Study of James week 10
Notes
Transcript
Judgement against the rich
Judgement against the rich
Our text this morning stands out the most of all the New Testament passages about the sin of the rich.
One would have to turn to the Old Testament for other comparable judgments on the rich.
With the people studying the Old Testament regularly, one might ask how could Christians have fallen into this sin.
James has already shown how friendship with the world is a constant temptation for believers who do not resist the deeper temptation of envy.
Envy creates its own worldview by which a person will justify any action in order to secure more wealthy.
The worldview created by envy will rationalize the evil consequences of any act in view of selfish interest.
The picture here is horrific and cannot be regarded as merely a warning.
Although James made no declaration about the hopelessness of the unjust rich, he offered no hope either.
They were committed to their evil ways, and God had committed Himself to oppose them.
1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you.
2 Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten.
3 Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!
James addresses his audience - Come now - which is a sharp confrontation.
James comes against the rich because of their outrageous acts against the poor.
The call for the people to weep and howl uses the language of humbling oneself.
Sinners who have heard the prophetic word of judgment should mourn and weep over their sin now instead of waiting for the judgment that will afflict them with greater weeping.
Instead of self-induced sorrow, the sorrow of judgment will be inflicted upon them.
Verse 2 tells the truth about greed and selfish hoarding of wealth.
Here James shows the degrading influence wealth has for all who place their confidence in it rather than God.
James states the wealth has rotted and their clothes have become moth-eaten.
It was not so much that the treasures themselves were in this condition but that the manner in which believers were holding them already evidenced decay.
The one who has known God and experienced the eternal realities of the spiritual world can sense in the wealthy treasures of this world the underlying corruption.
Believers need to take heed from this verse and need to examine how they have treated those around them or any they owe just wages.
3 Your gold and your silver have rusted; and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure!
Gold and silver will become corroded in the judgment.
Another words gold and silver will lose their value as investments because what is impossible - their corrosion - will come to pass; God’s judgment will make it a reality.
In the judgment God will use their most precious investments against the wealthy.
The Misery of the Innocent
The Misery of the Innocent
4 Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields, and which has been withheld by you, cries out against you; and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
6 You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.
With the imperative “Behold,” James directed the attention of the unjust rich to evidence against them.
Here those who worked for the wealthy had went unpaid.
This economic oppression was particularly urgent because many of the field laborers of that time were transient and often were in need of special compassion.
This ties in with what we are told in Leviticus 19:13
13 ‘You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of a hired man are not to remain with you all night until morning.
The field work had been done, but the wages had not been given to the laborers.
James states that the withheld wages cry out against the rich, and also the outcry of the laborers.
God heard these cries of the wages and the laborers.
In the life of Israel, this address characterized God as the one who moves to deliver His people.
In the last days, the Lord will come and defend the oppressed.
Within the circle of the Christian community, a clear voice must constantly call the wealthy to greater responsibility for the well-being of the average laborer.
The skills necessary to create wealth, powerful as they are, must be guided by Godly wisdom.
In verse 5 James gives a third indictment against the heartlessness of the rich.
Their callousness was rooted in their self-centered pleasure and luxury at the expense of their laborers.
All Christians are to resist celebration and to move out from a satisfied life to encounter the lives of those who barely survive so that they too might achieve a level of well-being.
Instead of making sure that the hungry brother or sister was indeed well fed, the rich fattened themselves; soon they would find that their own bodies would feed the all-consuming wrath of the day of slaughter.
6 You have condemned and put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.
The question of the guilty of the unjust rich is decided by James in this verse, declaring the final ground for the punishment of the rich on the last day: they have condemned and murdered innocent men.
The laborers whose Christian character had restrained them from rebelliousness are innocent of any crime, certainly of any against the rich.
But rather than being rewarded for their worthwhile labor they supplied to the rich, these day laborers had been made to suffer for applying their faith to their work.
Such suffering is the basic reason God has elected the poor to be rich in His grace as seen in James 2:5
5 Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?
God selects the poor and converts them to serve as a sign of his glory, nullifying what the world has taken for glory and wealth.
