Paul and Peter and the Gospel: Part 1
Galatians 2:8-14 · Roger Henderson · Mar 14, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926157206394

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, this morning we're going to continue on in Galatians chapter 2. I'd like to actually, you know, this is kind of the continuation. There's this section starting in verse 1, chapter 2, verse 1 through 10, is kind of one section. Then next week we start kind of into a little bit different section where there's actually an interesting situation that happens with Peter and with Paul. But this section here kind of is talking about Paul's ministry and how he was recognized basically by Peter, James, and John as being actually preaching God's message. I was looking a little bit back at some notes and things. It seems like that previously, it starts off in verse 1, it says, then after an interval of 14 years I went up to Jerusalem. Well, prior to that, You know, Paul was kind of, I wouldn't say unknown, but he was maybe, since he was a Jew, he was a devout Jew and persecuting Christians, they weren't really sure where he was coming from, so to speak. But in this passage, we're going to see that Peter, James, and John really realize that he is actually preaching the good news about Jesus Christ. It's a little bit hard to see, but we'll try to work through that.

If you notice in this passage, what we're just reading here in just a second, there's all these parenthetical statements. In fact, I even added some additional ones because it gets to be so... it's like The part that you want to see is kind of inside parentheses. You notice there's always a parenthetical statement here, and there's one here, and there's actually another one that's in there. And it's hard when you read through it.

It's sort of like I start telling you something, and I say, oh, by the way, and oh, by the way, and oh, by the way. And after you say, well, what did you tell me way back after the two oh, by the ways? What were you trying to tell me initially? And it's helpful to sort that out.

So could I get someone to read? I think we should actually read 1 through 10. And if two people want to read that and just kind of split it up, that would be great. Or if you want to read it all, that's fine. That'll kind of set the context for these verses, mainly verses 7 through 10. But we're going to look back to 6 a little bit. So I know there's not a lot of you here, so. I'll read 1 through 6. OK. All right. Thanks, Carol.

Then after an interval of 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also. It was because of a revelation that I went up, and I submitted to them the gospel, which I preached among the Gentiles, but I did so in private to those who were of reputation, for fear that I might be running a head run in vain. But not even Titus, who was with me, though he was aggrieved, was compelled to be circumcised. But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.

But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with me. But from those who were of high reputation, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. While those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me.

Okay. Anyone else want to read the 7 through 10 part? Roy? But on the contrary, when they saw that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter, For he that wrought defectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty to me toward the Gentiles. And then James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me. They gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship, that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision. Only they would that we should remember the poor, the same which I also was diligent to do. Great. Thanks, Roy. OK, so let's just go ahead here and look.

So I have verses one through, let's look at verse six here, which actually Bob sort of started but didn't really get very far with last week. So it says, and I've kind of colored the parenthetical parts here. because they're going to become important as we go through. Verse 6, but from those who were of high reputation, then here's a parenthesis, what they were makes no difference to me, God shows no partiality, while those who are of reputation contributed nothing to me. So I just kind of went through and looked at each section. The idea of high reputation, this actually occurred earlier on.

That's a phrase Paul seems to use when he's talking about people who were respected in the Christian community, if you will, or in the new church that was starting up. And it's also talked about as pillars in verse 9. So I think that's really speaking of basically Peter, James, and John. They were thought of as being the ones that were the main focal point in the new church. But what Paul's going to say is, and you might think, well, he's going to say something about that. In his parenthesis, he's going to say that it makes no difference to me. Or actually, it could be translated, it makes no consequence to me.

And I think what he's saying is here It really isn't helpful. You know, you might think, well, hey, if I get the really good players on my side, you know, if you're a football kind of person, if I get the really great players, it's going to make our team even better.

Well, Paul says, well, you know, really, we don't need that. And he's going to explain why they don't. It's not going to be helpful. Not that they're not preaching the wrong message. they're preaching the right message, we're going to see, but it's not going to be helpful because Paul has been specially called out to preach God's Word. So he doesn't really need their help. So it's not really helpful to him. And he further kind of says that in saying that God doesn't have the big guys and the small guys.

We're all equal. We're all one in Christ Jesus. And there's various verses in Scripture that talk about that. And basically, and God has spoken of it. God is a God of no partiality. He's not, there's not one bit of partiality. He doesn't have his favorites, so to speak. And that's a theme you can trace through scripture. So he's saying, you know, there's not the, they make, you know, they're not helpful to me. And really God doesn't have his favorites. He doesn't have Peter, James, and John as his favorites. And I'm kind of number two favorite or four favorite, counting there.

So, and then lastly, he says here, Those who are reputation contributed nothing to me. I think this is really kind of the key part of this because that's a parenthetical part in the middle. So literally, the ones that were a high reputation, those contributed nothing to me or added no value. There was no added value. And the reason there was no added value is Galatians further up that we read and we've covered earlier before. So look back at Galatians chapter 1.

And we'll see, how did Paul get his message? Did he go around to the churches and collect, you know, I'll get a little bit from you, I'll go to a Baptist church, I'll go to a Presbyterian church, I'll go to a Bible church and just collect. Did he do that? No, he didn't do that at all. His message came right from the source. And he says that in verse 11 of chapter 1.

It says, For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to men. So it didn't come, its source is not in men. For I neither received it from man, nor was taught it. But I received it through a direct, through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Some version might have a direct, I'm not sure.

But basically Paul's saying, you know, there's not an additional value, even though these men are doing the right thing, there's no additional value. in collecting additional wisdom from man. I have the gospel correctly interpreted from the Lord himself. And I'm going to preach that message. Now what's interesting is later on we're going to see that Peter, James, and John's message and Paul's message are one and the same. And they agree with one another in a sense.

And there's this phrase that's used. I'm not going to tell you quite yet. It's in the text, but I'll just wait. A little suspense here. But they basically agree, like we would agree. If Bob and I, and I say, Bob, I would agree with Bob. And we would do something that might symbolize our agreement. So what would I do if Bob and I agreed on something? What would be a typical thing we might do? I'm just going to go off track here a little bit, but it's actually on track. But what would we do if we talked and at the end we said, Bob, I really agree with what you say. Let's go for it. We're going to do this. What would we do?

Shake hands. Excellent. Excellent. So we're going to see the equivalent of that expressed. the right hand of fellowship. That's kind of a cool thing. It's the right hand of fellowship between the apostles, basically. It's really kind of cool. So that's basically if they agree, one's going to the Gentiles, one's going to the Jews, and we're going to preach God's message. And that's basically it. You know, this part he's just saying, you know, we didn't collectively get together and pool our knowledge, or pool our ignorance, as they say sometimes. God has given me the message, and he's called Peter, James, and John to a message, and he's called me to the same message. OK. Thoughts or anything on this? I was going to go on to the next set, seven through nine. Roger? Sure. Just one thought here.

No added value would imply that these guys that came in secretly thought that it was necessary for him to do this to get added value. Yeah, that's a good point. That's what they said, hey, added value is you've got to be circumcised, right? That's the added value. You're missing one part, Paul, but the added value is let's get a little circumcision in there, right? The only thing I can think of is that Paul did this, though, to refute that. That's good. If there was any value, it was that. We're in harmony here and you guys are wrong. Right. Well, I see what you're saying. The added value is discounting that is what you're saying, right? Okay. Okay. Good. Good. Other thoughts? Roger? Yes.

I think it's also referring to the fact that Grace, Paul's looking, you know, the other people were looking at it that Peter, James and John's had this special eminence or grace because they were disciples that walked with Christ. Right. And Paul, having been the apostle who was called later, didn't walk with Christ, would be looked down upon by people who had.

I mean, this is human nature. Exactly. You know, and it's a situation. What's it kind of like when you go to a new high school? you know, after everybody's been there for maybe three years and you come as a senior and you end up going to the same school, they don't know anything about you. And so you're looked down upon automatically because you aren't group of the ones that walk with Christ, if there is such a thing. Seems to be. Right. No, that's great. That's exactly what I think is being conveyed here. So that's good. So now we're going to see a contrast here between what he said here and the next set of verses here. Let's go into that.

This is where I was talking before some of you guys came in. There's parenthetical statements, kind of nested parenthetical statements in here. One encompasses the other. So I added one with the red little brackets. Because the thrust, this is actually one sentence. Let me just go on here.

This is actually one sentence from but through the circumcision. Those three verses are one sentence, but there's a couple of parenthetical statements in here. But the thrust of this is, but on the contrary, James, Cephas, and John, who reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcision. So that's kind of the That's the guts, if you will, of what's being said.

And the rest of it is, I want to explain to you why they did that. The why is all nested in those parenthetical statements. And I didn't see this initially. And I looked at various notes and things. And it's really cool. And if you don't notice, all the commas in there. Of course, the commas were added by the translators, translating Greek. So I didn't add the commas. But the core of it's right there. So I think that really is helpful when you look at that.

So 7 through 9 is going to contrast what was said up in verse 6. So what's the contrast between verse 6 and 7 through 9? And use the underlying part in your thoughts here. That'll help, I think. Go ahead. I think in the first part, there's a looking down upon Paul. And I think in the second part, it's an acceptance of Paul. OK. So I think it's position. OK. All right.

Other thoughts? Or do you see the contrast? Actually, I don't have verse 6 on there. Verse 6 is on the previous page. But you can look in your notes or your Bible. So I think the contrast is the underlying part in here actually with the non-parenthetical parts in the previous one. So I actually should have underlined a bunch of stuff.

So I believe the contrast is, if you go back to verse 6, it says, but those who were of a high reputation, well, those contributed nothing to me. Basically, there was no added value contrasted with, As was said, Peter James and John giving to Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. That's the contrast between those. I'm not trying to make this overly complicated either.

If I have, I apologize. So what I want to do for the rest of the time here with these, well not the rest of the time, 7 through 9, I want to go back and look at why Why do they feel free to do that? Does it tell us in here, in that parenthetical part, does it tell us why they were able to, just like Bob and I would shake hands and say, yes brother, that's right, we agree. I keep using Bob. He's a target of opportunity. So we're going to examine the other parts there. And there's kind of some cool things.

You're going to see the seeing, And you're going to see they're recognizing. Seeing and recognizing actually are two forms of the word know in the Greek, which is kind of a neat thing. So we're going to see that they felt free to do that because of what they saw in Paul and what they recognized in Paul. And that's kind of with us, right?

We come into this body, people come into this body, they come in and they listen to what's being said. And then after a while, they may have some initial impressions. And after a while, they said, I know what's being taught here. I know what Vern said is right. That's God's word, or what Mike says, or what Bob says, or hopefully what I say. So that's what was going on there. People were recognizing other believers that God was working in them. So let's go on. What we're going to do now is we're going to go and look. Actually, we're going to start backwards here, I think. We're going to go to verse 9. And actually what we're going to do is spend a little time before we jump into why they gave him the right hand of fellowship. What's the significance of the right hand of fellowship?

And it was given to Paul. The word right hand, or actually it's plural, right hands, which would be kind of hard to translate, is actually the concept of left and right in scripture are significant. So many times it's at God's right hand, and we're going to see that just over and over and over again. God's right hand as opposed to his left hand, that's a place of honor. It could be his right hand, his side or his arm, that's used depending upon the translation. So that's significant in Scripture. And it's a right hand of fellowship, koinonia, sharing in common, partnership, fellowship. So basically, we're going to look at this concept of right hand in scripture.

And actually, I've been fortunate to be looking at Hal's notes from 15 years ago, because it's really cool. And so actually, he had a really cool chart, as all his charts are. So I said, why would I want to try to reproduce this? And he does a wonderful job. So we're going to go through this chart from Hal.

Not exhaustively, but quite in detail on what right hand in the scripture signifies. So this is from 94. So the first one talks about, this is just like we were talking about, a covenant or an agreement. The right hand, confirm that by shaking your right hand.

Blessings. I want to stop at some of these and look at some of the verses. Blessings, this is the one like where Jacob blessed his children and he took his right hand and he put it on their heads. His children, it's actually his, let's see, it was Joseph's children, I think, that's right.

And then of course there's some deception in there and that's a whole other story. But anyway, he put his right hand on their head. God's protection is spoken of in the use of the right hand. And that one was, it's talked about upheld by God's right hand.

Actually, very close to that, those two I found to be very close. In fact, let's just look at one of these. Let's look at Psalm 18. Psalm 18 and verse 35. It says, Thou hast given me the shield of thy salvation and the right hand that upholds me. So, God's right hand is spoken as upholding us. And this is a, what's the right term for, I'm losing it here. I can't think of it. When something, obviously God doesn't have, God is spirit, right? He doesn't have a right hand. What's a word that describes, what's that? Thank you, thank you. You know, right. Thank you. Anthropomorphism, I can't, it might be another word too.

Anyway, obviously God's not in the right hand, but it's symbolic of God upholding believers. And there's so many ways it's used. Then God's judgment. That one talks about sometimes judgment upon the enemies of Israel many times. I found that this is very much steep in the Old Testament, God's right hand. But actually we see it in the New Testament too. We're going to see it toward the end. But it's very much in the Old Testament. And the Matthew passage is a judgment of the Gentiles.

God's salvation and deliverance. This is the one where it talks about... Let's look at Psalm 17. It says, Wondrously slow, by loving kindness, O Savior, of those who take refuge at thy right hand from those who rise up against them." So his right hand is a place of protection, deliverance. He's many times delivering Israel. It's also a place of life, joy, pleasure at God's right hand. And actually this is a very familiar one. In thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.

That's Psalm 16 and 11. our prayers to God's right hand. And then actually there's a whole bunch here that describe talking about his right hand in terms of God's attributes. His omnipotence, his omniscience, his righteousness, his loving-kindness, his faithfulness, his mercy. I didn't list all those. Hal actually had those all listed. I will try to get one chart here. But if you look through those verses, is there one that Let's look at Psalm 77, 10 or actually 9 and 10. Psalm 77.

It says, has God forgotten to be gracious or has he in anger withdrawn his compassion? Then I said in my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed. He's kind of saying this It hasn't changed, obviously. So God doesn't change. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And then it's a place of honor and exaltation.

And actually, there's two parts here. This is kind of cool. Basically, Jesus Christ is spoken of at God's right hand. And actually, and then secondly, The believer is seated with Christ, but we're also, if you look at Colossians 3, we're also at God's right hand. So many times what we see is true of the believer because we're in him is true of us. Which is just incredible. So Colossians 3 verse 1. If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things of the earth.

Okay, so that's kind of a So the question is now, I don't have a question on there, but what does it symbolize? It symbolizes the agreement between the apostles Peter, James, and John with Paul. So actually there's a summary that I kind of came across here.

The right hand of fellowship signifies Unity of mind, unity of message, unity of purpose. Unity of mind is that they have the mind of Christ. They're believers, they have the mind of Christ. Unity of message is the gospel of grace versus law. Unity of purpose is go into all the world, Jew and Gentile, and make disciples. So I think that's kind of what somebody summarized. That's the significance of the right-handed fellowship with the apostles and Paul.

Roger? Sure. Probably even more significant than just the right hand of offering that to Paul is the fact that all of them accepted the fact that he had a ministry to other than Jews. That's a good point. I mean, that's huge. It is huge. That's why the blanket and Cornelius and all the message came to Peter previous to this, so that he would understand to all the world. Because that was kind of veiled before. And the Jews, basically, they were God's chosen people. They were the apple of his eye. The concept that somebody else outside of them would be included was... That's good.

So now, as I promised, we're going to look at the reasons. I better hurry here, too. So now, I'm going to start in verse 7. We're going to look at 7 through 9. We're going to look at the parenthetical parts. So the first part here is seeing that I have been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcision, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.

So this idea of seeing, as I mentioned before, this is actually, literally, it's having seen. It's a participle. And it's this word for know called oia, to know by perception. So they perceived or they They observed Paul and they said, hmm, they saw what he was doing. And what they saw was that I had been entrusted, the idea of entrusted is pustuo, to believe, also to be persuaded of, hence to place confidence in. They were persuaded. By observing Paul, they were persuaded. They were persuaded.

And actually, let me just go ahead and we'll come back to the verse. that Paul had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcision just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised. So actually I found some verses in here that I thought were helpful that basically talk about how believers and how Peter and Paul had been entrusted with the gospel. I mean we kind of know that but it's always good to kind of remind ourselves. The first one in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 talks about that. It talks about Paul. Chapter 2 verses 3 and 4, For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity, or by way of deceit, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.

So this idea that that Paul has been entrusted is something that occurs, you know, not just a single time, it's many, many times. So that's what they were seeing. They were seeing that Paul had been entrusted with the gospel. And that's why they were able to give him the right hand of fellowship.

I think we have a similar thing. When we see people, we have confidence in them that they are walking with the Lord and they know his word. We say, well, that's somebody that I think you know, should be teaching or should be, you know, whatever, or should be doing anything in the Christian life. You're confident that...

It's kind of a diversion, but my son, my youngest son, Ryan, introduced me to his girlfriend. And it was kind of comforting to know that she was a believer. And she went to Brad's church. Ryan and his girlfriend, Vicki, a couple Sundays ago went to Brad's church. And she was recognized there by other people in the congregation.

I mean, so that's just a small, so I mean, you know, as a parent, that's kind of me saying, well, okay, that's kind of a neat thing. It doesn't mean that, you know, I don't have a way to talk with her, but that's a perception, just I have her only talking to her for several hours. So that's kind of a cool, so I mean, that's kind of the thing that we experienced. You talk to somebody, you perceive, you know, and you say, well, you know, that's not, that's not like knowing them for, five, ten years, but that's a good start. I think that's what is being talked about here.

This is the initial thoughts of what they saw in Paul. Roger? Yes, go ahead. Don't you think, too, that there was a lot of witnessing of what Paul had been doing in other communities that had preceded him? Because people were talking about, this is the man that had stoned Stephen and been there and taken his cloak. And now he's really changed. He's a new man. So I'm sure this had already kind of been brought by other people to the community before he even got there.

I agree. That's good. Bob? Well, and we pointed out, I think last week right there too, that Paul remained in contact with the Jewish community. He did, he did. Even though his gospel was directed towards the Gentiles. Right, right. I think that was known throughout his ministry. Right, exactly, exactly.

And the other verses here, in the interest of time, the first Timothy passage talks about Paul being entrusted again. Then the Timothy passage, as you might guess, talks about Timothy being entrusted with the gospel, to guard the gospel. and so on. So that's that part. Even today, God entrusts the good news to men that will faithfully present it. Yourself, Vern, and others have been given that. And you, Roy. That was my question. organization of his body is given some, you're held accountable to guard the gospel as well as present it. Right, and that's a job of the leadership and the elders.

It just occurs to me that that's parallel to this. No, that's good. That's good. It's God's ways, isn't it? Yep. Sam? And like I said last week, the fact of his knowledge of the Old Testament, I think because it said that he went into the synagogue and argued from the Old Testament.

And I'm sure one of the points that he was arguing was that the Gospel was meant for the Gentile. And you can go to the Old Testament and you can see sections of the Old Testament that talk about that, particularly in Isaiah. It talks about the Gospel going out to the Gentile. So here Paul is given this Gospel, the 14 years that he was taught. And Shon, I'm sure, It says in the New Testament that Jesus spent time with his disciples and explained the Scriptures to them. Paul had that same opportunity. Wouldn't that be something to be able to sit down and have God or Jesus reveal the Scriptures to them?

Right. But in a way, if you think about this, let's bring it up to make it personal here. Right now, we have the privilege, as we look at His Word, to have the Holy Spirit reveal to us the very same truths. I mean, and that's what's, you know, it's not like he's left us. No, no. So we have the opportunity.

I like that passage that I can't, I'm not going to quote it very well, but talking about, what would you rather have? Is it more important for you to physically be with Christ, or would you like to be what we have right now? And actually it says, in a way, we're more privileged now than if we actually sat with Christ. Wow, that seems even better.

No, it talks about, you know, I can't think of the verse, but the concept is that we have God's Word and the Holy Spirit and that is sufficient for what we, you know, that's all we need really, to live the Christian life right now. That's kind of like saying, which is better, cake or ice cream? I'm not saying it wouldn't be wonderful to sit with the Lord. Don't get me wrong. It kind of makes that comparison. I'm kind of getting off track here a little bit. So now, this is a parenthesis within a parenthesis. And it's going to point out some things.

It says, for he, talking about God, who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised, effectually worked for me also in the Gentiles. So I thought what's kind of important here, this is a lot of participles and I'm not real super duper on all the Greek grammar, but it does help if you can kind of cluster them together. So the subject of that little clause here is he who affectionately worked for Peter in his apostleship. That's the subject.

And the verb is affectionately worked. So you kind of have affectionately worked twice in there. Effectually worked is, I think it's one of Vern's favorite words, Energeo. It's the energizer bunny he has hopping around the screen when he does his presentations. So it's, God is energizing or working. He's working in Peter's life and he's working in Paul's life.

So that's what, if you look through some of these verses here, we're not going to have time to go through them. They basically talk about this working in believers' lives. And actually, let's look at the... Let's see which one... Let's look at the Philippians one just real quick.

Philippians 2.13. If somebody gets there, they wouldn't mind reading it. I'm fumbling around here. Thank you. Right. And actually, That word work occurs twice in there. Do you see it? Yeah, it occurs twice in that passage. That's kind of cool. He's the source. He's the source of our Christian life. He's the source of us telling. He's energizing people to do his will. That's wonderful.

We don't have to... Well, I have to go to the gym and get energized so I can... No, we don't do that. No. It's God who energizes us, right? Okay. So it's this parallel thing. God energizes Peter, James, and John. He energizes Paul. So that's the parentheses within the parentheses.

And now, this is the second word, the second knowing or we saw it had seeing first now we have recognizing and Recognizing the grace that had been given to me. So we're just going to look at that little phrase Recognize here is another form of the word. No, you know, let's go which is made a more familiar one This is a this is to be taking in knowledge It's a it's a no of The know of experience so it means I think was point out that Peter James and John, they had some experience with Paul. They knew him more than just observing him. They knew him, I know. And that's why, besides seeing, they recognized, they knew him. They knew what he was about. And that's why they could give him the right hand of fellowship.

And there are other, actually the verse is, I made a verse, the verb is having been given, recognizing that the grace had been given, granted, bestowed upon. And then there's a bunch of neat verses in there talking about how grace is given to man, grace is given to preach the gospel, Let's just look at one in 1 Corinthians 1.4. It says, I thank my God always, concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus. So this phrase, grace given, is pretty prevalent in scripture.

So the last part of this And this is kind of an interesting one. I really focused a lot on 7 through 9. I spent a lot of time there. But then I kind of left this verse 10 at the end. And I said, oh yeah, OK, we have to remember the poor. The more I looked at it, I thought, boy, this is kind of interesting. So basically, the idea here is to remember the poor. Or actually, literally, we should remember the poor. So the remember here is to call to mind, remember.

So my first thought was, well, what are we to remember in scripture? So what do you think? What do we remember in scripture? What does scripture say we ought to remember? I didn't say it right. Remember all the apostles' names? I'm being silly here. What do we remember?

Works of God. Okay. His word, right? Obviously, what he said. We remember the Lord Jesus and his death. There's various verses, and I'm not sure I listed them. I didn't list any for this. But we remember the words of the Lord Jesus. We remember his death on the cross. And actually, remembering the poor is one of those. Remembering the poor is in good company, if you will. It's remembering his word, God's word. Remembering what Christ did on the cross. Remembering where we came from, we were dead in trespasses and sins and now we're alive in Christ. So remembering is a word that's used of significance. In this case it's the poor. It's from this word to crouch, to cower like a beggar. Not a real pretty picture. So what kind of poor are we talking about here?

I had two thoughts, go ahead. I don't know this for a fact, I didn't look it up, but I think it's the same as Matthew 5, 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit. And it is? It is the same word. And that's basically a believer. A poor in spirit, someone who has learned the provision of God from being poor. Well, it's interesting. My first thought, well, is this like the... Is he talking about believing the poor in spirit that are spiritually suffering, if you will. And it does include that.

But the predominance is about 30 verses that talk about the poor, something like that. There's only three that talk about poor in spirit. The rest of them talk about poor. I mean, they're financially hurting. And actually, I kind of said, wow, that's interesting. And so I spent some time trying to categorize those.

And actually I captured them in these verses, and we're not gonna be able to turn to them, but What I'd like to just kind of I had four categories look at these verses here the the Jane the John and the Matthew passage Basically say you know the poor is a fact of life in this world Jesus said you'll always have the poor so number one is we shouldn't be surprised that we have the poor. I'm not saying that's good, but Christ saves us, we'll always have the poor. Fact number one. Fact number two.

It's not always bad to be poor. Because sometimes, and that's in the passages, the Luke and the Corinthians, sometimes that can be helpful. Just like trials and suffering can be helpful. You don't see it as that, but it can be helpful. That's number two. Number three is, And that's in the Luke 19 passage.

We're to be generous to the poor. Those, as believers, we're to be generous to them. And then fourth, we're not to dishonor the poor. The poor come into our assembly. We're not to say, OK, you guys get to sit over here, and the good guys over here. We welcome them, and we take them in.

So that's four things that kind of, and I thought that was kind of an interesting thing, because this is almost borderline political here. I look around, we get the privilege, once in a lifetime, to go to South America. Bob has been there. We've got these guided tours. I listen to the story of their cultures.

It's just incredible. Their desire to help the poor. What did it do to their country? My goodness, I don't know. It's amazing. So I think a scriptural view of the poor, it doesn't say we don't care about the poor, help the poor, what we should be. Think about the Old Testament, the gleaning, the poor had to work. to get there. There's a whole bunch of stuff. This is a lot bigger topic. But it really helped me. I said, wow. I thought it was spiritually poor. That's where I started out. Spiritually poor, that's where I'm going. But it turned out to be, oh, the poor is a much bigger set of information here.

Stan? Wasn't it also in Acts when the first church was organized and they were figuring out how to meter out the money and stuff like that. There was the widows and the poor. Right. Exactly. So even though the money that came in was supposed to be partially for those who could not do it on their own or didn't have the means to do it on their own. So the church, the first church actually looked out for this. It did. It did.

So, I mean, that's something that recognize that they're going to be poor and that we're going to, you know, that that's something that God would have us be concerned about. but to do it wisely. The concept of eliminating the poor seems to be the wrong concept. That's my political statement for the morning. It seems to be the wrong concept. Scripturally based, there's going to be poor, and we should help them, and we should be wise about how we help them. And there's also a verse in 1 John that says the reason we work is to provide for others or to help others. And so there again, that's another political statement. And I agree with you. I'm just saying that we can't leave them No, no, no, I, I, I, you know, so, so, so I thought this was actually a little bonus in studying this.

Bob, go ahead. Well, the whole directive here is to the churches. Exactly. And that's a good point. It's a good point. This is not to the, to the world. Just thinking, I don't want to get overly political, but just think of the health care reform. The church are really meeting needs through a variety of different kinds of ministries, ultimately. Exactly. A lot of help provided. Exactly. It's interesting.

When you start looking at scripture, you think, wow, this gives us God's view of the poor. He says there's always going to be the poor. That's kind of a, wait a minute, can't God just take care of the poor? No, he doesn't do that. He could, but he chose not to. Actually, I remember listening to Macaulay, even in Revelation, the poor is still there. At the end of the scripture, the poor is still there.

Okay, we'd better close here. I think we're way over time. We thank you, Father. We thank you so much for your Word, Father. We thank you for its clarity in every subject of life, Lord. And we thank you that we're just privileged to be able to study it, to understand it, Father, through your Spirit. We thank you for the body of believers here at Holly Hills. In Christ's name, Amen.