do not wish to see you now just in passing, for I hope to remain with you for some time, if the Lord permits.

But I will remain in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

Now, if Timothy comes, see that he is with you without cause to be afraid, for he is doing the Lord's work, as I also am.

So let no one despise him, but send him on his way in peace, so that he may come to me, for I expect him with the brethren.

But concerning Apollos, our brother, I encouraged him greatly to come to you with the brethren, and it was not all his desire to come now, but he will come when he has opportunity.

Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

Let all that you do be done in love.

Now I urge you, brethren, you know the household of Stephanus, that they were the first fruits of Achaia, and that they had devoted themselves for ministry to the saints, that you also be in subjection to such men and to everyone who helps in the works and labors.

I rejoice over the coming of Stephanatus, Stephanus, and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have supplied what was lacking on your part, for they have refreshed my spirit and yours.

Therefore, acknowledge such men.

The churches of Asia greet you, Achilla, Aquila, and Prisca, greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.

All the brethren greet you, greet one another with a holy kiss.

The greeting is in my own hand.

Paul, if anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed.

Maranatha, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.

My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

Father, we thank you and love you, and we thank you, Lord, for the 15 chapters that we have covered, the messages that we have heard, the things that we have been challenged with, God, and we pray that your spirit would continue to challenge us to be more like Jesus and less like Corinthian culture.

More like Jesus and less like American culture.

More like Jesus above anything else.

We thank you and love you in Jesus' name.

Amen.

May be seated.

Man, so as Chris talked about last week, the resurrection, chapter 15, is the most important uh chapter in all 1 Corinthians because it's about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And then all of a sudden, Paul adds one more letter to this church, what we call chapter 16.

Now he wouldn't have called that, it's just another teaching.

But why after the resurrection?

Why after such great teaching on the resurrection and victory in Christ, would he write another letter?

That's a great question.

We go from victory to now offering.

Oh my goodness.

We go from victory to offering.

Ain't that something?

It is something.

Because Paul now is saying, because you are victorious in Jesus Christ.

This ain't just no typical offering.

This is a specific offering for the poor.

Paul's theology throughout all of the New Testament is rooted in his understanding of Yahweh and Israel's covenant with God that goes back to the Levitical law, that goes back to the covenant, that goes back to how God's people are supposed to reflect God in a world of injustice.

That God's people are to present a different kind of reality.

And he's now saying this is what it looks like.

This is what victorious living looks like.

The powers of darkness, the sin, injustice, and evil that permeates the whole earth does not win.

And because it does not win, and because Jesus Christ crucified, buried, and resurrected wins, the people who follow Jesus in this resurrection ought to be demonstrating life in a culture of death.

There ought to be a different kind of reality for the people of God.

That we challenge death at every avenue, at every turn, that we challenge the mistreatment of people, that we challenge the mistreatment of women, that we challenge the mistreatment of the poor, that we challenge the mistreatment of people with various abilities, that we challenge the mistreatment of God's beautiful and green earth.

Because we represent a different kind of kingdom that is not right or left, but that is only centered on the politics, which is the care and concern of humanity and creation of King Jesus.

That is a different kind of party.

This is why he's saying, Now that you understand this, let me show you what it looks like on skin.

Let me show you the book of James.

One of my favorite commentaries on the book of James is a pastor by the name of Gregory.

He writes a commentary on the book of James.

You know what he calls it?

He calls it faith with real shoe leather, faith with your Nike on, faith with your reebox on, faith with whatever it is that you like to wear on your feet.

Faith is not some abstract idea out there, it shows up in tangible action in the way that we reflect and represent the resurrected Jesus.

Paul would understand this.

And so he says, now about the collection for the Lord's people.

Again, Paul, I don't know about you all, but I've talked to many different people in my life about poverty.

And one of the major dysfunctional, it's dysfunctional.

Some people just don't know, some people just don't read the Bible or actually study it enough, and they just start just spurting off.

Like, you know, the thing that people say, you know, God won't give you more than you can handle.

That's not in the Bible.

But people just keep saying it as if it's in the Bible, and actually it's the exact opposite.

God will actually give you something that you can't handle so that you depend on Him.

But we got these things that we just say, you know, God, you know, cleanliness over God.

That's not in the Bible.

But the same is true about the poor.

In this building, when we bought this building, I had several conversations with people along the way who supported us and who had some dysfunctional imaginations about poverty.

And because I love them, I'll share with them what the rest of the Bible says.

But oftentimes when we talk about the poor, go to the next one.

We often hear people, and this is about opening our hands, by the way.

We often hear people who say, you know, the poor you always have with you.

But you will not always have meaning of the poor.

There was a man right here before we ever started this church in here.

He told me this right here in this room, right here before it was dust and dirt and all kinds of stuff.

He said, You know, you know, Andrew, you always have the poor with you.

You gotta focus on Jesus.

I said, I don't know that Jesus.

I if you read Matthew 25, I would say that uh if anyone wants to get to heaven, they gotta get a recommendation letter from the poor.

Read Matthew 25.

Whatever you have done to the least of these, you have done unto me.

This is not works-based faith.

This is a faith that actually works.

Recommendation from the poor.

Matthew 25.

Oh, people have said this.

You just always have the poor with you.

You know, really, where does Jesus get this from?

Let's go.

Next one.

Deuteronomy 15.

Uh-oh.

Therefore, there will always be poor people in the land.

Therefore, I command you to be open-handed towards your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

When Jesus says that, he's calling the disciples to this, which actually means being more generous.

Deuteronomy, baby.

We better understand the history of Israel if we're going to talk about what the church is supposed to be doing today.

And there's been a lot of things that we've gotten wrong because we just nipped it and we've looked at it from our current position or our Americanized individualism that's built on consumerism and consumption.

And then we begin to take on the ideologies of America rather than the truth of God in Scripture.

However, there goes back to four.

Deuteronomy chapter 15, verse 4.

Deuteronomy 15:4

Go back.

However, there need to be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God has given you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you.

He ain't talking about us necessarily being rich either.

Blessings come in more than financial mammon.

He's not talking about that.

But it's important that we understand this that there be no need.

That there need to be no poor people among you.

Next slide.

Let's go back now with this in context.

There will all be poor people in the land, therefore I command you to be open-handed towards your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.

And then if your people, Hebrew men or women, sell themselves to you and serve you six years, and the seventh year you must let them go free.

This is justice.

This is to make sure that nobody gets too much.

See, the Levitical laws were always set up so that no one would get too much.

That's why there was a reset.

Because what would happen is land would trade, and justice would happen.

The people of God would say that they were people of God, but really they were people of the empire.

They laying in bed with Pharaoh or laying in bed with Nebuchadnezzar, laying in bed with Rome.

This is the seven letters of the church to Revelation.

Only two of them are found faithful, the other five are called to repent.

The people of God have a history of getting this wrong.

And then just going with the flow.

Scripture will tell us something different.

Next slide.

And when you release them, do not send them away into camps.

Supply them liberally from your clock, your threshing floor, and your wine press.

Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you.

Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you.

That is why I give you this command today.

That didn't change.

That doesn't change because we find faith in Jesus.

As a matter of fact, Jesus fills it up in his broken body.

He actually fills this up.

He is the fulfillment of this.

And he calls his people to follow him at all costs.

Next slide.

You need to understand Paul's theology.

Galatians, Paul's referring to in 16, he's referring to something he's already said to numerous churches in the New Testament.

Galatians 2, 10.

All they asked is that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

This is Paul's writing in the New Testament.

Next slide.

This important church, Acts chapter 11, the founding of what we call the church, the missionary journeys that begin in Antioch chapter 11.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

They're made fun of.

They're made fun of by the outsiders.

They call them little Christ.

They're joking because they they Luke.

Luke writes Luke and Acts.

Same writer writes both books.

Same writer writes both books.

Luke is unapologetically committed to the poor.

Why?

It's because he understands the history of Israel.

Jesus was committed to the people who were pushed outside on the margins.

And before they start these three missionary journeys in Acts chapter 11, Antioch, the disciples, as each one was able, decided to provide help for the brothers and sisters living in Judea.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

This is the poor.

Next slide.

Romans, wherever you want to go where Paul is at, you'll find Paul's concern for the poor.

For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem.

They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them.

For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them with their material blessings.

This is baptism language.

Neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, rich or poor, male nor female, these things don't divide us.

These things don't separate us.

There's no big, me, little you anywhere in the kingdom of God.

These things actually unite us and bring us together in baptismal language.

How many of you understand?

I've said this multiple times, that the baptismal waters of Jesus are thicker than biological blood.

And somehow, some way, society, Christians get weak and they start caving to dysfunctional family values, caving to dysfunctional societal battle values, caving to the people who have the power.

I can tell you this I'm committed to following Jesus, whatever the cost.

And I hope the church everywhere would be committed to the same.

Next slide.

For I testify that they gave as much as they were able and even beyond their ability entirely on their own.

Church, are we committed to the people on the margins of society in our own congregation and those who are around us in this kind of way?

This is a big witness.

This is a big reason why many people don't mess with the church.

Because the church has neglected its calling to the poor.

And has given us a bad witness.

Next slide.

So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to visit you in advance and finish arrangements for the generous gifts you had promised.

Then it will be great, ready as a generous gift, not as one grudgingly given.

As a matter of fact, we're called to give generously within our means and to be joyous about it.

Not asking you to give everything you got.

He said give the edges of your fields.

It wasn't a handout.

It was human dignity when people don't have access to meaningful jobs or employment.

It strips us of human dignity.

Which then leads us into cycles of poverty, injustice, trauma, substance abuse, alcoholism.

It's poverty, evil, and poverty that lead us there.

Nobody signed up and said, Man, let me sign the poverty sheet.

Does anybody know anybody know what they're here?

Somebody that signed up and said, Hey man, I want to grow up and be oppressed and be poor.

Somebody meet get, matter of fact, put my name on the first two lines.

I don't, I haven't met a person in my life, no matter how hurt or how dysfunctional or how broken they might appear to us.

I've never met a person that said, man, sign me up for the trauma, the poverty, the substance abuse, the pain, the hurt, the sorrow, and maybe even suicide.

I don't know one person that's ever signed up on that list.

Next slide.

However, I'm on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the Lord's people there, for Macedonia and Achaia, we're pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the Lord's people in Jerusalem.

You know what's interesting here?

Is that the Gentiles are now finding solidarity with Jewish believers.

There've been a lot of persecution in Jerusalem.

And now the Gentiles who have been grafted in, now they're providing material support for the people who were supposed to inherit the blessing from the beginning, but they jacked it too.

Right?

That goes to tell you that there's something about us as people that God calls us to work across boundaries that divide us in society.

This is the way of the world, the way of Jesus is.

When we see humanity created in the image and likeness of God, just like us, we're called to love them.

As a matter of fact, there's something about immigrants and foreigners too, right?

As a matter of fact, you're supposed to treat the immigrants and foreigners as your own kin.

We don't have to pause on that.

So I want to make sure we understand this.

Next slide.

I'll spare you some more.

Go ahead.

Next slide.

I don't know what that is.

That ain't supposed to be there.

But I want to be very, very clear that we are called to be people who open our hands.

We're called to live open lives.

People who open our hands.

The collection in chapter 16 is chapter 12 with money attached to it.

Isaiah 12 · chapter mention

If Jerusalem suffers, guess what?

The Corinthians cannot say that's their problem.

The Corinthians are also saying your problem is our problem.

This is different than the worship of Mammon.

Paul says, give according to your means.

Mammon says, teach us to clutch our stuff.

Grace.

Teaches us to have charity.

Charitas is the Greek word for grace.

Before we get the word charity.

Grace and charity, guess what?

The grace that we all receive in Jesus is charity.

What God gives me isn't only and is never ever simply for me.

The cross closes our pride, but the resurrection and the resurrection opens our hands.

The next point is that we have to now open our lives.

In verses 5 through 18, Paul names people, Timothy, Apollos, Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus.

The Christian faith is not just some kind of idea, it's a people.

Apollos is somebody that's talked about earlier on in 1 Corinthians.

Matter of fact, he's addressing the divisions.

Some follow Apollos, some follow Paul, right?

Some follow Cephas, which is the rock Peter, right?

He's addressing these things, and yet he doesn't allow that to hinder his love for Apollos.

In 16, he says, Our brother Apollos.

Our brother Apollos here.

They tried to make Paul an Apollos rival.

See, here's part of the culture in Corinth, which is also the same culture in the world, which is part of the Roman wrangling, which is part of the Olympic Games.

It's in the culture and society.

It's in Marion, it's in Indianapolis.

It's in New York City, New York City, it's in Chicago, man.

You go to other parts of the world, the same thing is there.

Where we're trying to make people rivals or trying to make nations rivals against each other.

But Paul kept calling Apollos his brother.

He would not give in to the Roman wrangling that the world and society participated in.

This letter begins with Paul versus Apollos, but it ends with Paul saying, our brother Apollos.

Because people trying to create rivals, Paul never gave into it.

Corinth creates wars that God's people don't have to fight, y'all.

There's some wars out here that we just ain't got to get into.

Let that be on the world.

That's not our fight.

We don't have to create camps.

That's what politics do.

That's what culture does.

That's what ethnocentrism does.

That's what social media can even do.

Churches can even, denominations create camps where you have to make somebody your enemy because somebody else told you to.

This is why Paul says to stand firm in love.

Be on your guard.

Pay attention.

Stand firm in the faith.

Be courageous.

And then he brings 1 Corinthians 13 back up around, baby.

He says, do everything in love.

You can do all of these other things, but if you have not love, you've compromised and sacrificed.

And it's nothing.

It's in vain.

We gotta keep these verses together, y'all.

That strength without love is domination.

Courage without love is aggression.

And conviction without love is arrogance.

The cross of Jesus is foolishness to the world, and that is what defines Christian strength.

And this is what we build our lives on.

This is the foundation.

It is foolishness to the Jews and a stumbling block to the Gentiles.

I got a picture here of something I want to show you.

In 2017, I went on a Sankofa journey to 16th Street Baptist Church where the four women, the four young girls were blown up.

I had to go down there, had option to go down there in a Sankofa journey.

This is a beautiful picture of Jesus.

Jesus with his arms stretched out wide.

He's got one hand that's pushing back injustice.

And the other hand that's open to forgiveness.

Next slide.

After this happened, there you are the four girls who were blown up in the church.

Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair, Carol Rosamond Robertson, and Cynthia Diane Wesley.

The Wells window in England.

The Welsh they had this made.

And they had this sent.

Isn't that interesting?

A place where the slave trade was very, very prominent for a very long time.

That they were the ones that sent this and had this done.

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.

Dedicated June 6, 1965, they took up an offering for some people who had been mistreated and had been mistreated in this country for a very long time, and said, We need to show hope and love and encouragement in this moment.

This is what our sisters and brothers throughout the world, and particularly in America, need in this moment.

This is what our black brothers and sisters in America need in this moment.

Isn't that interesting?

This is Paul's theology of reconciliation, Jew, Gentile, together as one in Christ.

They're living this out from afar, taking up an offering to bless them.

Next slide.

You don't get a chance, you ever get a chance to go down there?

I recommend you go down there.

My family came here from North Carolina, petifers.

They came here seeking opportunity, escaping the South.

These were free black folks.

But during the antebellum period of slavery, free black folks could get it too.

We enslaved your butt too.

So some of our family left, came up here with the Quakers, settled here in Weaver, but many of them stayed.

There's a man who was the first black pennies owner of a bank in Alabama by the name of William Petiford, who pastored this church at one point in time.

I have a tremendous respect, appreciation, and a responsibility to be faithful in my time.

Amen.

We don't forgive injustice by pretending that it didn't happen.

And we don't fight injustice by becoming captive to hatred.

We don't play Rome's games with Rome's rules.

Our rules are love, mercy, truth, grace, compassion, resistance, and refusing to hate anybody.

We do not play Rome's games by Rome's rules.

Stand firm, church, without closing your heart.

These people devoted themselves to the service of the Lord's people.

Again, this is in a Corinthian culture that celebrated status.

They love, you know, in this Corinthian culture, you could power up by the status that you got in society.

It was all about acquiring more and more position.

Because that was to say that you're somebody special.

Let's power up.

Let's keep powering up.

Right?

That's not the kingdom of God.

Jesus powers up by powering down.

Jesus is victorious by dying in Corinthian culture.

A lot of people had a hard time following Jesus because they thought he was weak.

I wonder if that thought still takes place today.

That people have misunderstood strength and that our weakness is our strength.

That we don't have to power up.

I was talking to some brothers yesterday about nonviolence and the beatitudes when Jesus says to turn your cheek, and how oftentimes people have thought that that means accept abuse.

No, it doesn't mean that.

As a matter of fact, in the culture, when somebody, when a man would slap someone, a Jewish man would slap somebody in the culture, he would backhand them and hit them on this side.

Well, guess what?

If you turn your cheek, he can't backhand you this way.

He's now forced to face you with dignity.

And now you gotta look at him.

You gotta look at him in his eyes.

This is not about weakness, church.

As the world understands, this is about strength through weakness, that only resurrection power can raise us a new life.

This is the life that Jesus caused us to live.

So the Corinths were celebrating status.

But the kingdom of God, it celebrates service.

It celebrates serving others.

This is the whole purpose of the upside down kingdom, that the first will be last and the last will be first.

Now we don't need to sell us going out and doing something as a church and then posting selfies and saying, look at what we did.

That ain't what I'm talking about.

I'm reminded by my global sisters and brothers all the time that that's just really some stuff that we do over here in the West that has spread to other places, by the way.

That's not what we do.

We serve and don't look for other people to pat us on the back.

We serve not because we're trying to get anything back in return.

We serve simply because we've been loved, served, forgiven, and given grace.

And it's our witness in the world to serve without expecting anything in return.

The cross closes our pride, church.

The resurrection opens our lives.

The last point is to open our hearts.

He says to greet one another with a holy kiss.

This is verses 19 through 24.

He says, greet one another with a holy kiss.

Unfortunately, we have minimized the holy kiss to a passing of the peace in our society, and we actually don't understand the ramifications and the beauty and the power of the holy kiss.

You have to think again, part of the problem in Corinth, when it came to the rich oppressed and the poor, the rich had the jobs, they were able to work, and then they had the poor people who could sell themselves to them for a period of time, and they had to work, and then the rich would go show up at the love feast, eat a ball of food by the time the poor gets there to get eaten.

And the food left, and the rich are drunk.

That was their communion.

So it's being very intentional when you greet each other with the holy kiss.

You gotta lay your high monkeys down.

You gotta lay your power down.

This is the rich kissing the poor.

This is the Jewish and the gentiles kissing each other.

This is male and female kissing one another, laying down any kind of power dynamic that exists in Corinthian culture.

Now we've been baptized by individualism, we've been baptized by dualism, this whole separation of sacred and secular.

We've misread the scripture.

And so, to even think about doing that, some of y'all looking at y'all spouses or your significant others now, like you better not even think about that.

In that culture, they weren't thinking of that in that way.

Of course, society might have been.

Some of that societal thinking, that cultural thinking had crept into the church, but they didn't think of kisses in the way that we do.

Son of I love you, girl.

You know.

That's not what they were doing.

It's just a friendly, loving kiss.

And guess what?

This is part of how they met on common ground.

Men kissing men even, and they weren't thinking about that's almost what they were thinking about.

That's part of our problem and our perversion.

The two men can't love each other without wanting to be together.

That's part of our sickness that we need help with.

Because God created us to have intimate relationships with one another in the same gender, apart from sexual relations.

What are we talking about?

Men who can't touch each other.

And let me say this: I understand that there's been things that have happened to some of us and violated in different kinds of ways where we gotta get to a place and maybe we opened up to that, and I don't want to play with that, I don't want to diminish that, I don't want to act like that doesn't exist, but because that exists both ways, men and women right here today in this congregation.

So don't try to go out to church and go grab somebody and speak me, hook, no, no, no, no, no.

Today we gotta operate a little differently now.

We gotta ask for permission.

Because unfortunately, we have a problem with taking.

So permission now is honor and respect.

Can't just take it.

I used to be one of those people that just hug everybody, and I still do, but I've become more aware of the fact that not every hold up, dog.

What the?

And then next thing you know, you're getting off sensitive.

What you mean?

Dang, don't you want to hug me?

You know, it ain't got nothing to do with you.

Get outside of yourself.

Got nothing to do with you, man.

But this is a way that they would have done away with the hierarchical culture in worship.

Rich and poor kissing, Jew and Gentile kissing, the enslaved and free kissing, the powerful and weak kissing.

Because I am not above you and you are not beneath me.

The holy kiss is a theology that you can see.

It's not something we just think about, about how we understand God and his relationship with humanity, but it's actually something tangible that we actually can see.

The gospel actually gets inside of our bodies.

It's in who we greet, who we talk to, who we listen to, who receives honor.

This is why those chairs are back there taken out of that church.

We want some honor.

There's chairs for you back there.

They won't go up here.

That's some stuff that we created because we have baptized Corinthian culture into the church.

And then people seek that position and they get it.

And then when they get it, they abuse it because they still have the status-seeking part of Corinthian culture too.

That is not the kingdom of God.

That's a different kind of kingdom in the church.

And what is this last part here in verse 21, 22?

Man, he says something revolting.

If anyone does not love the Lord, let the person be accursed.

Come, Lord.

Woo!

That sounds harsh.

We had a staff meeting this week.

We read over the text that we're gonna preach on on Sunday, and we always read through the text and talk about it.

And one of our staff members said, What's up with that?

Let me be clear.

Paul is absolutely talking to Christians.

He's not talking about the world.

He is talking to Christians who still got more Corinth in them than the Christ.

And they have found allegiance with Corinth.

This is serious judgment, allegiance language.

But this is not a permission to curse people that we dislike.

That is not of God.

The real question that's being asked here is who is Lord?

That's the question.

And so when people want to follow other things, Paul's saying, let them be accursed because they're going to reap what they sow.

And sometimes you can talk to people about things and they don't want to listen, and they're brothers and sisters in Christ.

All of you have had situations like this, and you have to let them be accursed.

Not that they would go to hell or condemnation, no, no.

But part of the way in which God allows us to be corrected is by giving people over to Satan so that they might be saved.

Sometimes we're trying to save people, and God is saying, let them, let them go.

Not that you don't care, not that you won't pray, or not that you've condemned them to hell, but you're holding on to something that God actually wants to address, but because you want to play God, it can't happen.

But then right after that, he says, Maranatha, come, Lord.

Come finish what the resurrection started.

Defeat greed and domination.

Defeat exploitation, sin and injustice.

Defeat evil and ultimately defeat death.

Until then, church, we live resurrection right now in our everyday life.

He ends here with grace and love.

My love to all of you in Christ Jesus, not only the Paul people, but also to the Apostles people.

Not only to those people who agreed, but also to the people who didn't treat him so well.

Paul stands firm without closing his heart.

Again, church, the cross closes our pride, and resurrection opens our hearts.

We have several children in our preschool.

Going to the bathroom.

The other day I got a picture of them going to the bathroom, Miss Madielle.

Taking them to the bathroom.

We have several families in need of assistance with scholarships.

Or what will happen is we'll take a debt and trust the Lord later on to figure it out.

Because our director, she got some grit.

She got some faith.

She's gonna hold on.

She ain't just putting folks out.

I'm just saying.

And I got to live with the tension of our director.

Pastor Drew, we ain't putting people out.

The doubt we're looking at bottom lines, it's like, well, they can't pay.

No, no, we ain't doing that.

Love perseveres.

Love holds on.

And so what I'm going to do today, what we are going to do is take up an offering for our preschool.

What has the Lord laid on your heart?

And what is the Holy Spirit speaking to you now to give to families who cannot afford preschool but need it to work?

Anything you want to add to that, Aaron?

So right now, I want to invite the prayer leaders up as well.

As we close out today, there'll be a few moments of prayer.

Maybe you need prayer for yourself.

Maybe you need prayer for your own heart, your own hands, your own life.

To say, Lord, open me up.

I've been closed off.

I've condemned people that God didn't condemn.

I've mistreated people or I've looked at people who are poor as if it's only their problem and didn't see my connection to them.

This is all of us, church.

Maybe I misjudged somebody and I didn't have enough information about them.

And so right now, I'm going to ask for you all to whatever the Holy Spirit has placed on your hearts, to prepare yourselves to give.

There will be two offering placed to come around again, just like we do in offering.

But this particular offering is for the poor, for the people on the margins who are in our preschool.

Families are in our preschool.

Good families.

And I'm asking the church to say, on the first day of the week, which is today, pick up an offering for the poor among you and to care for them.

While at the same time, you're free to come forward for prayer.

Let us pray.

Lord, we come to you right now and we thank you for your word.

We thank you, God, that because of the resurrection of Christ and because of the baptism of the Holy Spirit who calls Christians to live resurrected lives, even in a society of death and destruction, you call your people to persevere and to trust you through it all.

And even when it looks like people and families are defeated, God, you invite us to trust you.

You invite us to give, anyways.

You invite us to participate in solidarity and sacrifice by giving to others what you have given to us.

You call us to practice what we say we believe in real time and space through generosity.

And so, right now, God, we ask that whatever it is that you put on our heart to give, may we give freely and generously.

May we not feel convicted in a way that is outside of your will or pressured, but do this with generosity and within the means that we have to offer what we have to offer, God, and trust you with everything else.

We thank you and love you in Jesus' name.

Amen.