Sermon On The Mount: Jesus, Money and Worry | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:24 Today we continue our series of sermons on the most important sermon ever preached, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. And we're going to come to the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, literally, in Matthew chapter 6. And we're going to see what he has to teach us about our relationship with wealth and worry. But before that, because it's Mother's Day, I thought we might have a little Mother's Day humor. So Jeannie Olson, a mother of five from Illinois, took her daughter Kirsten, age nine, out for brunch. And during their meal, Jeannie courageously asked her daughter, how do you think I could be a better mom? Any of you moms or dads who've ever asked that know this is a dangerous question. And Kirsten thought about it for a moment, little nine-year-old Kirsten thought about it for a moment, and she said, well, you do yell a lot. I know you've been praying about that, but it isn't really working yet. Or, I love this, looking for Mother's Day gifts is sometimes hard. It's always hard for me when I'm thinking about gifts for my mom or for LaVon. And so I was struggling, and I was looking online to see, what are the best Mother's Day gifts to get this year?

3:23 And I saw there's an interesting list. It was published out of Great Britain. It was a publication there. And they had solicited from moms, like what are the worst Mother's Day gifts you ever got? A little tongue in cheek, but moms submitted gifts that they had received. And of course they were gracious when they received these gifts, but these were their sort of least favorite gifts they'd ever received for Mother's Day. Are you ready? Here it is. Deodorant, a fire extinguisher, cleaning supplies, ants from a kid's ant farm. And how about this one? car parts for their child's car. Well, today we're focused on Matthew chapter 6, where more than half the chapter is focused on our relationship with wealth, possessions, and worry. And those three are all intermingled in Matthew chapter 6. We're going to come back at the end to the idea of Mother's and Mother's Day and how that ties into the topics that we're focused on for Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount. So we learned two weeks ago that Jesus called his disciples to a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees. So the scribes and Pharisees were, you know, were very righteous. People looked at them and they did the right thing. It seemed like all the time. They went to the nth degree to please God. And yet Jesus said to his followers, you've got to exceed their righteousness. And they were perplexed by this. How can we exceed their righteousness? And Jesus said, really, it's a matter of the heart. So you can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons. You've got to do the right things for the right reasons. And God's concerned with your heart and not just with your outer, outward appearance. It's easy for us to try to impress other people by our seeming religiosity. But if what we're trying to do is impress other people, we've already missed the point. And so then Jesus goes into talking about our relationship with money, calling us to this higher righteousness. So he's really talking about matters of the heart here. And these are matters for first century Palestinian Jews, and these are matters for 21st century Americans. So I want us to listen carefully. There are four things we're going to learn in this sermon. So first of all, he begins the chapter with these words.

5:13 Whenever you give to the poor, whenever you give to the poor, don't blow your trumpet as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they, listen, so that they may get praise from people. I assure you that's the only reward they'll get. But when you give to the poor, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that you may give to the poor in secret and your father who sees what you do in secret will reward you. Now, notice he doesn't say if you give to the poor. He says, when you give to the poor, right? It's just assumed you're going to do that. Jesus assumes this. And rightly so, because the entire Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, talks about this over and over and over again. It was an obligation. It was part of what it meant to be the people of God, is that you were giving to help people who were in need. The Hebrew word is tzedekah. Tzedekah is a word that literally came to mean almsgiving or giving to charity, giving to people who were in need. And it's based upon another root, tzedek.

6:08 And tzedek is a word in the Hebrew Bible that means righteousness and or justice. And that word, so righteousness or justice appears 157 times, and I think it's 119 times that the word tzedakah appears. Actually, I have that reversed. 119 times tzedakah appears in the Hebrew Bible. 157 times tzedakah, not justice, but kindness, compassion, charity, almsgiving appears in the Bible. So over and over and over again, God calls his people to give to those who are in need. So, you know, when Jesus says, you know, when he addresses this, it's like, whenever you do this, he knows you're going to do it. It's expected that you're going to help the poor or those who are in need. Now, he goes on to say this, when you give to the poor, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that you may give to the poor in secret. Now, this is hyperbole. You know, your left and right hand don't know anything. They don't have a brain, right? But you're going to know with your brain what your right hand is doing and what your left hand is doing. He's just using hyperbole to say, listen, give in a way that you're not trying to get credit from other people. Give in a way that's in secret. Don't be trying to do this to get the praise of other people. The word he uses frequently in the Gospels is hypocrite.

7:14 Hypocrite meant a play actor on a stage, somebody wearing a mask, pretending to be something that they weren't. And he doesn't want them to be like hypocrites who are blowing their trumpets so that everybody will notice that they did something good for somebody else. Now, it's interesting that he says this because we all have felt this battle. Well, maybe you haven't. I have. I think most people feel the battle that when you do something good for somebody else, you kind of want somebody to know about it. You want to tell somebody. You want somebody to notice. You like it when people see them. And there's just something in us. It's like, I did this good thing, but I want to be recognized for it, right? And Jesus says, okay, but if you want the righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees, you're going to look at how you give without seeking any credit or any recognition in return. You see, it's possible to help other people, to help the poor or somebody who's in need, and you're using them just to make yourself feel better or to get recognition or praise from others. And he says, don't do that. Help somebody because it's the right thing to do. Help somebody because they need it. Help somebody because God calls us to do it.

8:10 And God's going to see that's all you need to care about, is God knows that in your heart and in your secret actions, you were doing what was right. All right, so that's the first thing he teaches. Now, we're going to skip down a few verses. If you have your Bible, turn to Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 through 21. And here Jesus says this, stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven where moth and rust don't eat them and where thieves don't break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That's interesting. In this passage, if you look to the Greek, and I'm guessing the Aramaic behind it, which Jesus spoke Aramaic or Hebrew Aramaic. Aramaic's a variant of that. But it sounds like this in Greek, five times the word treasure shows up. So he says, don't treasure up treasures for yourself on earth. Instead, treasure up treasures in heaven where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So he's challenging us to treasure the right things, to treasure up the right things.

9:11 He's talking about our heart. What do you treasure? What do you really love? What do you spend your time thinking about and focused on, right? And so in this case, treasuring the right things and not the wrong things. Now, I don't know what treasures you have and what things you have focused on in your life that maybe you realize later. I spent a lot of time, way too much time thinking about that thing. And this is sometimes true when it comes to things we collect. So when I was nine, I think it was nine years old. I think I was in fourth grade. I might have even been eight in third grade. And beer can collecting became a big deal. Some of you remember that I used to collect beer cans as a kid. So it started when I was eight years old. Of course, I couldn't drink it, but at least, you know, and I didn't even like the taste of it. I just thought this is such a cool thing. And all my older, cooler friends were collecting beer cans. So I began collecting beer cans. And I became consumed with this. And so, you know, I purchased my allowance money I used to buy beer cans. I would trade those beer cans for other beer cans and then trade those with others. I joined the Beer Can Collectors of America Association. So this was a club that was started, I think, in the early 1970s. Here's a t-shirt with the logo there on it. The Beer Can Collectors of America. I was a proud member of the BCCA. I went to the trading conventions. They'd come to Kansas City and you could trade your beer cans with other people. I started trading with people.

10:22 They had lists back in the day when there was no internet. We would just have these, you know, lists that would get mailed around and there'd be people in Europe and they would trade beer cans and my parents would, you know, pay for the postage so I could ship my beer cans over to Europe and they would send their beer cans to us here. And I was so excited about this. And then, you know, somewhere along the way, when I was about 13 or 14, I became more interested in girls than beer cans. And then somewhere along the way, around age 14, I became a follower of Christ and I became much more interested in God and girlfriends than I was in beer cans. And so by the time I was 15, I had my walls were covered with these beer cans on these shelves my stepdad had built. And I would take those beer cans down and I took them all down, put them in black garbage bags. I mean, my stepdad would take me out on Saturdays and we would go finding these old trash dumps in Kansas City. We'd take shovels and we'd dig down deep and find these old beer cans that were still preserved. Anyway, so I've had these beer cans in black garbage bags in my attic. I've moved them everywhere I've moved to. LaVon has begged me, would you just give those away? Throw them away.

11:19 Do something with them. But it's like, I can't quite release them because they represent a certain period in my life. But here's one of those black garbage bags. And I've got four or five of these at home, along with some boxes filled with beer cans. And what happened with these is I had some full beer cans in there. And those over a period of time, remember, this is like 45 years ago, more than that. Gosh, 51 years ago, I started collecting these things, 53 years ago. And so they started to leak. And then some of the beer cans got rusted. And then some of the beer cans, they sat on top, you know, in these bags. They got moved around from place to place. And they just got squished like this. And all of a sudden, the things that I had that had this great value, and I thought they were so important to me, that I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours collecting, now really have zero value at all. Jesus says this is what it's like with the things when we're collecting or treasuring the wrong things. And so he says, treasure the right things.

12:12 So what are the right things? Well, you know, when we think about the Ten Commandments, the very first two commandments, depending on how you label them. The first two commandments are, you shall have no other gods before me and you shall not make an idol of anything, any physical thing. Don't make it an idol and don't worship it, right? This is what Jesus is talking about. He's going right back to the first one or two of the 10 commandments. And that is we don't make idols of the stuff that is in this world or even of the people in our lives. We don't make idols and we don't worship what isn't God. So this is the first point. You go to the great commandments, right? Jesus says there are two great commandments. The first one, love God with all that's within you, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Are we loving the right things or the wrong things? And what happens to our hearts is they are so easily led astray to find ourselves loving the things we were not meant to love. We were meant to use, we were meant to enjoy, but we're not meant to make them our treasure.

13:04 We're not meant to treasure them deeply in our hearts, but instead to use them or to enjoy them. God gives us everything for our enjoyment, the scripture says, but we're not meant to make an idol of anything. And how easy it is for us to get caught up in the wrong thing, not even realizing it. Our idol becomes the next house we want to have. Our idol becomes the possessions we want to have. It becomes the jewelry or it becomes the clothing that we have. And that's why Jesus, for first century Jewish peasants, they didn't have access to all of these other things we have access to, but they did have nice clothes. You could get these beautiful fabrics, and a woman would receive this as her dowry in her wedding. And so this was the thing that could show that you'd really arrived if you had clothes made of this certain kind of fabric. And Jesus says, you know, listen, moths get into your closet and they're gonna eat those things up. They're gonna have no value in the end, like my beer cans and my garbage bags, right? So make sure you're treasuring the right thing.

13:57 And you store up treasure in heaven by treasuring the right thing. And what is the right thing? It's loving God with all that's within you and loving your neighbors, you love yourself. And then acting out of that and doing God's work in the world. And you are storing up for yourselves treasures in heaven and not on earth. Jesus is not telling us that we can't have a beer can collection or a stamp collection or a coin collection, but be careful how much of your heart you give to these things. You're meant to enjoy them, but that's not meant to be the center of your life. At the center of your life is God and God's call on your life to follow Jesus and to love people and to do God's work in the world. So that leads to the next thing that Jesus says when it comes to money. He says, the eye is the lamp of the body. This is chapter six, verse 22 through 24. The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how terrible that darkness will be.

14:53 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth. All right, this is so interesting. So he's making the same statement, the same point he made in just a moment ago when he talked about what you treasure. Now he's making that same point using a different metaphor. So in this case, the metaphor he's using is the eye and what you're letting into your body. So the eye is the lamp of the body. And scholars debate exactly what did Jesus mean by that? That's kind of a strange thing. How is the eye the lamp of the body? Is it sending light out from you? Or is it actually allowing light to pass through you and into your soul or your mind? And that's really what the big idea, I think, here. It probably means both. But on the one hand, you understand that our light, our eyes actually receive light. That light bounces off of objects that we're looking at and then comes into our eyes, is focused to the back of our eye. And then that's translated into a signal to our brain, right? So what we're seeing is what our brain is focusing on, on that given moment. And so when Jesus says, you know, that you're not meant to have your eye looking at something that's unhealthy, right? Because if you do, if your eye's looking at something that's unhealthy, then your whole body is filled with darkness. Your soul, you know, who you are, your mind is filled with darkness. You understand how this works. I mean, if your eye is focused on things that are unhealthy for you to look at, I think about pornography. And if your eye is focused on that, you know, this is going to have an impact on your brain. If your eye is focused on somebody that you shouldn't be attracted to and you're cultivating a relationship, take your eyes off this. If it's focused on material wealth, and in this case, he's talking about material wealth, if your eye is focused on money all the time, then what's going to happen is this is what your brain, he says, in essence, your body is filled with, and your body will be filled with great darkness.

16:37 If then the light in you is darkness, how terrible that darkness will be. So it also, though, might very well be that you remember Shakespeare was one who said this. He said, the eye is the window to the soul. So you can look in somebody's eyes. And this isn't always true. Sometimes somebody is just having a bad day or they're really tired or they're down or something. And so you see just, but even then you're seeing what's going on in their heart by looking at their eyes, right? And you can see, you can look at somebody. if you look at them often enough, you know, in enough various situations, you might find that all you see in that person is emptiness or cruelty or darkness or selfishness, you know, or you see in people's eyes when you look at them a kindness, a compassion, a love, a generosity of spirit. So maybe he's also saying that what it is you're focused on in your mind, in your heart, what you're treasuring is what people are seeing when they look into your eyes. I think both of those things are true, but primarily I think he's talking about what you're focused on with your eyes. And I'm reminded of a song that children, we learned when I was a child, be careful, little eyes what you see. Be careful little eyes what you see. Your father up above is looking down with love. Be careful little eyes what you see, right? Be careful what we're focusing our eyes on.

17:45 And so if your focus is on all that, you know, the next thing you want to buy, the next house, the next car, the next, the jewelry, all, you know, whatever it is, the stock market, you know, if you're focused on money all the time, you're going to find that what's, what happens is your brain becomes wired this way. You're going to find that what's inside of you is not light. it's something far less than that. I met a man this week who was telling me about his past careers, and he said, you know, one of his jobs, I think he was working for a non-profit, I don't remember, but he said, I spent a lot of time with people who were very wealthy. Now, he didn't know I was working on this sermon, but I was just curious to hear, tell me about this. And he said, you know, I worked with some of the nation's billionaires. I worked with people who had, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. And he said, you know, it was interesting. I met two types of people in this line of work. I met people who were consumed by their wealth. And that's all they thought about. He said, he was using hyperbole, but he said, 23 out of 24 hours a day, this is what they thought about. They thought about how they made more money. They thought about how they could, you know, increase their profit margins. They thought about how they were going to spend their money. They thought about what power they had because of their money. They were just consumed with money. But he said, there's another type of billionaire or, you know, people with hundreds of millions of dollars. He said, there weren't as many of them, but these were people who were focused on how do I do something good with what I have? And he said, you know, they held their money loosely. They recognized it was a trust that had been given to them. And I love this because he was, you know, he's preaching my sermon, you know, and not even knowing this is what I was preaching about, but it's what Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount. It's like, they looked at all of this and they said, you know, we've been blessed. And they realized what, what, you know, scripture says about Abraham. God says, I blessed you that you might be a blessing or what Jesus says in Luke's gospel, you know, to much is given, much more is expected.

19:28 And this is meant to be the rhythm of our lives. We are meant to be defined by our generosity. And you know this, I think it was Winston Churchill who said, you know, we make a living by what we earn. We make a life by what we give. It was something like that. I mean, it is important that we remember that where our eyes are focused or what we treasure most ends up what takes hold into our hearts and souls. And Jesus says a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees is not one that's just giving away so people will notice and give you credit. It is one that is focused on the right things instead of the wrong things. And the reason for that is what we find at the end of that little pericope of what Jesus said here in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, read this with me if you would. Let's say it out loud. No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will love the one, you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other, you cannot serve both God and wealth.

20:26 You cannot serve both God and wealth. You gotta decide which one of those is gonna have the priority in your life. One of them is gonna try to serve the other. You're gonna make one of them try to serve the other. And I know people who's driving passion, their treasure, what their eyes are focused on is wealth. And then they think God is a means to that end. If I just do these right things, then God is gonna bless me even more. And that's really what I want. As opposed to what I wanna do is bless God and honor God. And I'm gonna use what I have as a way of doing that, accomplishing his will and his purposes. We prayed last week, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That has to do with our checkbooks. It has to do with our time, our talent, all of it, right, is when that becomes the priority in our lives. And I've shared this with you before. You know that I don't leave the house without these two things in my back pocket, my billfold, which has my driver's license, my credit cards, cash, my insurance card, and my pocket New Testament with Proverbs and Psalms, right? And if I could get an entire Bible in my back pocket, I'd do that, but this is all I can fit back there.

21:21 And so every day when I, you know, when I suit up and I'm ready to go, you know, I pick up these things from this little table right by the, where my keys are, right by, you know, where I walk out the door. And I grab these and the question that I have to ask, and I don't always ask it, but somehow just having these in my pockets reminds me of this every day. Which of these am I going to worship? Which of these is going to have priority in my life? Is it my billfold or my Bible? My Bible representing God and God's will and God's word and God's character and God's heart for me? Which of these is going to have priority? Which is going to serve the other? And my aim every day, and what Jesus calls us to, is to make sure that this is what's at the center of our lives, and this is only a means to an end. Which is it for you? Which is it that you serve? Which is it that has the attention of your eyes? What is it that you treasure most? That's what Jesus is asking in the Sermon on the Mount. All right, some years ago, a Texas oil magnate went bankrupt.

22:17 several years before he went bankrupt. This is, you know, the booms and the bust that happened in the oil industry. Several years before he went bankrupt, he gave millions and millions of dollars to his university. And after he went bankrupt, lost everything, somebody asked him, a reporter asked him this question, do you regret having given all that money that you gave to your university? And this was his answer, regret it? Look, that school is the only lasting thing I've done with my money. If I hadn't done that, there'd be nothing to show for it at all. I would have lost it all. All right, I'm reminded of what John Wesley said on the Christian use of money. This was a sermon that he preached. And he said, money is a gift from God. And I'm quoting now, he says, it is therefore most urgent that God's people know how to make use of their money for his glory. All the necessary instructions can be condensed into three simple rules. Gain all that you can, or earn all that you can, gain or earn all that you can, save all you can, and give all you can. And notice he thought that money was a gift from God, Ultimately, the capacity to generate wealth was a gift from God.

23:18 You've heard it said sometimes money is the root of all evil. That's actually not what Paul said in the New Testament. He said the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. But money itself is morally neutral. It can be used for good or for evil. It can be used for God's purposes or not. And the capacity to earn wealth is a gift from God. So what do we do with it? Wesley says gain all that you can as long as you're gaining it justly, fairly, appropriately. Earn all that you can. Nothing wrong with earning money. Save all that you can, though. Don't spend it all. save as much as you can. You know, you need some for your life expenses, but save as much as you can. And from that, give all that you can. Right? These three ideas are really important. All right. So finally, that takes us to the longest section of the Sermon on the Mount focused on money. And that begins at chapter six, it starts at verse 19. Excuse me, it starts at verse 24 or 25. I've got it written here and I didn't put the reference to it. So here it is. Therefore, I say to you, don't worry about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink, or about your body, what you'll wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothes?

24:27 Now I want you to notice the therefore. So you've heard this before. Whenever you find a therefore in scripture, you need to find out what it's there for. Therefore always links what happened before. So in the light of everything I've just said, therefore do this. So he's just taught us about what we treasure and about that we can't serve both God and money. So now he's saying, therefore, in the light of that, don't worry about your life or what you'll eat or what you'll drink or what your body, what you'll wear. Isn't life more than food, the body more than clothes? All right. So often we read this section without reading the passages that came before it. And we just say, Jesus is telling us not to worry. Well, really what he's telling us is don't worry so much about the stuff that you need in daily life. He's saying, and I think in essence he's saying, don't worry so much about the kind of clothes you're gonna be wearing. You're gonna have clothes. Even if you have to get them from the Salvation Army, you're gonna have clothes.

25:20 There are warehouses full of old clothes. You're gonna have clothes. Don't worry so much about what your threads look like. Don't worry about what you're gonna wear. Don't worry about what you're gonna eat. You're gonna have enough to eat. You may not be eating at Capitol Grill or some fancy restaurant. you may be eating macaroni and cheese, but we have food pantries here, and you're going to be able to have food. You're going to be able to eat. Don't worry about what you're going to eat. You're going to have enough to eat. You're going to have enough to drink. It may not be a hundred dollar bottle of wine. It may be a bottle of water, but you're going to have enough to eat and drink. And so he's saying, be careful what you're worrying about. In the light of everything he said, what you're treasuring, be careful about not worrying about all of these things. He's not saying, sit back, no need to work, no need to plant your crops or milk your cows and goats or tend your sheep. God will miraculously provide for you. He's not saying that. I mean, go back to the urn all that you can. You have a responsibility to work. Paul says this in 2 Thessalonians. He says, you know, those who don't work are not going to eat. There were some people in the church that thought Jesus was coming back at any moment. They quit their jobs so they could wait for Jesus to come back. And he says, no, it doesn't work that way. You got to get to work. Until Jesus comes back, you keep working. So we do everything we can, right? And there are times we may be unemployed and we're just trying our hardest to get another job. Okay, so we're going to do everything we can and then we trust God and we don't worry about how fancy the things are that we have or, you know, all the things we wish we had. Instead, we trust that in the midst of that, when we're doing all that we can, God is going to do what we, what God needs to do to provide for us. And we learned last week, how does God usually answer our prayers? Typically, it's through other people, right? And And so again, the food pantries that we have, you know, and the food, you know, the mobile food mobile that we take out, all of these things are ways in which God is using us, you and me, to help meet the needs of other people when they can't meet their needs on their own.

27:10 So in this sense, this is not a call for us not to, you know, not to be concerned or not to have an urgency about taking care of our needs. And sometimes, so there's different kinds of worry. Some kinds of worry are really healthy. They're good, right? They provide an urgency like, I got to find a job. I got to find a job because I got to take care of my family. You're meant to feel some pressure about that when it comes to working or when it comes to getting medical treatment or when it comes to helping somebody else. There are times that we're meant to feel like, I got to do something. I got to get to work or planning for your future or your retirement. All of these are things where worry is meant to move us in a positive way. Jesus is not saying you shouldn't have those kind of worries. I was reading this week the latest results of the annual Alliance Survey of Americans, which focuses on Americans' worries, in particular, related to wealth and retirement. So it was in January of this year, the survey was conducted, 1,000 Americans. These were Americans over age 25 and whose incomes were between $50,000 and $75,000 a year.

28:09 So 67% of those surveyed, listen, were worried more about money than death. This was released just two weeks ago, the data was. they were worried, 62 thirds of them were worried more about money than death. And primarily what they were worried about is, are they going to be able to make it when they retire? So 63% of Gen Xers and 69% of millennials were more worried about money than they were about death. Now, again, worry can motivate us to action. So when we start to feel a little stressed, we don't just sit on our hands and go, oh my, what am I going to do? We don't just allow that to percolate inside. Instead, we go, I should do something. You know, one way to address worry and fear is to take action, right? And so, you know, we try to find the facts, and then we try to take action. And when you take action, when it comes to this kind of worry about retirement, meet with a financial planner. There's a whole bunch of them out there.

29:01 Most of them will meet with you for free to be able to help you begin to just lay out a plan, to begin to think about what needs to happen so that you can make plans today that will ensure that you're not having to be afraid in the future. That's a healthy worry that's meant to lead us to action. A survey conducted by Capital One's Decision Lab several years ago found that 77% of Americans were feeling anxious about their finances. I'd guess it's at least that high today, maybe a little higher with $4 gallon gasoline and health insurance people can't afford. And what they said, the answer. So this was the, you know, these are the people who, this is what they do for a living is try to figure out how to address these kinds of things. What they said is, you got to start talking about it. You got to start making a plan. You got to take action. You take action, you find your worry, your anxieties begin to go down. When you start acting upon. You get information and you start acting upon those worries. So again, those worries are meant to move you to do something. Healthy worries. But there are times that we worry about things we have no control over. And when I think about this, this is, I think, what Jesus is talking about too. He's saying, don't worry about having your fancy clothes and your fancy this and that.

30:03 He says, stop worrying about that. Stop treasuring the wrong thing. But he's also saying, look, sometimes we are going to feel a sense of worry about things that are totally out of our control. and on those things, we have to give those to God, right? We have to trust in God and do God's will and seek first God's kingdom and we're gonna find that there's a peace that passes understanding. Paul says this, that with thanksgiving, we let our requests be made known to God so we thank God for what we have as opposed to constantly focused on what we don't have. We thank God for what we have and then we trust in God and there's a peace that passes all understanding that guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. But I love Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer. This was composed, I think, in 1930 or 1931. Those of you in AA or 12-step groups know it very well. And I think most of you have heard it. But this gets at the essence of Jesus telling us not to worry about things that are outside of our control. Let's say it together. Let's pray it together. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

31:06 There are some things that are out of my control. God, I just give that to you. I need your help. Hear me, O Lord. And then I'm going to trust you that somehow, some way, you're going to provide for my needs according to your riches and glory. But also help me to see the things that I can change and what I can do and allow this worry to move me to action. Again, I think of Jesus' words there in essence saying, stop worrying about having nice clothes, eating at nice restaurants, having a nice house, driving a nice car. And instead, it's a call, I think, to simplify our lives. So often, the things that we are focused on in our lives create more anxiety, the things that we're pursuing, even the acquisition of treasures or, you know, earthly things, the more that we have, the more stress we've added to our lives. So Jesus says this, here's the answer in the end to all of this, right? Every little piece of what he said about finances, here it is, Matthew 6, 33, desire first or seek first and foremost God's kingdom, not your kingdom, but God's kingdom and God's righteousness, not other people looking at you thinking you're righteous. And all these things that you need will be given to you as well. Therefore, stop worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. All right, I want to bring this to an end by returning to Mother's Day. So one of my brothers bought my mom a digital picture frame for Mother's Day. And then he said, would all of you, you know, go through your pictures and send pictures for it? And so we could upload those pictures. And, you know, I went through, I spent a couple hours this week going through all the photos of my photo library that had my mom in them.

32:34 I think I had 764 pictures. And, you know, the earliest ones were scans that I made because, you know, we didn't have digital photography before about 20 years ago. And so, you know, here's the earliest picture I sent for the picture frame. And that is my mom and LaVon and I in June 5th, 1982, the day that we got married. And mom at that point was, she was, gosh, how old was she? He was 36 years old, I think, 36 years old. And then I looked at all of the moments of my life when our children were born, when I graduated from college, when I graduated from seminary, all of those moments, mom was in pictures at all those times, right? And all of the trips that we'd taken together and all the family gatherings and Easter and Christmas and Thanksgiving and all these pictures we looked at, you know, and here's a picture from last Easter with all our family do this every year.

33:28 And I looked at that picture and I realized other than five people who married into the family, none of the rest of those people would be here were it not for her. My mom's sitting right there in the middle, right? And, you know, she raised us, most of us kids, there's five of us, most of us kids, she raised as a single mom. She was married for a time, divorced. And so, you know, when I asked my siblings, you know, tell me about mom and what you remember, it was the sacrifices. It was how hard she worked, sometimes two and three jobs to make ends meet. It was the way that she gave herself to us, the times that she tried to bless us and encourage us and care for us and always being our cheerleaders and in our corners. And, you know, there's just such gratitude for this. Last year, we moved mom from her house that she lived in. She was in a duplex of about 1,500 square feet. And we moved her into a 300-square-foot apartment at an assisted living center.

34:24 And her health has been, she's struggled in her health. And, you know, we were going through all of her things. Like she picked out the things she wanted to take with her to that 300 square foot apartment. And then, you know, the things she wanted to make sure she gave to one of us kids. And then we all got to pick out the things we wanted. And then it was time to sell what we could and to give away what we could. And then there was a giant dumpster that was brought to the driveway. And, you know, whatever couldn't be given away made its way into the dumpster. And what was interesting about this, of course, is it just reminded me, this is happening for all of us someday. LaVon and I are going to have to make sure that we've given away as much as we can before we pass. We've thrown away as much as we can. All this stuff that we treasured across the course of our lives, all these things we've held on to. You know, my kids don't want my beer cans when I die. And so figuring out what we do with all these things. And the things that I, you know, what stood out to me is when you look at somebody's stuff that they have, you get a chance to see what they really treasured. And, you know, there were Bibles and crosses and they were, my mom's, you know, her fancy art was things that the grandkids had made that were hanging on the wall or pictures of us children. She had a little curio with her most treasured things, and they were all things we kids had made, my little handprint from when I was four or five years old, and, you know, little clay things that my brothers and sisters had made, and what our grandkids had made, her grandkids made, and even a great-granddaughter. And all of these things were the things that she treasured. And it just reminded me, you know, of the truth that the things that matter most are the relationships we have, first with God, and then with one another.

35:59 And if we forget that, we're going to have missed out on life. By the way, I want to show you this suitcase. This suitcase was one of her treasures. And when I opened it up, what's inside, I don't know if you can see this or not, it's a whole suitcase filled with letters from her mother to her father, her father to her mother during World War II. They were love letters. And somehow that was really important to her. And I took it home because I thought, well, somebody should hold on of these things. But you see, it was all about relationships and it was all about love. I'll end with this. And I shared this with you last year. This little box, this box is what goes into our memorial garden niches. And this is where all that is of me will go when I pass, right? Into our memorial garden here at Church of the Resurrection. There's no room for any of the stuff I bought along the way. There's no room for cars or houses or anything else. Just my ashes go here. But what transcends what goes in here is the love that I shared and the things that I did to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and the love that I showed other people. I want to invite you to remember these truths. Don't let your right hand know what your left hand's doing when it comes to what you give away. Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal. Treasure the right treasures.

37:15 You cannot worship both God and money and seek first the kingdom of God. And all of these other things will be added to you as well. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for all of your blessings in our lives. We thank you for your goodness, your mercy. And we pray that you would help us to treasure the right things. Help us to treasure you and to treasure others. help us Lord to give without seeking recognition or praise from others help us oh God to remember and every day make a commitment again to say that it's you and not our money or our possessions that matter most and help us to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness knowing that all other things will be added to us as well in Jesus name