Hey, church family, if you got your Bibles, we're going to be in 2nd Corinthians chapter 9.

We're going to study the entire chapter.

And again, in case you tuned in yesterday, we're talking about how we end our services.

After we glorify God in worship by singing and word, then at the end of the service, one of our pastors, often me, says

something like, we believe the gospel demands a response. And three ways we respond around here

is singing. That's what we talked about yesterday. Bringing and praying. And when we talk about

bringing, what we mean is if you have a church background, we bring our ties and our offerings. Now, the Bible teaches

what is called first fruit, faithful giving. And actually, I don't love the word giving because

everything that we have is gods. And so when we bring our ties and offerings, we're not actually

giving to God anything.

How can you give someone something that is already theirs?

Like if I let you borrow my truck and you kept it for two weeks, it would be way too long,

but then you came back to me and say, boy, do I have a gift for you?

And you gave me back my truck.

I would think you don't understand what giving means. And so I think I like to use

the word bring, even though the Bible talks about giving. And again, because we understand that

everything is the Lord's. And what first fruits faith giving means, we get it from the idea of the tithe in the scriptures.

And a tithe literally means 10%. And sometimes Christians will ask, well, do Christians have to tithe

and tithe in Old Testament concept, which I would say no. Jesus says that we should tithe.

But it's not just 10%, it's the first 10%.

And that 10% should just be like a starting point, a baseline.

But as a believer in Jesus, I have good news.

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