One of the things that I always like to say, especially on a night like tonight, is going verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book.

You just talk about what God wants you to talk about.

I've found that the frequency of topics as they come up in the through the Bible study, it's exactly the frequency that God wants us to talk about these things.

So in this case, the concept of giving is,

pardon me, Second Corinthians, chapter 8 and 9 is about that. And we've been on that in the last

week or two on these Wednesdays. As he's talking to the Corinthians about giving of their

financial resources to the church for helping other churches,

especially those in Jerusalem. So this is kind of an important thing. Paul's addressing the

Corinthian Church about what they promised to give already. They sort of made a pledge of giving

a year earlier, and now Paul has happened to sort of light

a fire under the church saying, hello, you guys said you're going to give. Let's get to the giving

part. And that's really the idea. The context, maybe even best last Wednesday night,

2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9, if we back up to

the last chapter in verse 9, it says, for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was

rich, yet for your sakes, he became poor, that you, through his poverty, might be rich.

This is really the idea of the wealth that comes from becoming poor. And then we get to be rich because Christ became poor for us. And the irony that's

around giving, in fact, it reminds you of that church picnic. Everyone brought food.

You know, and one single guy is the single guy always shows up with two pieces of bread and a slice of bologna to the church picnic.

And, you know, a family comes and they set up their camp right in front of him.

And they've got mashed potatoes and fried chicken, cornbread and salad and two

large apple pies with some deep freeze vanilla ice cream like this family came ready to roll.

Well, the grandmother of the family saw the young single man leaned over and said,

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