Parables of Jesus: The Rich Fool

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0:00 Well, this morning, so Ben asked me to cover for him this morning because he's at a sister church. And he's been walking through, and I left it over there. We've been walking through this book that he got. He told me the story last week probably actually got this book. So he was graduating seminary and had some gift cards to the bookstore itself. And he went in and he saw this book and it's a commentary. And so he bought it with this gift card because he had heard good things about it.

0:31 And then he said a few months ago, he never really dove into it and never really looked into it. But a few months ago, he was like, I want to learn more about the parables. And so he pulled out this book and started reading through it. So we've been on this journey for a few weeks. Then last week, we talked about the Good Samaritan. Funny story, he gave me the book last week to borrow the kind of read to get ready for this week's message. And I was just telling Megan this too. I got the book and I got back home and I'm looking through the book and I was so confused.

1:02 The book that makes sense to me and I didn't read the cover well enough, I guess. So I texted him, I was like, I'm lost. And he was like, oh, in a good way? Like, I really got into that. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. And I was like, page 57 is like at the end of the book. What's going on here? Like, and you're telling me it's Luke chapter 12. It's two books and one. And I didn't notice that. So it was my mistake. So, you know, sign the roll one. I probably shouldn't be qualified up here speaking. But we're going to look in Luke chapter 12 today.

1:34 We're going to talk through this next parable. So if you will, if you'll join me, we'll start in Luke chapter 12 verse 13. And I'll just read all the text that we're going to talk about today and then we'll just start kind of breaking the part and go online by line and figuring out what God has in store for us. So this is the parable of the rich fool. Verse 13, it says, someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.

2:05 Jesus replied, man, who appointed me to judge? Who appointed me a judge or an arbitrator between you? And then he said to them, watch out. The wrong guard against all kinds of greed. Life does not consist in abundance of possessions. And then he told them this parable, the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, what shall I do? I have no places to wear my crops. Then he said, this is what I'll do.

2:35 I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will store my surplus dream. And I will say to myself, you have plenty of greens laid up for many years. Take life in the heat. Eat, drink, and be married. Verse 20, it says, but then God said to him, you fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not ripped towards God.

3:05 So let's pray really quick before we dive into this. Hey, God, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for this passage. We pray that you would speak to us in this moment and share what you'd want us to learn from this passage. You know, we pray. So when I first got this parable last week and I was looking at it, so the church I used to work at, whenever hides an offering were low, we would pull out this parable or malatized

3:43 pretend, right, which is about storing up your possessions in the storehouse and talking about hiding and things like that. That was not the assumption that I ran with or the vibe that I got from Ben when I was given this, if it was just like the next chapter in the book that I couldn't figure out how it worked. But then Kindle sharing about the tax collector was just like, man, so this was not about hiding offering. But if you want to give, go for it. We have the box over there.

4:13 This morning, it just kind of rolled a background on this parable. So it's actually the same crowd that Ben was talking about last week with the story of the Good Samaritan. So at this point in Jesus's ministry, he's got a pretty big following. There's a lot of people around him. And there's a lot of people that are hearing these things. And the first person that comes up to him, or the first part of this parable is, it says that someone in the crowd said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide this inheritance with me. So this wasn't an uncommon practice back in those times. Another translation instead of using the word teacher, he uses the word rabbi.

4:47 And a lot of times what would happen in these days is that people had a, they needed somebody to make a determination and judgment on something. And so they would go to the rabbis and the rabbis would make judgment calls. They're almost like little mini judges in the religious community about various things. It could be about someone doing something right or wrong. It could be helping settle a family matter like there's an issue of inheritance. And so this person goes to Jesus as part of the crowd and he just calls out to Jesus

5:18 and says, hey, help me out. Tell my brother to give me my portion of the inheritance. And it's super interesting that Jesus knows this. He knows that being called rabbi or being called teacher, that there is almost like this, this pressure, if you will, or this freedom that he has to weigh in and to make a judgment call and make a decision. And Jesus' response is, man, who appointed me a judge or an arbitrator between you? So it's really interesting that Jesus responds that way when he technically has the authority

5:51 to make the call here. And looking at the background and everything we know about Jesus, the text, the commentary in one way it talked about this is Jesus came to be a judge over all of us, but not to be the judge between us. And what this person is asking Jesus to do is essentially come in and make this judgment call and to essentially make a division between him and his brother, he and his family.

6:24 And the exact opposite of that is what Jesus is hardest. Jesus didn't come to divide, he came to reconcile. And it's really interesting because the Greek words that are used between divider and reconciled and personally reconciled, you switch one letter. It's the same word, but you just switch one letter and that's just interesting because that's how Jesus was asked to essentially be a divider in that moment, but it's like this reminder, like, I didn't come here to make divisions among you guys.

6:58 I came here, like in these instances, I'm here to reconcile things. And I thought it was really interesting and I think it's even more interesting too that the type of story that he launches into right after this kind of this rebuting that he does with this person. So again, I'll read the parable portion and then we'll kind of unpack it a little bit more. And he says in verse 16, he says, and he told the parable, the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, what's all I do?

7:31 I have no place to store my crops. And he said, this is what I'll do. I'll tear it on my barns, build bigger ones, and I'll store my surplus. And I'll say to myself, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take it easy. Eat, drink, and be merry. And then of course we'll jump into what God says in a minute. When I was looking at this, I was thinking, this seems like a strange parable to follow up as a response for somebody to say, hey, make this legal ruling in my family.

8:04 And I was like, this is, he's talking about this, and he's talking about this rich ruler or this rich man who is a fool ultimately and stores up things and then just tears down his barns and builds bigger places to store things. And I was thinking, like, what is the, what's that connection there? Like, what is it Jesus is doing in this moment? And I even drew a Venn diagram to try to figure that out. And the thing that I can get is that with both the rich fool and the person who's coming

8:40 to ask for the legal ruling, and in really all of us, there's a lot of similarities. And the first thing is that, like, we have this insatiable desire for more. And I don't know, like, I don't remember a time in my life that my parents taught me down and sat me down and taught me, like, the more things you have, the better life you'll have. Like, they didn't teach me that. For some reason, that's something that I chase.

9:11 If I get this next thing, life will be better in that moment, right? If I can, you know, this person that came to Jesus, if I can get Jesus to rule in this instance about property or about this inheritance, then life's gonna be better. We're looking for that moment, that thing that we're chasing is gonna get better. Story for me, I bought this truck years ago, and it was not a wise decision financially,

9:45 but I bought it and we could afford it. I was like, this is great. And but leading up to it, you know, life was whatever position it was, and I kept thinking, when I get this truck, it's gonna be better, right? Number one, I'll kind of be a little bit more like the Metreus, which is a pretty big goal of mine since the Metreus has its truck. But it's a Ford, and I'll be able to, it's a big truck, and I'll be able to sit up high and say, life's gonna be better, right? And I got the truck, and I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty great to drive.

10:18 It was pretty great. I don't miss not driving that. I mean, I miss driving the truck all the time, but it didn't make life better, okay? There was nothing that changed in my marriage. My kids didn't all of a sudden start doing things on their own, like doing their chores. They didn't just magically start doing it, because the truck came home, right? And I had these by promises that I would tell myself, life's gonna get better when I hit this certain amount or this certain possession when I have this truck, or when I have this

10:48 much money in the bank, or when I make this much money. You know, thinking about the money thing too, I remember being in college, and if you went to college, I'm sure there were days like this for you as well, where you're just like, I got $10 the last of the week. I gotta get gas, I have no food, and you're trying to figure things out. And I can remember, man, when I can make a normal amount of money, when I can make, you know, $15,000 a year, life's gonna be great. And then that number keeps climbing, and when you hit that number, when you cross that number,

11:20 you realize it doesn't change things that you thought, it doesn't make things any better. And so where I'm going with this is, is like we all have this desire for more. And it's, the nice thing, what I love about Jesus is, is a lot of things, but one of the things I love about Jesus is, is he's coming in this place, and he's like addressing matters of the heart. He's not addressing the issue of this legal ruling about the property, or he's not even

11:52 just trying to tell this story just to have a good story for everybody to write down, and then later on we can talk about it. He's trying to address matters of the heart. And as a kid, my dad, when I was in first grade, my dad, he got sick, he had to go to the hospital, didn't really understand why. He was there for a really long time. And then as I got older, I found out my dad was diagnosed with Crohn's. And this was like in the early 90s. And I've been thinking about this phrase my mom said to me when I was a kid, I've been

12:28 thinking about a lot this weekend. And one of the things that he told me was Crohn's is something that's just kind of life, life long. It's just, that's still got it. He's, he still deals with it. Had a lot of surgeries, a lot of, a lot of crazy things. And mom made this, this comment to me when I was a kid, she said, well, you know, your dad wakes up every single day and he knows that he's sick. And as a kid, that's a lot to hear.

13:01 And I was thinking a lot about that this week, and studying this test. And it's like dad wakes up every single day in the physical sickness, right? We've all got a sickness. And we've all got this sickness of wanting more. We've got this sickness called sin. And Jesus is coming and he's talking about this with this, with this large crowd and he's addressing that right out of the gate. And I love that because in verse, in verse 15, he says, watch out because guard against

13:38 all kinds of greed because life is not consists of an abundance of possessions. Like Jesus is talking directly to this and we're all on the same boat. We're all on the same pool with all skates, all swim, whatever you want to say. We've all got this sickness. We've all got this desire to have more than we currently have. And if that goes on check, you can do some pretty outlandish things, which we'll get into in just a minute, but one of them could be your giant, your buying a truck thinking this is going to solve problems for you. It was great to drive, but it didn't solve any problems for me.

14:11 So let's dig into that idea of the sickness that we've got inside of our hearts and what's the remedy for that? What's the consequences if it goes unchecked and let's go from there? So a couple of things that we'll get into the actual parables. So it says then the ground is certain, rich man, you have an abundant harvest and he thought to himself, which I do have no places for my crops. Real quick about this parable, this is what's really cool. This parable is, so Jesus was speaking to a large crowd and this parable is essentially

14:49 a lot of scholars believe Jesus took. There was an existing parable, there was a story that was well known in the Jewish community preached by a Jewish rabbi years before Jesus and it talked about a rich person who had a lot of things that he worked really hard in life and to store things up and that ultimately the parable ends the same way that this parable ends is that essentially things aren't going to fill you up, they're not going to help you. But it's amazing that Jesus takes this existing, this known story that's out in the culture

15:22 and he takes it and he uses it and he adds a little bit more to it and expands on it. And I just thought that was great that he expands in so many different ways with this versus if you read the original parable that he kind of references in a little bit. One of the things that he talks about is, and one of the things that's really important to call out here is that the ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. It's not a whole lot that you or I can do to cause things to grow, right?

15:54 We can be faithful in getting the soil ready, pulling out the weeds, getting everything in place, planting the seeds and watering it. But at the end of the day, if you've ever had a garden, it teaches you really are not in control of many things. You can do all of these things but it's really God who has to bring forth the harvest. God has to bring forth the actual crops themselves. And the fact that Jesus calls that out right away is kind of like a warning sign it feels

16:25 like because he talks the rest about this rich person and it's like that rich person already forgot the step one, like you didn't make any of this happen. You didn't get rich by your own. And what I think the point Jesus is making in this is that where you and I are, yes, it's probably a result of some of our hard work and our ethic and things that we do to where we can provide from a physical standpoint. But you didn't go out searching for that ability.

16:56 That ability was given to you, right? Like, yes, you went to college, you went to school, you honed your craft, you got me better over the years. Yes, all that stuff. But God is the one who provided that ability for you to do that. And the amazing thing is that this rich person is like that glosses over the first part. He's like, he's totally forgotten about that. He just knows that he's got an abundance. He's got a ton of stuff. And then he's like, well, if I have more and when I can get more, then I'll actually enjoy it even more. And it's just, it's so true for me and I'm going to make an assumption that it's true

17:35 for all of us as well that we do that so easily, that we just forget. Like, oh, you know what? I'm the one who goes to work every day to do this and can provide for my family and I can buy the truck or I can do this or I can save for this retirement and hit this. And it's like, I'm doing this on my own. It's like, you're really not doing it on your own. Because at the end of the day, like, what are you doing to keep your heart beating right now? You're not. You're not doing anything. That's kind of like, that's out of your control.

18:08 And it's like, there's a very basis of things. Like we forget sometimes that God's one who's actually providing these opportunities and providing these things for us. And it's so easy for us to turn away from that, like, reminder or that reality and immediately look to more. If I have more, if I have more inheritance, if I have more crops, if I have more things, then life is going to be better. Another thing that is really important, I don't want to kind of call out here in the

18:38 text and the parable itself. You know, verse 18, well, verse 17 starts with this, but verse 18 as well, it says, then he said, this is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones. And there I will soar my surplus stream. What's interesting is, this guy is, he's talking to himself, right? I do that. You don't have to throw your hands.

19:11 We all kind of do that, where he's talking to himself. And what I think is important about the fact that he's saying this is like, this is a Jewish crowd that Jesus is talking to. And so that would have stuck out as a slight abnormality for them. So I'm half Jewish. Couldn't tell by the last name, Rosen Farlem, I'm sure, but I'm half Jewish. And I can remember as a kid, will we go visit my grandmother and my great grandmother?

19:43 We would eat dinner very early if there was a coupon and they didn't charge you for sharing at a restaurant. But I remember going to my manna house and just being bored to tears because all we did was just sit around and talk. And it's like, when you're a 13-year-old, you don't want to just talk. It's not like they talk to you. But I can remember that it would come down to Florida every two years and visit my grandmother

20:15 and my manna. And this conversation, it wasn't like, well, tell me what's hard in life right now. Who are these horrible conversations? It wasn't like, well, tell me how school is going to stop that stuff. It would be the most random things that we would just talk about. It seemed like it just went on forever and ever. This conversation's like, we would rent whatever our rental car was that we rented from the airport. That's what would be the main topic of the conversation.

20:46 And it's like, what is going on? And it wasn't until I was older and I started watching Steinfeld that I realized, like, packed like my family. Like, what are we even talking about? And I think the point that Jesus is making, or I think what's interesting here is that this guy was talking to himself in Jewish tradition and in the Proson-Farb family tradition, you talk about everything. You just, the most random things you talk about it, it was a way of like, they had community and it sustained that community amongst themselves is that they would just sit there

21:20 and they would talk about every decision that happened. And I think his really key and it's really important that in this story, the rich man is talking to himself. A decision like carrying down your barns and building big ones, if you had a community, that's not something you would just talk about with yourself. That's a big decision. I mean, like I said, we talked about what rental car we got. If you're going to talk about like tearing down part of your house and building something even bigger and how much money or how much crop you're yielding on a daily basis or an

21:52 annual basis, that feels like that's a big conversation you share with your community. And the point that I'm making with this is, and where I'm going with this, is like when we start going down the path of trying to serve ourselves versus serving God, like one of those consequences, if you will, or side effects is you start really becoming alone. And I don't think there's a, I hadn't seen this before and I looked at this parable,

22:25 but I don't think it's by any mistake at all that Jesus talks about how this man is literally talking to himself. And it was a procreate in that community you talk about everything with other people. So like that's, I think that's like, like, whoa, like when you go down the path of continually serving yourself and you're not checking your desires and not checking that illness, you're not checking those things like, if you're not careful, before too long you'll look up and you're talking to yourself and there's nobody else around you.

23:00 You know, another thing that like just really kind of sticks out to me is God's response to everything. And in verse 20, well verse 19, let me just pick up there. And it says, and I'll say to myself, you have plenty of green, lean up for many years, take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry. And then gosses and you fool this very night your life will be demanded of you.

23:34 Then who will give what you have prepared for yourself? The second thing like that really kind of sticks out to me in this passage is how the rich man says, you know, after I do all these things and I tear down my existing barns and build bigger one second store things even more, I've got even more things that I can hold on to and I can store. There's like this separation from the time where he makes that decision to do that and where he's looking into the future and he says, after I do that and I store everything

24:08 up, then I'll sit back and I'll enjoy, you know, all the fruits of my labor, I'll enjoy all the things that I have. And there's a couple of things that like kind of stick out to me with that. Number one, and this is not a knock against retirement 401Ks and all that stuff, this is not a knock against that. I don't think Jesus is saying you shouldn't have a retirement. When that becomes your goal of one day I'm going to be able to enjoy this, you know,

24:44 Mike, where are you? Over there. Mike's had a phrase that stuck out to me. You're missing out on here and now. And I think that's like the gospel message in this moment and that's in this passage here, is that here and now. When you're looking forward to that day, when you have that truck and when you're looking forward to that day, when you make that striping out of money or you have this big enough house, you're missing out on right now and you're not living. You're just kind of existing.

25:17 And it's interesting. In the text, there's like the Greek translation, which is one of the earlier translations of the New Testament. It's like there's two different words for life that come up. There's life like the physical life and then there's life in the sense of like having abundant life in the sense of not possessions, but being fulfilled in your life and thinking, well, one day when I get to this point.

25:50 And I'm just like, well, it's been life's going to start. You know, it's like the exact opposite of what Jesus is trying to get us to understand by his time here on earth and trying to get us to see. One of my parents friends recently met with him and my parents as well. My parents are retired. And he's successful. It's a super successful business man. And it was over the summer and over the summer I was having like this little guy that's

26:24 crisis about retirement and like, do we have enough for retirement? What are our goals and stuff like that? And I can remember sitting with him and he's done very well for himself. And physically he's got a lot of physical ailments. And I was just thinking to myself, you know, Brian, there's one side of you like to be prepared for your future to make sure like you can have a day where you can stop working and enjoy things. But when that becomes like your treasure, when that becomes your goal or your ultimate

26:59 game, you know, I was looking at him. He's made all this money. And he can't really enjoy it in his older years because he just has physical limitations and things like that. And again, that's not me saying like, cash out your 401k and buy the truck today. That's not me saying that. That's just me. It's a reminder to myself like when I'm focused on tomorrow and missing out on today. And when I was talking to Ben about this, like there's this, it's pretty great.

27:30 Like in Exodus, when Israelites were leaving Egypt, they woke up every single day and there was man on the ground. And if you held on to the man, and you didn't use it that day that you'd try to store it up for tomorrow, it would just immediately rot or just disappear. And it's like this reminder like God's providing everything you need for today.

28:00 And there's a lot of amazing things that God's trying to do for you and you and through you today. And if you're focused on tomorrow only, you're just going to miss out on today. You're going to miss out on that man that God's trying to provide for you. That's only good for today. You're going to miss out on that moment. And so there's this beauty in the sense of like Jesus is using these parables. And I feel like you can take this parable and preach it three times and have three different

28:33 angles that you can take it. The angle that he's been talking to me through this week in trying to study for things is just that. It's that tomorrow is not promised, right? Today is all you've got. And so if you're looking, if you're only living in the tomorrow since or in the future since you're just missing out on all the things that are happening today, you know, with Wilder and say that we don't have them full time and that's really hard.

29:08 We have Wilder about 50% of the time. And I was noticing something the other day about him. He's not. And I was noticing something about him the other day like just that he's just becoming a little dude, which is just so weird in so many ways, but he's just becoming this whole independent thing. And I was thinking in that I was like, man, it's so great to be able to just see that, like to just stop for a second and see that. And I try to remember back for nine years, I'm trying to remember a time where I've done that, where I just stepped back and savored the fact that it's something so silly.

29:40 Like he's getting, he's super into making his own food right now, which is the whole other thing. And it's just so cool to be in those moments and just to have that moment where God's like it, he sobers you enough in that moment through you. He's like, whoa, like this is happening right now before my eyes. And I've already feels like, I mean, those of you have kids, right? Like nine years goes by like that.

30:10 And it feels like I've missed out on so many things because for so long and so often I default and I go back to, we'll all prepare for tomorrow. I'll get ready for tomorrow. And what I feel like God's trying to share with us this morning and this passage and this parable is just that, is that number one, like, hey, we're all in the same boat. We've all got this sickness in our hearts to where we just think that tomorrow is going to be better or when we hit that new threshold or that new level, it's going to get better than. And the reality is, is that no matter what today looks like, whether it's great or it's

30:44 really, really hard, the reality is that Jesus is with you in that today. He's there with you in that crowd and is there with you in these moments. And he's calling us forward to this understanding, this reality of waking up and realizing like there's a lot that he can do today. And I just, I love that. I just, I think that's where he's going with all of it. And he's trying to share like when you have that heart to serve yourself, you're going

31:15 to miss out on things, you're going to miss out on communities, you're going to miss out on it together and this, but you're ultimately going to miss out on the beauty and the gift of what God's giving you for today. The way I think about it is, you know, I was fortunate enough as a kid, I don't remember ever going to school and not having a lunch. I remember I had to do school lunches a lot, but I remember when we go on field trips, that was really cool because you, well nowadays, like you put everything in a big Ziploc bag

31:45 and all the stuff and whatever, back when I was in school, the cafeteria made your brown bag lunch for you, right? And something happened too on field trips because all of a sudden, the lunch thing got really generous and you had way more food in your brown bag than you ever got if you were walking through with the tray. It was very weird. It's like, wait, we have two options for fruit and like three sides now? This doesn't make any sense. But where I'm going with the lunch thing is this is that when you got to where you were going, when you got to wherever you were on your way, art museum, science museum, whatever,

32:20 you know, at lunch time, the teachers load the coolers off the bus and they hand out all the brown bags to all kids, right? Everything you needed was in that bag. You had your juice, you had your applesauce, and you even had a utensil for the applesauce because we didn't have squeeze packs like kicks do now. We had the old factory cups. You even had a dessert sometimes which was pretty amazing. Everything you needed was in that lunch box and it was in that moment with you for that day and you didn't get real cheesy with you all for a minute.

32:52 But it kind of seems like Jesus is trying to tell you like, hey, everything you need for today, I'm providing for you. Like I'm your lunch box. Everything you need, you can find it in me today. And I just love that. I love that it's amazing if you're like, Jesus is trying to call us back to that, call us to that reminder that, hey, tomorrow is not promised. Tomorrow is not going to make you anything better. Right now, I'm working, I'm doing things. And I'm grateful for having the opportunity to kind of remember that this week and to

33:27 realize that and to study this passage. There's a beautiful poem that I will not recite because I cannot memorize it too long. But there's a beautiful poem that the commentary kind of ends with and it's a reflection to me of like what, like the true heart, like what God's longing for. And the poem is this and it's talking about there's a father who passed away and he had two sons and he divided his lane and he divided his inheritance equally among them.

33:59 Now the two brothers, one was rich. He was a good man, but he was just rich, very, very wealthy. But he had no family. He had no kids. He had nothing like that. The other brother had a family and one could argue because his family was so big he did not have any money. But he didn't have any money in the poem. But he had a family and it was life-giving to him. So after the funeral, after everything had been divided up, the rich brother, he went

34:34 to bed and he was thinking about his brother who was poor. He said, you know, here's my brother who he has a family but he just doesn't know what it's like to have nice things. He doesn't have a lot of material possessions. He doesn't have a lot of money. I know what I'm going to do. In the middle of the night, I'm going to get up. I'm going to go out to the field, the land that we own. And I'm going to take the marker that it's essentially the line, the boundary for where my field ends and his begins.

35:05 And I'm going to move it back so he has more. And at the same time, the other brother with the large family and no money is thinking, man, my poor brother, we just lost our dad. He doesn't have any family to help him cope with this. He's only got things. And so what can I give him? Well, I can't give him a family but you know what? I've got enough. I feel wealthy enough. I'm pretty rich with my family. I'm going to go out in the middle of the night. I'm going to move my boundary back so he has more land.

35:38 I'm not going to tell him about it but he's just going to get more of the inheritance. And so the story is that they both go out to the field at the exact same time and they run into each other because they realize that the other one was doing and they hugg each other. And the poem ends in that this is, that's the site where the city of Jerusalem was built. Historically context, you care. It's probably not accurate but that's fine. It's a great story. And the sense that this is when you're content with what you've got and that disease, that

36:14 sickness of war is not real in your life, that's when you can start leaning into serving God and start realizing like there's other people and you want to start giving things away that you have or you want to start giving to people. And I don't know about you guys. I've gotten a lot of paychecks in my life. I've gotten bonuses. I've gotten a lot of things. I've achieved a lot of things. I've been very fortunate in that regard. Nothing compares to the satisfaction of like leaning into leveraging the stuff that you've

36:48 been giving or God and giving it to somebody else. Like just nothing compares to that. Again, the bonus checks or money that you've made from selling houses or whatever, that's great and that's fine. But nothing is as life giving as when you are able to use those resources to help somebody else out. And again, this is not a tithe and offering service or sermon but it just feels like God

37:21 got this reminder for me and reminder for us this morning since I'm the one who's speaking that there is so much beauty and so much that you've already got. And if you're in that place of like, what do I do with it? What do I do next? Like God's going to present those opportunities for you to be able to share, to be able to walk into that life of abundance, that true life of abundance that's not based on materials but it's based on giving life to other people or helping other people. So I just love that and I love that there's this hope that we can experience heaven on

37:56 earth by being that vehicle, being that vessel for God to allow him to use the stuff that he's given us to help other people and to the reward or the beauty is that something so simple as God's reminding us like today is pretty great and to be in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of

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39:04 a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's a lot of people who are in the here and there's