God's church is described in
the book of God as a kingdom of priest, a royal priesthood. You and I who are gods, we who
believe on the son of God, are men and women of the priestly
family of God. As Aaron's family was the priestly
family in Israel, you and I, who are gods, are God's priestly
family. And the scriptures speak very
clearly in our text this evening, in Leviticus chapter seven, verses
one through 10, about the portion God has provided for his priest. That's my subject tonight, the
priest portion. I wanna talk to you a little
bit about our priesthood in Christ Jesus and the portion that the
Lord God has given us in him. In the seventh verse of this
seventh chapter, God specifically declares there is one law for
them. Now by that statement, excuse
me, By that statement, he tells us that all that he has revealed
concerning all the sacrifices in these first seven chapters
of Leviticus was one law. It was all given for one purpose. All that's been stated in the
six preceding chapters and all that's stated in these 10 verses
is intended by God to point us to Christ. to teach us about
our Lord Jesus and teach us to trust Him alone as our Savior. Now the lessons from these verses
are of immense importance. Details in Scripture are always
important. If we would worship the Lord
God, we must worship Him in the way that He has prescribed, in
the way that he has ordained, in the way that he teaches us
to worship him in this book. This seventh chapter of Leviticus
gives very specific instructions about how men were to come to
God, how they were to behave in the house of God, how they
would offer sacrifices to God, how they would find acceptance
with God, and how they were to deal with one another in the
house of God. When we come to worship God,
We come and worship Him only by faith in Jesus Christ, His
sacrifice. Through faith in the Paschal
Lamb, Christ, our Passover, who is sacrificed for us, we come
to God. Trusting Him alone, we come to
God. We find acceptance with God only
by faith in Him. Our Lord taught us to pray in
Christ's name. He taught us to gather for worship
in his name. We approach God in his name. That doesn't merely mean that
when we pray, at the end of the prayer, we say in Jesus' name,
we pray amen. It means that when we come to
God, we come to God conscious of this fact. Our only acceptance
with God is the blood, the righteousness, the intercession, and the person
of his dear son, Jesus Christ our Savior. Believing on the
son of God, we come to him with humility, bowing to his word,
and we come to him with reverence and godly fear. In verses one
and two, we see clearly that sin brings death. The trespass
offering, the blood shed and sprinkled, declares the judgment
of God upon sin. It declares the necessity of
death. You and I must die. All men must die. We must die by the hand of God
and by the judgment of God, by the wrath of God and the justice
of God, either in our own persons in everlasting damnation or in
the person of a substitute. A substitute who is able and
has fully satisfied the wrath and justice of God on our behalf. That sacrifice is Jesus Christ
the Lord. Learn this too. That which is
given and consecrated to God must be the very best. Verses three, four, and five
speak of this sacrifice. It's the best of things to be
given to God. Read the first chapter of Malachi
again and understand this. God will never have, God will
never accept anything we bring to him except the best. Only the best, only the best. Whatever our gifts, Whatever
things we bring as gifts to God in the service of God, as gifts
to God for his people, as gift to God in his service, whatever
it is, we bring the best or we come to him with contempt for
him. God says you bring your lame and your sick and those
things aren't fit for anything, take them to your governor, see
if he'll have them. God requires, God deserves, and
God demands only our best. The best of our times, the best
of our labor, the best of our gifts, the best of everything. I have seen a good many men over
the years, speak to them, and they tell me they're planning
when they retire to maybe pastor after they get retired and get
the work done. I've known a good many to say so. And when they
do, I tell them, please don't. Please don't. Please don't. God doesn't want your leftovers,
and I don't either. God's church deserves the best. Give him the best in everything. Everything and everyone accepted
by God is through the merits of God's
Son, the sacrifice here portrayed, most holy. We are made to be
the very righteousness of God in Him. We are in Christ made
to be in the consecration of our lives to Him. Living sacrifices
described this way in scripture, holy, and acceptable in the beloved. Holy and acceptable in Jesus
Christ the Lord. Now with those things said, let's
look at these 10 verses in Leviticus 7 together. May God the Holy
Ghost teach us the things revealed in them. Sometimes we think that
repetition of things is redundant. But in the book of God, nothing
is redundant. God often repeats words of instruction. And the repetition of instruction
concerning the offerings in this chapter show us that things that
are here described are of immense importance. The repetition of
instruction, specifically being given to the priest, teaches
us that God's priest, those who serve as God's ministers in his
house in the worship of God, worship Him and come to Him and
are accepted of Him in exactly the same way and upon the same
grounds as all others. Aaron's sons, Aaron's daughters,
though they were chosen, ordained and gifted of God this special
place of service as God's priests, the priests of the family, they
came to God. found acceptance with God only
through the merits of the sacrifice Christ Jesus the Lord represented
in all these sacrifices, just as you and I do. So it is with
God's servants in his house today. Pastors, deacons, leaders in
the church, they too come to God and are accepted of God in
exactly the same way you and I come to him at all times, only
through the merit and blood of his darling son. And the Lord
God never tires. He never tires of repeating instruction
with regard to these types. How often many aspects of what
we're looking at here in these 10 verses has already been told
us in these first six chapters of Leviticus. Because of God's
wondrous infinite love for the Lord Jesus himself. God Almighty,
the triune Jehovah, delights to speak often about him. The Spirit of God comes to take
the things of Christ in this book and show them to us. That,
Jimmy, is his function. That's his office. That's his
purpose. The Spirit of God was given to
take the things of Christ in this book and show them to us.
God so loves the Lord Jesus Christ. The triune God so loves our mediator
that he has preeminence in all things and the Lord God delights
to speak of him. God so loves his people. You and me, needy sinners as
we are, that He delights to show us these blessed pictures of
redemption and grace by Christ. He delights to make His Son known
to us. No wonder the Apostle Paul, writing
to the Philippians, said, to write the same things to you,
to me indeed, is not grievous, but for you it is safe. All right,
let's look at the 10 verses before us. Here's the first thing. God
demands blood. Likewise, this is the law of
the trespass offering. It is most holy. In the place
where they kill the burnt offering shall they kill the trespass
offering. The blood thereof shall he sprinkle round about upon
the altar. The holy Lord God, whose law
we have broken, whose character we have violated, whose throne
we have despised, whose son we have nailed to the cursed tree,
is ever looking for blood. God demands blood and he will
have it. Either our blood or the blood
of a substitute. The blood was to be round about
upon the altar so that those who came into the house of God
must have reckoned themselves horribly evil, terribly guilty
sinners, seeing blood everywhere. The Lord God seems to have spoken
to them constantly of sin, of guilt, and it does so in the
language of blood. The constant sight of blood at
the house of God tells us these two things, God Almighty is just
and righteous in dealing with guilty sinners such as we are. We are guilty. There's the blood
on the altar, the blood around the altar, the base of the altar,
the blood on the mercy seat. Almost all things purge with
blood, the apostle says. Blood declares there's guilt,
sin. Let us never, never, never Think
of coming to God except we are aware of our sin, our depravity,
our corruption. I know that it's popular these
days not to talk about sin. That smiling fool down in Houston,
he said, we don't talk about things like that. People don't
like to hear about that. No, they don't. No, they don't. People desperately need to know
and be reminded. You desperately need to be reminded
of your sin. And you can't come to the house
of God with a faithful man preaching the word of God and not be reminded
of who and what you are. Sin, that's all. That's all. What do you expect from folks?
Sin. Nothing else. Just sin. And it
teaches us something else. The blood tells us that there's
forgiveness with God. There's forgiveness for sinners
with God Almighty. Oh, bless His name. He who is
our God delights in mercy. Here's the proof. See the blood? Blood everywhere. Guilty, heavy-laden
sinners relished the never-ending sight of blood when they came
to worship God in the tabernacle at God's altar. And guilty, heavy-laden
sinners, men and women, convinced by God the Holy Ghost of sin,
of righteousness, and of judgment, relished the preaching of Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. We who need Him. Say gladly with
Paul, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and
I unto the world. We come here to preach about
blood, to hear about blood, to sing about blood, to give thanks
to God for blood. the precious blood of his dear
son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Let others, if they dare, speak
lightly of the blood and deride us for preaching it all the time.
All who know and worship God count the blood of Christ precious
blood. For as much as you know that
you will not be redeemed by corruptible things such as silver and gold
from your vain conversation, from your meaningless, worthless
life, but rather with the precious blood of Christ. Oh, how precious
that blood to those who are cleansed by it. It's impossible for me
to speak too often, too much, or too highly about the blood
of God's sacrifice. The Lord God said to Israel,
when I see the blood, I will pass over you. God makes much
of it, let us make much of it. The trespass offering, is declared
here by God to be most holy. This offering, as we have seen,
was an imminent type of our Lord Jesus, our blessed Savior, our
Mediator. He is indeed most holy. He is
intrinsically holy, holy in himself, in the totality of his being.
He is representatively holy. He lived on this earth in perfect
holiness as a man, as our representative. And he is infinitely holy, so
that his holiness is of infinite worth and value. And God Almighty,
by the marvel of his grace, makes the holiness of his son our holiness. The blood must be shed and the
sacrifice offered in the place where they killed the trespass
offering. We're told in chapter one, verse three, verse five,
verse 11, again in chapter four, and again here in chapter seven.
The sacrifice had to be offered in God's sight, at God's altar,
before the tabernacle. What does that mean? The blood
sacrificed declares redemption accomplished. When Christ shed
his blood at Calvary, redemption was done. The work was accomplished. Nothing to be added to it. The
Lord Jesus Christ did not simply make redemption possible. He
didn't just provide a way of redemption. He finished the work. Redemption was accomplished when
he said it is finished. The blood sprinkled, however,
is just as necessary as the blood shed. The blood sprinkled speaks
of redemption applied. That blood must be applied to
each of God's elect in the sweet experience of His grace as God
the Holy Ghost comes and sprinkles the conscience with the precious
blood of Christ declaring to us that redemption is ours. And the blood sprinkled. That
blood sprinkled, the apostle tells us in Hebrews 12, speaketh
better things than the blood of Abel. It speaks forgiveness,
mine. Redemption, mine. Righteousness,
mine. Salvation, mine. Acceptance,
mine. Because Christ is mine. I can
almost hear folks at the tabernacle understanding the things pictured
singing. What can wash away my sin? but the blood of Jesus. What
can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. The blood sprinkled, the blood
applied is redemption experienced. All right, second, look at verses
three, four, and five. The fat and the rump. What's that talking
about? The richest part of the sacrifice. The fat and the rump. The best
part of the sacrifice. These things are spoken of with
distinct words of instruction because Christ, our sacrifice,
is the richest and best of God's gifts. And because in the gift
of Him, the Lord God gives us the richest and best of all things. Verse 3, He shall offer of it
all the fat thereof, the rump and the fat that covereth the
inwards, and the two kidneys and the fat that is on them,
which is by the flanks and the call that is above the liver
with the kidneys, it shall He take away. and the priest shall
burn them upon the altar for an offering made by fire unto
the Lord. It is a trespass offering. Here
again we're reminded that all the fat, the rump, and all that
was the richest and best belonged to God. Trust Christ and all
that is the richest and best God gives you. He has given us
His darling Son and with His Son freely gives us all things. All the blessings of grace, all
the blessings of mercy, all the blessings of God in heavenly
places belong to His people. He tells us as we come to Christ,
eat ye that which is good and let your soul delight itself
in fatness. The triune God sacrificed His
best. His all for us. And the Lord
God gives us His best. He gives us His all, Christ Jesus
the Lord. What more can God give? What more could God give? He gave us His everything. Read the first chapter of Ephesians.
Everything is in Christ. Everything's in. God, the triune
Jehovah, puts everything in His Son, and He sacrificed Him for
us, and He gave Him to us. What shall we then give to God?
How dare we offer Him anything except the richest and the best? I stand reproved by my own words. In study, preparation, preaching
and work, God give me grace to give you the best, the best,
nothing less, nothing less. Let me never be satisfied with
anything less. Verse five tells us that the
fact taken off of the sacrifice was to be burned on the altar.
This too typifies our savior, the sweet smelling savor to God
in his suffering, the fire of God's wrath for us. God smells
the sacrifice of his darling son and it is
in the nostrils of the almighty, a sweet smell. A smell that pleases
God. A smell, you were talking about
the crazy preacher said, you do something that makes God smile.
This puts a smile on the face of God. The sacrifice of his
son. A sweet smelling savor to God. Now, let's look at the priest
portion. Applying it as God intends it
to be applied to this gospel day and to ourselves, verse six. Every male among the priest shall
eat thereof. It shall be eaten in the holy
place. It is most holy. Only those who
are God's priest, men serving in the holy place, Only those
who worship God by faith in Christ can eat of the altar of Christ
Jesus. We're told that in Hebrews 13,
10. Now, don't forget, the fat and the blood of the sacrifice
were never to be eaten. They were never to be eaten.
Now, I know I have to say this because I know there are folks
who say otherwise. This is not a law forbidding
that you eat fat with your steak or your pork chop. It is not
a law forbidding that you eat your steaks rare. It had nothing
to do with that. This is a law concerning God's
sacrifice. And the reason is quite clear.
The sin atoning blood of Christ cannot be eaten by man that itself. is enough to make anyone look
upon the popish idolatrous notion of eating the flesh and blood
of Christ as being utterly beyond scripture and contrary to scripture.
No one was allowed to eat the flesh of God's sacrifice except
the priests. And no one can eat the sacrifice,
Jesus Christ the Lord, in any kind of physical way. This is
talking about eating Christ by faith. This is talking about
taking the person and work of Christ, feeding upon his flesh
and blood by faith in him. And all of God's priest feast
upon the sin atoning work of the Lord Jesus. That's who we
are, we who believe. By eating the trespass offering,
the priest did something else. He symbolically made the sins
of his brother his own sin. Here, man brings his sacrifice. It's a trespass offering. And the man who brings it, brings
it as a representation of his sin. And the priest takes the sacrifice
and eats it and makes that man's sin his sin. Oh, what wondrous
grace. The Lord Jesus Christ takes our
iniquities and says they're his. Our transgressions and says they're
his. Our sin and says it's his. He
who knew no sin was willingly made sin for us that we might
be made the righteousness of God in him. This act of the priest
eating the trespass offering portrays something else. It portrays
that brotherly love that's to rule the house of God. Love which causes believers to
make the sins of their brethren their own. That's how we're to
live with one another. Believers making the sins of
their brethren their own. This passage has application
to us, those who are holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling. It is our privilege and responsibility
to eat the meat offering, our given portion of the peace offering
and the trespass offering together. We must not fail to make the
sins of a fallen brother our own. That is so contrary to nature,
Lindsay. It's contrary to everything about
us by nature. But that's what the scriptures
teach. We are to bear one another's
burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. To condemn the fallen
brother, to condemn the fallen sister is easy and natural, but
to identify myself with the fallen, That's the privilege of the priestly
family. Let's bear one another's burdens
then. If we are indeed one in Christ, we ought to deal with
our fallen brother or sister in their weakness and in their
failings as members of our own bodies who need help. If a man be overtaken in a thought,
ye which are spiritual, Restore such in one in the spirit of
meekness considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear
ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Now that's plain as the nose
on your face. If Samuel sees Don Fortner fall,
And if you watch just a little bit, you will. He got two choices. He can yak about it, and he can
gossip about it, and he can belittle Don, and he can talk bad about
Don, and he can find reason to scour Don and disassociate himself
with Don, all those things. Or he can say, he's part of me,
and I'm part of him. I want to help him through his
fall. Just those two things. Just those
two things. Either help the brother or you
hurt him. You won't be indifferent. Now,
look at verse seven again. Here we're told that there is
one law for all these laws. One purpose, one object for the
whole body of the law given to Israel. As the sin offering is,
so is the trespass offering. There is one law for them. The
priest that maketh atonement therewith shall have it. There's
one law. They're all designed for one
purpose. God gives them all these laws
of the sacrifices. Indeed, all the body of law given
in Old Testament scripture, all of it is given for one purpose. It is given to point us to Christ.
The law is our schoolmaster unto Christ. But once the schoolmaster
has come, we have no more need of the law. For Christ is the
end of the law to everyone that believe it. He's the end of the
law, the end of the law. The law's purpose is to bring
us to Christ, to point us to Christ, to direct us to Christ.
The law's purpose is to push us away from ourselves and away
from our works and away from our doings to Jesus Christ alone
as our hope before God. The law is designed of God to
teach us our need of Christ, to direct us to Christ, and to
force us to Christ. Paul said, when the commandment
came, sin revived and I died. What happened to him? What happened
to him? All his life long, Paul the Pharisee
thought and convinced himself of exactly what all men by nature
teach themselves and are taught by other men and convinced themselves
of, I can do this. I can do this. I can please God. I can do something God will accept. I can do good. And then you see
what God requires. Not just outward uprightness
and morality. but inward perfection, loving
God with all your heart, soul, mind, and being, loving your
neighbor as yourself. If ever you see that, you'll
lose all hope in yourself. That's the purpose of the law,
to force you into the arms of the Lord Jesus. Now, verses eight,
nine, and 10 give specific instructions regarding the priest. and God's
specific provisions for those who served him in the holy place. The skin of the sacrifice, we're
told in verse eight, belonged to the priest. And the priest
that offereth any man's burnt offering, even the priest shall
have it to himself, the skin of the burnt offering which he
hath offered. I can't help making a connection
between this and what we've read in Genesis Chapter 3, when the
Lord God took our guilty parents, Adam and Eve, and slew an innocent
victim in their stead. At the gates of Eden, before
he drove them from the garden, he took the skins and put coats
upon Adam and Eve. Representing, of course, the
righteousness of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer, the fine
raiment, clean and white, with which God's saints are adorned
before him. Righteousness. This righteousness
of the saints is that in which we stand accepted of God, the
righteousness of Christ. But it is his righteousness.
Not something we perform. Not the work of our hands. His
righteousness. Righteousness that could not
be had but by his obedience unto death as our substitute. But
hang on. Merle Hart, this righteousness
is your righteousness. Personally and really your righteousness. How can that be? Well, it really
is the work of your hands. It really is what you've done.
Not in your person, but in him who is your substitute. God demands
obedience. He won't accept anything else,
and we give it to him when we give him his son. For in his
son, in union with his son, we walked with him in obedience.
And we died with him at Calvary and rose with him in the perfection
of resurrection glory. Paul said, I am crucified with
Christ. The words quite literally would
read like this. I was at one time with finality
crucified with Christ. When he died, I died. Nevertheless,
I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth
in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me
and gave himself for me. His righteousness, His righteousness
it is, but He's made it ours because we're one in Him and
with Him. The meat offered was not to be
burned as a sacrifice to God, it was given to the priest to
be the priest's food. These sacrifices were groceries
for Aaron's family. Look at verse 9. And the meat
offering that is taken, that is bacon in the oven, and all
that is dressed in the frying pan, and in the pan shall be
the priest that offereth it. And every meat offering mingled
with oil and dry shall all the sons of Aaron have, one as much
as another, or as the other. They're to be treated exactly
the same. The sons who were seen and the
sons who weren't seen. The sons that folks saw every
day around the holy things and the sons that were in the background.
All of them had the same sacrifice, the same provision. Now, I have
no question at all that I have got the right understanding of
this and you will too if you turn to 1 Corinthians chapter
9. 1 Corinthians chapter 9. The significance of these two
verses is clearly given to us in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. I'd
like to read a bunch of this. Let's just read one verse, verse
13. Do you not know that they which
minister about the holy things live of the holy things of the
temple? And they which wait at the altar
are partakers with the altar. Well, what on earth does all
that mean, Paul? Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which
preach the gospel should live of the gospel. I believe that's
just exactly what Paul talked about back then in Leviticus
7. It's exactly what Moses talked about, exactly what God wrote.
He said, now the reason this law is given is because those
who preach the gospel are to live of the gospel. So that these
priests, this priestly family, obviously represents the whole
family of God, and yet there's a distinct way in which these
priests represent the Lord Jesus and a distinct way in which they
represent men who preach the gospel of God's grace, faithfully
serving God's people. Those commandments of the law
requiring a provision for the priest in Israel, were specifically
given, we're told here in 1 Corinthians 9, to teach us that God's servants
are to be provided for by the gifts of God's people. In all the offerings, as here
in the trespass offering, the first thing to be understood
is that the offering is the Lord's. It was for the satisfaction of
divine justice. But this too is to be understood.
The priest, as well as the offering typified by the Lord Jesus Christ,
our high priest, he has a portion of which he fed and found satisfaction. That obviously speaks to the
whole house of God. And as we're told in 1 Corinthians
9, as God the Holy Spirit tells us, Those who preach the gospel
shall live by the gospel. That is clearly the Spirit's
intention from this passage. The matter of supporting gospel
preachers, maintaining God's servants and their families and
their livelihood needs to be understood in precisely the way
it's presented to us in this seventh chapter of Leviticus.
I speak this not just for myself. I know folks who hear this. I
know churches who hear this. And I know churches that need
pastors who need to hear this. And churches who have pastors
and don't treat them as they should need to hear this. And
you need to hear this and remember it. When I'm dead and gone, remember
it. The financial support of pastors,
evangelists and missionaries, is not primarily to be viewed
as a display of love and esteem and appreciation for that pastor,
though certainly that ought to be involved in it. But primarily,
this is a matter of stewardship to God himself. It's not giving
to a man, but to the Lord. If we give God his due, we give
his servants their due. If we give God his due, We give
His servants their due. If we're niggardly in the support
of God's servants, we're niggardly in our attitude toward the Lord
God Himself, whose servants they are. I often have folks say to
me in various churches, well, we just can't support a pastor.
Find me 10 men, I'll show you 10 men who can support a pastor.
Any 10 men in the world. can support a pastor. I don't
care whether they live in New Guinea, or whether they live
in Africa, or whether they live in Danville, or whether they
live in New York City. Any 10 men in any place in the world,
if they want a pastor, can support him. If they don't want to support
him, it's because they have God in contempt, the gospel in contempt,
and the man whom they call pastor in contempt. This utter contempt. What do you mean, Pastor? Any
pastor worth his salt will live like the folks he preaches to.
And any ten men can see to it that he does. Any of them can.
I don't see how you can expect that. You take one man, one man,
just one man. There's a place up in Cincinnati.
What's that grocery store called? What's that place called, Lizzie,
up there north of Cincinnati? Thought I started off with it.
I'll think of it in a minute. Jungle gym, that's it. He started that
thing on one of these street side places selling vegetables,
selling produce. That's how it started there.
And he just kept on, kept on, kept on. I believe it's the biggest
grocery store I've ever been in in my life. How'd he do that? He was determined to do it. What's it take? Just everything
you got, that's all. All your time, all your energy,
all your money, everything, everything. You just give it to it. And if
we're serious about the service of our Redeemer, that's how we
serve him. After the Lord's portion of the
sacrifice was consumed upon the altar, the best of the residue
was given to the priest. In some cases, The whole burnt
offering was given to the priest. In other cases, what we call
choice cuts were the priest's portion, the breast, the leg,
the rump. The priest's portion was always
best. Now, God's servants are not hirelings. Faithful men, faithful pastors,
faithful preachers, faithful missionaries, faithful evangelists
do not seek. to enrich themselves. They don't. I know preachers
who got rich doing it. I'm talking about faithful men.
I'm talking about faithful men. I know preachers who got all
kinds. I'm talking about faithful men. I'm not talking about jack
legs. I'm talking about faithful men. They don't seek to enrich
themselves. These men I bring here to preach
to you, missionaries, we try to help. God's servants labor
not for yours but for you. They don't seek your gold, they
seek your good. And yet, as the servants of God,
those men who faithfully preach the gospel, who faithfully give
themselves to the work of preaching the gospel are to be highly esteemed
for their work's sake. and properly maintained in that
work. The workman is worthy of his
meat. The laborer is worthy of his
hire. Paul writes to Timothy and says,
let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor,
especially they who labor in the word and in the doctrine. That honor? It's the same honor
that you give to maintain the widow in need. Same honor. It's not talking about tipping
your hat. It's talking about supporting her. Those who labor
in the word and doctrine, they're worthy of double honor. Paul
said, if we have sown to you spiritual things, is it a great
thing if we shall reap your carnal things? I was at a garage here
a few months ago, and some fellow got to yakking and talking, and
after a while, He found out I was a preacher. I don't know whether
I told him or somebody else did. Anyway, he looked at me and said,
well, that's good work if you can get it. That's the easy stuff. And
I wanted to hit him, but I didn't. I did say, why don't you follow
me around for a week? We'll find out. Just follow me around for
a week. It's reasonable that God's servants
be taken care of. When God's servants are properly
esteemed as his servants, by those they serve, Esteemed by
men by whom God speaks, by whom God uses him to speak to, whose
souls are comforted, edified, strengthened, and taught. Those
people counted a privilege and an honor. Indeed, they counted
a part of divine worship and service to give them the best
support they can. That's just right. That's just
right. Paul speaks about those Macedonians
who, they didn't have the means to do it. But he said, and I
told him, don't do this, don't do this. But they first gave
themselves to the Lord. And then, they didn't just give
what they could, they gave beyond their means. They gave beyond
their means. And somehow, God supplies you
to do what you want to do. I'll tell you what I've experienced
in my life as a believer. I have many times looked at something
and said, no, I can't give anything to that. Whether it's talking
about money or labor, I just can't do it. If somebody has
a need, I'm sorry, I just don't have the money. Just don't have
it. But I'll tell you what I've never done. I'll tell you what
I have never done. I have never seen a need and
reached in my pocket to get something. I didn't find something. Have
you? I've never seen a need. Reached in my wallet, what's
needed, to find something. Didn't have something. There
was something there to give him. I've never seen it happen. I've never
wanted. to do anything in the cause of
Christ. God didn't supply me with the
means to do it. Not one time, not one time. I've never been asked to go anywhere
to preach. God didn't supply the way, not one time, not one
time. I've never wanted to do anything
in the cause of Christ. God didn't provide a way for
me to do it, and I promise you, You will never want to do anything
in the cause of Christ. He won't give you the grace and
the means to do. It won't happen. It won't happen. How do you know? Well, my God
shall supply all your needs. according to his riches in glory
by Christ Jesus. That's a big supply. That's a
big supply. God shall supply all your needs,
not according to your abilities, not according to what you have,
but according to his riches in glory by Jesus Christ. That's
the priest portion, as is given to us in Leviticus 7. All right,
let's have a hymn, Lindsay.