Materialism

Morning, friends. Good to see you guys. Thanks for joining us at Midtown this morning.

There is a TV show that's taken our nation by storm in recent years. It's currently in its 15th season, watched by millions of people on a regular basis, and I think we love this TV show largely for its prestigious artistic sensibilities, its high-minded philosophical reflection. It's called Hoarders. You guys seen Hoarders? Yeah? Oh, yeah. We got a couple. Oh, Hoarders, yeah. Yeah. People love this stuff. They've even made special rebrands over the last 15 years of this show. It's not just Hoarders. There's Hoarders Overload, Hoarders Where Are They Now, Hoarders Family Secrets, Hoarders Infinity War. It's amazing.

People love this show, and if you haven't watched it, it's exactly what it sounds like. Each episode features one to two people who are hoarding various items, food, clothes, dolls, pets, books, chickens. That's a real episode. Magazines. And then each hoarder is paired with a team of specialists who go into their home, help them clean up their home, and also give them the psychological help they need. That's actually a really important part of the show. In the DSM-5, which is the classification of mental health disorders that therapists and psychiatrists use, hoarding is actually classified as a mental illness. And that becomes clear when you watch the show. Hoarding leads to all kinds of unhealth, not only for the people who hoard, but also for their circle, for all the people that they are near. There's eviction notices they get. There's spouses filing for divorce. There's children being taken away. Hoarding is destructive in every way in the show. And as I was reflecting on it this week, thinking about our obsession with the show and thinking about the dynamics of the show, there's also an interesting question that popped into my mind. See, most of us can look at someone who stocks up 300 cats or 400 bottles of laundry detergent or 20,000 newspapers or whatever, and we can look at them and say, they have a problem and they need help. But that raises a follow-up question. Why don't we look at people who stock up their wealth in the same way? See, when we look at or meet someone who has stocked up wealth, who has hoarded wealth in our culture, we rarely think they have a problem and they need help. We often think the exact opposite. We think they're praiseworthy, smart, skilled, even virtuous. There's a recent Harris poll done that illustrated this. 60% of Americans believe that wealthy people are inherently more intelligent than less wealthy people. Another study concluded that job interview candidates who signal their wealth in interviews and on their resumes, they're perceived as more praiseworthy and capable as their less wealthy counterparts, even when they share the same credentials. And our storytelling and our culture communicates this, right? We love a rags-to-riches story. The geniuses in our culture are the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs, the people who have built up and accumulated much for themselves, and everyone wants to emulate their story. And even in the events of our day-to-day lives, if we really are honest and reflect, this affects us. We often look at those with a beautiful home or beautiful spouse or a career that they're passionate about or a higher level of financial security and think, man, they've got life figured out. The people we often look up to, most are the people who have accumulated the most. They're the hoarders, not of cats or chickens, but of wealth. That's what success looks like, and it's shaping how we all show up in the world. It's making us all assume that we need more in order to be successful and happy. There's a sociologist at Princeton named Robert Wuthnow who wrote a whole book on this and did a huge study on it. The book's called God and Mammon or God and Money in America. And he had these amazing findings that if you look it up, you'll see a lot of things that are striking. But two stats in particular stuck out to me when I was reading about it this week. When he did the study, he found that 90% of Americans polled, 9 out of 10, say that selfishness of the wealthy and the material conditions of the poor are serious national problems. 9 out of 10, I think we'd all agree with that. 80% of those same people said that having a beautiful home and a new car is very important to them.

9 out of 10 say the poor are in trouble because of the selfishness of the rich, and 8 out of 10 say a beautiful home and a new car is very important to them. I have a beautiful car, necessary for my life.

In other words, we live in a culture where accumulation and wealth are equated with success, and that makes us into people who know the good we ought to do, but are hindered from actually doing it because of our materialism. Wuthnow summed it up this way. He said, we live in a materialist culture. We want money and possessions, and very few people have heard a powerful voice telling them to resist those impulses or how to resist those impulses. Organized religion has not done a good job of challenging people to examine their own materialism. The point isn't that we're all just strapped. It's a matter of making moral choices about how we use our resources.

You guys, for as much as we like to think that accumulation or consumerism isn't our problem, as much as we like to think that it's just those wealthy people out there, the truth is that our whole culture and most of our lives are filled with hoarding. We're obsessed with more. We not only accept, we celebrate consumption, accumulation, even greed at times as a way of life. Because we believe more is the pathway to peace, happiness, success. A little thought experiment to illustrate. Right now, if you make $60,000 a year or more, you are among the wealthiest 1% of humans on planet Earth. At this moment, 3 billion people in the world live on $2 a day. At this moment, 4 out of 10 of the families that live in the Garfield neighborhood, just south of our church, live below the poverty line. From every possible measure, most of us in this room live with a remarkable amount of money. A remarkable degree of wealth and comfort while most of the world doesn't. Most of us genuinely do not need more, and most of the world does. Now keeping that in mind, think about where your money has gone over the last couple of weeks. Towards clothing, to be hung in closets that are already full. Or food at restaurants when we already have stocked fridges at home. Or streaming services for lives already overstuffed with entertainment. Or the most recent iPhone upgrade when you already had a workable iPhone but the new one's in green.

Or three $8 rose petal infused honey lavender vanilla bean oatmeal lattes from the coffee shop that's like every other coffee shop. Served to you by the barista that's the same nihilistic and charming barista.

Despite both our lack of need and exorbitant needs of the world around us, most of our lives and our budgets are about hoarding. Accumulating more. Sociologists have come up with a term to describe this habit in Americans. It's called retail therapy. 62% of Americans admit to regularly making impulse decisions on purchases to improve their mood. Retail therapy. Why go to therapy when you can just buy stuff? A trivia question. As of 2020, 30% of Americans in the U.S. live in the U.S. How many pairs of shoes do you think the average American woman owns? Shout out some numbers. What do you think?

Paige is not confident in American women. 27. 27 pairs of shoes. Luke was close. 30 was close. Sorry ladies for calling you out. I'll call the guys out a different week. That stat just struck me. 27 pairs of shoes. You guys, we've hoarded so many things that we don't have room for them anymore. That's why the self-storage industry is worth $50 billion in the U.S. At this moment, 2.3 billion square feet of land is being sold to the U.S. 2.3 billion square feet of American soil is used for self-storage, for all our extra stuff. We could sleep our entire nation in our self-storage units. all practicing a religion of acquisition, a habit of hoarding. And to top it all off, it's not working. All of our consuming and all of our storing up of wealth doesn't actually bring us the life and peace and happiness that we hope it will. The data has proved that our culture of more is a lie. It's a con. There's a landmark 2010 study in a journal published by the National Academy of Sciences that made this really clear. It's a study that made this really clear. It found that once a person comes to an income threshold that meets basic needs for them and their family and prevents them from living paycheck to paycheck, there is no marked increase in happiness the more wealth they get. It's like a bell curve. So when you're at a low income level and can't afford basic needs to care for the people around you, it is going to be difficult. But as you reach a level where you can take care of those things, your happiness levels out. And what they found is that happiness actually decreases from that bell curve the more money you make. After meeting basic needs level, basically, a lower middle class income level, happiness decreases and risk of loneliness, depression, and anxiety increase. Robert C. Roberts, a philosopher at Baylor, summed it up this way. He said, upward mobility often ends not in satisfaction and peace, but in exhaustion, disappointment, emptiness. Or as John Forman of Switchfoot put it, when success is equated with excess, the ambition for excess wrecks us.

We're continuing in a teaching series here at Midtown through the book of James. We're calling this series The Great Con. And each week we've been looking at a different con, a different lie that our culture has conditioned us to believe or buy into. And we're looking at the ways that James actually exposes those things as not wise. He says, guys, you're missing it. This isn't what it means to be human. This isn't what it means to really have life. And this week, we're finding that our culture of hoarding today isn't just an American problem. It's a human problem. James dealt with the same dynamics in his own time. And James didn't hold back. His words in this passage, friends, are piercing. But they're also encouraging. He exposes the problem, but he doesn't just stay at the problem. He also points us towards a solution, a path towards transformation and freedom from our hoarding impulses in our culture of more. So friends, if you have a Bible, open it up with me. We're going to be near the backs of your Bibles in the book of James. Chapter 5, verses 1 through 11 is where we'll be reading from. If you don't have a Bible, by the way, that's OK. The words are going to be behind me on the screen so you can follow along there. James chapter 5, starting in verse 1.

Come now. You rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted. Your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you. And it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen. The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out. And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure. You have fattened your hearts on a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one who does not resist you. Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another so that you may be able to stand against one another. may not be judged. See, the judge is standing at the doors. As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Indeed, we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you pray with me, friends? Father, we hear these words, and they pierce us. And we know that your heart is one that moves towards us in love, and that through your servant James, you speak these words not to condemn, not to shame, but to draw us nearer to you. And so I pray that your spirit would work through these words, that you would convict where you need to convict, that you would encourage where you need to encourage, that you would comfort where you need to comfort, and more than anything, that you would send us forth from this place transformed by your love. People who radically change our lives because of what you've done for us. Pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Some Bible fun facts for you. Scholars estimate that across the whole of the scriptures, there are about 150 verses that deal directly with the topic of hope, which is a pretty important virtue for Christians. Definitely an important theme, but it's actually not the most mentioned theme. For instance, faith, most scholars estimate, is mentioned directly around 400 times in 400 verses across the Bible. Now, another guessing game for you. How many verses do you think deal directly with the topic of wealth and money? Shout out some numbers. 600? Just 600? No other guess? 50? 2,300 times. 2,300 times. Across the Old and New Testaments, money and wealth are a running thread. Jesus himself, in the gospel biographies of his life, addresses money and wealth in some form in nearly half of them. And that should make us ask, why? Why is this such an important topic, and why don't we talk about it more? And I can't speak for other ministers or pastors or churches, but I've often been hesitant to address money because of the ways I've seen it done poorly. For instance, I've known examples of conversations about money in the church used by people in power to take advantage of others for their own purpose and selfish gain. There's a pastor friend of mine named John who just mentioned this recently in a sermon. He visited a friend who pastors this massive, well-known, charismatic megachurch a few years back. We're talking thousands of people, multiple services, massive worship and teaching, production, the whole thing. And the Sunday he visited, during the service but before the sermon, a pastor, not the lead pastor, just another pastor on the other side of the church, visited a pastor, not the lead pastor, just another pastor on the other side of the church, said that they would be taking a special offering to bless the two senior pastors, Mr. and Mrs., they were husband and wife. And the pastor in the announcement encouraged everyone to dig deep, to be big givers. This is their way to love God well, by blessing Mr. and Mrs. Pastor. He told them that this is their chance. You've got to dig deep, friends. And they passed plates and baskets around, and my friend John started to do the math in his head. Huge church, we're talking about. Between all the services, dozens of thousands of people. The senior pastor and his wife, John, were all over the place. They were all over the place. John's wife, he also knew, already took pretty large salaries from the church. And third, this was a Pentecostal church, which to some of you in the room means nothing, to others in the room, you're like, they give. They give generously. Yeah, yeah, Brittany knows. There's the laugh. Yeah, yeah, nice. And so John's first thought was, are there any job openings in this church that I can step into? No, not actually. He didn't think that. He said, truthfully, he was kind of sick to his stomach, because he estimated that that day in his head, that single offering would likely be more than he makes in a full year as a full-time pastor. And then the service went on. The senior pastor came up, preached a sermon. The music went through. And then after the music, the same guy came up and said, dig deep again. We're doing another offering for Mr. and Mrs. Pastor. This is your chance. We need your giving. Bless them. Money was being used as a tool to reinforce personal gain for those in power. And if you've been affected by that, if you've heard that message in the church, I'm sorry. And the Bible speaks directly against that sort of usury of the poor in order for the wealthy to gain. But there's also a second reason that I've often been hesitant to talk about money. Because today, there's a common notion, often preached from pulpits as well, and published in all sorts of best-selling books, that material blessing is directly connected to divine blessing. Health and wealth and prosperity are signs that God is blessing you. And that's always fascinated me, because there's just one pesky character that keeps popping up in the Bible that disputes that. Jesus is his name. Jesus of Nazareth, the one who Christians say is their Lord and Savior, had very little in the way of material possessions across the whole of his life. Born to a poor, working-class family from a no-name town. Working-class job in the first century, likely a carpenter or stonemason laborer of some sort. When he started his ministry, he was supported by the giving of others. What he ate, he received by fishing or farming or the generosity of others with the occasional feeding of the 5,000 sprinkled in. And when Jesus wanted to make a point about money, he had to ask someone else to bring him a coin. The person that the Bible says is the most blessed by God in history was someone who was not only not wealthy, but intentionally resisted wealth in the way he lived and in the way he taught. It's all over the Gospels. These are all words of Jesus, friends. Luke 12, 15. Take care. Be on guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. Luke 6, 20. Blessed are those who are poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Mark 10, 24 through 25. Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. And then he follows up with that. What is impossible with man is possible with God. And finally, Matthew 6. Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. We can hear James riffing on some of his brother's words in this passage. And they're both echoing what the Old Testament has said. Proverbs puts it this way. Do not wear yourself out to be rich. Be wise enough to desist. When your eyes light upon it, it is gone. For suddenly it takes wings to itself, flying like an eagle toward heaven. Alasdair MacIntyre, who's a great philosopher on Christianity and the scriptures, put it this way. Riches are, from a biblical point of view, an affliction, a massive obstacle in entering the kingdom of heaven. Are we all convicted yet? It's important to hear that, to know that, to let it pierce us. But it's also important to know why the Bible speaks so strongly. It's important to know why the Bible speaks so strongly. Because it's actually not about money and wealth itself. There are wealthy people who are remarkably detached from their wealth, live well below their means, and give generously away. And there are poor folks who feverishly cling to every dime. See, Jesus and the scriptures are most interested in the spiritual power that money can have over us. What it does to our hearts, what it does to our minds, and eventually what it does to our actions. It's not that wealth makes it impossible to follow God. It's just that the more we have, the more obstacles in the way. So the question we need to ask ourselves is this. What is the spiritual power that money has over us? Why is it so dangerous? And why does the scripture harp on it again and again? That's what James is interested in exploring here. And in this passage we see James not only exposes the ways that money destroys us, but also gives us the strategy to fight back. The ways that money destroys us and the strategy to fight back. First, how it destroys us. It causes self-indulgence, he says. Notice the actions of the wealthy in this passage. The text says that they have laid up treasure. Some of your translations might say hoarded up wealth or treasure. That's a negative word. That's the point. He doesn't say, for instance, you have wisely saved and stewarded your money well and are using it well. See, the Bible actually does say that wise usage of your wealth is a good thing. Proverbs again. Go to the ant, you lazy bones. Consider its ways and be wise. It prepares its food in summer and gathers its sustenance in harvest. There's something about using our material gain well that the Bible affirms. That's not what James is talking about. What he's critiquing isn't wise saving. It's hoarding for ourselves, living in luxury and pleasure, he says in verse 5. What James is identifying is that it's crucially important for us as followers of Jesus to know the difference between saving and prudence and putting our money to good work and hoarding and storing and indulging in what we have. There's a basic difference between a life of necessity and occasional convenience and moving into a life of self-indulgence. As an example, I was chatting with one of our board members this week. He said, I'm going to go to the ant. I'm going to go to the ant. I'm going to do something about a不要 towel that I find very望 instrument. MR. Okay. MR. Thank you. particularly, said a happy and comfortable life would mean having a net worth of $650,000. They also reported that their definition of wealthy is $2.3 million. That's what it means to be wealthy. You see what's happening? We are the wealthiest people in the world, the wealthiest people who have ever lived. But that wealth has not made us more content. It's made us more self-indulgent. It's made us assume that luxury is a necessity. And the more we accumulate, the more we hoard, the more self-indulgent it makes us because we start to assume that we actually need more than we do. We start to assume that wealth is really just those 2.3 millionaires. And so oftentimes, I notice this in myself and I notice it in conversations I have, the urge is for us to ask, where's the line? How do we know we've crossed over a new indulgence? How many cars can I actually have? How many shoes can I own? 27, 28, 21? Talking to the guys on that one, not the gals, by the way. How big a home or apartment can I have? How big a house or apartment can I live in? Friends, the Bible does not give us that line because the Bible is written for all sorts of cultures and all sorts of places throughout world history to all sorts of income levels. See, the question James and the Bible are wanting to answer for us is not, how much can I keep for myself? That's a self-focused approach. If our primary question is, what am I allowed to store up for me? How much am I allowed to spend on me? We're thinking about it wrongly. James instead wants us to ask questions like this. Does the usage of my wealth draw me closer to loving God and loving others? Does this usage of my wealth remove obstacles that prevent me from loving God and loving Do I really have to spend this on myself, or can I give it away to help others? Those are discipleship questions. There's a great example from church history that illustrates this principle well, and I think we could learn from today. There was a famous minister back in the 18th century. His name was John Wesley. He didn't start out famous. He's become famous over time. He started as a simple minister, small church, but his writing and preaching eventually made him more popular and made him considerably more money as well. Because back then, you could write these things called books. People would read them, spread them around, and they would be super weird. Anyway, he wrote a lot, and that made him very popular in the 18th century. But what's fascinating is as his income grew, the only part of his lifestyle that grew was the amount that he gave away. He did not use more wealth as an opportunity to grow his spending on self. So for instance, early on in his career, he made 33 pounds in a year, not a large amount of money. He gave away three and lived off the 30. The next year, he made 40 pounds. He gave away 10 and lived off the 30. The next year, he made 70 pounds. He gave away 40 and lived off the 30. Later in his life, one year, he made 1,400 pounds. He gave away 1,370 and lived off the 30. For the follower of Jesus, increased wealth is not an opportunity to bless us, to indulge in us. It's an opportunity to bless others. So another good question to ask ourselves, is my standard of living rising at the same pace of my income? It never should. The more money we make, the greater distance there must be between the lifestyle we actually live and the lifestyle we're capable. C.S. Lewis, I think, put it really well in his book, Mere Christianity. He said, I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditures on comforts, luxuries, amusements, et cetera, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we're probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure is not enough. Excludes them. Lewis, bring in the heat. And here's why this is so important, you guys. The state of our soul is directly connected to the things that we value most. What you value most will shape your heart. And if our lifestyle values most things that will decay, it means our hearts will decay with them. That's what James says over and over in this passage. He's looking at things from the perspective of eternity. And what does he see? He sees rotted clothes, overstuffed closets that consist of things that could be given away to those who have lived their lives. And he sees that they are not only too little, but instead they sit and rot in our own closets. And as long as they do, our souls rot with them. Have you ever stopped to think how little clothing you actually need in your life? Just stop to think for a second. I have a friend of mine who was really convicted about this a few years ago. And he went radical. I'm not saying everyone should do this, but I think his example is really helpful for us. He said, I'm going to limit my wardrobe down. I'm going to have five or fewer T-shirts or button shirts. I'm going to have a couple pairs of pants, maybe two or three shoes for different occasions, a couple pieces of formal wear, and a jacket. His entire wardrobe cost him $250. And that literally opened up thousands of dollars in his budget to just be given away to those who need clothes. His ability to discern between wise spending and self-indulgence enabled him to love his neighbors better. But as long as his old closet kept sitting there, he was actively overlooking and neglecting those in need. That's actually the second thing that James says money does to us here. It causes us to neglect those in need. He says our hoarded gold and silver rusts, decays, and therefore eats away at our humanity. And it causes us to perpetuate injustice, either complicitly or explicitly. That's what was happening in his context. The wealthy people there were taking advantage of their wealth and oppressing the poor to retain or gain more wealth. Friends, when money and wealth becomes our priority, we start to make business decisions based on profit and not people. We start to hold tightly onto our own things instead of envisioning the ways that those things could help others. And after years of thinking about it, we start to see that our hearts become warped. And soon enough, when we're presented with the opportunity to give to those in need, our gut response becomes, well, if I give this away, what will happen to me? That's the wrong question. That's not the question of the Christ heart. The Christ heart does not ask, if I give this away, what happens to me? The Christ heart asks, if I don't give this away, what happens to them? I was talking with a friend of mine this week. He works for a publisher, and we were talking about the ways that families hand down their stories over years. And he's got this remarkable family story. His great-grandmother was German. She actually lived through World War II. We'll call her Anna, just for the sake of the story. Anna was a mom in a poor Christian German family. And every day, just to illustrate kind of where they were at economically, they baked one loaf of bread that would last them the day. So they'd eat it at each meal alongside other things as they could get them. So their loaf of bread was their daily portion. And then, in the 40s, when the Nazis started to take over, she and her husband started to agonize. They knew the evil that was going on. They prayed and longed to help, but they didn't have much. What could they actually do beyond pray? But soon, Anna saw an opportunity, because as the war rages on and concentration camps were built around, one of the train stations on the way to the concentration camp was right nearby their house. And so when trains stopped with Jews headed to hunger and horror, she would take their one loaf of bread in the morning, rip pieces of it up, and hand it out to folks. And she'd bring her daughter along with her, my friend's grandmother. And at that time, her daughter was so confused. Like, Mama, why are you giving our bread away? We need this to eat. And Anna, calmly as she continued to hand it out, said, we'll have bread to eat tomorrow. These people won't. Friends, when you put your heart on things that rust, your heart will rust with them. A heart that's made of gold is a heart that stops beating. So those are the pointed words of James here. This is how money destroys us, but he doesn't just leave us with the problem. He also gives us the solution to this destructive habit in us. And it's woven together through verses 7 through 11. He says, Be patient, therefore, beloved. Until the coming of the Lord. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. The judge is standing at the doors. Over and over again, James is saying that the way we respond to the power of money and materialism now is by living with the end in mind. See, the primary problem with us, when we have too much concern for our wealth or our stuff, too much concern for accumulating, is that our view of the end is skewed. We've forgotten or we've neglected the true story of the world and the universe and everything. We've forgotten the good news of the gospel. See, here's the truth of the good news, friends. Since we could not, on our own, in our messy and conflicted hearts, be the humans we were made to be, God became the human we were made to be. Since we couldn't become like God, God became like us in Christ. And Christ initiated a kingdom of healing in this world of brokenness. He showed us how to give instead of hoard, how to turn outward in love instead of inward in indulgence. He showed us what our hearts have always known but have buried or forgotten, that life is found not in grasping for ourselves, but in giving our lives away. It's in dying that we live, in giving that we receive. In the middle of all of our mixed-up hearts and motives, we killed him for that. We buried him in the ground, ready to forget it all happened and to continue on with our life for us on our terms. But the truth isn't something that stays buried. Christ forgave from the cross. Christ rose from the grave. And Christ promised that in and through him, a kingdom of justice and peace and wholeness and generosity and self-giving, we would be able to live. We could live the way we want. We could live in a place of loving kindness and love as we treasured for ourselves. In that kingdom, we can become the vehicles of that kingdom, that inevitable coming kingdom now. That's the kingdom that has final say. That is the end we need to keep in mind, because in that kingdom, all people share in love rather than hoard. All people have more than enough. That's the reality that's coming. That's the reality that Jesus is breaking in. And he says, you, the church, you who know me and have heard my voice, you get to be the end of your life. That's what we need to be able to do. And initiation. You get to be the appetizer of that coming kingdom. That's what he's called us to. Keep the end in mind because when you do, everything else changes. And the economy of the infinite love of God and love of others is the only currency. And so now, when we choose to make that the kingdom, the wealth of our lives, when we give our lives to Jesus and live with his coming kingdom in mind, suddenly the materialism of the world starts to fade away because we know it doesn't last. Suddenly, that desire for that next piece of clothing to cheer us up loses out because we find our cheering and giving our money away to our co-worker for lunch. Suddenly, that pressure for a better car loses out and we give that money away to those who don't have cars. Suddenly, that 27th pair of shoes loses out and we use that money to support the mission of a church that's committed to giving themselves away. Bit by bit by bit, we start to change because bit by bit, we see what matters. We see what will rust and decay and we see what won't. We see what will never wear out and we invest in the things that will never.

James says live with the end in mind. Be like the farmer who sows seeds, who invests his time and energy in the things he cannot see but the things he knows are coming. Be like the prophets who are faithful to God and to the poor and to the marginalized even when it costs them everything practically now because the prophets are the ones who are really blessed. We don't look back on the hoarders from the time of the prophets. We don't look back on the kings who are only concerned about self-preservation. We look back on the prophets because they endured. They were faithful. The ones who look the least blessed now, God says, when you are faithful to me, you are the most blessed forever. Be like Job who endured suffering, even questioning God along the way but never doubted the end that God was bringing. That's a great reversal of the gospel. That's the kingdom good news. It's enough to flip this whole world on its head. It's enough to transform the way we see our stuff because we can remember, as John Calvin put it, God has not appointed gold for rust nor garments for moths. On the contrary, he has designed them as aids and helps to human life. May we all leave here with that vision, friends. May we all learn to live with the end in mind. Let's pray.