Hey everybody. I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying

Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you

have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've

been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission

of Jesus and the journey of faith.

And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.

You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week.

So in this episode, episode, episode four of a six-part series, it represents a number of

teachings that I did.

Back in 2012 in the fall, we challenged the whole

church community where I was serving as a teaching pastor at Door of Hope to read through the

whole New Testament in 90 days, and hundreds of people did it with us. And we would gather at 6 a.m.

5 mornings a.m. five mornings a.m. to read it aloud together that day's readings. And then on the Sunday

gatherings, we would get together and either Josh White, the other teaching pastor or myself,

would offer teachings connected to that week's readings. So this represents a message where

we were right smack in the middle of reading Paul's letters to the different churches that he planted.

And this is a message about how Paul's vision of how the good news about Jesus

becomes powerfully persuasive when followers of Jesus are living with incredible generosity.

And specifically, in the passage in his second letter

...