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[0:00] Well, good morning. I'm a little surprised and grateful to see as many faces in the room as we have here today.

[0:10] ! The weather wasn't supposed to be snowing right now. That's what it said. Anyway, last time that we were in Luke, remember last week we didn't get to spend time in the Gospel of Luke.

[0:28] So this was a few weeks back. Last time we were there, we came across a young man who came to Jesus.

[0:40] And Jesus had been teaching and in controversy and just kind of interrupts Jesus and says, Hey, I want you to be the judge between me and my brother.

[0:52] My older brother is holding on to the inheritance. I want him to pay it to me. You do this. And Jesus was like, No, not going to do that.

[1:04] And instead took the opportunity to do something else. He said to them, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

[1:17] And he told a parable about a rich farmer whose crops grew at such an abundant rate that he didn't have enough barns, enough storage for all that he was going to harvest.

[1:33] And so he said, I know what I'll do. I'll buy bigger barns and then I'll have everything that I need to take care of myself in the years going forward.

[1:44] And I'll be just great. The problem with that mindset that he had was this. God said to that farmer, Fool, so is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.

[2:00] And so he introduces the idea of how we view treasure and that dynamic, that relationship, and how that indicates where our heart is.

[2:13] It points where our heart, where our mind is at. And Jesus is going to continue that. This is verse 34 of the passage that we're looking up today. It's the last of our passage.

[2:26] So where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And so he's continuing this discussion of treasure and our relationship to treasure.

[2:38] But in doing this, Jesus, in a sense, switches. There's still a crowd there, but he's now addressing, we're going to see in our text, he's addressing his disciples in particular.

[2:51] Whether that's just the 12 or it's all of the disciples who have made the decision to be followers of Christ, he is now doing that and he's still talking about the concept of treasure.

[3:07] So before we actually get into the text, and this is where we had trouble last week, we took some time to look at some Bible study 101 pointers, if you will, and took a lot of time doing that.

[3:24] And like last week, we're going to do that again, but in a little different way. But I promise we're going to get to the text today because this will be a little bit quicker. But what we're going to be talking about as we get into this text, because these next few studies that we have in Luke chapter 12 are some difficult passages, particularly in two weeks.

[3:48] Next week we have the children's Christmas program, but in two weeks on December 28th, we're going to be in another passage in Luke chapter 12 once again. And we're going to be looking at a parable that's hard to understand.

[4:01] Now, have any of you ever come across a parable of Jesus before that was hard to understand? Okay, very good. We're going to actually not only look at that parable, but we're going to dive into some helps in understanding difficult, how do you deal with difficult passages?

[4:18] Particularly, we're going to zero in on difficult parables. But today we're going to be talking about tensions in the text. And as we read this story, we haven't read it yet.

[4:29] But as we read this story, what I want you to do is to realize there's some tension here. Because there are some things that are said that the question becomes, is this how we should do it?

[4:45] Should I apply this to my life? How do we deal with that? And so one of the things I want to encourage you to do is to be curious as you're reading your Bibles. One of the problems that I see when it comes to Bible reading is when people aren't willing to be curious.

[5:05] In other words, they're just reading the text because, A, someone said I've got to read my Bible every day, and B, so I'm just checking off a list of stuff I'm supposed to read, and whether I really understand or not.

[5:21] And so I want to hope that you get beyond that kind of thinking and really consider getting into the text in such a way that says, Okay, I want to understand this.

[5:34] And so today I want to ask a series of questions about the text that we're going to read. These are the kinds of questions that you ought to be asking when you're reading a passage of Scripture.

[5:45] So here's the first one. So you're going to know the questions, some of the questions to ask ahead of us reading this passage. So here's the first one.

[5:56] Why does Jesus in our passage today, remember he's talking to the disciples, and he's telling the disciples to sell their possessions and give to the poor.

[6:08] Why does he tell his disciples that, but in the previous passage that we looked at a couple weeks ago, he doesn't tell rich people, people who have means, to do the same thing?

[6:22] Why not? Good question to ask. We'll consider that as we make our way through the text. Here's another question. Are the poor more spiritual than the rich?

[6:40] Depending on your theological persuasion, you might think it's the flip. Are the rich more spiritual than the poor? There are denominations and preachers, particularly on TV, that preach a prosperity gospel that talk about how if you're close to God, if you have enough faith and God's going to give you all of this stuff.

[7:05] Well, this is perhaps the flip of that, and it's also out of balance. The idea that are the poor more spiritual than the rich? Or another way of asking that is, is it spiritual to be poor and worldly to be rich?

[7:21] Good question. So what is it that Jesus teaches? What is it that the scriptures would teach? Here's question number three.

[7:32] How far did Jesus intend for us to take his words? You might say, well, we're supposed to be all in.

[7:44] On a question like this, though, how do we deal with this? How do we understand this? And here's the more specific question of this.

[7:54] Should we sell all our possessions as he instructed the rich young ruler to do? If you remember the story of the rich young ruler, it's told in the three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

[8:08] This rich young man of position in the community came to Jesus and said, what must I do to be saved? And Jesus said, well, just obey all the commandments.

[8:19] And he lists a number of commandments. And the young man says, well, I've done all of these since I was a kid. And Jesus said, well, there's just one thing that's then lacking.

[8:30] Here it is. You lack the one thing. Go sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Come and follow me.

[8:42] So is Jesus telling us that that's what we should do as well? And is there a difference? How do we deal with that?

[8:53] This next one is maybe the longest point on a sermon note sheet I've ever had. So just bear with me as we make our way through this. I've divided it into two parts to make it a little bit more chewable.

[9:07] Were the early believers in Acts, were they foolish for selling their possessions and giving the money to meet the needs of others?

[9:21] Because if you remember in the book of Acts, as the early church is gathering, there were people who were in need. And we see this in Acts 2.45. It says it several other places.

[9:32] But here in verse 45 of Acts 2, it says, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. So you had these early believers who were like, hey, I'm going to sell my stuff and give to the poor.

[9:49] The question, and there are some commentators who would ask this question, were they foolish for doing this? And here's why they would ask that question. Were they foolish for doing that since these same people seemingly ended up with their own serious financial trouble?

[10:09] In other words, those early believers in the book of Acts, because of persecution, came under their own serious financial trouble.

[10:20] And Paul, as he was traveling and planting churches on the mission field, actually started to take up a collection from these new church plants to send back to Jerusalem to help out these people who were in need.

[10:36] This is from Romans 15. It mentions it in Philippians. It mentions it in Galatians. It mentions it in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians. For Macedonia and Achaia, this is in Greece and just north of Greece, these churches in these regions have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.

[10:59] Because of their great persecution that was happening in Jerusalem, people were being kicked out of their families. They were being fired. They were losing possessions because of their Christian faith in Jerusalem.

[11:11] And so earlier, they had been selling their possessions and giving to the poor were themselves becoming poor. Were they foolish to give away their stuff to begin with?

[11:25] What's the question? Interesting question. Good thing to ask these kinds of questions. Here's another one. This is the passage, as we'll see in a moment, where he talks about ravens and lilies.

[11:39] And he says of ravens, these birds, that they neither sow nor reap. And he talks about these flowers, these lilies in the field, that neither toil nor spin.

[11:52] Okay? So since neither ravens sow nor lilies toil, is Jesus teaching his disciples that they need not work? Like ravens don't work.

[12:05] Lilies don't work. They don't toil. So why do we? Do we need to toil or can we just kind of sit back and expect God's going to provide for us?

[12:17] How do we deal with that? And there are some direct indications in other places of Scripture. And this is why we have to understand that Scripture helps us to interpret Scripture.

[12:29] So we go to a passage like this in 2 Thessalonians. It's a longer passage than this, but I'm just going to show you these two verses where Paul says to the church in Thessalonica that we hear that some among you walk in idleness.

[12:42] They're busybodies. They're busybodies. They're not doing anything productive. They're just not doing anything. They're not busy at work, but busybodies. Now, such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.

[12:59] As a matter of fact, Paul would say to these people, if you're not willing to work, you shouldn't eat. So why is Jesus saying this about lilies and ravens and using that as an example for us, and yet at the same time we're taught, no, work is good.

[13:18] Work is vital. It's a part of how we live in the world today. So here are just a few questions to ask as we dig into the text here today.

[13:31] So we're starting in verse 22, and hopefully now we can better understand what Jesus is teaching and perhaps what Jesus is not teaching as we make our way through this.

[13:46] Okay? Verse 22. And he said to his disciples, notice again how he is just addressing his disciples here. Even though there might be a larger crowd and there might be more people listening, but he's talking specifically to his disciples.

[14:00] Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing.

[14:15] And he tells us not to be anxious about your life. What's another word for anxious? Worry is another word. Don't be worried would be another way of saying that.

[14:25] Don't be worried about your life. I don't know if any of you ever struggle with worry about anything. From time to time, I think everyone struggles. There probably are some of us that worry more than others, but it's something that we need to learn to deal with.

[14:43] And he does this by making these statements. For life is more than food and the body is more than clothing. And he says, consider the ravens. Now, here's this mention of these birds.

[14:54] They neither sow nor reap. They have neither storehouse nor barn. And yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds?

[15:06] And I remember he just told this parable about this farmer who felt like he needed to build bigger barns. And he says, well, consider the ravens. They don't even have barns. They don't plant.

[15:17] They don't reap a harvest. They don't do any of this stuff. And yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? What is Jesus saying there?

[15:29] And which of you, by being anxious or worried, can add a single hour to his span of life? Can any of you do that by worrying? Actually, the medical industry would tell us that worry might actually shorten your lifespan instead of increase it.

[15:48] If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why would you be anxious about the rest of it? Now, consider the lilies, he says, how they grow and yet they neither toil nor spin.

[16:04] Yet I tell you, even Solomon, King Solomon, wealthiest man probably per capita, given inflation and all of that stuff, probably the wealthiest man in all of human history.

[16:20] Even Solomon, dressed in all of his glory, was not arrayed, was not as beautiful as a simple lily, a flower in a field.

[16:30] But if God so clothes the grass, just a random lily in the field, which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, they would take dried grass, dried flowers, and use them as fire starters.

[16:48] So tomorrow is thrown into the oven. How much more will he clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Again, considering this.

[17:02] And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried about them. Now, let me ask you a question. Do not seek what you are to eat or drink.

[17:14] So that means you should never go to the grocery store. Is that how you would interpret that? I don't think that's what he means there. I think what he's getting at is the worry that we have.

[17:28] And most of us aren't so worried about that. We have some in our communities that have that as a concern, particularly in other parts of the world. This is a great concern as well.

[17:40] But understand that God's going to provide. For all the nations of the world, seek after these things. And your father knows that you need them. Instead, rather than being worried and just constantly because of that worry, be so focused on your daily provisions.

[18:02] Instead of doing that, seek first his kingdom. And these things will be added to you. So this is his instructions when it comes to anxiety, when it comes to worry.

[18:16] And that's kind of what we're going to finally get to on your notes. This was on your notes last week. You didn't have to have those because this week's notes now include it.

[18:28] And it's expanded a little bit as well. And so this first part that we're going to be looking at is Jesus' three-part ante to anxiety.

[18:40] And I want you to notice first thing. Notice he uses this word consider. Consider the ravens. Consider the lilies.

[18:51] The word consider here means to think perceptively. To think based on knowledge.

[19:02] To think based on what you know. So when we consider the ravens, these birds, when you consider the lilies, these flowers, think about what we know about them.

[19:14] And that's going to teach us this first antidote, if you will, is to think correctly. Think correctly.

[19:25] Think correctly. I'm going to show you a verse that I often show you. I'm going to show it to you again. And I will probably show it to you multiple times going forward. From Romans 12.2.

[19:36] It is a key verse of scripture that should kind of give us an underpinning, a foundation for how we ought to live the Christian life. He says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, the way the world thinks, but instead be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

[19:53] Our minds need to be renewed. Even if you grew up in the church, we have just a natural tendency to think the way the world thinks, to operate the way the world operates.

[20:08] And so as believers now, now that you've trusted Christ as your Savior, our minds need to be transformed to think the way that God does, to think in a way that the scriptures are informing how we view the world.

[20:23] Our worldview now has changed because of our relationship with Christ, and that informs how we think about treasure, how we think about daily provision, food and drink, how we deal with the subject of worry.

[20:38] So this is now all a part of, we need to reprogram, if you will, our minds to think from a biblical perspective, how we view these issues.

[20:49] And so Jesus now, in this text about birds and flowers and treasure and all of that, is going to correct our understanding about how life works and about how we view the stuff of life, the things of life, the stuff that will stay in the here and now, in the temporary, not eternal.

[21:12] And we're going to see how worry messes up our thinking. And it absolutely does. The first thing that worry does is it distorts the preciousness of human life.

[21:28] It makes us devalue human life. Is that a problem in our world today? Does the world today devalue, not think of life as being precious?

[21:41] Jesus, oh my, that is a grave concern in our world. And yet, here's what Jesus said about us. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

[21:53] There's something unique about human life. It's different than the rest of the animal kingdom. The idea that we are animals, like sometimes I will hear kids say, or a teenager say, well, you and I, we are mammals.

[22:11] You ever heard that before, that humans are mammals? No, you're not. You're not a mammal. You might have hair like a mammal, but you are unique in all of creation.

[22:24] God has done something with you that is different than all of the animal kingdom. He has created you in his image. No other mammal or any other animal can say that.

[22:39] It's not true of them. And it's interesting to me that in our culture, again, especially when we see sometimes commercials or movies or programs, when an animal dies, we get all upset, right?

[22:59] If some beloved pet dies, we get all upset. But if someone on TV is depicted as being murdered or slaughtered, or we think of a baby in the womb that's aborted, for some reason that doesn't seem to bother people as much.

[23:19] Why? As much as we love our pets, and we had a beloved dog in our family that we loved, I mean, and to this day, I mean, he died probably seven years ago now.

[23:34] And from my perspective, he was the best dog in the world. I don't care what kind of dog you have. My dog was the best dog in the world. And it's just how we are.

[23:46] But yet at the same time, do we get upset when we think about abortion? When we think about an innocent life that's slaughtered, turn on the news and you see almost every day these horrific events that are happening, shootings and things, and we become so callous to that.

[24:05] Why is that? Well, it's because we need to be renewed in our minds to understand that human life is very precious, and it's different, and we've been created in the image of God.

[24:21] He says, Of how much more value are you than the birds? God just has created a system where birds, ravens, whatever, different varieties of birds, flowers.

[24:37] They're all created. They're all provided for in the way that nature works. God set all that up and provides for them.

[24:49] Are you not more valuable? It seems like a silly question when we spell it out like that. But we have to remember that, that God cares for us.

[25:01] So is he going to let you starve? Is he going to let you, as his child, suffer in that way? Here's another way that worry messes up our thinking.

[25:14] Worry questions the power of God, whether God can really do it, whether God can really take care of us, right? And here's the statement that Jesus makes, talking about the lilies.

[25:29] How much more will he clothe you? Or more generically, how much more is he going to take care of you, provide for you? How much more so than a flower in a field is he going to care for you?

[25:43] And then he says to his disciples, Oh, you of little faith. He's saying this is an issue of faith, that when we're so concerned and we're wrapped up in anxiety, we're wrapped up in worry over basic necessities that we have in life or how we think we're going to get by in life, he says that's a faith issue, that you're not trusting him to do what he promised to do, to take care of you.

[26:13] When you live life his way, he's going to provide, he's going to take care of us. And then the other thing is that worry adopts the perspective of unbelievers, of people who have not trusted Christ as Savior.

[26:33] And he says it this way in verse 30, For all the nations of the world seek after these things. Now, the way that the English Standard Version has translated this, all the nations of the world, is another way of saying all the unsaved people of the world.

[26:54] All the people who are not trusting in Christ. All the people who do not know Christ. That's how they operate. They operate according to the world's value system.

[27:06] That you've got to worry. You've got to be anxious about how things are going to happen in your life. But you're different. Your priority should be to seek his kingdom.

[27:20] That's the priority for us. He will provide. We have to trust that he will provide. We put him first. We put his kingdom ahead of our own.

[27:33] And we trust him to provide for us. Now, look what he says in verse 32. He's again, he's talking to his disciples.

[27:47] And he says to them, Fear not, little flock. It's the only time this phrase is used in the New Testament. And he's talking to his disciples and he calls them a little flock.

[28:01] Little sheep. It's a good thing he doesn't consider us like mighty lions. Right? We're little sheep.

[28:14] Living in a world that's very hazardous. And needs someone to take care of us. This whole idea that we can do life independently.

[28:29] That's a big ideal in terms of American culture. The idea of independence. And when it comes to that from the perspective of a government.

[28:39] From a perspective of politics. We like independence. But when it comes to our relationship with the Lord. Independence is not good.

[28:51] And we are absolutely dependent on our creator. On our loving Lord. Who has promised to provide for us.

[29:03] And we are vulnerable. Absolutely we are vulnerable. And so we read on from this. Fear not, little flock.

[29:14] For it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Now remember where we're at in the text. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.

[29:27] Right? You guys know I'm making my way to the drums. To the congas they're called. Not bongo. They're congas. And this is, you know, starting in chapter 9 verse 51.

[29:41] Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. And he's preaching the message. Right? The message of the gospel. And the gospel that he's preaching is the kingdom of God is at hand.

[29:52] The kingdom of God is at hand. Right? And I can't keep a rhythm to save my life. But it's the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God is at hand.

[30:02] That's real simple. And it's getting louder and louder. The more we make our way through the gospel of Luke, that message is getting louder. The kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God was standing right in front of them.

[30:17] Speaking to them face to face. And he says, It is your father's good pleasure to give you this.

[30:30] To give you the kingdom. And I sometimes wonder if we miss this. It is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

[30:49] Do we understand? Do you understand how much your life gives him pleasure? How much he loves to do good things for you?

[31:06] Sometimes we miss this. Here's another passage of scripture that talks about this. This is Ephesians 1.5. This is from the New King James Version. It says, Having predestined us to the adoption as sons by Jesus Christ himself.

[31:22] Don't get caught up in, Oh, there's the predestination word. Don't get caught up in that. It just means that God knows ahead of time that you're going to be a child of God. But here's what I want you to catch in this.

[31:35] Again, we read that and it's kind of sanitized.

[31:49] And the way it's worded, does it really sink in what he's saying here? Here's the New Living Translation of this verse.

[32:01] God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do. And it gave him great pleasure.

[32:19] If you are a child of God, if you're sitting here today and you're a child of God, you've trusted Christ as Savior. Understand that God planned for that in advance.

[32:34] And that the idea of bringing you into his family. The idea of allowing you to be a part of his kingdom.

[32:48] That your life brought him pleasure. That you please your Heavenly Father. Knowing that ought to change so much of the dynamic in terms of how we think of our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

[33:09] Because so many think of him in the terms of fear. Or in terms of, and this is really going to come into play in two weeks as we continue our passage.

[33:22] The idea of how you view God. How you view his second coming. His coming again. His coming kingdom. Is that something that strikes a tone of fear in your heart?

[33:38] Is that something that strikes a tone of guilt? The idea that Jesus could come back today? Is that what it makes you feel? Or is it an attitude of excitement?

[33:55] An attitude of love? An attitude of anticipation? Are you going to get excited about a drop of ketchup coming out of a bottle?

[34:11] I think there's a commercial about that. Or are you going to be excited about Jesus coming again? That's in two weeks. But understand the pleasure that your life brings.

[34:26] The idea of him bringing you into his kingdom. Secondly, Jesus is going to talk about living generously. Living generously.

[34:39] So here he says this. Sell your possessions then and give to the needy. He's telling this to the disciples. Ultimately, I think he would be saying this to us as well.

[34:52] That we ought to be generous people. Now, there are some things about this. When it comes to material possessions and money and security, security is a word that gets tied up into our finances as well.

[35:10] Because I want my future to be secure. I want my retirement to be secure. All these kinds of things. And so the question then becomes, how do we deal with this?

[35:21] Is it that God's going to give me everything I ever wanted and provide me with all kinds of health and wealth and prosperity and all of that? Or is God telling me, no, sell everything you've got, like he did to the rich young ruler.

[35:36] Sell everything that you've got. Give it all away and come follow me. Which is it? And again, we have to understand that when he's talking to the rich young ruler, the agenda there is not what this man owns or how much wealth he has.

[35:54] The question with the rich young ruler is, what is he trusting? And with the rich young ruler, he's trusting his stuff. And that's indicated by what Jesus commands of him to do.

[36:06] That's a unique command that he gave to one person, not to all of us, to sell all of your possessions. And come follow me.

[36:17] But he does tell us to sell our possessions. But he doesn't use the word all here. So what's the mindset do we have? Is it at the either extreme?

[36:28] No, I would say no. That somewhere in the middle is where we need to be. And you have this now on your notes. Jesus isn't saying that you shouldn't have possessions.

[36:41] That's not what Jesus is saying. So if you own a car and a home and have a closet full of clothes and shoes and have a refrigerator that's full of food, you don't have to feel guilty.

[36:55] Right? If you have possessions, if you have some nice things, absolutely fine. Absolutely wonderful. If you have some wealth versus someone living paycheck to paycheck, again, absolutely fine.

[37:10] Nothing wrong with that. Just understand the right perspective that you need to have towards your finances. He is saying to hold on to what you have loosely.

[37:23] So that when you see someone who is in need, that you're willing to help, that you're willing to provide, to be generous to people in need.

[37:37] That's what he's saying. To be ready to give away what you really don't need, to provide a necessity that someone does not have.

[37:51] That's what we need to be willing to do. And then thirdly, to invest eternally.

[38:10] Again, from Luke 12, verse 33, provide yourselves then with money bags that do not grow old. I don't know why.

[38:21] I got a kick out of the word money bags here. We don't use that word so much unless we're talking about a person. We might say that person is money bags or whatever.

[38:32] I don't know. But then that's what they did. They carried money bags. And so have a money bag. You might, you know, today translate that to have a bank account then that does not grow old with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.

[38:53] Actually, he's not even talking about bank accounts here. He's talking about heavenly accounts. That's what's in view that what Jesus is talking about here. So it's a money bag that would leak would be your bank account versus an eternal investment.

[39:10] And what's eternal? Eternal are the things that are going to last into the next stage. When we provide money for ministry, that's an eternal investment.

[39:24] When we provide for people, people are eternal. Eternal. And so those kinds of provision are eternal investments. But let me tell you what he's not looking for, what he's not asking about here.

[39:37] Or actually before we, the last verse of our text, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. A lot of times we get this in reverse, right?

[39:48] We think, well, where our heart is, that's where our treasure is going to be put. And he's saying the other thing is, look where your treasure is, and there you'll find your heart.

[40:00] So if you're not investing in eternal things in any way, what's he saying about your treasure? So Jesus isn't looking for donors.

[40:18] And I don't think the churches ought to be looking for donors. That's not the point. The point is that we'd be partners in ministry, partners in things that will matter for eternity.

[40:36] That's what we need to invest in. Partnership in ministry with the Lord. Jesus wants eternal investors who have a vision for what true treasure is.

[41:00] I want to tell you about a story about a young man who came up in the late 1800s. He was a retailer by trade, and over time he got a job as a young man in a chain of stores that were then known as the Golden Rule stores.

[41:24] That was the name of the stores. And he began to invest in those stores, and he became part owner of this small chain of stores in the Midwest.

[41:36] Eventually he invested so much that he became the sole proprietor of this chain of stores. And by the time he got into the early 1900s, he became a millionaire.

[41:51] He continued to invest in his stores, continued to open more of these stores. And the year before the stock market crash in 1929, those stores had a revenue of $184 million.

[42:11] But because of the stock market crash, he went bankrupt. And he went crazy. Because of his anxiety as to how he would provide and what he had and what he lost, his family eventually had to put him into, this was in 1931, the Battle Creek Sanitarium for the Mentally Insane.

[42:37] We don't have those anymore, do we? I think maybe we should. While he was there as a patient, he began to write his family farewell notes, thinking that his life was over.

[42:57] And then one night during a shift change, he wandered the hallways of this sanitarium and heard some music. And so he went to the source of the music, which is where he then found the chapel of this sanitarium.

[43:15] And they were singing a hymn. And he sat down to listen. And as he listened to the words of this hymn, it reminded him of the gospel that he had heard as a teenager growing up, the gospel that he had rejected.

[43:35] As a teenager growing up, he went back to his bed and kneeled there at his bed and surrendered his life to Christ. He placed his faith and his trust in Jesus Christ as his savior.

[43:51] Eventually, he was declared sane once again. And he went back into the world and decided, you know what? Even, and he was 56 at the time, he decided he was going to get back into the retail business and see if he could make a go of it again.

[44:07] And that if he did, he would use his wealth to fund charitable things, particularly those that were involved in the spreading of the gospel.

[44:19] He would tell people, I was born again in the sanitarium. In 1971, this man finally died.

[44:38] This man here finally died at 95 years of age. His name, you probably know it, not by his two names, but his initials.

[44:55] J.C. Penney. And through the years, he provided millions and millions of dollars to gospel causes because it was this passage of scripture that inspired the hymn that he heard.

[45:17] Some of you might be wondering, what was the hymn that they were singing that inspired him so? I wasn't familiar with it. I know a lot of hymns.

[45:29] I wasn't familiar with this one. So I'm going to play you a couple of verses of this. And I want to see afterwards if any of you are familiar with this particular hymn. So let's hear this now.

[45:48] Be not dismayed What I have he died God will take care of you Beneath his wings of love abide God will take care of you God will take care of you God will take care of you Through days of toil Through days of toil When heart doth fail God will take care of you

[46:49] When dangers fierce your path a sail God will take care of you God will take care of you Through every day or all the way He will take care of you God will take care of you There's a few more verses to that song, but you get the idea.

[47:32] How many of you have heard that hymn before? More than I expected. Oh my. Where did I go wrong? How come I'm missing this? My goodness.

[47:47] So It reminds me of the charge That was spoken to the Man in the parable Fool Am I going to be a fool?

[48:05] Or Am I going to be rich towards God? Lay up treasure In heaven And let that treasure then be an indicator Of where my heart Is So I pray that First of all If you've never trusted Christ as your savior That's where it starts Start To It starts to impact the way that you think about things The desires that you have Everything starts to change You might be thinking Well, I You know I don't know if I can let go of the things of this world I don't know if I can let go of the anxiety Or the worry that I have about My situation But when you trust him Even with your unanswered questions That's the best place to be

[49:08] Is to just say Okay, Lord I'm going to let go of this And I'm going to trust you Wherever that takes me Understanding that your life brings him great pleasure And he wants to give you so much He wants to provide for you He wants to take care of you So I'd I would encourage you to do that To trust him And allow him To be your provider As you live according to his ways As you follow his teaching He will provide Let's pray Lord, thank you so much for your word For what you have taught To your disciples And Ultimately today We are your disciples We are your followers We have trusted you As Savior and Lord And we thank you for

[50:09] Provision that you give to us We understand that it comes from your hand That you provide Even though we go to work And even though we We get A paycheck And we use that To buy food and clothing And pay the bills We understand that everything That we have Comes from your hand And we thank you for that For those who have never trusted Christ as Savior I pray that today They would see their need And that they would say yes To you And trust you Just simply trust Their life To your plan There is no other way There is no other plan For you are the way The truth And the life And no one comes to the Father But by you And I pray today That people would accept

[51:11]  And trust you As Lord and Savior Again we thank you For all that you provide for us And we love you We ask it in Jesus name Amen Amen