Coming up on DTNS, Jonathan Strickland explains why NFTs are not a magic tool for the metaverse. White Elkos and Airlines are fighting over 5G in the United States, and Microsoft did some post-holiday shopping, woke up and found a pre-ordered Activision Blizzard, shipping sometime next year. This is the Daily Tech News for Tuesday, January 18th, 2022 in Los Angeles. I'm Tom Merritt. And from Studio Redwood. I'm Sarah Lane. I'm Roger Chang, the show's producer. And joining us, executive producer at I Heart Media, Jonathan Strickland, welcome back to the show. It's been too darn long. Howdy, y'all. It's good to be back. It's good to have you back. I can't wait to talk about the metaverse stuff, because I think you've got an important take that we don't hear enough people talking about. We were just talking about all kinds of stuff, including memories of ammonia leaks and fires on good day internet. Get that longer version of the show at patreon.com slash DTNS. Big thanks to our top patrons. Today, they include Andrew Bradley, Dale McKayhee and Scott Hepburn. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. After no showing its own event on January 11th, Samsung has announced the Exynos 2200 smartphone mobile processor. It's the first mobile system on a chip with a GPU known as Xclips, starting with an X, running AMD's RDNA 2 graphics architecture and manufactured on Samsung's four nanometer EUV process, allowing for hardware accelerated ray tracing. Other specs include one high powered cortex X2 flagship core, three cortex A710 cores for balance performance and four more efficient cortex A510 cores, an upgraded NPU, an ISP architecture that can support camera sensors of up to 200 megapixels. Samsung and AMD first announced a licensing deal back in 2019. Samsung, why did you ghost on us? We're not here to talk about the past. Here's our first chance. Speaking of smartphones, data from panelists shows that Apple had the most smartphone shipments in Q4 2021 worldwide, 22 percent of the global smartphone market top in Samsung, which fell back to second place at 20 percent. Xiaomi kept hold of third place with 12 percent share. And if you keep in track, Apple came in at fourth at 9 percent and vivo in fifth place at 8 percent. You may recall back in November, Amazon proposed a ban on UK issued Visa cards to pay for goods and services on Amazon service because of the high fees that Amazon said Visa was charging. A lot of customers weren't too happy about that. Now, Amazon says that the expected change regarding the use of Visa credit cards on amazon.co.uk will no longer take place on January 19th. That's when it was set to go into effect. Originally, Amazon says it's working with Visa to come to a solution that won't require customers to use alternate alternative payment methods. Now, unlike in the US, Visa doesn't currently offer a co-branded Amazon card in the UK. Maybe that's how they worked it out. Look for that soon. Central Bank digital currencies, CBDCs. You've heard us talk about them. They're worth keeping an eye on. They are not competitors to cryptocurrency, so much as attempts to smooth out a lot of the operations of a nation's financial system by using some of the benefits of a blockchain, albeit not decentralized. We've mentioned that the Bahamas and its sand dollar were the first to launch a CBDC. Since then, back in October, Nigeria launched its NERA and Cambodia's Bakong has reached half of its population. And of course, China is the biggest country experimenting with CBDCs. Still hasn't fully launched the digital yuan, but it now has 261 million individual users, about a fifth of the population. All right, let's talk about what pretty much ate up all of social media this morning. The fact that Microsoft has announced an agreement to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Reminder, this deal is not expected to close until Microsoft's fiscal 2023. Microsoft's fiscal 2023 begins, confusingly, for people who don't follow finance, July 1st, 2022, and it won't happen right on July 1st. It'll happen when it gets regulatory approval sometime between July 1st, 2022, and June 30th, 2023, if everything goes as planned, which it might not. So don't get confused in June when Activision Blizzard and Microsoft are still not the same company. It could be anywhere between July this year and June of next year, and probably on the later end of that, given the complexity and the number of markets these two companies operate. However, once it's done, Microsoft expects it'll make them the third largest gaming company in the world by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. Microsoft has already said, when it gets this done, it plans to add as many Activision Blizzard games as it can to Xbox Game Pass. Activision Blizzard, for example, has World of Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, some or all of those might it show up. Activision Blizzard, however, is not a company with a lot of issues. It has been dealing with sexual harassment problems, including reaching an $18 million settlement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and being sued by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Wall Street Journal sources say 37 employees have been quote-unquote exited, in other words, fired since last July, and 44 more were disciplined. While Bobby Kotek will remain CEO of Activision Blizzard for the time being, and at least through the close of the deal, it's unclear what will happen once Microsoft takes control. Activision Blizzard's lead, whoever it is, will report to Microsoft's CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer, and Wall Street Journal sources are saying that Kotek probably won't stay on. Satya Nadella summed up Microsoft's strategy on this acquisition in a statement saying, quote, we're investing deeply in world-class content, community, and the cloud. Now, this was said in relation to a gaming acquisition. I get that, but pay attention to the breakdown there. Gaming or content, community, and the cloud. That implies that there are things other than the cloud, other than Azure that Microsoft now hopes to capitalize on. They've been doing good. They're not going to stop with Azure. But content, community, a very interesting way of putting that, lots of takes here. Jonathan, where's your head at on this? I mean, you were getting at it toward the very end there, Tom. I was feeling like Satya was getting a bit meta with all that as in metaverse, which of course is the topic that no one can get around and we'll talk about it more later on in the show. I actually think it's promising for multiple angles. I think it's promising in the sense that my hope is Microsoft coming in can help Activision Blizzard clean house and get things in order. And I often feel skepticism when a company that has been revealed to have a toxicity to its corporate culture at a very deep ingrained level, like a generational level in the case of Activision Blizzard. I often am skeptical that such a company can turn things around by themselves. It's not impossible. It's just really hard. And I know a lot of people have expressed skepticism with codec in charge in particular. I feel like this perhaps could be a chance for that to really have a true transformational change, which I think would benefit all the people who work at Activision Blizzard. And then that sort of has a trickle down effect of, I believe when people are in a space that's safe, where they feel their contributions are valued, they produce better work, which means you get better games down the line too. And then, of course, with Game Pass, the immediate boon for gamers is that they'll get access to more titles very quickly. So I think at least in the short term, this has a lot of positives. I don't foresee a ton of regulatory resistance to this simply because, as you mentioned, even with the acquisition, Microsoft won't be the dominant company in that space. That doesn't mean they won't face some resistance. It's also a global market, so it gets way more complicated. But I think that there are no obvious roadblocks that I see. Yeah, I mean, before we move on, I mean, this is, if I'm not mistaken, well, I know it's Microsoft's biggest acquisition, I believe the biggest one was LinkedIn, which was in the $20 billion range a few years ago. So I mean, this is that and quite a bit more money.  And you kind of figure that if somebody's at the helm and these things are happening, they often aren't at the helm anymore. This makes a lot more sense to me now. Why Kotick?  But before Microsoft officially takes over of the company, but it sounds like there was some boardroom deals that were already in the mix. Yeah, there definitely will be a story coming out on what the shareholder involvement in this dance was. And what, you know, if it was Kotick agreeing like, OK, fine, sell to Microsoft and then I'll step away gracefully, get my parachute from Microsoft. Who knows? We'll find out all of that stuff. There's also lots of stuff to talk about on the gaming competitive landscape. You know, does Call of Duty become a Microsoft exclusive only on Xbox and PC? They're not saying that. And certainly Sony would not benefit from that. It weren't it to happen. I have some thoughts on the fact that they have made. I think Phil Spencer made some noises about like, well, eventually Xbox Cloud, you know, Xbox Game Pass, they're going to have to be available on PlayStation. Maybe this is how they do it. They use this as leverage to get that. We'll we'll talk about this some more with Scott Johnson tomorrow. But it definitely feels like like Microsoft is going to have more leverage to force some deals with Sony in the future. Well, Toronto's Citizen Lab has issued a report on the 2022 Winter Olympics app called My 2022. The China is requiring all athletes, audience members and media to use for daily COVID monitoring. Anybody who's going to be involved in the Olympics, all visitors traveling from outside China to the Beijing Olympics must download the app 14 days before they travel to China and start recording daily COVID statuses. Foreign visitors must also upload passport details and travel and medical histories. Now, though, COVID tracking is the main purpose, the app also includes the ability to do some voice chats. There's some social stuff, make file transfers, read Olympics news. It's designed to do a little bit more than just, you know, have your medical history involved. Citizen Lab, though, found some things that's not super surprised about. There is a feature to flag things as politically sensitive, a list of censored words as well. The words list isn't active, so it would be a boilerplate addition to any Chinese made software. Not a huge surprise. But Citizen Lab also asserts that the app's encryption has a flaw that could be exploited by attackers to intercept voice audio and file transfers. If you were to use those features of the SAP, it also says that server responses could be spoofed to show fake fake instructions to users and confuse them. The company that made the app didn't respond to Citizen Labs to disclosures, but state run Global Times reported that all personal information will be encrypted to ensure privacy. OK, well, you believe them or you don't. Several countries have recommended that their athletes use rental or disposable phones, burner phones and computers and new email addresses meant only for use in connection with the Olympics. Yeah, so I mean, Global Times is not wrong. Citizen Labs didn't say there wasn't encryption. They just said the encryption had vulnerabilities in it that could let you get around it. So, you know, it'll be encrypted just not well. The doors locked, but the windows are all open. Yeah, the door, the door is locked.  Yeah, I don't know. This none of this surprises me. I think it's gotten a lot more play just because it's China. And you know, that list of censored words and stuff, it's like you're not going to have a piece of software made by a Chinese company that doesn't have that in the source code somewhere. The fact that it's not active, I think is more of a surprise to me than the fact that the list is even there. But I would like to see this company respond to Citizen Labs responsible disclosure, especially because athletes from all over the world are going to be forced to use this. You want it to be secure because it's got their passport information and everything in there, their health. Some of their health information is going to be in there. It's important stuff. It's just interesting to me to see the recommendations to people who are attending the Olympics be not unlike the recommendations I would make to someone who's going to DEF CON for the first time. I had the same thought. It's so funny. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, oh, you might want to use a burner phone. Definitely turn off all your devices. Yeah, it's like the nation of DEF CON. In December, we did a know a little more episode about the problem with C-band 5G rollouts and airlines. We talked to airline captain and computer scientist Brian Hoffman about that. But here's the short version. If you don't have time to go listen to that entire episode, AT&T and Verizon want to roll out new 5G service in a bit of the spectrum that the FCC has authorized them to use. That part is in controversy. But the spectrum happens to be near spectrum used by some airplane equipment, particularly something called radar altimeter or radalt, which is used often for landing in poor visibility, you know, to tell you where the ground is kind of important when you're landing a big old airplane. The FAA worries that some radalt equipment, especially older equipment, may be affected by C-band 5G transmissions, since some equipment uses a little more bandwidth than it was designed to, than it's supposed to. So it's, you know, the truth on the ground is different than the truth on paper. C-band service happens without disruption to airlines in other countries, though. And the FAA says that it's different here because, A, C-band and equipment spectrum are closer to each other in the U.S. than they are in other countries. And the 5G service being launched here uses higher power levels. The FAA says it will not allow flights to use uncertified equipment near 5G broadcast, which could cause flights to be delayed or diverted during poor weather if those 5G broadcasts are happening. Sunday, the FAA certified two models of radar altimeter for use at the 88 airports expected to be most affected by C-band rollouts. That's about 45% of the aircraft, but that leaves a lot of aircraft still uncertified. And the telcos have agreed to buffer zones where they will not have C-band transmissions near the runways of 50 airports in the U.S. That includes big ones like LA, New York and Chicago. That brings us to Monday when the executives of 11 airlines signed a letter saying these measures are not enough to avoid significant disruption to flights and asking the U.S. government to intervene and delay the 5G rollout longer. They painted a picture of, you know, half their fleet's being grounded and not being able to fly in the fog and rain. And so Tuesday, AT&T and Verizon both complained but agreed to postpone the rollout once again at a limited number of towers around certain airport runways beyond the 50 they had previously agreed to create buffer zones near. And that's where we're at on that now. So, Tom, with the FAA saying, well, this radar equipment, particularly older equipment, it's not going to play nicely, that is not something that can be handled at the airport level in order to roll this out more smoothly. What do you mean by handled at the airport level? Meaning update your old equipment. Oh, yes. If everybody bought new equipment, that would solve the problem. But you're talking about a lot of planes. You're talking about a lot of cost and you're talking about airlines going like, well, why should we pay to replace perfectly good working equipment when you could just not operate your 5G near the runway? Yeah, I was going to say, Patrick Beltin of lightreading.com wrote a really interesting article about this, where he was actually making the argument that a lot of this it's it's there is the technicality part, the technological part and the safety concerns part. But there's also a political struggle between organizations that that represent the telecom industry and organizations that represent the aviation industry that largely boils down to we agree that some equipment needs to be replaced. We want you to pay for it. And it's both sides saying that. And it comes down to this argument about the agreement that 200 megahertz was an appropriate buffer band between the upper level of the 5G C band that AT&T and Verizon are using, which tops out, I think, 3.98 gigahertz and the low end of radio altimeters, which is around 4.2 gigahertz. And that they said, well, everyone agreed on that. So since you agreed on that and since we went by that, that means that you aviation industry should foot the bill. Whereas the aviation industry is saying, you're pushing this this agenda, this the schedule on us, we're telling you that we need more time for testing for the FAA to certify that we can actually operate in these these these regions under these conditions. So you should really pay for the updates. And that is a large part of this as well. And it's it's always interesting to me to see that that convergence of politics, financial interests and the actual technology and and of course concern for safety all collide because it always leaves you questioning which part is actually the most crucial at this at this point of the conversation. Yeah, Amos, I saw you turn your camera on a producer Amos. I know you've worked on a tarmac or two. Did you do you have a thought on this? Yeah, with the comment of Sarah saying, you know, just we can't we just replace the radar all radar altimeters. Part of the problem there is that each airframe and often each variation of the airframe will have a different form factor for the radar alt and they're very bespoke to a specific line. And a lot of the companies that created these that made them in the first place are either out of business or have been folded into a new business and are no longer making them and providing just enough parts to repair the ones that are there. So actually going in and doing all that, it's not just like a simple box swap. You know, you can't just take a video card out of one computer and throw another and everything work fine. It's sometimes the form factor, the physical form factor, the weight distribution of it. And all that has to play part into retrofitting these older planes. So I can see where the airlines are coming from that it's it's a lot more consuming than than what, you know, than at first glance. But at the same time, I don't disagree with everything. Jonathan Strickland just said that, you know, it's there. And if you're not if you're not using the bandwidth that was given to you, that's a problem with your equipment, not necessarily the cell phone towers. But yeah, it can be a lot more involving just because the physical form factor, the weight of it can shift how the aircraft flies and everything else. It's pretty intense, but it does need to get done. That makes sense, because I've seen several airline commenters say, in some cases, you just have to replace the plane. And that could be why because it's just too old to retrofit. Oh, well, folks, if you like science and tech intersecting like that, check out Nikki Ackerman's new miniseries, scientists in tech on how a researcher is using remote digital cameras to track endangered wildlife. It was in your feed this weekend. You might have listened to it already. So check it out in your DTNS feed right here. Well, one way to make money in our new metaverse, whatever that ends up being is to sell ads. Oh, tech. As an example, the Financial Times sources obtained documents from meta detailing patents on body and facial tracking, including eye tracking that could make virtual experiences more realistic and possibly improve their ad targeting might improve the experience as well. But ad targeting definitely part of the mix. Another method would be to sell you virtual things. And in less speculative news, Coinbase announced that it has partnered with MasterCard so you can buy NFTs with fiat currency if you so desire. Because NFTs record ownership, it's often assumed that there'll be a great way of letting you own and use virtual things in the metaverse because there's a ledger. There's record of all the stuff. Who owns what? Jonathan, you seem to believe that's easier said than done. And we might need to fix a few issues first. In fact, you referenced an article by Intel's Roger Kodori about technical requirements for NFTs. So so what are the technical requirements that give you the most pause? Well, in that in that post that Kodori puts out, he posits that we would require compute power, networking capability, all the bits and pieces that would run this machine of the metaverse at about a thousand times more power than what we currently have at our disposal with cutting edge technology, which is, I would argue, significant. But beyond that, I mean, the tech part is just one issue of it. Obviously, one of the big problems we have is that we don't have a definition for what the metaverse truly is, right? We have a bunch of different companies that are pouncing after this idea of the metaverse, but because we don't actually have a thing to look at and say, here's how it's going to work. That makes a lot of these conversations speculative at best, which creates, I would argue, grounds for disaster if you are someone who's enthusiastic about it, but not informed enough to be super careful, which is why I get nervous about the NFT side. So the way that I see NFTs being positioned right now are often in the sense of this is a way of recording a purchase, whether it's a piece of virtual real estate or an object within a metaverse, or very frequently I'm seeing it described as being able to purchase something within one pocket metaverse and potentially poured it over to other pocket metaverses. So this would free you up so that let's say you're in Meta's metaverse, but you really like the virtual coats that are in Microsoft's version of the metaverse. So you want to go and buy a virtual coat, but you spend most of your time in Meta's metaverse. So you want to bring that virtual coat over to Meta. A lot of people are talking about NFTs being this kind of token that would allow that sort of portability, except that that ignores the need to actually build all that stuff from a coding perspective. And I see a lot of people making an analogy with video games saying, imagine that you're playing like a Call of Duty Warzone and you buy a gun and that and you want to use that same gun in maybe Microsoft's Halo series. You actually have to build all that. You have to include that in the physics of the engine. And because we don't have one cohesive metaverse we're talking about, we're really looking at a lot of walled gardens potentially. I don't know that that's actually going to be how it all pans out. And I worry because the sales pitch could be very different from the virtual reality we actually encounter when it blossoms. Well, and also, OK, so using the gun as an example, say that I pay pretty penny for the gun NFT that can can be ported through the metaverse, depending on where I'm where I'm hanging out, where I might be playing a game, where I might use that. Couldn't you just say, well, I paid this much money and my gun can never miss? And so now my gun is better than everyone else is going like, that's not going to work. No, but I think it's more likely that we're going to see issues where there's going to be these promises made where the people who actually have to build the stuff are the ones who eventually have to explain unless there is deep collaboration, it's just not going to happen. Right. Like that's the real fear. Like, I think we can always define what is possible or not possible within any virtual world. I mean, the rules can be defined by the way the creators who create the world. The other aspect of this, the compute power plays into this, too. I believe anything that at least anything I would call a metaverse would need to be pretty expansive in what you could do, what you encounter, the number of people you encounter. And currently that we see some pretty big limitations, at least on the number of people. Like if you look at Facebook's Horizon Worlds, I think that caps out at 20 people per virtual world. That seems small for a metaverse. Yeah, I don't. So I mean, you could have pockets of that, right, where you're transferring from one to another. But that that I can't imagine that being a seamless experience. And it's like if you're at a party and you're thinking, wow, man, things are really popping in the kitchen, but it is so crowded. There's no way for me to get in there to see what's happening. That's kind of what I think about. And like these are the just the technical issues I see even within a walled in garden. Like if we're just looking at Meta's version of a metaverse, these are our issues that I think are going to take time to solve.  I'm reminded, I mean, we've all seen the hype cycle. We've all been there when something's really been taking off. But I'm always reminded of the 1990s, like late 80s, early 90s, when virtual reality first got its start and everybody was jumping on board until they tried it. And then we're deeply disappointed and the industry died for more than a decade. I'm worried that we're heading toward the same thing with Metaverse right now, because the hype train is just so out of control. And in the meantime, I'm worried about people who get swept up in that and think, oh, I want to buy that virtual pair of sneakers or I want to get that virtual real estate that's next to that rapper that I really like, and then they end up sinking a lot of money into something that never really comes to fruition. That's I always get concerned about that because I never want to see people get burned by their enthusiasm. Yeah, there's a big difference between what you can do today, which sounds like it will be part of the future Metaverse and what the Metaverse, whatever it ends up being ends up being someday, which is, I don't know, five years, 10 years down the road. I mean, think about how long it took the web, which was interoperable from the start to really catch on. It wasn't until like 9899 that businesses really were starting to do it. And it then it crashed and it wasn't till the mid 2000s that it even became common. So this is a situation where like I've definitely used the like, hey, you know, the idea is like somebody is going to just make wizard swords and then anybody can build a game that uses those wizard swords, right? I think that's a great example of how NFTs don't have to just be like weird collectibles. They could be useful, but that also, you know, I think you bring up a good point means only those games that build on that system will be able to use that wizard sword. And there's a long time between now and that becoming a regular ecosystem that you can trust and say like, this is the place to buy the wizard sword that can be used at a lot of different places. Those sneakers, NFTs you're buying now, not likely for you to be able to wear those in the future, because people will say like, oh, yeah, but that was the old NFTs before whatever we end up developing comes into play. Yeah. And I also think that, you know, we're looking at a situation where NFTs may not even be needed if it is like a truly a walled garden experience where we don't see this interoperability between different metaverses, then there's an argument to be made that NFTs might not be needed at all because you could just have that all contained within the one system. NFTs end up being used net while everyone's using AOL. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I think back to the old days of the early days of social network platforms where, you know, you just would end up going to wherever your friends were, right? Yeah. There was no there was no guarantee that Facebook was going to win over my space, which feels I feel so old saying that. But like there was no guarantee in the early days that that was going to happen. But, you know, people started to gravitate toward it and it just became kind of an avalanching trend. And of course, there were obviously decisions made at Facebook and decisions made at my space that contributed to that significantly as well. But but then you're like, well, what metaverse do I invest into? If there's one that is only compatible with certain equipment, then you might be sinking a huge amount of money in stuff for what ends up being a ghost town. Translate. Yeah. My GeoCity site is no longer accessible. All right, let's check out the mailbag before we get out of here. Justin wrote in with a joke. Sometimes we like to, you know, we like to kick around some jokes, usually on GDI that we think are funny. Justin had a joke he'd like to share with a group. He says, what vampire does everyone accept? But basically ignore. Like, except like, I accept you vampire. I accept you, but I'm not really paying much attention to you. I don't know, Sarah. What vampire does everyone except but basically ignore? Dracula. You know, I never, I never scroll all the way. I never scroll all the way through a vampire. That's the problem is I just never. You just click OK. I see it. And I'm like, you're fine. Come on in. Oh, shoot. It's a good metaphor because you just click OK.  We love a good tech joke. Feedback at DailyTechNewShow.com. We want to send those jokes. Anything that you hear us talk about in the show or you'd like us to talk about in our future show, please do send your thoughts our way. We really do appreciate all of your emails, jokes or not. We also have some brand new bosses to thank. They include ex-harding, Ben Fiori and Jackson Bueno. All just started backing us on Patreon. So we'd like to thank ex-harding and Ben and Jackson. Yeah. Good stuff. Good to have new bosses, new blood. There's even new folks in the discord now. Welcome, everybody. It's good to have new folks in the house. Absolutely. New blood, get it? Yula and Fires. Thanks also to Jonathan Strickland for being with us. Jonathan's been way too long since we've all been on a show together. Let folks know where they can keep up with all that you do. Oh, sure. OK. So I host a show called Tech Stuff as a tech podcast that publishes five times a week. And I also am a co-host on a show called Large Nerdron Collider about geeky news and mashups. And it's really silly. And that comes out on Thursdays with my co-host Ariel Casten. Check it out. Excellent. Well, please do come back early and often. We are live on this show also Monday through Friday at 4 30 p.m. Eastern 21 30 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. Join us live if you can. We'll be back doing it all again tomorrow with Scott Johnson. Talk to you soon. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this program.


We're in James chapter five. We're going to look this morning at verses one through six as we continue our series through the book of James And I'm going to begin this study as I have recently especially as we've looked at some very tough things I'm going to begin by simply introducing it by by by saying that this is a very powerful piercing word it isn't a A Message that has a lot of Parent kindness so there's an awful lot of mercy and kindness in his words But as we read it James was being very direct and he was speaking to the unregenerate rich And he was speaking concerning what is going to take place in their future because these are people who were Neglecting the things that they had been taught in scripture and we're treating those who were poor in a way That's simply was not to be tolerated and so we're going to look at that and Again, I'm going to lay a foundation I'm going to take some time to lay it and then I'm going to build on it And I always come to the conclusion hoping to be able to tie it together with some application So beginning at verse one reading to verse six James chapter five James writes Come now you rich weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you Your riches are corrupted your garments are moth eaten Your gold and silver are corroded and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will he and will eat your flesh like fire You have heaped up treasure in the last days Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields which you kept back by fraud cry out and the cries of the Reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaat you have lived in the earth in pleasure and Luxury you have fattened your hearts as in the day of slaughter you have condemned You have murdered the just he does not resist you isn't that sweet? Those are strong words Those are very strong words and so I want to spend some time laying some foundations So we can get a context to see as to who he is speaking to Now in the first six verses of chapter five James is basically going to give to us what we would call two basic themes or two aims He has two aims in giving to us these words that he's presenting the first thing The first aim that he has is to show the ultimate worthlessness of accumulating earthly wealth So he wants to reveal that doing that Accumulating earthly wealth really has no eternal value and then the second thing is to reveal the character of those who trust in riches Now today, there's a consistent condemnation of those who are wealthy It's common for many to automatically consider wealthy people to be evil people and there are those and I've heard this Perhaps you have to who may say well the Bible says that money is the root of all evil Well, in fact the Bible does not say that in first Timothy chapter 6 verse 10 This is what the Bible says it says for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil For which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows It isn't money in and of itself in other words It's the love of money the Bible doesn't condemn wealth what the Bible does condemn is strained from God out of greed And the reason greed is condemned is because you cannot serve two masters In Matthew 6 24 Jesus said it like this. He said no one can serve two masters Either will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other You cannot serve both God and money and so The reason that James is laying this out and the reason scripture speaks about the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil is because you can't serve both God and financial wealth But the Lord wants for us is contentment that we would be contented with what we have The God who knows all things knows what we have need of and he's promised to provide for us our daily bread And and he desires us to live for him and not just for ourselves and he has promised he will provide for us Philippians 4 19 says my God shall supply all your need He doesn't say my God shall supply all your greed He says my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus So we're supposed to pursue the things that matter because we know that material things do not eternally Satisfy we might go after something and desire to obtain it and we finally have it But once we have it there's this desire again for something different something new something more modern or up to date We know that according to 1st Timothy chapter 6 verses 6 through 8 Godliness with contentment is great gain and Paul said we brought nothing into this world And it's certain we can carry nothing out and having food and clothing with these we shall be content When you read the book of Job in the Old Testament chapter 1 verse 21 Job said it like this Job said naked I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return there the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away Blessed be the name of the Lord. I came into this world naked and that's the way I return It's popular today to condemn those though who do possess wealth And it would seem obvious that this kind of hatred is very selective Normally the wealth that is considered evil is related to what has been popularly called corporate greed We've all heard that term and much of the anger is directed at what has been now called the one percenters and that one percent speaks of the top tier of the top one percent wage earners in the United States and That number changes but The one percenter number represents basically those with incomes averaging around $475,000 a year What I find interesting about all the selected selected hatred and all of this money is evil is It's usually Based on whether or not the person who is rich is liked by people It's really more of a popularity Contest as I see it because much of the negative that we read about is based on likes and dislikes of the person who is wealthy So it's very personal. I never hear for example negative things. Maybe you have I haven't I Never hear negative things about how wealthy Jeff Bezos is Jeff Bezos is a founder of Amazon and a variety of other corporations that I never hear anything about him Do you I don't I never hear him anybody say Oh that Jeff Bezos. He's really a monster. He's just too rich I just don't hear that and I was looking to see how much money he has in case he might want to send me some and But his his his amount kind of is it varies he recently had a divorce and quite a number of Quite a bit of money went to his his ex wife over 30 40 billion dollars at all So he now has he only has a hundred and seventy billion dollars I feel I feel for that man my heart breaks. So a Hundred and seventy billion dollars, but okay, what does that mean and to me? I didn't mean anything a number is a number when you start looking at anything over a million. I Have no way to fathom that how much is a hundred and seventy billion who knows I don't know But I did this I like I like to find ways to try and get my mind around numbers and things when I can't and so I Looked into Almighty Google and I said at the rate of spending one dollar a second How long would it take me to spend a hundred and seventy billion? dollars how long at one dollar per second just to give you an idea and It comes out over two thousand years Over two thousand years if you spent a dollar a second it would take you over two thousand years to spend a hundred and seventy billion and That's not even counting how his money Multiplies every day how it's increasing every day So a hundred and seventy is where you begin But today because of interest in other gains that he has he's got more he's got more he's got more in other words He would never be able to spend every single dollar. He has if you live two thousand years So that's an awful lot of money, but do you ever hear anybody say that evil Jeff Bezos? No, you don't how about with our athletics our athletes, you know, I was looking into that I was thinking what kind of money do our athletes make and so Bryce Harper signed a 13-year contract for 330 million dollars to play baseball and That included a 20 million dollar signing bonus. Nobody said anything about it. Nobody said Bryce Harper is making too much money You know Paul McCartney, that's a blast from the past, but Paul McCartney Former Beatle and still out there on the road his net worth is 1.2 billion dollars Nobody calls them out and says oh you're evil because you have money even comedians like Jerry Seinfeld Jerry Seinfeld is his net worth is 820 million dollars And the Oprah Oprah Winfrey Oprah Winfrey her net worth is 4.2 billion dollars Think about that and Then think when is the last time you heard them called out for being greedy? You don't but why don't you because we don't mind people who entertain us being rich We don't mind that Newspent for us is valuable. And so if Bryce Harper can do what he does or Oprah does what she does We simply say well, they're earning their wages. It's okay It's the corporations that America seems to have such problems with the corporations that provide so many jobs and so many services And so it's real selective. That's the point. I'm making people don't call these entertainers greedy because they like to be entertained by them So outrage is selective. It's motivated by personal philosophies more than economics But the question has to be asked are the financially rich more evil than those who are poor? And the answer is the bible has much to say concerning personal financial wealth You see in the bible the possession of wealth is not said to be sinful in and of itself Scripture actually points out that financial riches can be gained in acceptable ways In other words, god doesn't have a hatred for those who are rich because riches can be gained in in a proper way Financial riches can be a gift from god the bible says Ecclesiastes 519 says moreover when god gives any man wealth and possessions and enables him to enjoy them To accept his lot and be happy in his work. This is a gift of god Financial prosperity can be the result of simple diligent hard work both physical or creative In proverbs 10 verse 4 lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth Riches can be inherited proverbs 1322 a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children But the wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous Riches can be the result of wisely investing in the kingdom of god That's what jesus referred to as of storing up your treasure In 2nd crinthians 9 6 through 8 paul said it like this. He said remember this Whoever so sparingly will also reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give not reluctantly or under compulsion for god loves a cheerful giver And god is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things at all times having all that you need You will abound in every good work He went on in the same chapter in verse 11 to say You'll be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion And through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to god When you read your bible you'll see in the old as well as the near that there are various individuals that are spoken of As being very rich you have you have jobe you have abraham you have isaac jacob You have joseph You have moses and king david salomon daniel you have neomia all of them in the old testament had great wealth In the new testament you have men like zakias or joseph avar metheus or nicodemus you have martha and you have philemon all of them Were wealthy not one of them was condemned for their wealth So wealth is not sinful in itself You see god gives power to obtain riches to some warning them that they should remember him Because it's easy to forget god when you're wealthy you become self sufficient In deuteronomy 18 god said you shall remember the lord your god for it is he who gives you power to get wealth Then he may establish his covenant which he swore to your fathers as it is this day And so wealth is uh, it can be the source of of blessing, but it also can be a source of of temptation One of the chief Temptations is the temptation to cease depending on the lord to forget him It's because of this temptation that so many warnings are given in scripture The self-seeking pursuit of wealth is really a dangerous ambition Proverbs 23 4 and 5 says it like this do not wear yourself out to get rich Have the wisdom to show restraint Cast but a glance at riches And they're gone for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle So there are a lot of warnings You see it can be a trap to be wealthy Because it can convince you that this world is all that there is And that's why god says don't trust in riches With wealth comes a variety of effects When you're wealthy you can become proud Proverbs 28 11 says a rich man is wise in his own conceit Wealth can give a false sense of security For cemeteries 6 17 charge those who are wealthiest who he's speaking to Charge them who are rich in this world that they may not be high-minded nor trust in uncertain riches But in the living god who gives us richly all things to enjoy Great wealth can stimulate greed it provokes a desire for more Proverbs 27 20 hell and destruction are never full So the eyes of man are never satisfied the rich man is asked how much is enough and his answer is a little bit more And wealth can warp your entire life's priorities That's why in luke 12 15. Jesus said watch out be on your guard against all kinds of greed A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions Again wealth in and of itself is an evil Much good is done when god's people use their finances wisely We're stewards what we have we've received from god and we use it for his glory In first Corinthians 4 7 Paul said who makes you differ from another And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? So When you have finances you can use it for the glory of god You can support missions You can support outreaches Buildings can be built land can be purchased Equipment can be bought Church staff can be added those in need can be cared for And so it's not the wealth in and of itself. It's the use of it It's the greediness that james is speaking about here in this passage And that's what we're going to be looking at as we go through james chapter 5 verses 1 through 6 And so james desires to prevent his readers from placing their hopes on earthly things notice what he says again James 5 verse 1 Come now You rich and weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you burst out sobbing literally Shriek in grief Your miseries are coming upon you Now he's speaking to the unregenerate rich He's saying you're ready for the coming judgment You're primed for it And you're not even aware that judgment will come because your eyes are on gaining riches And he's saying the unbelieving rich are in danger of judgment because of their pride their fraudulent dealings their riotous living And their cruelty to the poor And so as he's speaking here at first glance it may it may feel like he's being cruel to them But in fact what he's doing is he's urging them to repent Beginning in Judea the romans were going to bring misery and pain to the jews They were gonna They were going to be losing everything when you go to israel And you get to go to certain sites and you see things the ruins of that that at one time were beautiful houses or whatever that were burned down And you know the history of israel a bit and you know that in 70 ad Titus of rom came in and and just torched the city and things were lost Well, these events were going to be taking place in the lifetime of many of these rich And that's what he's saying there. He's saying your miseries are coming upon you. They're not even prepared. They're not even ready But james is prophesying.  This is again a very strong word to them He's saying you're heaping up that which you're going to lose Now it's interesting when you read those verses you might note this That these verses refer to the three main sources of wealth at that time grain garments and gold And he's pointing out that all of these are subject to decay all of them are subject to corruption and loss You're hoarding of things that will not last which is running the opposite of what jesus taught his disciples to be careful to store up In matthew 6 19 and 20 jesus said it like this He said lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust does corrupt where thieves break through and steal Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust does corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal He says in verse 33 of matthew 6 seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness And all these things shall be added to you And so that's the opposite jesus says don't heap up these things store treasures in heaven But the rich were busy hoarding for themselves and james is warning them.  You're going to suffer suffer trouble You're going to have calamity Notice verse 4 He says indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields Which you kept back by fraud cry out and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the lord of sabbat The the lord of sabbat sabbat means the lord of host The the lord of the armies of heaven. That's who he's referring to So what's happening? Well, he says in verse 4 the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields Well, you've been keeping back their their wages. They're not paying their workers in order to live in more personal luxury In other words a worker is working. He should be getting a certain amount But the employer the rich man is not giving him money because he wants to spend that money on himself So he's keeping back his wages And that's violating god's word God's word is clear concerning paying promptly not taking advantage of workers Because you see in withholding their pay. They're violating the law of moses in leviticus 1913 the scripture says Do not hold back the wages of a hard man overnight In deuteronomy 24 14 and 15 Do not take advantage of a hard man who is poor and needy whether he is a brother israelite Or an alien living in one of your towns Pay him his wages each day before sunset because he's poor and is counting on it Otherwise he may cry to the lord against you and you will be guilty of sin Now many of these poor were humble day laborers. They were generally unskilled They were living just above the poverty level But because they were unskilled they were also very often underpaid and treated unfairly And so verse 4 says the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the lord of hosts The lord of hosts is seated on his throne. He's saying he's preparing to judge you for for your wrong In psalm 72 12 he will deliver the needy who cry out the afflicted who have no one to help You're living in a way that is only Produced in you More to be guilty of and these people who are working for you.  And they do all of that and then when the time comes for them to be paid for their honest work that they did Then that guy says no, I'm not going to give you. I don't like it I don't like how you did it or I'm not giving you that much Because I just don't think it was what I was expecting whatever and what they end up doing is they end up either Short changing them or not paying them and then they'll say, you know what? You know, nothing you can do about it And that's the attitude that that we have we still have today that we had even back 2000 years ago And the law was very clear that if a man does an honest day's labor you pay him promptly because he's relying on that But these people who are poor who are getting ripped off begin to cry and the crying out to the lord and he's saying god here's In verse five he says you've lived in the earth in pleasure and luxury You have fattened your hearts as in the day of slaughter You've lived on the earth in pleasure You've been feeding yourself without fear. You've been pampering your own flesh When others you could help are suffering You make sure to take care of yourself Now here's something to think about people who are not poor Can have a difficult time having compassion on those who are The lord began to teach me this many many years ago many years ago. There's so many things I could share with you I had an aunt Who was an alcoholic and an uncle? an alcoholic And during the weekends very often when I was a little boy my mom and dad would pack my brother and me and My baby sisters into the car and we would drive to their home where they lived and My mom and dad would go into their home on saturdays And clean their house Because my aunt who was extremely dear to me she came to know christ in her latter days and went to heaven when she died And so did her her husband my uncle louis but I can still remember as a kid My mom packing us into the car and off we'd go and we'd go to the house. There's a small little home there totally unkempt because my My my aunt would drink during the week. She was always drunk House is always a mess Lots of children running around My mom and dad and we would go so I started seeing that kind of spirit of charity very early in my life And and my mom was one of these very compassionate women We used to say mama you like to pick up the strays and the way we meant that was when you see somebody hurting My mom was very generous towards them and very kind towards them. She had a heart for them And so I saw that from a very early age And I've also seen the the hardened hearts The the the hearts of somebody who says well, you know clean yourself up and get a job and this and that And in ministry when I began our church was maybe a few years old at the most I remember somebody who would infrequently come to a bible study here and and I can remember How he would walk up and speak to me afterwards and then walk away And then I wouldn't seem for a while and then one day I went to our church office and and we were in Ontario on maple street at that time and And as I pulled in this guy came on his bicycle and pulled next to me and wanted to talk and He walked in my office. I brought him in the office and we began to talk and and to be honest with you His body odor he hadn't bathed and I don't know how long Was so bad. It was so bad He was so dirty and so smelly that when he left my office I have to be real. I had to open the windows and and aired it out. It was he was just really really a mess You know and I was talking to one of my friends another pastor and I said, you know He needs to get a job and my friend said something. I've never forgotten. He said, yeah, if you can keep it And I started thinking, you know, I've been I judged him. I judge this guy. This guy's mental Abilities are really not there. I don't know if he could work. I don't know if he could hold a job He doesn't even bathe himself let alone clean himself And that's when I began to think in terms of you know, we have to have compassion We have to have concern We have to have hearts that don't don't grow callous You see because that's easy to do and and somebody who's who's doing fairly well Or at least you have, you know, clean clothes in a home that you live in and and a bed you can sleep on Sometimes we forget those kinds of things You see James is dealing with this now remember in this in this letter James has already addressed the sin of preferring the rich over the poor He already said in James 2 verse 9 you show partiality and when you do it you commit sin And you're convicted by the law as transgressors They were already showing priority to those who had money over those who were poor And he's addressing this the second time and he's making it very clear how wrong this is and he's speaking to them And he's saying to them certain things that I think are interesting for example in verse 5 He says you have fattened your hearts as in the day of slaughter When he says you fatten your hearts It's a way of saying your hearts are no longer capable of feeling By taking advantage of the poor you've made yourself callous to their pain And you're becoming fat off of the sacrifice of other people And this has repercussions In proverbs 21 verse 13 the bible says whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard so We want as a fellowship to always keep our hearts open to those in need And I was thinking about this and I thought I'd share a few things with you that you might find interesting because to me It's a blessing and I want to share with you But this church's fellowship has been going a long time and we've had opportunity Over the years to be of help to some as a matter of fact We've been a help to quite a number of people over the years And I was thinking about some of the things that that have happened here all the way back for example in 2004 In 2004 our church ministered to those who were devastated by that by that tsunami that Hit there in asia and some of us are may remember that and when that tsunami hit It devastated tremendous areas and we heard about it and and I came out on a sunday morning and I said to the church I said i'm not receiving an offering i'm not doing that But I am saying this The devastation is is is all over the news and as a church Let's do something to be of help and if you'd like to be of help You can put in the agape box is what I said you can put in the agape box an offering And we will get whatever the finances are that come in and we will get it to them We don't take a penny We don't take a penny of that If ever we have something come in and it's designated for something like that, of course every nickel every penny We don't have operational costs. We don't have anything but I said that I said every penny will go and and that that weekend This is amazing that weekend to the next week 167 thousand dollars were donated by this church 167 thousand dollars And that Take into consideration inflation and adjust it over 15 years ago And you'll see how generous this church has been to those in need Absolutely, and then there was that time that we had Katrina When Katrina hit I did the same thing which was a year later 2005 I came out and said we want to be of help you see with the with the tsunami in the east We actually I went there with a team We went to a puquette, thailand And I went and I reviewed all of the devastation came back sent a work team over And that work team went and helped to build a chapel in puquette a calvi chapel We had teams that went worked and then the next year with Katrina when that hit We bought we bought a big old truck. It's in the parking like and still see it. It's still here. It's by the house over here And we bought that truck and we loaded it with things because I told the church I said we need to be of help and that time we saw 70 000 dollars come in in a week And we went out and we helped the victims of Katrina. We've done that yearly yearly for all these years we we send gifts to to children in mexico cali I have a picture. I think of of what we did. I asked if they'd put that up if they don't they're fired But we had yeah, and now that's not the right picture there. That's something else I'll share with you in a minute about that Forget it.  We're talking about little children. They don't have any shoes And so you'll see them sometimes they'll have two different shoes, you know, maybe a black maybe a tennis shoe One's a certain size the other smaller That's what they have And so we have pictures of babies receiving a pair of shoes a pair of tennis shoes brand new shoes for them and their little faces and their smiles Or or giving them dolls or giving them you name it and you guys you guys do that You gave that and we love you guys for it And those babies are receiving because that's what god has has called us as a church to do We we had our prison ministry dinner that's taking place And and there were 16 prisons represented by wardens or officials of the prison that were just here That were celebrating with your prison ministry team here because they go in to the prisons and they minister to the prisoners And and we have the angel tree Kind of thing where were gifts that you donated over 200 gifts were given to children of prisoners Just this just within this last week god does that we have those things we help provide for families in need Here in newman elementary just down the road. We we helped them just recently in christmas These kids didn't have things you guys gave to them We have ongoing weekly ministry to the poor and needy and pomona because the scripture teaches us to do that Churches are more than just groups of people who come and have a hallelujah huddle and then go home Churches are are are made up of people who care Who care about the lost who care about those who don't have Care about those things that that's that's the body of christ There was a there was a A book written i have it in my library somewhere where a liberal i'll call him liberal because he declared himself as a liberal That's his words for himself. He says i'm a liberal He said and i've always had it. He said i had in my my own heart my own mind He said i had a prejudice against conservative christians He says because i think that that conservative christians don't do as much good as those who are not christian He said and so he went about as an experiment He went about to to validate his thesis that that the liberals are just as or even more Generous than conservative christians, you know, and so what he did was very simple He he uh looked at giving as in the salvation army the amounts of money that came into the salvation army buckets From san francisco and then he looked for a city in the united states in the midwest That was basically equal or equivalent in population size and the midwest has looked at as being like a bible belt And so i believe and i may be wrong about the the city It's been a number of years since i read the the book, but i believe it was in demoin iowa I believe that that was the city that he used to compare with the giving in san francisco And what he did is he simply wanted to find out how much money came into the buckets in san francisco versus How much came into demoins and then he wanted to compare it and show that it was at least equal But he believed that the san franciscans would give more because this in san francisco the city of love and this and that And was he ever surprised when he discovered that the demoin christians out gave by a by several several times The amount that came in in san francisco now he's wondering about his thesis what's wrong here So he interviewed people and he discovered what it is and the discovery was interesting and enlightening Because the those whom he referred to as the liberals in san francisco They when he asked how come you're not giving to the salvation army? They said we already give to the poor We do that in our taxes But when he spoke to the christian conservatives in this other city, they said it's our responsibility To not only pay taxes we render honor to caesar We already pay our taxes, but we also are obligated to help those in need That came from the teachings of jesus christ You see so christians are much more many times more generous than those who are not believers It's documentable and it's true and it comes from scripture to love your neighbor as yourself And if you love your god and you see a brother in need and you harden your heart john says How does the love of god dwell within you? He says you cannot say i love you brother and curse that guy at the same time He says because that means you don't know what love is So the believer actually knows what love is why because god so loved us that he gave to us eternal life And he said care for those who are in need and that's what james is talking about Care for those in need Care for them because they have great need and he's saying you who are unregenerate you who don't know god You're too busy accumulating things for yourself And even when your laborer is crying out because he's hungry you make sure you're fed first Before you care about him. It reminds me of the rich man in lazarus where lazarus is at the gate there Begging for scraps from the rich man's table and the rich man the bible says he fared sumptuously every day He had banquets every day And and all lazarus wanted was just some of the scraps And that's how it works the rich don't know god and the poor have faith and trust in god For our daily bread and he's speaking to the rich here and he's saying you don't care But their cries have reached the ear of god himself The righteous Well notice verse six it says you have condemned You have murdered the just and he doesn't resist you The righteous are being persecuted And oppressed by the rich Their death was a consequence of being dragged before judgment seat We're having no influence no one to plead their cause They were condemned and they were executed It says in verse six. He doesn't resist you. He has no way of defending himself So he patiently endures and he depends on god But he says god Will be the judge Wednesday night This last Wednesday night, I shared this on Wednesday night, but I can repeat it here. None of you were there but anyway On Wednesday night We had all the gifts behind us Almost all the gifts behind us and I wanted the people to see that I wanted them to see the picture of what were we were able to do 485 packages That we're going to be giving in the name of christ through the love of this church And I was sharing with them And I'll I'll share with you this and I'm about to conclude so I'll share with this Our story And our church was very young We used to meet in a place in Ontario called central school And uh I went to do a sunday morning And I had had a dream That I awakened on a sunday morning and then I went to teach I had had a dream that uh That morning That I shared with the church And I said, you know the lord used that to speak to my heart to spark something in me because In the dream I was in kind of a wasteland and And there was a lot of dirt. There was no grass and there were broken down Shacks that people were living in and and I remember I was walking and I came up to To a there was a pipe with a faucet and uh You could turn the the knob off and on and the water would come out of the spout and all And it was just there in the middle of this dry land and I remember there was a little girl who was four years about four years old Who was there next to the water?  And she looks at me and she said no one ever has but the voice was my daughter's voice Corrine who was that age My daughter was The same age and I realized What the Lord was awakening me to Said you treat the babies as if they're your own Treat them like they're your own Your little girl needs Forgive me Treat the children Love them Care for them So that's why I get touched That's why when you give boxes of shoes To babies who don't have them That's what touches me When you took something that could have gone to somebody else your own child and you gave it to somebody else That touches me Why? Because that's the love of god Being shown by the body of christ Your riches are in heaven This doesn't mean that that we shouldn't say lord As you prosper me i'm blessed, but I will use what you've given to me to be of help to others That's what we should do. That's what believers do The rich that james is speaking about they're different They're accumulating wealth for themselves without realizing That Rome is going to come in in 70 ad and tear everything All the things that they thought were theirs and made them who they are would be lost In a short period of time you just lose it all And that's why jesus said store your treasures above Where a thief can't break in and steal with the moth and the ros won't corrode and destroy Your treasure is supposed to be in heaven But until we go to heaven we have opportunity to do good And I want to thank all of you and I mean this sincerely All of you who generously give and support and help Your works are not going unnoticed god himself will reward you for your love and generosity And there are children today in mexico and in other places Babies of prisoners because their daddy's in prison, but they received a present And that said on the on the present it says from your daddy who loves you You did that you gave you supported you helped because god loved and supported and gave And god helped you that's why we do what we do So when james is saying You're you're you're going to lose it all that's true But what you don't lose is what you stored ahead And he's pointing these rich people's eyes to what really matters Because no matter what it is you have and you know this and I know it and the all there you grow The more you know You might have it you might like it you play with it for a while and you get tired of it And then you want the new version because you discover that those things They're fine. They're okay. I'm not saying they're sinful. Of course. I'm not Wonderful if you can afford it. Please don't walk out with condemnation. I'm not bringing that what I'm saying is you know They don't satisfy the thing that satisfies Is when you see a smile on a child's face and you know that he's out there kicking a soccer ball A ball that you guys donated that these shoes he's wearing That that matters those are the things that matter and the other things they just don't What matters are the things we do in the name of Jesus christ for his glory Those are the things those are the things that matter And that's what called us god has called us to do and so john westley said this He said do all the good you can By all the means you can in all the ways you can In all the places you can at all the times you can to all the people you can As long as ever