Pierced through with many sorrows

Transcript

Okay, so you can probably tell from the title and the reading that tonight's discussion is going to be about money. And this is a Bill Link Jr. special. He always would tell us and my sibs that, you know, Hebrews 11 is the faith chapter. 1 Corinthians 15 is the resurrection chapter. And if that's the case, then 1 Timothy 6 is the money chapter. And considering that today, at least in the United States, is tax day, I thought it might be a good topic for us to discuss this evening. I also thought it might be a good topic because there's a lot of financial anxiety in the world today. There's concern about AI taking away jobs. There's concern about the war spiking gasoline prices and causing economic instability. And there's those persistent and general concerns about inflation and just the cost of living. So let's start with what can be a major source of anxiety. Some of these things. So a recent Pew Research Center poll of adults in the United States, and this was conducted just in January of this year, the poll determined that 93% of respondents were concerned about health care costs. Another 92% were concerned about the cost of groceries and everyday items. 89% about housing. And the list goes on, right? Electricity, gasoline, finding a job, all these sorts of things. And we're not talking about the cost of luxury vehicles or the cost of European vacations, rich to me. These are people that are just worried about meeting their day-to -day needs, keeping the lights on, keeping gas in their car. So I wanted to share this research as our first data point. Basically providing evidence that there's a lot of anxiety in the world around finances. And specifically, this poll was for Americans. Okay, so that's the first data point. Here's your next one. And I found this really interesting. Aside from Luxembourg, Americans earn the highest paychecks in the world. This chart here on the left of your screen shows household income after taxes for the world's wealthiest nations in the color blue. And it shows American states, the five highest earners and the five lowest earning American states in red. And it was fascinating to me that workers in what we would consider the poorest states in the United States, West Virginia and Mississippi, they still have more take-home pay than workers in Britain or France. And this comes with the huge caveat that we don't have all the social services or government programs that European countries do. Cash is really king, as they say in the United States. But nevertheless, I think this definitely gives us some perspective when we think about wealth in the United States relative to the rest of the world. We're a very wealthy nation. And Canada, you can see, is up there as well. So these two data points, the financial anxiety and the fact that we're so wealthy, it really poses a question. Why do Americans have so much anxiety about their finances when they live in the wealthiest nation in the world? You would think those massive paychecks are doing something to alleviate financial worry, but they haven't. Now, I'm not a social scientist, I'm not an economist, but I have a few ideas that might help us better understand what's happening here. So I promised we're going to be pivoting to the biblical wisdom very soon, but I just want to lay out some groundwork in terms of what's happening in our society today. This chart here shows the proportion of the population in each of five groups segmented by household income and defined in terms of poverty limit multiples. I might have to explain that a little bit. Basically, the poverty limit is a federal number that's used to calculate eligibility for government programs like food stamps or SNAP, Medicaid, school lunch programs, and things like the Women, Infants, and Children program. Back in 1979, 24% of American households were below or within 50% of the poverty limit. So that's that less than 1 .5x, 24%. On the other end of the spectrum, you had households earning more than 17 times, 17 times the poverty limit, and that was less than 1%. Very few households were considered to be rich at that time. But if we look at some of the more recent data, the segmentation has really changed quite a bit. So I've just added 2014-2019 to the slide here, and we often hear about this idea of a shrinking middle class. It is true that the middle class has shrunk from, as you can see on the chart, 39% of the population in 1979 to 31%. The lower middle class and the very lowest income bracket, what we might call the poor, less than 1.5x of the poverty limit, those groups have actually shrunk as well. So the middle class is shrinking, and the lower income groups are shrinking as well. What's really happening in the U.S. economy among U .S. households is that the upper middle class and the proportion of people classified as rich has been increasing. That's very interesting to me. Okay, so the last slide showed that Americans have the highest disposable income in the world. Now this slide is confirming that there are fewer poor Americans and increasing numbers of wealthy and upper middle class. So you may be asking yourself if that's the case. It's not really explaining why there's so much financial anxiety. It seems like the rich are getting richer, and there are fewer poor. This should all be a good thing, according to conventional wisdom. All right, so to explain this a little more, I'm going to ask for your patience for one more slide. There's this economic concept called inflation, right? It's based on the consumer price index, which is a market basket of goods and services, your food, your clothing, gas, utility bills, services, housing, everything is sort of bundled into this index. And that poverty limit that we discussed before is pegged to the index. So as prices go up and incomes go up, the poverty limit goes up as well. Okay, so let's look at how inflation has connected with income. You can see that income has kind of kept pace with inflation, even outpaced it somewhat. And perhaps that's reflecting some of those upper middle class and wealthy people who are really sort of pulling that income line higher and higher. This would suggest that families can afford the increased cost of living caused by inflation, right? Because their incomes are keeping up with it. But I think what might actually be happening is that the inflationary measure doesn't really reflect the expenses of the people at the lower end of the income bracket, folks under the poverty limit, and sort of in those lower middle class brackets. So I'm just going to add the cost of housing, the cost of medical bills, the cost of tuition and childcare. All of these things are essential spending that households have to encounter. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, you have to pay for these things. And they have outpaced inflation overall. So what this means is you essentially have to feel more poor. You have to medical debt or your housing expenses or your childcare expenses. You're paying more for those things despite your income increasing over this time. So while it's a good thing that there are fewer poor families, the ones that are at the very bottom bracket, they probably feel more poor because they have less spending power when it comes to these essential expenses. All of this is, we hear about these things in the news. We hear about the cost of living and inflation. I just wanted to provide a little bit of data to anchor us to what's actually happening in the world and what are families that are kind of on that lower end of the income spectrum, what are they encountering? And so wealth inequality, this is one of those terms that you hear thrown around a lot. This has been something that's always existed. Going back to the Gilded Age, we've got the Vanderbilts mansion on Fifth Avenue here on the left. And just across the Brooklyn Bridge, you've got immigrant families living in tenement housing. They've got grandparents, they've got children all in one room with the same situation happening on the other side of the wall. Very dramatic lifestyle happening here. And if you were one of those immigrants living in tenement housing, you probably didn't think about Mr. Vanderbilt very much. You didn't have much exposure to the way that he and his children lived. Even though there was only sort of five miles difference between where those two pictures I just showed were taken, the families like the Vanderbilts and the Carnegie's and the Astors, they lived in a different reality. They might as well have been aliens to the folks in Brooklyn. They lived in literal fortresses of palatial homes with servants and carriages and very limited access despite living relatively close. And that's just not the case anymore. Today's media provides so much exposure to extreme wealth. Television shows like MTV Cribs, like come in, check out my mansion. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Our culture is obsessed with seeing how wealthy people live. And so nothing has really changed about the exclusivity of wealth. Accessing wealth, going into the centers of power as it were, is still very difficult. But we get exposed to wealth much more than I think people in the past might have. And so our sense of not having this thing, these lavish and exorbitant lifestyles, there may be a sense of, oh, hey, I'm missing out. This is something that everybody else has. Practically speaking, that's not the case at all. So there's some deception that's happening there. I thought this was interesting too. It's the same map, but just with the Zillow listings for homes over $5 million. And you can see that that distinction between Manhattan and the Bronx, I'm sorry, or Brooklyn, I should say, has really changed. The gentrification has resulted in very expensive homes throughout the boroughs of New York. So in any case, we are all getting exposed to the billboards in Times Square, glossy magazines, ads targeted to the upper echelons of society. We still see that. And marketing agents are putting the lives of the wealthy on display to ask us, why don't you live this way? So I'm just going to share as an illustration of that video or part of an advertisement that was shown in the Super Bowl this year. Live longer. All that money doesn't just buy more stuff. It buys more time. The wealth gap is a health gap. The rich have healthcare that comes to them, custom formulated peptides, specialists on call and preventative care before they need it. They get the best of everything. So why don't you? Now you can. All right. All right. That's all you really need to see. I'm sorry for subjecting you to that. But they ask a question, right? Kind of the hook to that advertisement is they get the best of everything. So why don't you? And that's really compelling. I think it gets to the heart of the problem. The advertisement is playing on the desire to live like the rich and the wealthy, but also shows how these premium services are more in reach to many Americans. But the reality is these services are still being marketed to those upper middle class and wealthy people, those growing segments of the population, and not the 30% of households that are near the poverty limit or below the poverty limit or poor, lower middle class. They still had to watch the Super Bowl commercial, but they're not necessarily the target audience. So just giving you a little perspective there. And another similar issue has been called premiumization. And air travel is a perfect example of this. Back in the day, if you took a flight, you had the option to fly economy or first class. Now there's first class, there's business, there's business select, there's premium, there's comfort, plus there's like all these different things. And all these people they're paying more are boarding before you are. Right? So how does that make you feel, right? When you're the very last person to go on the plane, you're trying to find some place to put your carry on. There's this sense that there's selling happening to people that are wealthier than you. And so you can't get into that echelon, unless you're obviously in that higher income bracket. This isn't something that we had previously. Another example is at the grocery store, you've got the options at Aldi's, which maybe aren't quite as appealing as Whole Foods. When you put them side by side, you've got the same thing with clothing and even fitness experiences, like going to a football game or going to Disney World that used to be more in reach for middle class families. And now they feel a little more out of touch. It's harder to get there for normal Americans. There's still this exposure to premium products and services, but accessing them is another story. And all of this can kind of lead to a sense of deprivation. Despite living in the richest country in the world, we're constantly comparing ourselves to a standard of wealth that's far beyond most of what human history had access to. And so this might sound dramatic, but I would call this a form of psychological oppression. It hasn't always existed, but is rampant in the world today. Just one more example before we turn to the scriptures. This week, I had to add this in because I saw it on Monday, the New York Times published an opinion piece entitled, The Death of the Basic American Car. And it highlighted a time in American history where models like the Civic or the Toyota Corolla were very popular. I think perhaps because of the 1970s gas crisis, auto manufacturers made these smaller econobox vehicles that did quite well for a while. But now they're shifting to luxury SUVs and these huge trucks and luxury cars. So the options for inexpensive vehicles are just not what they used to be. And I found this quote by the author really insightful. They wrote, today there are so many wealthy people who can afford luxury cars that simply isn't that profitable for companies to produce cars for the bottom 40% of Americans by income. So the issue isn't just having less than your neighbor. It's actually not being able to afford the options in the marketplace because the wealthiest Americans, which are a growing proportion, are asking for these vehicles. And the corporations, it's not worth their time to make the cheaper, less expensive vehicles. So just kind of framing where we are as a society with the economics of today, they really forced these financial issues to the forefront of our mind. And this is a quote attributed to Teddy Roosevelt. Comparison is the thief of joy. It's hard to avoid your neighbors driving those luxury SUVs when you're in the same traffic that they are. And if we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, it's going to steal our joy. Those preoccupations are sometimes called keeping up with the Joneses. And I didn't realize there was actually a comic strip called Keeping Up with the Jones back in the 1930s. That's where that expression sort of comes from. And so you can see in this panel, Clarice is commenting, look at Mrs. Jones. She's got to matinee. She entertains. She wears wonderful clothing. She gets something out of life. You simply got to make more money. And this is where biblical wisdom can save us a lot of grief. Second Corinthians 10 verse 12 states that it's unwise to compare ourselves to others. The context of the scripture isn't specifically about wealth, but as a general principle, there's a lot of wisdom in avoiding comparisons, because we're often comparing the things. Okay, your neighbor drives a Porsche, but he's miserable at home because he's spent all his time investing in his business instead of investing in his family. So there isn't really a parody there. You don't see that. And if you're not him, you won't understand. There may be other advantages or opportunities in his life. Not worth comparing. Hebrews 13 specifically on money or contentment with material possessions. Keep your life free from love of money. Be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man can do. What can man do to me? And so this verse starts to give us some real insight into why covetousness is spiritual failure. When we're striving for more, we're telling God that his blessing isn't enough for our lives. When we fear lest we lose what we have, we're telling God that we don't trust his care. This is the whole point of that famous verse in Matthew 6, right? Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you. But what things is he talking about? What are all the questions? Wherewithal will we be clothed? What shall we drink and what shall we eat? Don't worry about it. Just seek the kingdom of God and things will be taken care of. He doesn't promise us a new iPhone every year or concierge medical services or season tickets, but living life in a state of contentment is such a wonderful gift. We're able to say, the Lord is my helper. What can man do to me? I just wanted to share a personal note. A little over a year ago, my company gave the workforce notice that there was going to be a reduction force. That's what they call layoffs nowadays. They gave us a month's notice. I don't know if that was generous or cruel because that month was terrible. The morale was awful. People layoffs were coming. I guess it gave folks time to find other jobs. There was a real sense of dread in the office at that time. At that time, Hannah and I were expecting August. Even though we were expecting, we were in this situation where we needed the stability of work, I'm the only one in our family earning an income, the situation didn't really bother us that much. We knew that whatever happened, that God would take care of us. We tried to live our lives by biblical principles and show good financial stewardship over our resources. We weren't trying to keep up with the Joneses and rack up incredible credit card debts. That wasn't an issue for us. Yeah, it was actually quite a relief to not have to have really heavy stress. I'm not saying that if somebody else was in our situation and did feel a lot of stress about the situation, that it would be wrong, but I think it helped. I think our having a spiritual mindset helped us navigate through that situation in a way that some of my colleagues might not have enjoyed. It's a really powerful thing. That brings us to our next marquee verse here from our reading, 1 Timothy 6, godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world and we can't take anything out, but if we have food and clothing, with these, we will be content. Paul says, you want to be wealthy, try godliness with contentment. It's a great investment. It's great gain. He says food and clothing are really enough. Here, I believe food and clothing is actually shorthand for the essentials. Losing your job, losing your soul sense of income, that could threaten your essentials. I want to limit the scope of my personal example. In the food and clothing category, I also put housing, transportation to get to work, money for your gas bill, wood on the fire in winter, these things that you need to live. There are a lot of things that we could probably live without, even if we think we need them. The upgrades, the next generation, new features, especially in the West, there's so much we have that we could probably live without. By living modestly, we might actually be happier. The real warning comes in the next verse. Those who desire to be rich, and in that category, I'm going to add those who desire a luxurious lifestyle, those who desire a life of leisure and indolence, those who desire lots of zeros at the end of their bank accounts. This encompasses many variations on a theme. This is a mindset that Paul is addressing. He says, those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. This verse is depicting a three-step process. The first step is enticement, becoming allured, enticed by wealth. Like any good trap, there's a bait. There's some benefit that seems to be dangled out in front of us, and it seems harmless at first. But don't take that bait, because if you do, you get entangled. That's the next step. We become entangled or wrapped up in senseless and harmful desires. Our relationships, our moral responsibilities, our sense of ethics, they start to become warped by an obsession with wealth, which finally leads to the third step, enslavement. The love of money ultimately ruins and destroys. So that's enticement, entanglement, and enslavement. Some of you will recognize this line from the famous musical Fiddler on the Roof. I'll just recover. So hopefully that came through loud enough. Tavia's told that money is the world's curse, and he responds, may the Lord smite me with it, and may I never recover. So it's a humorous line, obviously. In the context of the film, Tavia's, you know, he famously speculates, I was a rich man, and his desire for wealth, I think in the film, is more about having dignity and stability in his life. He's concerned about his wife, Golda, and his five daughters, and meeting their needs. So in some respects, I think it falls into that food and raiment category, that the minimum things we need to live, to care for our basic needs. But the truth is, there's some wisdom to the students' expression of money being the world's court curse. If we have an inordinate affection, an improper affection for wealth, it really can lead to dreadful consequences. People's problems with gambling, pressing other people, theft and illegal schemes, blackmail, extortion, financial debt bondage. Some things sound pretty extreme, but love of money can also quietly make a family miserable when one or both spouses are hyper fixated on either earning or spending. And it's worth noting that it's the love of money, not money itself, but the love of money that is the root of all evil. And you don't have to be rich to love money. So it has everything to do with our attitude and relationship. So just returning to 1 Timothy 6 verse 9, I want to apply this model of enticement, entanglement, and enslavement to a few familiar Bible stories. So first off, in Genesis 13, you've got Lot whose story starts off well enough. Maybe he doesn't love money, he just wants a better opportunity for his family. But you have to ask at what cost he ignores the wickedness of that city because it's an opportunity for prosperity. And of course that leads to eventual ruin for his family. I'm just going to go through these quickly. You've got Elisha's servant Gehazi. You remember that after Naaman is healed, Gehazi goes running after the Syrian. And first he lies to Naaman. He says, Oh, Naaman, we got visitors, right? We've got visitors and they need a bar of silver. It's not that strange. It's like, give us the clothes and give me a bar of silver for our visitors. Sure, take two. Then he takes the stuff, the treasury, and he comes back to Elisha. And Elisha says, Where have you been? He says, I didn't go anywhere. So now he's lying to Elisha. And we lie to ourselves if we assume that the money will bring us happiness or security or satisfy our existential needs. We lie to God when we tell him that we trust him, when in reality we trust in our 401k. I want to be clear that having savings, being responsible, it doesn't make us unfaithful people. But trusting in them might. Our attitude towards the bunny that we have, the bigger barns we built, that probably does. And God sees right through it, like Elisha does. And Gehazi is smitten with leprosy. Bad news. Next up, going out of chronological order a little bit here with Achan. But again, concealment and deception, major themes in Achan's case. They were told to destroy everything in Jericho, but Achan didn't. He dug a hole under his tent. He put his stuff in there. What happened? This led to a terrible defeat at AI and the loss of many lives. And so we see there's community impact as well. Ultimately, he and his family bear the brunt, but there's community impact. So we have to think about the Elisha and how sort of our lifestyle and our spending or our focus on earning, it could really negatively impact others. So there's Achan. Ananias and Sapphira. This one's scary. Peter says to them, you've not lied to man, but to God. And there's that line about the feet of those who have taken your husband are at the door. Really ominous stuff. But we see this theme of deception appearing again. I find that really interesting. And perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that truth felt false victim to the pursuit of riches. This falsehood is actually part of the issue. This is something we see in the parable of the sower where Jesus refers to the words sown among thorns as being choked by the deceitfulness of riches. The riches deceive the hearers, and they in turn deceive others in pursuit of wealth. That's what happened to Ananias and Sapphira. And you can see this graphic is a little bit ridiculous, but just choking that word, it's just throttling the word that's in us. And so that seed does not bear fruit so we must keep ourselves from the cares of the world and the deceitfulness, the lies of riches. Here's another verse in the Psalms of David speaking to the deceitfulness of riches. See the man who would not make God his refuge, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and sought refuge in his own destruction. And you see that parallelism between trust and refuge. It draws out the equivalence being made between riches and destruction. The very thing that you thought brought safety is actually destroying you. And that's the deceitfulness of riches. And there can be no greater example than Judas, right? Judas betrayed the Holy One of God for 30 miserable pieces of silver. It wasn't worth it. He was completely wrecked by greed in the end. And I know that there are various theories about Judas's betrayal and what motivated it, but we know that he was the money man for the disciples. He was their accountant, and it says he was a thief and he held the bag, right? He was ripping off the other disciples. And that love of money brought him to the point of suicide. In the end, he was destroyed by his own hand. So really quite tragic. No man can serve two masters. This is from the Sermon on the Mount. You will either love the one and hate the other, or hate the one and love the other. You can't serve God and money. I think that's what Judas was trying to do. He was trying to have it both ways, and it ruined him in the end. Okay, so these are all great cautionary tales. They're all scriptural tales of the love of money gone wrong, as it always does. But what if we're rich already? Or what if, by no inordinate desire of our own, we've become wealthy, right? You think of Joseph, who did very well for himself. Abraham or Solomon, pick your example. So I want to talk about that for a minute. And for those of us who are not in those upper middle class or wealthy or even middle class, even if we don't think we have a lot compared to our neighbors, we have to remember that living in this time in history and living in this country, we do get exposed. We are relatively wealthy from a certain perspective, and that comes with all sorts of caveats. So what does scripture say for us? 1 Timothy 6 teaches that as for those who are rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, not to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but to set their hopes on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They're to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves a good foundation for the future. So that they may take hold of that which is truly life. And so a couple of notes here. As you can see from the colored text on screen, this first is inverting our typical idea of wealth to a different kind of wealth. Generosity and good works become that new kind of wealth. And unlike the uncertain riches of the present age, they become a good foundation, a reliable foundation for the future. This is something you can trust on, whereas the uncertain riches could be gone in a moment. They don't provide true security. So Paul is very cleverly subverting the classical idea of wealth by showcasing the benefits of spiritual riches. And so I thought of the Sermon on the Mount. Do not lay for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. This is real treasure, to be rich in good works. And another point, it does say God has richly provided us everything to enjoy. We're not actually instructed to feel guilty for enjoying the good things God's given us. We're supposed to enjoy God's gifts and to be generous and ready to share. And it's not an either or. We don't have to be generous people that have totally impoverished ourselves. It's to enjoy those things that God has given us and to be generous and to be ready to share. And this speaks to the mindset, because I think if we're hyper folks fixated on getting money, we are not going to be fixated on giving away money. So I don't know if you would call this a matter of balance, because I think you should extremely be thankful for God's good gifts. I think we should also be extremely generous and giving away the good things God has given us. And that leads us, at least for me, led me to Jesus's teaching to the rich men in Luke 18. And this was really a challenging teaching. If we're honest with ourselves, we probably feel a lot of affinity for the rich man who went away dismayed after Jesus asked him to give up all his goods and raise money for the poor. Jesus comments how difficult it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. So I've just sort of said, in a way we are all rich, as people in the Western world are all kind of wealthy, right? So is it really difficult for all of us to get into the kingdom of God? That's a scary thought. And I've heard various explanations, right? There's that idea that there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem called the eye of the needle that actually a camel could get through, right? That makes me feel a little better. The camel can get through the eye of the needle. You just got to let down some of those bags. And so that rich camel will get through the gate and enter the kingdom of God. So there's sort of a solution worked out in that way. I don't know if there was such a gate. Maybe you've heard that story. Apparently it goes back to the 11th century, which all that really tells me is that Jesus' teaching made people uncomfortable even in medieval times, right? So this idea of the eye of the needle. It's a hard teaching and it clearly upset the rich young ruler. And I think it should be deserving for us today. Scripture should prick our conscience. But we're not doing ourselves any favor by making apologies for or trying to explain away Jesus' teaching. He's saying something very clear here. It's difficult. Wealth is going to prevent us from getting into the kingdom. I would offer one other thought to sort of mediate that. In verse 22, Jesus says to the rich ruler, one thing you still lack. He says, one thing, sell everything you have, completely alter your socioeconomic standing, debase yourself to the level of the impoverished beggars at the temple gate. That's it. You're set. Just do that one thing. And so I think it's a little bit, I don't know if tongue in cheek is the expression here, but he's almost telling the ruler, you think you're doing so great because you're following the commandments, but you're really actually one mile away. Just this one thing, which is actually not such a small thing. And so I don't think he expected the rich young ruler to take a vow of poverty, but his wealth was an issue for him. And it needed to be addressed with as much severity as an offending eye, right? Pluck it out. Does Jesus really think we should pluck our eyes out if we're struggling with lust or something like that? I don't think that's the solution, but he is telling us to take drastic measures. So with the notable exception of Ananis and Sapphira, the first century ecclesia, they were taking drastic measures. They did completely divest themselves of their individual wealth for the collective good of the community. Barnabas, he had that land that he sold, right? He laid it at the disciples' feet. We might also think of the poor widow before the ecclesial age, but she was getting everything she had. It was just two mites, but for her, that was everything, and she dropped it off. She probably didn't think anybody was watching, but Jesus was, and it gave him a lot of pleasure to see that. He was impressed by it. He understood what that meant for her. And so we have this teaching of Christ, and we could say many things and go to many other scriptures, but I think this is a beautiful one for us to bring our thoughts to a close on. Jesus words to the disciples after they rebuked Mary for pouring out that costly ointment, for making such an extravagant gift, lavishing his feet with this expensive gift and wiping his feet with her hair, and the disciples were very dismissive. It says Judas and John, but the other accounts have all the disciples really kind of remarking on this. And Jesus said, leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial, for the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me. And so today we can't show Christ this extraordinary generosity directly. We can't hold his feet the way that she did, but there will always be poor among us. There will always be people in need. We may be people in need. And so I would encourage to close with a call to action. Let's renew our efforts to live more like the first century ecclesia, to be more open-handed with the widows and the orphans and the needy. I think now would be a good time for us to review our charitable giving, to look at our monthly recurring donations if we set those up, and maybe update them. Let's look at Agape, and let's look at Meal a Day, and the Bible School, and the CBM, and let's make sure that we've included them in our bequests and our legacy giving. Let's get a little more extreme with our generosity. And I know that we all work hard for money, and it's important to remember that it's God who is our provider. It's God who gave us the health, the talent, the opportunities to earn. So whether we have two coins or a parcel of land, we shouldn't hold on to it too tightly. So in this day and age where there is so much financial anxiety, there is so much worry, and we hear about it in the news, we hear about it from our neighbors, and maybe we're encountering the effects of it ourselves. Maybe we're struggling to find work for months and months that turn into years. These stories are not that uncommon, but God's not going to fail us, and He is our provider, and He has our eternal well-being in His hands. So let us thank Him for the good things He's given us. Let us be generous and open-handed with them, and let us always live in accordance with the principles that Scripture has given us on this topic. So thank you very much.