Well, good morning, Valley View. We’re continuing our study of the book of Philippians. So if you have a Bible, you want to go ahead and turn there. If you don’t have a Bible slip out any time we have them out in the Connection Corner, note taking outlines are there as well. We’re going to wrap up chapter two today. I was asked this week by someone and I had mentioned this at the men’s breakfast, but someone asked me, hey John, what are you? We know you like to read a lot. What are you reading for fun, I thought I read everything for fun. It’s all fun. But I know what you mean by that. And I was a little embarrassed to admit, but I went ahead and said, well, I’m reading a book about serial killers. I know it sounds weird. It’s a little embarrassing. I thought. In my defense, I thought it was primarily a book about how lead poisoning, in the 70s, especially in the Pacific Northwest, led to a lot of challenges. But the main one was serial killers was the prominent position of this author. And so I was thinking about that and the odd connection to another book I had been reading about narcissists. Of course, narcissists, you know, are people completely self-absorbed, can never admit wrong, not even possibly conceive they might be wrong, don’t receive correction well, and some of you are going, I know a few those. But no elbows right now, okay? We may have those traits. That doesn’t mean we’re all full blown narcissist. Point being, as I thought about having read both those kind of odd books, there’s an interesting connection about those that really stood out to me. And it’s that none of us would ever recommend anyone look to either of those people as a person to follow in life. Those are the worst of the worst in society. You would never go. You know, there are some redeeming attributes about serial killers and narcissists that maybe we could look to and follow it. No, you would say run from that kind of person. Literally stay far away from that kind of personality. Never follow anything about them. Worst of the worst. Which raises the question for us today in that Paul is going to address, then who should we follow? We know who not to follow. But look, everybody’s going to follow somebody. It sometimes we do it on purpose. Sometimes we do it by accident, led along without realizing it. The question for each of us to wrestle with, who am I going to follow? Who am I going to pattern my life after? Who am I going to look to for wisdom, advice, direction? Paul today to the Philippians is going to commend to them two people in particular. It’s a young church and especially a young church needs examples. And Paul says, here’s two people. I’m going to send them your way. Follow them, model them, model your life after them. We all need that. And what we’re going to see in today’s passage are ten qualities of the commendable person. I know you’re thinking the ten point outline, John. You’re struggling to get through three. Don’t worry. I’m going to keep it moving. We’ll get through all ten and we’re going to do something a little different here at the end of the service today as well, to build on that. Ten qualities of the commendable. So let’s start by just reading our passage here in Philippians chapter two, verse 19 through 30. I’m going to read the whole section to set up these ten points. I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon. So that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare, for they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know, Timothy, his proven worth. How is a son with a father? He has served with me in the gospel. I hope, therefore, to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me. And I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also. I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need. For he has been longing for you all, and has been distressed, because you heard that he was ill. Indeed, he was ill near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow, I am the more eager to send him therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. So receive him in the Lord with all joy and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me. So Paul commends these two individuals to them. Timothy. Epaphroditus, these are people you should look to and follow. Now let’s look at these ten qualities that he highlights. What are the ten things that we see in here. We could list more. We could summarize some. But these are ten that stood out to me. First is that Timothy in particular is devoted. He is devoted. Look at how he describes Timothy in verse 19. I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be cheered by the news of you. For I have no one like him. Timothy is devoted in such a way that he stands out above the rest, and you’ve seen this in various settings. Many of us. Maybe it’s at work, maybe it is in ministry, maybe it’s in sports. A lot of people just kind of tend to be at similar skill levels, and then they’ll come along. Someone who really stands out stands out above the rest. Paul here, when he uses this word, I have no one like him. It’s real similar to a word we used earlier. I think it was over in chapter two, verse two, where he said, complete my joy by being of the same mind. We talked about how that word was similar to this idea of maybe like a soulmate, same- souled, linked at the soul. And this still uses that key idea of soul, but it’s like sold similar. So that’s again this idea that we are so lined up in the way we approach ministry and the way we approach life that no one else quite gets it. Paul is saying like I do, but Timothy. I remember when we served in ministry on the college campus at U of L, Julie and I served there and plenty of kids passionate about sharing with Christ with others, plenty of kids passionate about living for Christ rather than for the world. But there was this one guy, Matt, who stood out above all the rest. I mean, he was the preeminent leader on the campus, and he wasn’t even trying to lead. He was just so infectious in his enthusiasm and personality, his energy, his drive to tell others about Christ. And that ministry flourished almost solely because of him. Of course, Jesus working through everyone and the Holy Spirit. But he stood out. We had no one else like him. We had no one else, and everyone else was great. But he stood out as far above the others. He was devoted at his very core, and making sure these students on this campus are reached for Christ. Paul says this about Timothy. That’s the kind of person you want to look to. Someone who’s devoted, someone who cares. That’s something I pray for here at Valley View when I pray for our new members, I think we want people who are fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. We don’t want to just be kind of partway halfway in. And I get it, if that’s where you are. But for our members, for our people who have said, this is my church, I’m all in. We want fully devoted followers of Christ. That’s where you experience your spiritual life to the fullest. That’s where life flourishes. The most joy is to be found devoted. That’s who we look to. So that’s the first quality that he points out here. Devoted. Second is genuine, someone who has genuine concern. He says this about Timothy in verse 20, for I have no one like him who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. And look, that’s what everyone wants in someone that you are seeking to follow. You want people around you who are genuinely concerned for you. There are some who are genuine but not concerned. There are some who are concerned but not genuine. You want the two together genuinely concerned. We looked at this when we studied Romans chapter 12, verse nine. Let love be genuine and you know the difference. One of the worship songs the students sing is fake love. This world is full of fake love. We want the real thing. This world is full of people pretending to love you and care about you, but they don’t. This world is full of fake love. We want genuine love, genuine concern. That’s the kind of people you want to pursue and be around and here’s the hard thing about genuine love. Sometimes that requires us to do the thing we wouldn’t want to do. Sometimes that requires that we say to one another, I see this in your life, and this isn’t good. Genuine love requires truth. You can’t avoid truth if you really love someone now, the truth should be delivered in gentleness and kindness, not as a stick to hurt someone with. But it’s done in love to say you are not experiencing God’s best in your life. If you continue down this path that is part of genuine love. Genuine concern is not just avoiding truth. So genuine. This is Timothy. This is the kind of person to follow someone who loves genuine. Number three is that we should be Christ centered. Look at verse 21 again. I have no one – 20 and 21. I have no one like him who would be genuinely concerned for your welfare, for they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. If you’re following anyone, it should be someone who is Christ centered, but not as a show for their own interest. Paul has pointed out here a couple of times, there are those who preach the gospel out of selfish ambition. They’re even in ministry primarily for their own sake, which is sad to say. It does happen. One member of the church, when we were talking about narcissist told me. He said, yeah, I’ve met a narcissist. In fact, I got to know him in Bible college. It’s sad to say, but it’s true. Some preach the gospel out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but who you should follow is the one who has Christ at the center of their life, Christ at the center of all that they do. They’re making it about him, not themselves. Christ centered. Number four is that he should be proven. Someone you’re seeking to follow should be proven. You could add the word tested, proven, tested. You want to follow people who’ve been through some stuff and come out of it better and stronger. They’ve experienced some hard things in life. Look back at verse 22 here. You know, Timothy’s proven worth. How as a son with a father he served with me in the gospel, not only Timothy, but if you look down at verse 29, receive him in the Lord with all joy. This is about Epaphroditus, honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life. He’s been through some stuff, he’s been through some hardships, he’s been through some challenges, and you’ve seen him come through him still trusting Christ, still growing, not cursing the Lord and giving up on him. Because I had a hard thing in my life. He’s been proven and tested. This was a significant debate in the early church, first couple hundred years of the church. They went through the seasons of persecution, but then reprieve. Roman government would persecute them, but then they’d back off depending on who was in power. And what would happen during the persecution is a whole lot of people would be killed, but also a lot of people would get to the point of martyrdom but deny their faith to get out of martyrdom, to escape being a martyr. And so and by the way, many of the Christian leaders came to see that the person most likely to in the moment, in the heat of the battle, in the moment when it’s been put to them, either deny your faith or be killed. The person most likely to deny their faith in the moment is the one who was most adamant that they never would. I will never– remember Peter with Jesus. I will never deny you, Lord. Now you’re going to three times, never. Oh, just a few hours later. The big debate, though, was what do we do with these folks? Persecution waves over and these folks start coming back around the church, many genuinely feeling bad that they denied their faith. What do we do? Do we let them back in or not? There was a big debate. Some said no way, not ever. That shows that they weren’t truly Christian. Others said, you know what? I wonder what I would have done in that moment. And some people have asked me before, what would you do if someone came in and said, Deny Christ or die? And I said, I hope. I hope God will give me the strength to do the right thing in that moment. I hope, I pray. I also know sometimes I try to get out of the hard thing. Lord, would you give me the strength in that moment? Okay, huge debate, but what the person you want to follow as best as you can is the person who it is proven, who is tested, who has shown they know how to endure. They’ve been through the hard thing, they know what it means, and they’re still turning to Christ. Proven. Tested. Number five, we want someone who is willing to be accountable. Someone who doesn’t have a problem submitting to accountability, someone who doesn’t have a problem of having a spiritual authority over them. In fact, someone who understands the value of that, who relishes that, the value of having a mentor, the value of having someone older than you to pour into you, someone who has wisdom. If you look at how Paul describes Timothy in verse 22, he says, proven worth how as a son with a father, he served with me in the gospel. It’s a clear pecking order here. He– Paul’s the father in the relationship, Timothy’s the son. Timothy is the one who is to submit to Paul’s direction. But listen, I love how he describes this here. He also says he served with me in the gospel. I think those are some of the best and probably the best mentoring type relationships where there is this side by side element, rather than just that. You’ll do what I said top down element. We’re serving together, we’re sharpening one another. We’re actually learning from one another. An older person is encouraged by the enthusiasm of the young. The young gets the encouragement, the wisdom of the old. We work together that way. That’s why at the men’s retreat, the leader there kept hounding over and over again. You got to be intergenerational. Older men have got to be around younger men. You’ve got to be sharpening one another. It works both ways. And Timothy shows I’m willing to say I don’t know it all. I can follow the leadership of another and a good follower will make a good leader. That’s the kind of person you want to look to follow yourself. Someone who’s not above that. They can take the second stage seat. It’s okay. They’re okay with that. Accountable. Number five. Now number six, someone who is willing to go, willing to serve. If you look at verse 23, this is hinted at in this verse. I hope, therefore to send him just as soon as I see you, I will go with me. I trust the Lord, that shortly I myself will come also. Timothy was already known for being sent places. The book of first and second Timothy were written to Timothy, who was in Ephesus working to serve the church. There. Timothy was seen as someone who’s I’m ready to go. Send me out. Where do you need me? I’ll go. And we need to have that kind of mindset, that kind of heart, that kind of attitude. Like in Isaiah, where who can we send, Lord, here I am. Send me –that willingness. And by the way, that’s scary, right? A lot of times we we don’t necessarily want to put ourselves out there that far and go, yeah, Lord, I’ll, I’ll go wherever you send me. Oh, Lord, I’d like to pray about wherever you might present to me and see if that’s best for my plan for life or not. That can be hard. It can be scary. He might call you to go somewhere. In fact, he probably will call you to go somewhere that you wouldn’t have chosen on your own. And you know what that may mean. Most of us think he’ll want me to go to the jungles of Africa. No. He may just want you to go across the street. That might be scarier. Actually, it might be easier to go off to Africa than to that person across the street. But we’ve got to be willing. Let there be a willing heart. That’s the kind of person you want to follow. Where you see that about him. What is it, Lord? I’m ready. Let’s go. Willingness to go now. Number seven, you want to follow someone who is trustworthy. The qualities of the commendable. Someone who is trustworthy. Now, the whole occasion of this letter having been written was that it part for us who Paul mentions here? The first half is talking about Timothy, the second is about Epaphroditus. The whole occasion of the letter is that the Philippians apparently put together a financial gift and sent it to Paul through Epaphroditus. And so you can look over on your own later. Chapter four, verse 18, he says, thanks for the gift from Epaphroditus. I appreciate it. What this shows is that Epaphroditus was trustworthy because he wasn’t taking him a cashier’s check. He was taking gold coins a thousand miles. This guy was trustworthy. You could put that money in his hand. And, you know, every penny penny would get to Paul. We knew this about him with utmost confidence. You want to follow someone who is trustworthy. And the more I serve in ministry, the more that’s a pretty hard and fast line for me in terms of people I’m serving with in leadership. Do I trust them or not? Of course, we all, especially if you’re new to church, there’s going to be areas of growth. Trust is going to be one of them. But what if I’m serving side by side? We’ve got to be able to trust one another to trustworthiness. Can I trust your word? I’ve served with people, said one thing to my face and they turn around, say the exact opposite to someone else an hour later. What are we doing? What are we doing here? Not here. I’m not talking about here. Trustworthy. Now trust takes time to build. We all know this. It can be lost quickly and it takes a lot of time to build. So you’ve got to be patient with those, especially who are new in the faith immature in the faith. We’re going to do dumb things. We’re not going to do everything right. It takes time. It’s small decisions. Luke 16:10. The one who is faithful in a little thing will also be faithful with much. But we stay committed and we keep persevering to become trustworthy. And now the next one, trustworthy and transformed. You want to follow the person whose life has been transformed by Jesus. They have a pre-Jesus story and you wonder, is that even the same person? The guy who spoke at the men’s conference, Tim Brown, kept talking about that. Guys, I’ve done everything and I’ve tried it twice, and I tried to get as good as I could at it. And that’s no longer who I am, he said. I pray often that my kids don’t remember the angry person that I was. Transformed. Here’s how we know this, Epaphroditus. We just know it by his name. His name. If you look at it, you’ve probably heard of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Epaphroditus. You hear her name in his name, which means likely his parents would have been worshipers of Aphrodite, or at least Greek gods in general, naming their own child after a Greek god. By the way, it probably meant something It probably meant something like beloved of Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty. It probably meant something along the lines of handsome. So he’s label. He’s lived with that label his whole life. I am favored of Aphrodite. I’m la… I’m handsome. That is what has been given to him. That is the legacy. That is the spiritual legacy that has been given to him. But here’s the key phrase to remember because he’s not living that out now, he’s living as a Christ follower now, fully devoted, committed, risking his life for the sake of the cross. And here’s the key phrase to remember because I don’t know what your background is. I don’t know what spiritual legacy you were given or not given, but your past, both the decisions you’ve made and the things maybe others have given you or done to you. It doesn’t have to define you. Epaphroditus didn’t let it define him. I guess this is who I’ll always be. And he even kept that name. Your past doesn’t have to have to define you now. It may help describe you. Oh, I see why he’s that way now. If I had been through that. Yeah, I would struggle with that too. But it doesn’t have to define you. He didn’t have to stay a worshiper of Greek gods. He trusted that Christ could move in his life and he could be transformed. Trustworthy. Transformed. Number nine, the kind of person you want to follow is honored and valued. Look at verse 25 and the way that Paul describes Epaphoditus. In fact, he uses five different honorary titles honorifics here, which, by the way, is unparalleled in Paul’s letters. He doesn’t do that for anyone else. There are other places where he does give a number of titles. Here, lumps them together, heavy collection. I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, my fellow worker, my fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need. Each of these titles we could unpack for a while. I’ll mention one. How many of you like to go to Sunergos Coffee? Anybody like to go to that local Louisville coffee shop? That’s the same word here as fellow worker. That’s actually a Greek word that they used to name that coffee shop. Sun with Ergo, works- working together, fellow worker, I see him as someone side by side in the work. And this next title, fellow soldier has that idea as well. In fact, it would have been a technical term to describe someone that you served arm in arm, side by side with in battle. And by the way, in terms of people who have the deepest connection personally in life, there’s usually no one more deeply connected than someone who served side by side on the battlefield. This kind of title, especially as Colby talked about in a Roman colony where we had a lot of veterans, former Roman soldiers, settled there. This is a title that would have meant a lot to them. In fact, we know that that whole city of Philippi really valued titles. Let me tell you how important I am. Here’s my title. Here’s another title. And he’s saying to them, this is a guy you need to follow. This is a guy that Paul respects. And look, if you want to know who to follow, who are other people following? Who are other people valuing? Who do other people honor? That’s the kind of person to look to. And now the last one here, number ten. You want to follow the person. And this is what we’re all called to do is to walk by faith, follow the person who walks by faith. And we saw that modeled in Epaphroditus. Look back at verse 30. He nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me? Epaphroditus was willing to take a risk for the sake of the gospel. Just traveling with money in that day and age would have been very dangerous. He didn’t just hop on the interstate and dash there quickly. No, no, no, this would have been a journey primarily by foot, and there would have been people ready to relieve you of your cares and goods at any moment. Not only that, but he’s a Christian, going to see Paul in prison in Rome, in prison for his Christianity. There’s a lot of risk in that. All of life as a Christian is full of calculated risk. All of life is. There’s no escaping risk. We’re called to walk by faith, even in things that are risky. Even when we served in missions. You know, you want to you know that there’s some risk involved in moving overseas. And we went to about the safest place you can go to do missions in our mind probably was Fiji in the South Pacific. And you think, yeah, John, big risk for the gospel there. But look, I remember one day sitting in my office and I hear wailing, the deepest wailing you could hear. And I look out the window down from our house at the bus stop, and a mother is pulling her daughter out from under a car who had just been ran over and she was dead, nine years old. Risk is everywhere. You’re never going to escape it. 800 people a year die on the interstates in Kentucky. Just driving to work. Just another day. Risk is everywhere. The question is, will we walk by faith, not avoid risk? We walk by faith. And I’m not talking about living so recklessly that you’re throwing your life away. You know what I’m talking about. We don’t walk in fear. We walk by faith. So huge difference. These are the kind of people you want to follow when you see these qualities in someone. That’s the kind of person to go. I want to be like them. How do I get time around you? What can I do? How can I get around you? And I want to do something a little different at the end of the service today, because Paul has commended to them two people. Timothy, and Epaphroditus. I want to commend someone to you right now, in just a second. I have someone come up and speak to you, to speak to all of us, to speak to me. Someone who is respected in the church, someone who is proven, someone who is trustworthy. We could go down this list of qualities. We just wrapped up our previous fiscal year. Quick update on that. We did end up voting the new budget in, and I asked that folks give to help us finish off the year in the in the positive if possible. And we did end up $50,000 short of our need for last year total at the end of the day between expenses and giving. And that’s a lot. Okay, that’s not ideal, but I looked back at the previous year. The previous year, we ended up $213,000 short. So that was a big improvement. That’s a big praise, right? Yeah. We’re always looking for something to praise. That’s a big praise. That’s an improvement. That’s pointed the right direction. But given that this letter, the occasion of this letter was through a gift I thought it would be, this would be a good moment because there’s no one more passionate about giving in our church than Larry Peercy. And so, Larry, if you don’t mind coming up, he’s agreed to just share with us for a couple of minutes about his passion. Thank you Larry. Well, he said I had 5 to 10 minutes, but it looks like I’ve got about 1 or 2 minutes. But I’m going to I’m going to sort of jump into the middle of my, testimony about, giving and tithing. I started, teaching Sunday school when I was 20 years old. And of course, in teaching, you run across some things that, you probably have to deal with. And I started coming under conviction because we were not tithers we gave regularly to the church, but we didn’t tithe. And I began to feel this conviction. And a few years we decided, some of you may have belonged to a church that passed cards around to make a commitment for the budget. And, we did that, and we committed to tithe for a year. And and so we set into that year, and we we started tithing, but we had three little kids and we weren’t making a whole lot of money. And so before long, we were getting behind in our tithing. And I remember at the end of the year, going to the bank and borrowing money to catch up my tithe. And so I said, this isn’t working. And so we went back to just giving. In 1966, in October, we got transferred to Somerset, Kentucky. And so I knew we were going into a new church. And we’re going into a new situation. And so Sharlett and I prayed about it, and I told her, I said, we’re going to start tithing, but we’re going to write the check to the church first, and then we will if if we’re not able to pay the bills, I’ll call the people myself and tell them that they’ll be first next month to get their money. And, you know, I guess I didn’t really know that I was stepping into God’s plan for giving. At that time, I don’t think I knew that there was, about 30 references in the Bible to firstfruits, and so but there was a couple of verses in the book of Haggai that got a hold of me, and they really dealt with me. And I want to read those to you in Haggai, chapter one, verse six, he says, you’ve sown much, but harvest little. You eat, but there’s not enough to be satisfied. Invest in verse nine, he says, you look for much but behold, it comes to little. And when you bring it home, I blow it away. That probably hasn’t ever meant anything to you. But what that said to me was, this is exactly what’s been happening to you. You like you can’t make enough to to please God with your giving. If you take care of all your other needs first. But when we started writing the check to the church first, we never did. I never did have to call anybody and tell them that they were going to get paid the next month. During this time in Somerset, I was teaching again and I had a visitation partner and we would go out, visit people that had visited the church and, that his name was Ray Carroll. He was an All-American football player at the University of Kentucky during the Bear Bryant years. And he was big, he was an offensive lineman and he was bold. And I learned some things from him. He would go knock on the door, and if you didn’t answer, he’d go around, knock on the back door, he would knock on the windows. He’d holler, and and if you were home, you had to come answer him. And the first thing he’d want to know is, if you were a Christian and, you know, I was struggling to ask you if you went to church, you know, but he said, are you a Christian? And then he’d say, are you baptized? Have you been baptized? And then he’d say, do you tithe? And I remember him saying over and over, you know, if you don’t tithe, you try it for three months, and if you don’t believe in tithing after three months, you come tell me and I’ll give you your money back. Now, I never did get bold enough to get to that point, and I never felt like God was telling me to do that. But I did learn some things through this period of time, and one of the things I learned was that, I was at peace now because I felt like that I was totally, totally, willing to follow God. And I don’t know if it’s been that way with you, but with me, the money, I guess, was the hardest thing for me to deal with. And when I got there, then I felt like that I was right with him. And then I started noticing some other things. God met all of our needs. I mean, I learned that God could meet your needs just as easy by decreasing them as he could by giving you more money. And so what happened was we would get to the end of the month and we were we still had money. And and then I started seeing some some contests won and some different things. Money coming in from other ways. And the first thing I knew was that I was I we were able to give more than a tithe and we enjoyed giving. We were excited about giving. And one of the things that we noticed is that I didn’t get upset when the preacher was talking about money, you know, you know, you hear people say, if you do any visiting, then you hear people say, every time I go to church, they’re talking about money. Well, it didn’t bother me anymore. I, I told the pastor he can preach on tithing every Sunday, you know, that’s fine. It’s what touched our hearts. And it’s what got us, right with the Lord. There’s some other things, and I know we don’t have a lot of time, but, I remember learning that giving was God’s idea, wasn’t … it wasn’t the church’s idea. Wasn’t the preacher’s idea. It was God’s, back in Genesis four Cain and Abel brought gifts to God. So how do you think they learned that? Well, they must have learned it from their parents. And maybe it was when God was walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day that, he told them about that. But but I learned that that was God’s plan. I learned that God owns it all. You know, we’re just stewards. There’s a passage in, in, And I won’t read it because I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but it’s in Malachi that says, Will a man rob God? And that used to really bother me because I wondered, how can we rob God? I mean, if God can take five loaves of bread and feed 5000 people, he if he needs some money, he could zap up some money really easy. You know how, how can how can we rob God and and and then it was much later that I guess God gave me that insight that that what, what he was talking about is that we were robbing God of the privilege of blessing us, because God wants to bless his children. And but God is totally holy and he cannot abide sin. So if we’re disobedient in any way, we’re outside of of of God’s blessing because God, God doesn’t change. And I know these verses, I’ve read to you are in the Old Testament, but that passage in Malachi is only two pages away from the New Testament. And in my Bible, it’s only four pages away from where Jesus himself said, I didn’t come to do away with the law. I came to fulfill the law. And it was Jesus who said, you know that it’s more blessed to give than receive. It was it was Jesus that that kept talking about, the things that that, we’re supposed to do with money. He told 38 parables in, in the gospels, and 16 of them have to do with money and finances. So. So what do you do with your money is important. And I believe that that God wants us to return his tithe. We can’t pay a tithe. We can bring the tithe. Everywhere in Scripture talks about tithing. It talks about them bringing the tithe. I believe that, tithing was a part of the law, but I believe that tithing is a part of grace too. And Jesus raised the bar on every area that they dealt with above the law when he said, even if you’re just angry with a person, you’re guilty of of murder. So so he he raised the bar. And I think that that tithing is just simply telling God, yeah, I trust you. And and yeah, I’ll bring it first because it doesn’t take any faith to give the tithe after after you’ve taken care of all your own needs and still have money left over, there’s no faith involved there. For the farmers that were bringing the grains and their cattle and their sheep, to give the first took an act of faith. And and without faith, you can’t please God. So I would encourage you to look look carefully at what God’s Word says about giving and about tithing. And I believe that, you know, God obviously doesn’t need our money. I mean, it’s not about God about to go broke. And if you don’t, turn loose of some money, he’s going to he’s going to suffer. That’s not it at all. It’s about us. It’s about what we need so that God can bless us. And I challenge you to let him bless you in this way. Thank you.