SPEAKER_01: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Today is Sunday, the sixth of December, two thousand and fifteen, and we constantly need to remind ourselves that God is still on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: Difficult days.
SPEAKER_01: It's difficult days in the world.
SPEAKER_01: Strange and terrifying things happening.
SPEAKER_01: It's a difficult day in our society.
SPEAKER_01: More mass shootings.
SPEAKER_01: Things we don't understand, things that don't make any sense to us, things that cause us to raise serious, deep questions of the soul.
SPEAKER_01: In our own midst, we've had in the last couple of weeks a couple of deaths.
SPEAKER_01: And we're confronted with things and we don't have the answers.
SPEAKER_01: Our hearts well up inside us and ask questions, and we know something of the goodness of God and of his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: And what we know, as Patrick said, is that God is good, and what he does is good, and he uses pain, suffering, death, evil, trials, and tribulations to draw us to him and to glorify himself.
SPEAKER_01: And so we say, God has been on the throne all week long, he is today, and he shall be in the week ahead.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just when we see that and feel it, and when it makes sense that that's true, it's especially important for us to confess with our mouths that God is on the throne and he is good and righteous and is involved in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And we take that in times of darkness by faith.
SPEAKER_01: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things we don't see and understand.
SPEAKER_01: Seeing is not believing.
SPEAKER_01: Believing is when we know it's true because God has said it, but we don't necessarily feel it and we certainly don't understand it.
SPEAKER_01: So we desperately need to continue to remind ourselves who God is and to begin to see him as he is.
SPEAKER_01: And that's certainly what the book of James does for us.
SPEAKER_01: The book of James.
SPEAKER_01: Turn, if you would, please, to James chapter one.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to take another step today in a process that will take us a long time as we slowly and reflectively dig deep into what God is saying.
SPEAKER_01: Book of James, powerful, practical, upsetting to us, quite frankly.
SPEAKER_01: But true.
SPEAKER_01: All of it is true, and we need all of it to get a right sense of who God is, and in today's passage, a right sense of who we are in the circumstances of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: This was penned by the younger half-brother of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It was penned by the man who was the leader of the first church in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_01: It was penned and applied to believers in the first century, and it is just as applicable for us today in the 21st century as it was then.
SPEAKER_01: And so we say, Lord, open up your word to us, help us understand, help us think the way you think, help us see things the way you see them.
SPEAKER_01: The whole point of the book of James, and you may get tired of it, but God is not tired of saying, does your faith really work?
SPEAKER_01: That's what the whole book is all about.
SPEAKER_01: Does your faith really work?
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't work in the details of our lives and of our weeks, then it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: And the question is, how does our faith affect us when we're driving in traffic?
SPEAKER_01: How does our faith affect the way we pay our bills?
SPEAKER_01: How does our faith affect us when we're watching TV?
SPEAKER_01: Does our faith work in the office?
SPEAKER_01: Does it work in the schoolroom, in the university?
SPEAKER_01: Does it work in the living room?
SPEAKER_01: Does it work in the bedroom?
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't work in those places, it doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: If it doesn't work in your life on Saturday night, then it certainly doesn't work on Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing special about coming in here that suddenly transforms us.
SPEAKER_01: A transformation takes place as we take God at His Word and begin to see life that way and begin to integrate who God is and the way He works into our lives, and as we begin to see that worked out in the circumstances of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what the book of James is all about.
SPEAKER_01: So far we've seen in verses 2 through 4, for example, that faith works in times of trials and difficulty.
SPEAKER_01: Count it all joy.
SPEAKER_01: It makes no sense.
SPEAKER_01: It just happens to be true.
SPEAKER_01: And what he says is through the trials, God develops within us perseverance, or the term we used was spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_01: And without spiritual resilience, there is no spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_01: You see, there's where there's no pain, there's no gain.
SPEAKER_01: That's not only true with physical things, that's true spiritually.
SPEAKER_01: What he says is in the pain, we take by faith that God is working and he's developing things in our lives without which we will not be spiritually mature.
SPEAKER_01: So in the midst of the pain, we see who God is and we become more and more the people that he wants us to be as he develops within us spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't like the process.
SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
SPEAKER_01: Because in a broken, fallen world, and with this broken, fallen person, there is no gain without a measure of pain.
SPEAKER_01: There's more to life than pain.
SPEAKER_01: But our foolish attempt to hold it away from us, to stick our head in the sand, to not deal with the hurt, to not deal with the grief, to not deal with the confusion, that doesn't help.
SPEAKER_01: We take by faith what God says, who He is, and we begin to grow.
SPEAKER_01: James also told us that if we lack wisdom in these matters, then we're to go to God, and He gives it to us freely.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, but don't be double-minded.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be like, I talked about last week, I think, the uh, you know, sitting at the Olive Garden, and you can't make up your mind.
SPEAKER_01: What are we going to order today?
SPEAKER_01: Don't be like that.
SPEAKER_01: That's a picture of double-mindedness.
SPEAKER_01: When it comes to trials and difficulties, have your mind fixed on the reality of what we know about God.
SPEAKER_01: If we are not rooted and grounded in an understanding of God and his involvement in our lives, then we get shaken, we get tossed back and forth like the wind and the waves, and we're double-minded, and he says, I will give you the wisdom that you need in the time of trials and difficulties, and that wisdom is who I am and what I am doing.
SPEAKER_01: See, it always goes back to God.
SPEAKER_01: It really does.
SPEAKER_01: And in today's passage, we see the the focus shifts a little bit from a direct understanding of who God is to an understanding of who we are when we begin to see ourselves God's way.
SPEAKER_01: We don't understand ourselves without first understanding who God is and our sense of ourselves, whether we're in good circumstances or bad, whether we're in low positions or lofty positions.
SPEAKER_01: We need to see ourselves as God sees us.
SPEAKER_01: And that is really the focus of today's passage.
SPEAKER_01: He does this by bringing to our attention two groups in the church.
SPEAKER_01: Two groups in the church in his day, two groups in the church in our day.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of the ends of a spectrum.
SPEAKER_01: And there's people in the middle, but it helps us understand.
SPEAKER_01: There are those who are lowly, who are weak, who are disenfranchised, who are not influential, whose opinion doesn't get counted by those around them.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody consults them.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody seems to really care.
SPEAKER_01: There are people who have lost all influence, and as we get older, we begin to lose a whole lot of things in life.
SPEAKER_01: And the weak and the lowly, that's one group that he talks about.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's the other group, people who have resources, people who have abilities, people who have success, people who have things, people who are looked up to in the world, people whose opinion counts, people who, when they say this or that, people listen to them.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, for both groups, the low and the high.
SPEAKER_01: How do you see yourself?
SPEAKER_01: Do you see yourself as God sees you?
SPEAKER_01: That's really the question for our passage today.
SPEAKER_01: Or do we see the lowly the way the world sees lowly and condescendingly?
SPEAKER_01: And do we see those who are gifted and qualified and competent?
SPEAKER_01: Do we see them up here and the others down there?
SPEAKER_01: That is not the way God sees us.
SPEAKER_01: And the question: will we see ourselves wherever we are in that spectrum, God's way?
SPEAKER_01: So that's really what this passage is all about.
SPEAKER_01: And it all boils down to who God is and what God does.
SPEAKER_01: It always gets back to God.
SPEAKER_01: Really does.
SPEAKER_01: Alright, let's try to walk through this a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: The beginning of verse 9, let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's some things about that that when we first read it, when we read it superficially, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, there is in this verse the realization that things are really not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever noticed that?
SPEAKER_01: Things are not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: We think things are a given way, and yet the reality is not what we think, what we see, what we touch, what we taste, what we understand, what we experience.
SPEAKER_01: Reality with a capital R is what God sees, what God thinks.
SPEAKER_01: It's, and we're all, we get it wrong most of the time.
SPEAKER_01: And yet we think we understand.
SPEAKER_01: A fascinating statement here that ought to jolt you a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: It's intended to jolt you.
SPEAKER_01: There is a command addressed to you, all of us, to boast.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you don't normally think of the scriptures encouraging us to boast.
SPEAKER_01: Boasting is not a good thing, normally.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a startling command.
SPEAKER_01: And believe me, it is a command.
SPEAKER_01: The differences between the language of the original and the English language makes this a bit difficult to translate because the fact that it's a command kind of gets buried in the way our grammar works.
SPEAKER_01: Let them, and that sounds not the same as boast.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I woke up a couple of people there.
SPEAKER_01: This is a command.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a suggestion.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a good idea.
SPEAKER_01: This is not an observation.
SPEAKER_01: This is a command.
SPEAKER_01: God says to you, you need to boast.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us don't have any problem doing that.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that is a problem, but uh it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: The very first word in this verse, in the original language, is the command.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't have no interest in trying to teach everybody Greek or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: But in our language, there's almost a required sentence order because the parts of speech in a sentence are all interrelated.
SPEAKER_01: In the Greek language, each word, more or less, has its own sense.
SPEAKER_01: So he starts out by saying, boast, you lowly.
SPEAKER_01: And yet we read it, let the lowly boast.
SPEAKER_01: The point is, whatever is put, or typically, whatever is put at the very beginning of the Greek sentence usually has the emphasis.
SPEAKER_01: So what he's saying is, be proud.
SPEAKER_01: Boast.
SPEAKER_01: Make a big deal about this.
SPEAKER_01: Take joy in it.
SPEAKER_01: The fact of the matter is that the way this is translated is sometimes difficult for us.
SPEAKER_01: But he really says both, take pride in, glory, cheer.
SPEAKER_01: The different translations are very helpful for us here.
SPEAKER_01: The NIV says, believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the way we think.
SPEAKER_01: That's just not the way we think.
SPEAKER_01: That is the way God thinks.
SPEAKER_01: And we need to adjust our thinking to reflect what God thinks.
SPEAKER_01: He says, believers in lowly circumstances, not influential, not impressive, no one cares about their opinion, they ought to rejoice and cheer and boast.
SPEAKER_01: Boast in their exaltation, it says at the end of verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: Boast, you lowly brothers and sisters, in your exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: The New American Standard says the humble should glory in their high position.
SPEAKER_01: And the idea of being proud or boasting is it's it's what we make a big deal about.
SPEAKER_01: Most of our pride in boasting is about ourselves, which is misplaced.
SPEAKER_01: But the idea behind being proud or boasting is what is it we make a big deal about?
SPEAKER_01: What is it we talk about?
SPEAKER_01: What is it we want other people to see?
unknown: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And what he's saying to those who are on this end of the spectrum is in God's sight, do you see yourself in the exalted place that God has given you?
SPEAKER_01: The command from God to us, both for the lowly and the high and mighty, another way of putting that comparison, is to boast, but boast in the right thing, not in yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to have you turn in your Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 9, please.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but I constantly have to go over that when I'm flipping in my Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel.
SPEAKER_01: It's after Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: Quite a ways after Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: Very important thought for us.
SPEAKER_01: It's on page 810 in my Bible, but I don't think any of you have exactly the same version, so it's not going to help you a bit for me to say that.
SPEAKER_01: Thus says the Lord, Jeremiah 9, 23.
SPEAKER_01: And whenever you hear that, thus says the Lord, it kind of means pay attention.
SPEAKER_01: Wake up.
SPEAKER_01: Think about this.
SPEAKER_01: And it often means, here's something you're not likely to understand or sense or see, because we mostly get it wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches.
SPEAKER_01: So Jeremiah is taking this side of the spectrum, and James will get there, but he begins with this side of the spectrum.
SPEAKER_01: So if Jeremiah was emphasizing what James did, then he would say, let not the lowly despair that they're in a hopeless, weak situation.
SPEAKER_01: Don't boast in that.
SPEAKER_01: There's something else that we're supposed to boast about.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 24, but let him who boasts boast in this that he listened that he understands me.
SPEAKER_01: This is God saying, boast.
SPEAKER_01: But what you need to boast in is who I am.
SPEAKER_01: That you understand something of me, who understands me and knows me.
SPEAKER_01: We get to boast about the fact that God has led us in on some understanding of the Lord of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: God befriends us.
SPEAKER_01: We get to know him.
SPEAKER_01: Those are the things that we are to boast about, that we're to make a big deal about, that we're to talk about, that we're to draw attention to.
SPEAKER_01: This is not the boasting of the arrogant who is impressed with himself, his abilities, and so forth.
SPEAKER_01: It's the boasting of those who understand how low and weak and helpless we really are.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not easy for those who are wealthy and in positions of authority, and people look to them and they have great abilities.
SPEAKER_01: It's not real easy for them to really understand who they are.
SPEAKER_01: We'll see that it's actually easier for the weak and the lowly.
SPEAKER_01: They have a spiritual advantage over the rest of us.
SPEAKER_01: But Jeremiah is saying, don't boast the way the world boasts.
SPEAKER_01: This is football season, and I love watching the NFL.
SPEAKER_01: I am going to be going to a hockey game, so maybe I'll be able to talk about hockey one of these days.
SPEAKER_01: The best bad example of boasting to me is a wide receiver.
SPEAKER_01: A wide receiver who's run, he's athletic, he might be good looking.
SPEAKER_01: You can't tell with all the stuff he's wearing.
SPEAKER_01: But he's out there and he's running down the field, and this quarterback plants his feet.
SPEAKER_01: At least most of them do.
SPEAKER_01: I won't talk about the Packers, but anyway.
SPEAKER_01: So he plants his feet and he lobs a bullet down there.
SPEAKER_01: And this wide receiver is going down.
SPEAKER_01: And he's about ten feet tall, and his arms are about six feet long, and he reaches up, and sometimes you'll notice he even grabs it with one hand and pulls it in, protects it, goes to the ground, and the crowds erupt.
SPEAKER_01: And it is a thing of beauty, no question about it.
SPEAKER_01: It is a thing of beauty.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, I realize that, but I find that beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: But what do most wide receivers do?
SPEAKER_01: And then they do a little dance.
SPEAKER_01: They do a little celebration.
SPEAKER_01: That's when I want to throw a rock at the television set.
SPEAKER_01: A sanctified rock.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't know what's in the heart of the wide receivers, but everything that communicates by most of them by their actions is that they are incredibly impressed with themselves.
SPEAKER_01: So we have grown men who have not yearned to grow up, who are paid far too much, and then we all cheer, and I do too.
SPEAKER_01: But there's something about that great ability.
SPEAKER_01: That produces all of the wrong things within us.
SPEAKER_01: And that is a picture of what the world does with those who are impressive and powerful and what our own heart does.
SPEAKER_01: We are to boast, but not in who we are and what we've done.
SPEAKER_01: We are to boast about who God is and what God has done.
SPEAKER_01: What God has done is made a way for us to not get what we deserve.
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ bore in his body on the cross what we deserve: the full fury of the wrath of an angry God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what you and I deserve.
SPEAKER_01: And as a result of him getting what we deserve, then we get what he deserves.
SPEAKER_01: There's this huge transfer that takes place.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want to boast, boast about God and what he has done in your life.
SPEAKER_01: And that is worth boasting about.
SPEAKER_01: It's called giving praise and a testimony to God's work in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: What should we be talking about?
SPEAKER_01: We ought to talk about the cross and we ought to talk about what God has done with a wretch like you and me, if he has for you.
SPEAKER_01: But what are we?
SPEAKER_01: We're impressed with ourselves and we try constantly to impress other people.
SPEAKER_01: And it's all misplaced.
SPEAKER_01: You see, we mostly get it wrong.
SPEAKER_01: So what James kindly does for us is remind us that we have this huge privilege.
SPEAKER_01: God has led us in on some secrets.
SPEAKER_01: He is good, even in the deepest darkness.
SPEAKER_01: God is working for good, even though we are totally confused by what we see around us.
SPEAKER_01: We know it because that's what's revealed in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen, not just whatever we hope for, but what we have a sure certainty about of the future reality, and we're certain about it because it's revealed.
SPEAKER_01: So our hope is in him, and our conviction is especially the things that we can't grasp completely and understand fully.
SPEAKER_01: So James then gives us this double paradox.
SPEAKER_01: What he talks about in verses nine and ten is the rich poor, that's a paradox, and the poor rich, that's a paradox.
SPEAKER_01: A paradox is not two doctors in the AR.
SPEAKER_01: These are two things which, when brought together, make no sense at one level, and yet at another level make a great deal of sense.
SPEAKER_01: So what James does is he gives us illustrations that jolt us, and he uses terminology and words that confuse us at one level initially by a superficial read of it, and that's his intent.
SPEAKER_01: Because he wants us to stop and think and listen and wrestle with what God is saying to us.
SPEAKER_01: We must not read the Bible the way we read almost everything else.
SPEAKER_01: Good writing oftentimes is characterized by having the main point in the very first sentence of the paragraph, and the way you make it through high school, college, graduate school, and get advanced degrees, a little secret here, you just read the first sentence in every paragraph.
SPEAKER_01: Because if things are well written, then the main point is really clear, and it's up front, and the rest is kind of just fill.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for the authors who write here, I apologize, but uh.
SPEAKER_01: And in some writing, most newspaper and blog, for that matter, uh, it's not only what's in the first line, but it's the first line of the first two or three paragraphs.
SPEAKER_01: And you read any newspaper, a long article, you really only have to read the first line of the first two or three paragraphs.
SPEAKER_01: The rest is just kind of fill.
SPEAKER_01: Now, unfortunately, we bring that custom of reading to the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: And you can't do that with the book of James.
SPEAKER_01: So he confronts us with things that make us slow down, shut up, and listen.
SPEAKER_01: It's the first time I've been able to get away with telling the congregation to shut up.
SPEAKER_01: I may have thought about it before, but that's but the point is when we approach the scriptures, we we ought to go slowly.
SPEAKER_01: And we ought to ruminate, cogitate, reflect, and think.
SPEAKER_01: Ruminating is such a beautiful word.
SPEAKER_01: Cows ruminate.
SPEAKER_01: Somebody after the first service reminded me that cows have four stomachs.
SPEAKER_01: So uh I guess that's our problem.
SPEAKER_01: We just have one and we fill it and then it just stays in that stomach and it gets bigger and bigger.
SPEAKER_01: But but cows ruminate.
SPEAKER_01: They just spend all day long there digesting that which they've taken in.
SPEAKER_01: You can tell I'm not a cow farmer or whatever you call it, cattleman.
SPEAKER_01: But the the point being that I really am not interested in quickly going through what the scriptures say.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't want you to either.
SPEAKER_01: One of the, every once in a while somebody will say something to me like, Walt, you you've really rattled my cage.
SPEAKER_01: And then I start listening.
SPEAKER_01: Because God is interested in rattling our cages.
SPEAKER_01: And then a comment, something like, you know, last Sunday after church, we as a couple or we as a family sat and and kind of talked back and forth about what you said.
SPEAKER_01: And I honestly not wired together that I need that many compliments, but that to me is a compliment because that's what my desire is that we would open the scripture together and be so focused on what God has said and so involved in integrating it into our lives that we'll go away and we'll really think and focus.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what James is trying to do to us.
SPEAKER_01: So these paradoxes are intended for that purpose.
SPEAKER_01: So the rich poor, uh, verse 9, let the lowly brother blow boast in his exaltation.
SPEAKER_01: As I said, things are not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: The lowly brothers, in our opinion, are low.
SPEAKER_01: In God's opinion, that's not how he evaluates them.
SPEAKER_01: And those who are high and mighty and impressive and wealthy and capable, God is not impressed with them the way we are.
SPEAKER_01: We often get it wrong because things are not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: In the first century, the vast majority of believers then and in most places in the world today were not the high and the mighty and the wealthy and the impressive and the influential.
SPEAKER_01: They just weren't.
SPEAKER_01: There were some.
SPEAKER_01: Actually, it would be worth considering that most of the believers throughout most of church history have been in this category: the poor, the lowly, the disenfranchised, the weak, the powerless, the afflicted.
SPEAKER_01: And what is even more interesting is that God has intentionally chosen the weak and the lowly and the unimpressive and the incapable and the helpless to confound the strong and the wise and the capable and the self-possessed.
SPEAKER_01: That's what that passage in 1 Corinthians is all about.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you are wise?
SPEAKER_01: And then he goes on, he says, God has chosen the weak ultimately to exalt himself.
SPEAKER_01: Because when we are weak, then we know who's strong.
SPEAKER_01: And when we think we're strong, we struggle to know who really is strong.
SPEAKER_01: The poor and the lowly struggle to see themselves in the right way because everything around them affirms that they have little value, little importance, and if they were only different, things would be better.
SPEAKER_01: And the poor, and that's the majority of believers throughout the world, we live in a bubble, my friends.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a bubble of affluence.
SPEAKER_01: That's not our fault, and it's not inherently wrong unless we begin to think that this is what's normal and this is what's right, and this is a sign of God's blessing.
SPEAKER_01: That makes great television preaching, health, wealth, and happiness.
SPEAKER_01: It's an abomination.
SPEAKER_01: It is not what the scriptures teach.
SPEAKER_01: We are not the fortunate ones if we can see things in God's way.
SPEAKER_01: I always get in trouble when I start singing.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite Jane's starting to squint, like, Walt, don't go there.
SPEAKER_01: Um I won't look over here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a little weird uh in a lot of ways, but I I love uh Fiddler on the Roof.
SPEAKER_01: And I love Tevya.
SPEAKER_01: I love Tevya.
SPEAKER_01: And Tevya he just expresses what's in our hearts so much.
SPEAKER_00: Uh at one point he unforgettably says, Dear God, you made many, many poor people.
SPEAKER_00: I realize, of course, that it is no great shame to be poor, but it is no great honor either.
SPEAKER_01: So what would be the difference if I had just a small fortune?
SPEAKER_01: If I were a wealthy man.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's the way the world thinks.
SPEAKER_01: Tevy is wrong.
SPEAKER_01: He's wanting something which ultimately he thinks is good and isn't good.
SPEAKER_01: It's really not good for us.
SPEAKER_01: If I were a wealthy man.
SPEAKER_01: If we understood the scriptures and if we understand reality as God has revealed it in Scripture, those who know they are weak and small and helpless and powerless and dependent and needy have a spiritual advantage because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain through the cross.
SPEAKER_01: They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, where we have all kinds of things to lose and we think nothing to gain.
SPEAKER_01: It is a spiritual advantage.
SPEAKER_01: That's what James is saying.
SPEAKER_01: They are exalted.
SPEAKER_01: It's to their benefit, it's good, it makes terrible sense in a social sense, but it makes great sense biblically.
SPEAKER_01: Being poor in spirit.
SPEAKER_01: It's the poor in spirit who will inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: You see, we don't see reality the way God reveals it.
SPEAKER_01: The poor rich.
SPEAKER_01: Oh my.
SPEAKER_01: How impoverished we really are with all of our resources.
SPEAKER_01: The big people, the influential, the star athletes, the great performers, the wonderful speakers, the impressive people.
SPEAKER_01: The danger is huge that we become impressed with ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: You have gifts, you have abilities, you have competencies that God has given you.
SPEAKER_01: And the great seduction is to think, boy, I really am pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_01: The poor rich.
SPEAKER_01: What we find when we read scripture is that wealth, affluence, power, position, competence, influence is more of a disadvantage spiritually than an advantage.
SPEAKER_01: We just don't believe it.
SPEAKER_01: But it's true, my friends.
SPEAKER_01: The disadvantage of the advantaged.
SPEAKER_01: Let the rich boast in their humiliation, in the fact that they are actually lower, although they're viewed in society as higher.
SPEAKER_01: The spiritual danger and the spiritual liabilities of affluence are great.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 10, the rich young ruler, Jesus made it very clear.
SPEAKER_01: Talking after he spoke to the rich young ruler, he turns to his disciples and says, How hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we don't know what to do with that.
SPEAKER_01: We don't like that.
SPEAKER_01: We'd rather not read it.
SPEAKER_01: Because everybody in this room is really very well off.
SPEAKER_01: What is that saying?
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the lowly and the broken and the needy who you can't come to God impressed with yourself, impressed with your abilities.
SPEAKER_01: You can only come to God and receive that which you need most when you recognize the bankruptcy of who you are, your incompetence, your unimpressiveness, your neediness, and all of the good things around us feed the wrong understanding of ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: God gives wealth when he pleases, and it's not wrong.
SPEAKER_01: He gives, he sets our course in good places.
SPEAKER_01: And we as a people, our lives are set in good places.
SPEAKER_01: But that's only the doing of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because you've got a good job, or if it is, then how did you get that job?
SPEAKER_01: The right connections, the right education?
SPEAKER_01: Where did you get any of it?
SPEAKER_01: You got none of that innately.
SPEAKER_01: It's all given to us.
SPEAKER_01: So the wealthy, if they're wise, they become stewards.
SPEAKER_01: They are managing the good things of the Lord of the household.
SPEAKER_01: They're just household managers.
SPEAKER_01: And well-to-do people who do that well are such a beautiful, beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_01: But when people do that well, they're not impressed with themselves.
SPEAKER_01: They know much has been given to them and much is expected, and they joyfully and graciously with a servant heart serve others through their resources.
SPEAKER_01: But the danger is very great.
SPEAKER_01: I'd encourage you to make note of those verses and pay attention to it.
SPEAKER_01: What James says here, talking about the rich in their humiliation, he says, because like a flower of the grass, he will die.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: He'll die.
SPEAKER_01: He will pass away.
SPEAKER_01: And then he gives the illustration.
SPEAKER_01: Where the sun rises with its scorching heat, withers the grass, so the flower falls, its beauty perishes, so also the rich man will fade away, his riches will fade away in the midst of his pursuits.
SPEAKER_01: The things that we feel good about ourselves about will one day all be gone.
SPEAKER_01: Trials are a great leveler.
SPEAKER_01: Death is the greatest leveler of all.
SPEAKER_01: And what the Bible says to us, James chapter 4, verse 14, says, and we'll see this in a few weeks or a few months or a few years whenever we get to it.
SPEAKER_01: Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we'll go to such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.
SPEAKER_01: Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.
SPEAKER_01: What is your life?
SPEAKER_01: You're like a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.
SPEAKER_01: And yet we shove the reality of death as far away from us as possible.
SPEAKER_01: It creates existential trauma for us.
SPEAKER_01: What the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 2 is that it's better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of celebration.
SPEAKER_01: It's another one of those thoughts that you need to ruminate a bit on.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: It's better to go to a house of.
SPEAKER_01: It's paraphrased in the message, paraphrase, as it's better to go to a funeral than a party.
SPEAKER_01: Check that out.
SPEAKER_01: Ecclesiastes 7.2.
SPEAKER_01: And what it says is, you will all die, and those who are wise ponder that.
SPEAKER_01: And especially those who have a great deal to lose when they die.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's reputation, ability, resources, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Those aren't wrong.
SPEAKER_01: But boy, we better be cognizant of the fact that they will not last.
SPEAKER_01: They will not last.
SPEAKER_01: They will all be taken away from us.
SPEAKER_01: And the wise man meditates on the mortality that he or she faces and lives life in light of the certainty of death.
SPEAKER_01: That's the biblical perspective.
SPEAKER_01: And we run away from it as much as possible.
SPEAKER_01: The story is told of two men in history, one Philip of Macedon and the other Louis XIV.
SPEAKER_01: Philip of Macedon was the father of Alexander the Great, 300 or 400 BC.
SPEAKER_01: Alexander, or Philip of Macedon was a man of influence, he was a man of power.
SPEAKER_01: He was at the top of his game.
SPEAKER_01: He was in a position of incredible influence.
SPEAKER_01: He, if anybody in his generation was a mover and a shaker.
SPEAKER_01: It's very interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Philip, with all of his resources and all that he could do, one of the things that he did is he assigned a servant, a slave probably, to come and stand before him.
SPEAKER_01: He gave him not only permission, he commanded him to come and stand before Philip and look Philip in the face and say, Philip, you will die.
SPEAKER_01: Today, Sunday, 6th of December, 2015.
SPEAKER_01: Philip, you just need to remember this today.
SPEAKER_01: You will die.
SPEAKER_01: And Philip had the wisdom to allow himself to be constantly confronted with his mortality because he could only live today in the right way in the reality and in light of the day of his death.
SPEAKER_01: That is not morbid, that is real.
SPEAKER_01: This life is not what life is all about.
SPEAKER_01: This life is only the anteroom.
SPEAKER_01: It's only the foyer.
SPEAKER_01: And real life comes when we go home.
SPEAKER_01: This is not what we were created for.
SPEAKER_01: The toys that we die with is not what's important in life.
SPEAKER_01: What's important in life is that we know him and we understand his ways and we use the good things that he's given in a way that will bless and serve other people, and that we get on with life and get on with death and go home.
SPEAKER_01: That is a biblical perspective.
SPEAKER_01: If I preach that too much, you'll ask me to leave.
SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, I'm gonna leave anyway.
SPEAKER_01: Louis the Fourteenth.
SPEAKER_01: Mover and shaker in his day.
SPEAKER_01: Louis XIV banned the word death from the French language.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't succeed.
SPEAKER_01: Banned the very concept of death.
SPEAKER_01: He refused to be confronted with the reality of his mortality.
SPEAKER_01: He had the power to go a whole lot further with that than we do, but from a biblical perspective, who is wiser?
SPEAKER_01: Philip or Louis?
SPEAKER_01: The difficulty is by nature, we're a whole lot more like Louis than we are like Philip.
SPEAKER_01: God is trying to do is help us understand the poor-rich and the rich poor.
SPEAKER_01: And to ask ourselves, how do we really see ourselves?
SPEAKER_01: Very practically, just how do you see yourself?
SPEAKER_01: And maybe you're in this camp, maybe you're in this camp, maybe you're somewhere in between.
SPEAKER_01: For those of you who are unimpressive, for those of you who don't have a fancy place to entertain people, for those of you who don't have a nice car, or maybe don't have a car, the danger is very great that you'll begin to look down on yourself and see yourself and be kind of embarrassed with your position in life.
SPEAKER_01: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_01: What God says is you have a leg up on everybody else because you know how weak you are and impotent.
SPEAKER_01: And I, I am strong, I am powerful, says God.
SPEAKER_01: And I exalt you.
SPEAKER_01: For those of us who have the other side of the spectrum, it's pretty easy to wrestle with pride, the desire to simply enjoy the good life, as though that's what it's given for, for us alone to enjoy.
SPEAKER_01: After all, I worked hard for it.
SPEAKER_01: Where did you get the ability to work from?
SPEAKER_01: It's very easy to begin to look down on other people and subtly or not so subtly say, well, if they would work hard, my friends, God lowers the high and mighty and raises the weak and the poor.
SPEAKER_01: In the cross, everyone gets what they need.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone gets what they need.
SPEAKER_01: The poor get exaltation, and the rich and impressive get humiliation.
SPEAKER_01: And both are needed.
SPEAKER_01: In the gospel, we get what we need.
SPEAKER_01: And what we need is the ability to see God as He is and to begin to see ourselves as we are.
SPEAKER_01: Faith in Christ lifts the lowly believer and gives him a great blessing.
SPEAKER_01: It ensures him of the knowledge of his position in God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Faith in Christ does an equally blessed thing for the rich.
SPEAKER_01: It fills him with a spirit of lowliness and humility.
SPEAKER_01: As the poor brother forgets all of his earthly poverty, and the rich brother forgets all of his worldly riches, there is this beautiful equalization.
SPEAKER_01: Difficulties, trials are the great equalizer.
SPEAKER_01: Don't resist it, my friends.
SPEAKER_01: Don't resist it.
SPEAKER_01: Things are not as they seem.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, would you give us the grace, and that's what it takes, would you give us the grace to see things as they really are, to see ourselves as they really are?
SPEAKER_01: And for those who are hurting and despairing and grieving and humble, of such is the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: For those who are in good places today, Lord, I pray that you would help us understand that it's all your doing in grace.
SPEAKER_01: It's not of ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, may you develop within us spiritual resilience.
SPEAKER_01: May you develop within us an undivided heart.
SPEAKER_01: Would you develop within us the ability to see correctly and to understand you and ourselves?
SPEAKER_01: And as we do, we become the people of God who transform the world around us.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, may we settle for nothing less.
SPEAKER_01: I pray in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.