The Dangers of Materialism

Transcript

Tonight, I want to get into a topic that is very, very important for us in our society because materialism, coveting, and envy are some of the most serious dangers, I think, that we face acutely in our society. And I want to share some perspectives on this danger, including some perspective that comes from a visit to another continent. And I'm going to be speaking to myself as much as I am to anyone else because this is a challenge that we all have to wrestle with, particularly in our society. And one of the reasons is because of the fact that the average American today is 90 times richer than the average historical human being. Think about that for a minute. This is median average that they're talking here, not upper class. We're not talking about the Elon Musks, the Jeff Bezos, and the Bill Gates of the world, just the average person in America. Those of us in middle class America and Canada are rich. Even those of us who think we're somewhat poor by U .S. standards, maybe we're not at And we see all the people around us that have so much. But if we zoom out of our context in space and in time elsewhere in the world or back in time, we will see that we are even more incredibly rich by world and historical standards than we realize. Here's a graphic that kind of gives you a little bit of a perspective on zooming out in space. If we look at today, our society in the U.S. and Canada compared to other countries in If we look at over here, the Central African Republic is one of the poorest countries in the world. We have like 90 times more wealth than our income than folks in that country, than the average person there. Think about a country a little bit closer to home, like in Mexico. We have like triple the wealth of people in Mexico. So we are worldwide, U.S. is very near the top. I mean, there are some other smaller countries that are richer on average, but we have tremendous wealth. And if you zoom out in time and you think about history, most of humanity over the ages has been much closer to the wealth that we have in the Central African Republic, which is meager, of course. England in 1600 AD, the average income was about $1,000 a year in today's dollars. So that puts you up maybe a little bit higher up and maybe in this range above where that graphic shows the folks in the CAR. But one and a half times what it would be like to be in the poorest country in the world right now. And you don't even have to go back to 1600, just 1978 when I was growing up, China with just under a billion people at the time, that's basically where China was as well, about $1,000 a year for average income. So when I read this quote from the psalm, I think it describes a lot of what we see in our country. Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom, in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in You. You know, the first part of that quote from Psalm 39 is a really apt description of our society. Our society teaches us to rush about, work really hard, long hours to get more and more money. But there is an alternative which I want us to consider and encourage us to pursue. Slow down, live on less, focus our time and effort, invest our time and effort in pursuing our relationship with God and true riches rather than the riches of this world. Now in that graphic, we are somewhere in the middle, in the US, we don't really have that. We don't often take that worldwide or history-wide perspective. We're often just looking at the people around us or the people who've got a little bit more than us and that's kind of our comparison, what we compare ourselves to rather than kind of stepping back and realizing the immense blessings we have. So to that I'll share a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, comparison is the thief of joy, constantly comparing ourselves to others who've got a little bit more than us is a recipe for just losing the joy in our lives that God wants us to have. Instead of comparing ourselves historically, we kind of think about the folks that are better off. And social media doesn't help us in this respect by any means. We see the little snapshots of the highlights of people's lives around us, we see the vacations our friends are having, and we're constantly seeing that filtered perspective of the high points and suddenly our lives don't seem as nice. And it can lead us to grasp for more, it's the American way. One of the things we can slip into is just running up the credit cards and reaching for things that are beyond our means. And that doesn't end well, we end up drowning in debt, striving harder to throw that burden off our back and might involve working longer hours, trying to keep up with those lifestyles and then we kind of get used to that lifestyle and it's just a vicious cycle. And this is a problem that really goes back to the garden. So we've got a question to consider back in the garden. What was the first command in the garden? What do you think of when you think about the first command in the garden? And the Lord God commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden. You may, you know, in the ESV, but other translations render it as you shall eat of every tree of the garden, you shall freely eat from all the trees of the garden. There's no word may or shall in the Hebrew that corresponds with that, the interpreters have to, translators have to kind of fill in helping words like that to try to bring across the text, but into English. But I think we could see it in a way as a command. Think, have in your mind, an Italian grandmother who is so happy to have you partake in the meal that she lovingly made to share with you, manja manja, she'll say, eat, eat. It's a command with the implication, eat, enjoy yourself of this bountiful feast that I'm happy to share with you. That's what I think this is a picture of God commanding, lovingly commanding mankind, Adam and Eve to eat bountifully of all this bounty in the garden, freely eat, there's so much here that I want to share with you, God is saying. So, then the second command comes, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it, but in the day you eat of it you will surely die. Now notice how our nature is always focused on that one thing we can't have rather than focused on the abundance that God has blessed us with. It's a problem for us. I think part of what we need to do is change our mindset, change our focus. So, I'm looking for solutions to this problem I see us in in contemporary American society. And one key strategy I want us to be thinking about is that turn of mindset, focus on the blessing and the abundance with gratitude to God that we have. Focus on that freely eat command, the abundance that God has blessed us with, let's have gratitude for the things, you know, thinking about those things that are just beyond our reach and letting that be what drives us and demand our attention, set that aside. Focus on the blessings that we have. Look for contentment in what we have, you know, and let that be true for the little things in life, let it be true for the big things in life like in our homes, in our cars, the big ticket items in terms of expenditures. We need to, you know, try to have that mindset of thankfulness and being satisfied with not the biggest and best of everything. If we can learn to be content with less wrecking again, having that historical perspective and we live like kings compared to so many people in history, that's what I want to encourage us to try to do. We've been blessed by much. So here's this little personal perspective. This is the home that I need to focus on being, you know, thankful for and focus on the blessings. There's a lot that I am blessed with. Living on three and a half acres in the woods with, you know, trees around us, trails to go out onto state forests and being able to sit out on that deck you see there on the left in the mornings listening to the birds as I have a coffee or eat my breakfast. The memories, the beautiful memories of raising our family here, there's so much to be grateful for. But if I'm going to be honest, my focus is not always there on the blessings. I often focus on the things that are going wrong and the things that need to be fixed. And believe me, there's a long list, you know, one of the things, well, to give you an example of my roof was leaking a few years ago and it had to get replaced. And now there's like, you know, moss growing and it's needing more attention again. And so there's there's these little things that sometimes, you know, get talked about the strategy, strategies again to find contentment. Think about perspective again. If I go back in my mind to the neighborhood we lived in in Africa, so here's we're talking about taking another trip or taking a trip to another perspective, another continent to kind of realize that our problems really are first world problems, as we say. My roof is keeping the rain out a lot better than this these folks roof is doing. So I need to be thankful for what I've got. I think about another thing that's been given me in our kitchen. It's getting 26, 27 years old. It's it's been through a lot. And lately, the control panel has been acting up. We try to turn the timer on when the oven's on and the oven suddenly shuts off. And it's like, it's kind of frustrating. And it's like tempting to say, OK, let's just go out and buy a new one. But if I think about what how that compares with the cooking conditions for, you know, folks again in that neighborhood in Kenya, this is the standard three stone jeep go the kitchen for most people in the village that we lived in. And they've got like wood smoke in their home as they breathing that in while they're cooking. We've got lots to be thankful for. And I think about my bathroom, I could use a remodel. Sometimes I get issues like hard water stains on the toilet. But, you know, it's not just a hole in the ground. I need to be thankful. We've got plenty. So. Our time in Africa as a family has helped us see the abundance that we have here. And and the kind of the danger of the of the mindset that we that we find ourselves here in in the United States, part of it is an insatiable appetite for more and more. And you look at how things have changed in our country in colonial times, or just after the American Revolution in 1790, apparently the average home in the U.S. was eight hundred and thirty one. Or just under six for the average. But as time continued, the houses got a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger, and the family sizes are getting smaller. In 1970, when I was born, suddenly that average eight hundred and thirty one square feet is now fifteen hundred square feet. And, you know, a little closer to today, the average is close to twenty five hundred square feet. That trends reversed a little bit because of the lumber prices going through the roof during COVID. But but that's generally the trajectory that we've seen. And, of course, I have to geek out and look at it graphically and try to fit a exponential curve to it and to look at it and everything. This is this is what it looks like. And you can see it's just it's just taken off. The square footage per person was under two hundred and hundred and eighty square feet, roughly the time time of the Revolutionary War. And now we're up to over a thousand feet, square feet per person with those smaller families and bigger houses. And we got like a person we keep thinking we've got to get bigger and bigger, but we don't. You know, that's that's a lie that we somehow get sucked into. I encourage you to to buck that trend. Think about maybe living simpler. Here's a quote from a medieval Jewish poet. Seeks more than he needs, hinders himself from enjoying what he has. Seek what you need and give up what you do not need, what you need not. For in giving up what you don't need, you'll learn what you really do need. Let's live simply. Unfortunately, our society, we think that, you know, it's all about pursuing happiness and we equate happiness with wealth and more stuff, a nicer car, a nicer house. You know, that's we keep telling ourselves if we get a little bit more stuff, we'll eventually read. But, you know, you can look at some of the richest people in history and think, you know, if I get a little bit more, then I'll be content. Now, Rockefeller may have meant that with a wink, but that's that in reality, he's he's commenting on basically the attitude of society, just a little bit more. It's this like carrot at the end of the string that keeps causing us to strive for more and more. And we're never content. And that's a danger. Distinctly coming, getting off a plane in Washington, D.C. after a year in Africa. And it felt to me like like that proverbial frog being dropped into the boiling water and wanting to jump out and saying, oh, look at look at all this, you know, striving after wealth that's all around here. You know, I'd grown up in it. I'd slowly felt the temperature easing up more and more and more to the boiling point, but I hadn't really noticed it. But stepping out of that society for a while, it changes your mindset somewhat. Part of that trip. So we stopped. We landed in D.C. We went to the Williamsburg Conference that that year and spent some time with believers in Maryland before coming back home. On the way home, we stopped in a mall. I don't know what I was thinking, but I don't know. We needed something. I don't remember what it was, but I was I was kind of shocked. One of the things that's distinctly again burned into my memory is right in the door as we walk in the door was this store called True Religion. And and and I realized that, yeah, this really is a shrine to the God of this country that it's about our religion is the religion of materialism. We it's what we worship here in the United States of America. We want to have nicer clothes and more stuff. But Jesus said and warned us when he's in the parable of the of the the sower, he said, Other seeds fell among thorns and the thorns grew up and choke them. A critical warning. We need to hear this warning for as for what was sown among the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful. We need to heed our master's warning. Don't let the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches choke God's word in your life. What if we pursued contentment rather than happiness, also known as more wealth? I think we're going to find ourselves actually more happy. Another strategy in this in this battle that we have the words of our master in the Lord's Prayer, give us this day, our daily bread, look to him for our needs and thank him for our blessings and just focus on the day's needs. And and be recognizing and thankful for those things. And not and as Jesus, you know, his commentary came after the prayer, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also. Invest in the spiritual rather than the material. So we have that warning, this warning and and we have, you know, advice from Jesus. And then there's also strategy. We read some strategy in this in this battle plan in First Timothy, that godliness with contentment is great gain. We need to work at being content. GK Chesterton said there are two ways to get enough. One is to accumulate more and more and the other is to desire less. You know, there's there's some there's some young people that I've got hope for the future of our glimmers of hope, one of which is I see a number of young people that actually are kind of taking a different tack on the whole materialism thing, and they're actually kind of pursuing minimalism and trying to get by on less. It's a countercultural thing, doesn't really match with the way the world is around us, but I think it's a it's a path for much more spiritual benefit and growth. They're trying to get rid of things and keep life simple. And contentedness is an important strategy to fight against that, the covetousness that's so pervasive in our society. Another quote from the Mishnah, Benzoma said, Who is rich? Those who are happy with their portion to be content. It's not something that I succeed in, by any means, day after day, I fail. But I encourage us to, you know, even if we're having trouble with this, to not give up. It's a skill that takes practice, you know, we're going to fail sometimes. But if we work at it with practice, we can become content with what we have, and we can even be content with less to choose to get by with less. Let's strive after so much material. And thinking about the subject, I did a little search. I don't know why I thought like in my photo album, I'm going to find anything about contentment, that, you know, in all my digital photos, I searched the word contentment and kind of smart, it came up with some interesting, some choices, one of which was this photo, a picture of Anna and I. And it pointed me to another strategy that I think is key in our battle. And that is being content in a father's love and care. Just as Anna here is content in my love as a young baby, we can become and find contentment as we come to our Heavenly Father, knowing that He cares for us. This is the message again and again that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. Your Father cares for you. He knows your needs. And we need to just soak in that reality and let it sink in. God loves us. God cares for us. We can be content in that love. We're not going to find content in this and striving after riches, but we can find it in our Father. And this was another one that came up in that search. Here Aaliyah is finding joy in a gift that she had, a flower, and in the love of her grandmother. We can find joy in the gifts from our Heavenly Father, and the love that we have from Him, the love we receive from the family that God has blessed us with. Another quote I'll give is, Our hearts are restless until they find rest in you. So we can seek for contentedness in our Father's love. Thank you. So I want to take us on another trip back to Africa. Lessons in this fight against materialism. Only now we're going to go back in history as well. Let's go back to Africa where Joseph found himself when he was in Egypt. I was going to say I've been kind of camping out in Bible studies a lot lately in the Old Testament, and my Bible classes have been more Old Testament focused. I'm doing a New Testament chapter today. 1 Timothy 6 is our focus, but I can't help but going back to the Old Testament, to Genesis. I think there's a good reason for that, because as I keep seeing, I've been seeing Bible echoes again and again in the Scriptures, and they bring out powerful meanings. I think we're going to find that that's the case for this chapter as well. There are 35 echoes that I saw scanning through 1 Timothy 6 to the life of Joseph. Six chapters, 35 allusions, I feel, that are there. I'm not going to take you through all of those today. I do want to take you through the ones because there's an awful lot of additional insight I think we can have. The Scripture just takes on a deeper depth of meaning when we can see kind of the context that the writers are hinting at in other passages. So just jumping back to, or going back a little bit from before chapter 6, you hear things like, you shall not muzzle out an ox while it's treading out the grain. It made me think about, oh, grain stored up in Egypt during Joseph's life. Is Paul thinking about this as he's writing this? That's just an example of one of these many, many again and again places where we see it. If you think about it, Joseph is writing to Timothy, a young man in the truth, and I'm not surprised that it seems as if Paul was meditating on the Joseph story, another young man in the faith who endured a lot of trials and served God in his life, and as Paul's trying to inspire his young protege, I think he was meditating on his scriptures. One little verse like that, or one little word, grain, maybe doesn't prove anything, but let's keep going. In verse 19 of chapter 5, never accept any accusation against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. An accusation. Joseph had a false accusation against him. Remember Potiphar's wife and that false accusation ended him in jail. Um, but in the Joseph story, there's also the story of Judah in Genesis 38. Judah was publicly rebuked by Tamar, and I wonder if Paul was thinking about that. Moving on to verse 21, I charge you to keep these instructions without partiality and do nothing out of favoritism. There was definitely a lot of favoritism in the Joseph story. His father Jacob was totally showing favoritism to Joseph and then later towards Benjamin. Keep yourself pure. Well, Joseph remained pure by fleeing temptation. So now that just gives you a feel for a little bit. Now let's focus on what about the Joseph allusions in our chapter, chapter 6. He's talking about those under a yoke of slavery. Well, Joseph was a slave. He was sold into slavery, and he served his master with full respect, so much respect that he was not willing to give in to the temptation that Potiphar's wife was calling him to. Um, what about verse 2? Believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers. Better since they who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. I wonder if Paul was thinking about the fact that Joseph's service for Pharaoh led to the salvation of his family. Joseph's brothers benefited from his service. In verse 4, there was discussion of envy, dissension, strife, slander. You know, a lot of those attributes sound a lot like Joseph's brothers and how they were envious of him, and they had that strife. There was definitely strife in that family. Verse 11, but as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness. That fleeing reminds me of Joseph, you know, fleeing from Potiphar's wife's advances. The verse in verse 13 of speaking, Paul's looking at that image of Jesus making his good confession before Pontius Pilate, the ruler of Israel at the time, one of the representatives of the Roman Empire, the biggest empire in the world. Well, Joseph made testimony before a ruler. He said, God's going to interpret your dream. Keep oneself unstained and free from reproach. You know, one of the things about Joseph is, you know, unlike almost every other character in the Bible, accepting our Lord Jesus, there are blemishes in their character that we see. Joseph, it seems like, though, seems kind of blameless. I don't know, maybe that's a stretch, but that came to mind. Verse 17, don't set your hopes on uncertain riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything. Joseph's story sure has a big focus on God's provision, which saved his people during a famine. Verse 18, they that are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. Joseph had the opportunity to have vengeance on his brothers when they came looking for food to Egypt. He could have shut up shop and said, sorry, folks, no more business. We're closed for the day, or, you know, we don't sell to outsiders, or he could have come up with any excuse he wanted to. But he instead shared his grain with his brethren. And he did so, you know, even before he saw the inklings of changes of heart that Judah, for example, showed when he was willing to give of himself and sacrifice for his brother. Storing up good treasure, storing up treasure, I'm sorry, reminded me of that image of Joseph storing up the grain. In verse 20, Paul says to Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Those words kind of make me think very much that Paul was kind of thinking about how Joseph was entrusted to care for those stores of food and to make sure that they lasted through those seven years of famine. So, you know, that's just focused on the last, you know, chapter and a half, and there's many others, I could say 35 different illusions. So when we look at that, you can see that Joseph is, I think, thinking about, I'm sorry, Paul is thinking about Joseph as he's communicating to Timothy. And when we have that perspective and we can kind of think about how these things kind of tie in, these themes and these words tie into the Joseph story, the opportunity to reflect on those illusions, and I think it really adds to the richness of Paul's message. Let's go back and think about chapter six and think about, you know, again, towards our strategy of fighting materialism. So lack of contentment that's described of the people in verses three through five seems to be connected to dysfunction in relationships. There seems to be a correlation that Paul's drawing out here. These people who slander, evil suspicions, there was a constant friction among people with these people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. They seem to be striving after material gain, and that attitude is also affecting or correlating with that attitude that's causing dysfunction among their brother, this envying, this dissension, these tensions. And there's a big contrast with the instructions for the slaves in verses one and two who are to serve, to benefit others. The people in verses three through five are all about themselves, and Paul's trying to encourage, to tell Timothy to encourage people to live lives of service instead. There's another contrast, and the real core of Paul's message and the strategy of fighting materialism and envying and covetousness is in verses six and seven. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. Just being thankful for the essentials that we have rather than striving for more and more. This is hugely important strategy. And well, let's see. And there's another contrast with that. We have these people in verse nine. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Remember Jesus' warning. The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. This is the snare that Paul's talking about that deceives so many in our world today. This desire to be rich is really the antithesis of contentment. It's a real danger. Look at the language that Paul uses to describe it. The snare, like a trap, and being plunged into ruin and destruction, do we think of that desire to be rich that way? Do we have that mindset that the desire to be rich is a snare, is something that can plunge us into ruin and destruction? Or do we think that's just the American way to strive for the successful life? You know, remember that boiling frog. We don't want to be caught up in it. Continuing in verse 10, Paul goes, root of all kinds of evil. It's through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. This language also seems to connect. Well, so before I get there, this word for wandered away in Mounce's lexicon is described as pervert and seduce, and it's only used one other place in the New Testament. However, that same word is used in the Septuagint in Proverbs 7.21 of seduction. The image of the woman who was trying to seduce the man walking by with much seductive speech, she persuades him. With her smooth talk, she compels him, and he's brought off to his death as the lamb to the slaughter. The love of money that Paul's talking about in verse 10 is being described with the same kind of language as the seductress. Well, look at the next verse and see how that fits in. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Paul seems to be linking back to Joseph fleeing from Potiphar's wife. Just like she could have pulled Joseph away to immorality, the love of money can pull us away from our faith. Paul is talking about the destruction of riches so that we're not pierced by the thorns that Jesus was speaking about in the parable of the sower. If you think about that image of Potiphar's wife, contentment? Was she content? She was a foil for godliness with contentment, total contrast. She was the wife of one of the needs. All her needs were met, but that wasn't enough for her. She wanted something else. She wanted the one thing that wasn't hers. She wanted Joseph. She reached out for Joseph, just like Adam and Eve were reaching for that forbidden fruit of a different kind of fruit. Instead of the forbidden fruit, grasping for riches, instead reach for eternal life. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. Reach for eternal life. Reach for Jesus who chose to die on the tree and gain true riches rather than the riches of this world. Instead of the tree, the forbidden tree, we need to reach up to Jesus whose death on the tree became a tree of life for us. Paul's mind, I think, is going there because in verse 13 he says, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who in testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul brings us to that image of Jesus' confession before the ruler of this world, before whom he explained that my kingdom is not of this world shortly before he gave his life. Likewise, and think about the Joseph parallels, Joseph, he made a good confession before Pharaoh, teaching Pharaoh that God would give the answer of peace to just to Pharaoh's dreams. Then Joseph instructed Pharaoh on the plan of salvation that God had provided, and then he helped act to bring about that plan of salvation. In the same way, Jesus made a good confession before the ruler of his day, and he went on to plan of salvation. Just like Joseph suffered in his faithful action and saved his brethren, Jesus' suffering saved his brethren in his generous gift of life. So we need to take hold of a different fruit so that, you know, just like God provided the grain and Egypt and the famine and our of death, the oppression of a different Pharaoh, the sin, the king sin in the world today, God provided Jesus the bread of life to save us. So, continuing, jumping ahead to verse 17 and chapter 6 of verse Timothy, Paul says, as for the rich in this present age, you know, we might feel like not so rich compared to other people in the wide context. We're the rich in this world. What are we to do? Charge? Paul's telling Timothy to charge them not to be haughty nor to set their hopes on and then the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. Remember the uncertainty of our riches and remember the certainty of God's provision. You know, you think about, you know, Joseph, his father Jacob was a man blessed with great flocks and herds, but those riches, they needed provision from God, from that grain that Joseph had stored up for them to survive. And God provided it in the midst of famine, God provides. We need to have that mindset on the things, the amazing wealth that we have in this country is so uncertain. Things could crash, you know, think back to the Great Depression, all of the vast riches that people thought they had can just evaporate in a flash. Looking to God and recognizing our provision comes from him and the things of this world are not, you know, where satisfaction or security comes. That's insecure. I think of Paul elsewhere when he said in Philippians that not that I'm speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I've learned the secret of facing plenty and need. That's the important context of I can do all things through Christ or him who strengthens me. Paul's not talking about, you know, doing, you know, in the world. He's talking about surviving and being content through whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, both, you know, plenty and times of want. We can get through all those things. In verse 19, and my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. So thinking about those back to Joseph again, those 14 years and kind of closing out here in first Timothy six. In verse 18, we read that, again, speaking to those those who are rich in this world, we are to do good, to be rich and good works, to be generous and ready to share. Joseph could have, as we said, you know, out of vengeance towards his brothers, teach him a lesson. He could have withheld grain from his brethren. But instead, he showed love, love to those who almost killed him, love to those who sold him into slavery. He didn't just give them grain. He like he put their money back in their sacks. That's generosity. I wonder, you know, Jesus teaching of love your enemies. Did Jesus, you know, come to that partly out of a meditation on Joseph's example? I don't know. I wonder, I wonder if Paul is, is thinking about how he, you know, was rounding up the apostles and the disciples of Jesus and wanting to bring them, drag them to prison. And yet they, when he saw the light, showed love to him. So the lesson is God supplies our needs. We've been given abundant blessings to be able to, to save others, that generosity that we need to have because of what we've been given. It's a choice. Joseph had a choice. He chose to give. We can do the same. And thankfully, the, the early, the brethren in the early church did the same. They, they gave love and shared with Paul as well. So let me summarize many lessons from Africa tonight, both from Africa today and Africa, you know, a few thousand years back. What you need to make sure that we have an abundance mentality, focus on what we've been given, not on what we don't have. Let's try to replace a life of chasing after stuff with a life of gratitude for our blessings. Let's strive after godliness with contentment. And to do so, let's be as little children being content to the being in the loving arms of our heavenly father, trusting him for our needs and recognizing this great bounty that we've been given and the fact that we have the ability to bring salvation to others in desperate situations. Be generous and share your wealth. Let's close with rereading verses 17 through 19 and think about how important this wisdom and instruction is for us in the 21st century, North American society, as we seek godliness with the contentment and a world that seeks to build the opposite in us, a discontent so that they can sell more of their wares to us. Let's stop reaching out for more material wealth and instead reach for the tree of life in Jesus' sacrifice and the new life that we have in him. Verse 17, as for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future so they may take hold, again, taking hold of the tree, the better choice, not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of life. Take hold of that which is truly life. So I pray that God will strengthen us in this effort to fight the materialism of this world and to instead have godliness with contentment. Thank you, everybody.