How does that change the picture from everyone liquidating everything at once to a community continually responding to one another?

Well, it shows, how can I say this? It shows some reflection and discernment about how to go about doing this.

The fact that they didn't sell everything all at once, but that they took their time doing it.

You know, the example I like to use, I like to contrast what Jesus says to the rich ruler when he tells him to sell everything and contrast that with Zacchaeus.

who said he sold half of what he had and he ends up being commended for the fact that he's generous and holds his possessions with loose hands.

And so I'm saying the requirement isn't to sell everything.

The requirement is to be generous with the resources God gives you in a wise way and in a way that allows you to be generous and to continue to be generous.

So how are relational unity and financial generosity connected? And can we practice the generosity of Acts without first recovering that sense of Christian community?

How does that relate to, though, the sort of sense of continuity between the Old Testament's ideas of a chosen people and what happens in the New Testament? I think you'll say there's a shift that happens there that seems like some Christians want to draw a kind of straight line there between those two.

So there are two things that are happening.

One is it's a misunderstanding of what Israel was to be as a chosen people.

Because, yes, Israel was the chosen people.

It was the place where God was going to really work.

But the reason God was going to really work there, the hope was, is that that blessing that would come to Israel would spread out into all the world.

That never happened.

And people from different parts of the political spectrum all over the world take inspiration from things that are happening in the United States.

Um, I, I recognize that when I did this slide, uh, uh, that, um, we speak the same language, but we don't spell words the same way.

So, um, polarization, if, if you see that Zed, turn it into an S, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Okay? So, uh, and let me tell you a background of what I'm gonna share with you.

Um, about a year ago, I was at the World Evangelical Alliance global meeting in Seoul, Korea, which, um, produced a statement out of that meeting about evangelicalism around the world.

And in the midst of that, I was asked to write a chapter for a book that came out of that meeting, uh, on cultural engagement, on social engagement.

So what you're getting is the chapter that I wrote for that book, along with the benefit, uh, hopefully, o- of my comments beyond what I wrote.

Is there a pla-- Is there still a place for engagement?

Yeah.

here.

Try that.

Ah.

That's good.

Okay, here's our text that gets us started.

It says, now one of the experts in the law came and heard them debating, and when he saw that Jesus answered them well, he asked them, which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, the most important is, listen Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

no, no, no.

Mm-hmm.

Okay? Light shows.

So I better be consistent in what I'm talking about as being a believer and a Christian in the way I engage and the way we as a community engage with the world.

I better be consistent, or else I'm gonna be shut down before I even try and talk to them, because they're gonna see me as being a, a hypocrite or not being genuine or however you wanna put it.

So, so this relational dimension is key.

I, we actually talk about relational evangelism at the center that I'm at, because we think that's the most important part of it.

So it's not only what I believe, it's how I present it.

... it's not an evangelistic course, it's a course about how to do evangelism.

Do God's promises depend on faithfulness? Uh, thoughts around that?

Well, God's commitment was a one-sided commitment.

He ga- In Genesis 12, he gave ...

He co- made to Abraham in what's called the Abrahamic Covenant.

He said he would form a people, a seed out of Abraham, and he made very specifically as we move through Genesis, uh, what specific seed of Abraham was in view.

And then he gave them a land a- and with a land promise, and then he said that through that nation the world would be blessed.

Those are the three parts of the Abrahamic Covenant.

Because I think you were saying important things.

When I read it, I thought he was getting at the idea that in Acts 2 where they're all sharing their material goods with each other-

other-Um, there was a, a kind of an evenness in, in poverty, uh Well, no, actually what it means that the reason they're sharing with one another is because there are some people who have legitimate needs.

Mm-hmm.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

[laughs] So ...

Yeah, so that means there's some poor in their mix, and they're taking care of them.

Why does Luke articulate the Lord's supper in the way that he does, um, uh, differently to Matthew and Mark?