SPEAKER_00: I also want to say I appreciate very much.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you know that a little over a week ago my sister died, and we were in New Mexico to try to be with the family.
SPEAKER_00: And Jane and I were really touched with the many expressions of love and condolences, a hard time.
SPEAKER_00: It's always hard when a loved one is lost, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that was wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: We feel like we're a part of a family here.
SPEAKER_00: We appreciate that very, very much.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to like to ask you to turn, if you would, please, to James chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: As we begin to wind down in the perusal and study of this book, the book of James, chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: By the time the school year rolls around, which is here almost around the corner, it'll be Christmas before you know it.
SPEAKER_00: You realize that, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Now, coming from another part of the country, I've when I've said that, I realize that people kind of get irritated when I said, Christmas is right around the corner.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, can't you allow us to enjoy this beautiful weather?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have to remind us of what's coming?
SPEAKER_00: But you know, last winter, it was a wonderful, beautiful, mild winter, and I'm assuming that's the way it always is around here.
SPEAKER_00: So let the snow come.
SPEAKER_00: I think we need to pray, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we would truly say, let whatever you want in our lives to come.
SPEAKER_00: Because what you want and what you sovereignly and graciously arrange for us and allow in our lives is good and you use it for good, even if in and of itself it is so painful and hard and even bad.
SPEAKER_00: You are a God who takes bad things and uses them for your good purposes.
SPEAKER_00: And so all we really want is what you want.
SPEAKER_00: Really.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, you have a passage before us that is not an easy passage.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that we would have ears that are open and a heart that is willing to ask, what in the world, if anything, does this mean for me?
SPEAKER_00: And so we ask, Lord, uh, teach us, we pray, in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Um we uh we have been walking slowly through a difficult book.
SPEAKER_00: Not difficult because of the complexity of what James had to say to the believers in the first century, and by the miracle of the inspiration of the scriptures and preservation of the scriptures, what God also has to say to us as well.
SPEAKER_00: Not because it's so difficult to understand, it's not all that difficult to uh to study, it's just difficult to hear at times, and it's difficult to live out.
SPEAKER_00: And yet it is God's word.
SPEAKER_00: It was his word for them, and it's his word for us today.
SPEAKER_00: Um I would have to say that this passage in particular is one that I approach with a measure of fear and trepidation.
SPEAKER_00: Um I would have just as soon given this passage to Scott or somebody else to deal with.
SPEAKER_00: Because this is like the entire book, hard-hitting, direct, in your face, practical, true, and necessary.
SPEAKER_00: But there's something about the tone of this passage which uh which I find a little bit difficult.
SPEAKER_00: So as I've been approaching this message this morning, um one of the several weeks ago, I I showed you a couple of uh pages from a page-a-day calendar uh designed for pastors, kind of insider jokes for pastors.
SPEAKER_00: And as I was approaching this passage, uh one of those particular pages, it was from March 6th, uh came and I want to show it to you, but I need to set it up for you first.
SPEAKER_00: This portrays a senior pastor uh sitting and talking to his associates, and they are looking at the preaching calendar.
SPEAKER_00: And what that says, you can't possibly read it, it's far too small, but let me tell you what it says there.
SPEAKER_00: So the senior pastor, speaking to the associate pastor.
SPEAKER_00: All right, I'll preach on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Easter.
SPEAKER_00: You can have the role of women in the church, speaking in tongues today, biblical inerrancy, and oh yes, our special fundraising Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: See, this is every pastor's dream.
SPEAKER_00: Um again, I I find this passage actually not so difficult in and of itself, but because of the tone.
SPEAKER_00: So would you follow along as I read?
SPEAKER_00: And as we seek to open ourselves up to the question, does this have anything to say to us?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I'm reading in the ESV, chapter 5 of James, verses 1 through 6.
SPEAKER_00: Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
SPEAKER_00: Your riches have rotted in and your garments are moth-eaten.
SPEAKER_00: Your gold and silver have corroded, their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.
SPEAKER_00: You have laid up treasures in the last day, behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_00: You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: You have condemned and murdered the righteous people, and he, referring to God, does not resist you.
SPEAKER_00: God is speaking to you, he is saying.
SPEAKER_00: So have a wonderful Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: What we have here is a blistering, blistering condemnation and hellfire and brimstone.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't like to hear it, and sometimes it's not a lot of fun to say it.
SPEAKER_00: Um this is a passage that our only response can be, ouch, ouch.
SPEAKER_00: But then also, does this have anything to say to us?
SPEAKER_00: Um this topic of God's seething, righteous condemnation of people who are wealthy and abuse and misuse their wealth, live in luxury and self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a message that we'd like to hear.
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose, I suppose it's possible that this has no application to any of us.
SPEAKER_00: I suppose that's possible.
SPEAKER_00: But let's not be so quick to assume that this applies to someone else.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the person sitting in the other pew, or maybe somebody who's not in church this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Does this have anything to say to us?
SPEAKER_00: It's not a topic that left to myself, I would choose to speak on.
SPEAKER_00: But then again, I haven't been left to myself to decide what to speak on.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we do here is we take a book of the Bible and we just work our way through it.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever happens to come to the surface, that's what we talk about next.
SPEAKER_00: And it's amazing to me how invariably there's something there for many of us.
SPEAKER_00: Far more than if I were to select a topic in which I said, Oh, Tim and Twyla really need this one, so here's for Tim and Twyla.
SPEAKER_00: When I try to do that, Tim and Twyla never show up.
SPEAKER_00: Or the Tims and Twylas that are sitting all throughout.
SPEAKER_00: So what we just do is we take what God has before us and we try to say, Lord, what are you saying?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to me?
SPEAKER_00: And uh open ourselves up to God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes I wonder with whatever happened to Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
SPEAKER_00: Can't we just stick with that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, that is absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus loves us, and we do know that because the scriptures have said that.
SPEAKER_00: But there's many other things that Jesus has said besides, oh, I love you, how wonderful you folks are.
SPEAKER_00: You're just the best thing.
SPEAKER_00: You're something special, you're the only one of your kind.
SPEAKER_00: And yet that's what we want to, what we want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: And by God's grace, he makes us into something special.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because of us, it's because of him.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and boy, are we the only one of our kind.
SPEAKER_00: Look in the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the disciples, I'm struck and I'm reminded of Jesus in the upper room with the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember, and there's so much about the upper room discourse, John chapter 13 through 17, that I absolutely love.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in my father's house there are many dwelling places.
SPEAKER_00: If it were not so, I would have told you.
SPEAKER_00: I go and prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also.
SPEAKER_00: Um and he talks about his love for his people and his protection for his people and the tenderness.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and when I read the Upper Room Discourse, that's what I want to hear.
SPEAKER_00: When I really read it, I hear him saying some things to his disciples the night before he was to be crucified, some things that were disturbing to them, and yet I'm not so interested in hearing those.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's an interesting verse in uh in Mark chapter 14, actually Mark 14, 18 to 19.
SPEAKER_00: Let me see if I can find that.
SPEAKER_00: Mark 14, 18 to 19, uh in this is also what was uh said in the upper room.
SPEAKER_00: John in the upper room discourse talks about it, but Mark 14, verses 18 and 19, uh, part of that same discussion, Jesus said, and as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.
SPEAKER_00: Now that was disturbing.
SPEAKER_00: That was concerning to them.
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't say, Oh yeah, that must be Judas, although this was said specifically about Judas.
SPEAKER_00: But what they said was they began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after the other, is that Judas?
SPEAKER_00: Is that Judas?
SPEAKER_00: Is that no, that's not what they said.
SPEAKER_00: They said one after the other, Lord, is it I?
SPEAKER_00: So surely he was talking about Judas.
SPEAKER_00: Well, surely he was.
SPEAKER_00: He was also talking about Peter.
SPEAKER_00: Within a few hours, Peter would deny him three times.
SPEAKER_00: So let's not be so quick to assume that the difficult passages don't apply to us.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So, uh and and I don't know exactly how this passage.
SPEAKER_00: I will make some suggestions of how it might apply to us.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't know what God is saying to you personally this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I tend to believe He is saying something to each of us if we will open our ears and respond.
SPEAKER_00: We are confronted with uh inconvenient truths, truths about our own heart, if we will listen and apply.
SPEAKER_00: So again, just let's not be too quick to dismiss it.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So just a big picture of what we have in these verses.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jesus was writing to Jewish Christians, what we would call messianic Jews, mostly.
SPEAKER_00: There were no doubt some Gentiles in the churches, but the churches in the area to which James, uh younger brother of Jesus, was writing, were clearly believers who had found in Jesus the Christ, their Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And they were scattered around, particularly the northern part of the Mediterranean basis.
SPEAKER_00: And there were in the churches to whom he was writing, there were people who were wealthy and there were people who were poor.
SPEAKER_00: And he has something to say very directly to both.
SPEAKER_00: There are people who were oppressed and abused, and there were people who were oppressors and abusers in the same church, sitting next to each other on Sunday morning with their best Sunday morning face on.
SPEAKER_00: And why would we assume that if this applied to them, it doesn't apply to us?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it doesn't to you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it does.
SPEAKER_00: In that day there was no middle class really to speak of.
SPEAKER_00: You had the wealthy and you had the impoverished.
SPEAKER_00: The middle class really didn't develop until 15, 1600, 1700s as trade and the rise of cities and so forth developed in Europe.
SPEAKER_00: So you had the rich and the poor, and we would put ourselves probably in the middle class.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us would uh would say we're not rich.
SPEAKER_00: Um, hardly anyone, although some in our midst are in very difficult financial situations, but we would quickly identify ourselves with the middle class.
SPEAKER_00: And so what does this say to us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the fact of the matter is that the uh the kind of life that we have today, and I'm not saying this to make us feel guilty, but the fact of the matter is the kind of life that we have today in our middle class society was far above uh what uh even in the Middle Ages the nobility had.
SPEAKER_00: Our homes have more creature comforts in them than most medieval castles.
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
SPEAKER_00: It's absolutely true.
SPEAKER_00: So, in fact, most people in the world would view us as affluent and wealthy.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the way it it is.
SPEAKER_00: So again, let's let's not be too quick to say, no, this doesn't have anything to do with me.
SPEAKER_00: Uh James has is saying to us in this passage that faith that works, and that's the theme that we've taken for the book of James, faith that works.
SPEAKER_00: Faith that works demands serious personal reflection about how we acquire, manage, and use our financial resources, be they great or be they small.
SPEAKER_00: A real living faith requires that we honestly, sincerely reflect upon how we view, use, steward, manage the financial resources that God has entrusted to us.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're not open to being challenged in that area, then we're not listening.
SPEAKER_00: We're not listening to God because He constantly and consistently challenges us and reminds us that we need to be thinking about how we view material things, how we manage them, what our heart attitude towards them is, how we acquire them.
SPEAKER_00: These are all things that significantly interface with our spiritual lives.
SPEAKER_00: The book of James says repeatedly, and we've seen all of these passages, that our spiritual lives and our material financial lives are intimately intertwined.
SPEAKER_00: So in James chapter 1, verses 9 through 11, he has already said to us that the rich should not boast in their loftiness and their arrogance, but rather should realize that this life and the things of this life are fleeting and they will not last.
SPEAKER_00: In James chapter 1, 26 and 27, we saw that God is not impressed with the same things we are.
SPEAKER_00: We're impressed with powerful, influential, wealthy people, people of power, and we want to hang out with them, and we want to be thought well of them, and we want to chase after the things that wealthy, influential people have.
SPEAKER_00: And that is not what God values.
SPEAKER_00: It's apparently what we value, but God values people who hang out with and highly esteem and serve the lowly and the needy and who have compassion for people who live in very difficult situations.
SPEAKER_00: Do we esteem the same thing God values?
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes and no.
SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is we're much more impressed in desire of chasing after wealth and influence than we are truly being compassionate and involved with those in our midst.
SPEAKER_00: And there are those in our midst who are very needy.
SPEAKER_00: Parenthetically, this is not a church that does not care and is not generous.
SPEAKER_00: That is not at all what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00: When a need is presented, and even in recent weeks, there was a specific situation in which a particular need was presented.
SPEAKER_00: And what what the response was of the group of people here in our midst who saw that and pulled out their pocketbook and pulled out their checkbook was beautiful to behold.
SPEAKER_00: And when I heard about it, it almost brought tears to my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: I am not suggesting that we are unresistant to God's instructions to us to care and serve the needy among us.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying that James says how we handle our resources says something about where we're at in our spiritual lives.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 3, verse 13 and following talked about wisdom from above and wisdom from below.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom from below is worldly, unspiritual, and demonic.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says that expresses itself and is characterized by selfishness, lack of mercy, and compassion for those who are less fortunate than ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Our spiritual life and our material attitudes and actions are closely intertwined.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, verse 3 a clear fact that our prayers are sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Not answered because we're praying for the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: We are praying that God would bless us so we could take that blessing and have a good life.
SPEAKER_00: And James says, God does not answer that prayer.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a godly prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, can I have more that I can have more?
SPEAKER_00: Or does God bless us so that we can give more and serve more?
SPEAKER_00: And if we're just praying for material blessing for our sake, don't bother.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't bother.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that material blessing is wrong, but why would you think that if God increases our financial means, that that means we should live a better life, an easier life, have more things, more enjoyable, be able to take better trips, be able to have a nicer car, have a bigger house.
SPEAKER_00: Why would we assume that God's blessings on us automatically mean that we ought to have a higher lifestyle?
SPEAKER_00: Where do we get that?
SPEAKER_00: We don't get that from Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: We get that from our society and our culture.
SPEAKER_00: In this passage, in a simple way, James does three things, and I want you to be attentive to them, and then I'm going to go through these few verses and explain each of these three one by one.
SPEAKER_00: He does three things.
SPEAKER_00: He announces God's judgment on rich and oppressive people.
SPEAKER_00: Rich people who misuse the means and the influence that God has given them.
SPEAKER_00: He will encourage the oppressed by the sure and certain fact that God will one day most assuredly set right every wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And the counterpoint to that is that God will most assuredly judge every selfish, oppressive tendency, every bone in our bodies that takes the things that we have and uses them wrongly.
SPEAKER_00: The judgment of God falls upon that.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, he warns us of the grave danger of materialism.
SPEAKER_00: So let's uh let's just, the exposition of this passage is the ouch.
SPEAKER_00: The application of it is, Lord, is it me?
SPEAKER_00: Is it I?
SPEAKER_00: But we need to feel the ouch, not slide away.
SPEAKER_00: This may not apply to you, it may apply to you.
SPEAKER_00: But we need to listen to the to what God says.
SPEAKER_00: James begins with a vivid reminder of the terror, the absolute terror of approaching judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The absolute terror of the condemnation of God when it falls on men.
SPEAKER_00: A vivid reminder of judgment that is about to come in the terrible day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So James says, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
SPEAKER_00: Weep and howl.
SPEAKER_00: James describes a horrible reality about which the scriptures clearly speak, about which gentle Jesus, meek and mild, who only went around telling people how much he loved them, wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus also made very clear the piercing soul, destroying reality of judgments.
SPEAKER_00: Weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SPEAKER_00: It is a discussion of the description here of God's wrath.
SPEAKER_00: And this is harsh.
SPEAKER_00: This is hard.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing pretty about this.
SPEAKER_00: Weeping and gnashing of teeth.
SPEAKER_00: These are extreme words, these are extreme expressions, weeping, wailing.
SPEAKER_00: There is a howling.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, folks, I'm not going to take the time to go through what the prophets have said to us.
SPEAKER_00: I would ask you, I'd ask you to write those down and look these up and have a wonderful afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually mean that.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we neglect something that God repeatedly says, we are hurting ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: He says it for our good.
SPEAKER_00: And these are just three of scores of places in the Old Testament where God gets in our face.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: With the approaching terror of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And these passages, along with ours this morning, including Jesus' words in Mark 9, describe the shrieking, howling, frantic terror of those who undergo the condemnation of the damned.
SPEAKER_00: Let me repeat that.
SPEAKER_00: These and scores of other passages, Old Testament and New, repeatedly describe the shrieking, howling, frantic terror of those who are undergoing the tortures of the damned.
SPEAKER_00: We used to talk about that.
SPEAKER_00: We don't very much anymore in our evangelical world.
SPEAKER_00: This is a reality.
SPEAKER_00: This is part of what the scriptures say, and this is part of who our God is.
SPEAKER_00: And by God's grace, we have a cross, we have a substitute, we have salvation, we have a savior, so that by faith what we deserve gets placed on Christ, and what Christ deserved but didn't get, we get.
SPEAKER_00: The cross is this great exchange.
SPEAKER_00: What we deserve, Jesus God, and we get what we don't deserve.
SPEAKER_00: But do not for a moment underplay the reality of the horror, the shrieking cosmic existential terror of the condemnation of the damned.
SPEAKER_00: That is real.
SPEAKER_00: And that ought to drive us to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons we're celebrating the Lord's Supper after this message this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So what we have in verses two and three is the selfish, excessive stockpiling of wealth, which the Bible here calls hoarding.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten.
SPEAKER_00: Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what he is talking about here, gold and silver and the treasures that are laid up, your riches have rotten, your garments are moth-eaten, etc.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh this is the expressions of wealth in the New Testament time.
SPEAKER_00: The expressions of wealth in the New Testament time had to do with grain, plentiful grain that was harvested and stockpiled.
SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily wrong, but it can become wrong if it's for my own selfish purposes.
SPEAKER_00: But this was an expression of wealth and affluence.
SPEAKER_00: It was stockpiling of grain.
SPEAKER_00: It was also, and James has spoken before in this book, about excessive, excessively beautiful and expensive clothes and jewelry, and that was the expression of affluence.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, all of that will be gone.
SPEAKER_00: All of that will be gone.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the equivalent things, um, now unless you're a farmer, uh, I don't have a problem stockpiling too much grain.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think most farmers have a problem stockpiling too much of it, right, Mike?
SPEAKER_00: But we stockpile our wealth and and and it shows up in other ways.
SPEAKER_00: It shows up by our frantic efforts to get the largest retirement nest egg we can possibly get.
SPEAKER_00: It shows up in our fancy homes and our cars and our toys and our boats and our snowmobiles and my library.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if I were to talk about the things, you haven't seen my library.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't pack it in the back of our little Ford Escape, but you know, that's a big treasure to me.
SPEAKER_00: I have invested heavily in that library.
SPEAKER_00: So we all tend to stockpile things.
SPEAKER_00: Um it could be almost anything.
SPEAKER_00: It could be a second home, it could be a spectacular vacation that we give ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying those things are inherently wrong.
SPEAKER_00: What is being talked about here is what is the attitude about this drive to constantly accumulate more and more and more.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, James actually makes two major points here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, none of it, none of it will last.
SPEAKER_00: We're hopefully familiar with what he said in Matthew chapter 6, uh, verses 19 and 20, where he said, don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break into steel, but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And throughout the New Testament, throughout the Gospels, Jesus reminds us that none of this stuff lasts.
SPEAKER_00: All of the accumulation of our wealth, whether it's a selfish, frantic effort to get as much as we can, or whether it's just all that we've got, we barely are able to survive, all of our wealth will one day be destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: You see, when we put our focus in material things, it's like investing things that are precious to us in a known failure.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is it's a terrible investment when we invest in material things, when we hoard them, when we gather them, when we try to hang on to them, because all of them will be destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: It's the worst possible investment.
SPEAKER_00: It's guaranteed to result in zero.
SPEAKER_00: Guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00: Guaranteed to result in zero.
SPEAKER_00: You will not take it with you.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean it's evil.
SPEAKER_00: It just means if we are driven to have our lives acquire more and more and more, we're investing in a stupid investment.
SPEAKER_00: Stupid investment.
SPEAKER_00: All of my investments are stupid.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I may, by God's grace, be able to use them to provide for myself and for other people, and that's not stupid.
SPEAKER_00: But the hard attitude to want more and more.
SPEAKER_00: And the things we invested in are not lasting.
SPEAKER_00: He said that before he was martyred in Central America in the 50s.
SPEAKER_00: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
SPEAKER_00: And that's very much the spirit of this.
SPEAKER_00: But when we lose our job, we have trouble seeing that as something that God has graciously done for us.
SPEAKER_00: When we're in full health and vigor, we say, praise God, how good God is.
SPEAKER_00: And when God sends us a doctor's report, do we still say God is good?
SPEAKER_00: When we're young and in love and God gives us a partner and God gives us wonderful kids, well, at least some of the time they're wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: But what about when God takes away a loved one?
SPEAKER_00: Can we see the reality of a God who loves us and knows what we need?
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes because He loves us, He knocks the props out from under us?
SPEAKER_00: When things are going well, it is much harder to trust God, frankly.
SPEAKER_00: Have you experienced that or not?
SPEAKER_00: When life is a beach and it's sunny, it's pretty easy to praise God.
SPEAKER_00: When life stinks, when life hurts, when we're racked with pain, physical, emotional, relational, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Has God in his goodness changed?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we not have perhaps the right picture of God?
SPEAKER_00: Look at Job.
SPEAKER_00: What did God do to Job?
SPEAKER_00: And you say, yeah, well, Satan did that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't read very well.
SPEAKER_00: Satan could only do what God allowed him to do, and God's purposes for Job were to use Satan for his good.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't have a view of God that allows us to see that God lovingly and graciously does things to us, I said that intently, to us, for us, that hurt, then we have a very impoverished view of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The second point that he makes here is that wealth is entrusted to us to use and not to stockpile.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that whenever we misuse the good things God gives us, they go bad on us.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like hanging on to an egg for too long.
SPEAKER_00: What happens?
SPEAKER_00: Just leave the egg out on the counter for a few weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't even take that long.
SPEAKER_00: It's not nice.
SPEAKER_00: We know that about eggs.
SPEAKER_00: How come we don't know that about our nest eggs?
SPEAKER_00: You see, our material resources, if we don't use them for the purposes for which God gives them, then they have a way of going bad on us.
SPEAKER_00: And what he says here is that this becomes something that is corroding and rotting, and it will it will eat your flesh like fire.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if he was saying that in today's terms, he would say, our material blessings, if we're not careful, will become like a cancer that rots our souls.
SPEAKER_00: Rots our souls.
SPEAKER_00: If we put our focus in material things, we will not experience the true blessings of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because material things are wrong, it's because if we're not careful, our heart attitude about them is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: We must not misuse the gifts and the good things that God gives us.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: The abusive power of wealth and things that wealth brings.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, though the wages, their wages are crying out against you, and the cries of harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 6, you have condemned and murdered the righteous person, he does not resist you.
SPEAKER_00: The wages of the laborers whom you have defrauded, he said, cry out against you as they reach the ears of the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in this talking about was the economic system of day laborers in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And just to help us understand what that's uh all about, in the Palestinian economy, the Palestinian economy used hired day laborers rather than slaves, in part because a slave could cost more than he otherwise would cost more if he converted to Judaism, because he'd have to treat the slaves differently.
SPEAKER_00: The hired laborers would be the younger sons of peasant families or peasants forced off their land due to the foreclosure of mortgages on their property.
SPEAKER_00: These laborers lived hand-to-mouth existence.
SPEAKER_00: Today's wages brought tomorrow's breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: Today's wages were needed for tomorrow's breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: When the wage was not paid at the end of the day, the whole family went hungry.
SPEAKER_00: Despite a host of Old Testament laws, ways were found to withhold payment.
SPEAKER_00: One might withhold them until the end of the harvest to keep the worker coming back.
SPEAKER_00: He might appeal to a technicality showing that the contract had not yet been fulfilled, or he might be just too tired to pay that night.
SPEAKER_00: If the poor worker complained, the landlord could blacklist him.
SPEAKER_00: If he went to court, the rich had better lawyers.
SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of thing that's being talked about here.
SPEAKER_00: The abuse of laborers, the selfish, wrong abuse of laborers.
SPEAKER_00: So he talks about the ability to manipulate the judicial system by the rich and the wealthy.
SPEAKER_00: They had better lawyers.
SPEAKER_00: That was back in Jesus' day.
SPEAKER_00: Not a whole lot has changed.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a good enough lawyer, if you can afford it, you'll probably be able to get along and not have to pay.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about, well, the abuse of power in general, the abuse of power in general is something that we recognize.
SPEAKER_00: It fills the newspapers.
SPEAKER_00: It fills the political discussion today.
SPEAKER_00: The most powerful political figures, and I don't care if you're talking about Democrat or Republican, they have found ways to get around the system.
SPEAKER_00: Found ways to get around the system because of their power, their influence, and their wealth.
SPEAKER_00: God will most assuredly condemn that.
SPEAKER_00: God will one day most assuredly set every wrong right.
SPEAKER_00: And we need to pay attention.
SPEAKER_00: Because the same tendency is within you and me.
SPEAKER_00: You get a little bit of authority, a little bit of power, you have a certain position.
SPEAKER_00: And the tendency, the danger for me and for you is to self righteously abuse that.
SPEAKER_00: That's us, folks.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just people out there.
SPEAKER_00: We see it in extreme forms.
SPEAKER_00: Do we ever ask ourselves, Lord, is that me?
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything about that in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Abusive treatment of work.
SPEAKER_00: We just talked a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to that in just a minute.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, sinful and self-indulgent living.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_00: You have fatted your hearts in the day of slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: He talks here about a life of ease.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: You have lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_00: Luxury, the word itself, means soft and pampered.
SPEAKER_00: We live our lives as softly and as pamperedly as we can possibly make it.
SPEAKER_00: That's us.
SPEAKER_00: The picture here is of the rich and the powerful whose affluence secures for themselves a life of ease.
SPEAKER_00: As though God's purposes are to give us an easy life.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we preach gospels, we proclaim them, we have television programs, radio stations, megachurches are filled with the message that you're really something special, and God wants you to have all of the good things in life.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't happen to have those, then there must be something deficient with you, because we know God wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.
SPEAKER_00: That is baloney.
SPEAKER_00: We said that last week, and we'll say it forever.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what the pictures, the scriptures portray.
SPEAKER_00: God does not exist to give you the good life.
SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: There is a life to come that is good.
SPEAKER_00: And by his grace we may enjoy great blessings and moments of joy, and we can enjoy the good things that God gives us.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that those are wrong.
SPEAKER_00: But is that what we deserve?
SPEAKER_00: Is that what God is for?
SPEAKER_00: And if God chooses to bless us, is that so that we'll have a comfy life?
SPEAKER_00: More secure life?
SPEAKER_00: That's the American way.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the biblical pattern of who God is or what a God follow how a God follower lives.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it's just not.
SPEAKER_00: A calf that was raised for a particular purpose, that at a day of festival it would be slaughtered.
SPEAKER_00: The prodigal son comes back, the father says, Wow, now it's time to bring out and slaughter the fatted calf and we're going to have a party.
SPEAKER_00: What James says is, we're fattening ourselves for the slaughter.
SPEAKER_00: When we approach life this way.
SPEAKER_00: And I am in comparison.
SPEAKER_00: So affluence and wealth is relative.
SPEAKER_00: That ought to be one thing we get from this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Possessing, having wealth is not wrong, it's loving it and misusing it.
SPEAKER_00: Loving it and misusing it.
SPEAKER_00: Two simple little painful questions with regard to excessive stockpiling.
SPEAKER_00: How big of a bank account do you really need to have?
SPEAKER_00: A biblical answer is not, as big as possible.
SPEAKER_00: How much money do we really need?
SPEAKER_00: An incorrect response is just a little more.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we automatically assume that we need more and we just need a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is when you get a little bit more, it's still never enough.
SPEAKER_00: How much money in the bank do you really need?
SPEAKER_00: I can't answer that for you.
SPEAKER_00: But I will stand accountable before my God in the day of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: I will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, and you will as well.
SPEAKER_00: Not for condemnation to hell, because we have a salvation that's sure, but we will be evaluated for what we have done in this life and with what God has given us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't talk about the biblical teaching of rewards very much.
SPEAKER_00: But I will give account for how much money I have in the bank.
SPEAKER_00: And you will too.
SPEAKER_00: But especially for what we've done with it and what our attitude towards it is.
SPEAKER_00: When does prudent savings become selfish and excessive accumulation?
SPEAKER_00: I don't have a specific answer for you there, but my friends, we ought to be thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00: Because my assumption is that what I have saved is not quite enough.
SPEAKER_00: And I just need a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: And a little bit more, and a little bit more.
SPEAKER_00: Defrauding workers, why are Christian employers notorious for paying poorly?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it, and why is it that if a young man or a young woman wants to be a teacher and they teach at a Christian school, you can be sure they will earn significantly less than if they were teaching at a public school.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Is that just because the Christian school lives on gifts?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: I have served as the head of a Christian organization where we had salaries and people to pay.
SPEAKER_00: And it was the reason we weren't able to pay enough was not just because we were a Christian organization and we were living on the basis of gifts.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not that simple.
SPEAKER_00: Why would Christian employers be notorious for paying poorly?
SPEAKER_00: Is a Christian company, school, or church exemplary for being generous in its financial provision for its employees?
SPEAKER_00: That's a fair question for a Christian business, a Christian organization, or a Christian church.
SPEAKER_00: If we think it's normal that people should do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, then why do we not think that it should be normal that we do, we pay at least, or more generously, than just the minimum that we can get by with?
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's not simple, folks.
SPEAKER_00: I get that totally.
SPEAKER_00: But we have to deal with that.
SPEAKER_00: Couple of thoughts.
SPEAKER_00: We tend to redefine luxuries as necessities and self-indulgences as perks.
SPEAKER_00: I used to think a snowblower was a luxury.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, I think you have to ask yourself the question in North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: But do we really have to have it?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not against snowblowers.
SPEAKER_00: I I had one until I moved to Texas.
SPEAKER_00: We've got a uh 48-inch flat screen TV, and we don't think that's quite enough.
SPEAKER_00: So we want a 65-inch, now slightly rounded digital television set.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying you shouldn't buy it, I'm just saying, is it the frog in the kettle?
SPEAKER_00: Do we just are can we ever be satisfied with what we have?
SPEAKER_00: Or are the things we think are necessities really luxuries?
SPEAKER_00: And if God gives them to us, then he gives them to us to perhaps enjoy, but most certainly to steward and use and to bless other people with?
SPEAKER_00: Do we assume that God increases our financial resources in order to increase our lifestyle?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to quit, folks, before you throw rotten eggs and Bibles at me.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a fair question, folks.
SPEAKER_00: Do we assume that when God blesses us materially, that means that ought to have us increase our lifestyle?
SPEAKER_00: Or does that mean that we have an increased ability to steward and use and bless other people and exalt the name of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: The next time you get a raise, why don't you just keep living on what you have and add that raise to what you give for God's purposes?
SPEAKER_00: Or that you write that bonus check at the end of the year, you go to your checkbook and you write out a check and you give it to somebody in need.
SPEAKER_00: Is it conceivable that we would even think that way?
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now, friends, I don't know how this applies to you.
SPEAKER_00: I truly don't.
SPEAKER_00: I know how some of this applies to me, and I don't like it.
SPEAKER_00: But let's not be so quick to say this applies to somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: Ouch! Surely not I, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Surely not I.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray?
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, I do not know what you want to say concretely to the life of any individual here.
SPEAKER_00: I have a sense of what you're saying to me.
SPEAKER_00: But I ask that as we take the Lord's Supper and reflect, we would ask ourselves, Lord, what's here for me?
SPEAKER_00: By your grace, we ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.