Judgement on the Wicked
The Book of James - James 5:1-6 • Sermon • Submitted
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I. Introduction
I. Introduction
What Would You Do?
What Would You Do?
What are you willing to do for $10,000,000? Two-thirds of Americans polled would agree to at least one, some to several of the following:
Would abandon their entire family (25%)
Would abandon their church (25%)
Would become prostitutes for a week or more (23%)
Would give up their American citizenship (16%)
Would leave their spouses (16%)
Would withhold testimony and let a murderer go free (10%)
Would kill a stranger (7%)
Would put their children up for adoption (3%)
James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth, 1991
1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 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. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
James notes four sins that bring judgement:
Another preacher who left Virginia for Kentucky was John Taylor. He, too, became sidetracked from spiritual matters after his move. He wrote in his personal journal of the hard manual labor needed to make a successful living in Kentucky: “We had no time to pause and think, but go right on to work.” After two years he was able to boast, “I was the richest man in the county where I lived.” However, he had to admit that “through the course of this two years, I preached but little.”
What are you willing to do for $10,000,000? Two-thirds of Americans polled would agree to at least one, some to several of the following:
Both of these men had endured hardship, persecution, and had been relatively poor in Virginia. Building up wealth had not been their previous goal. In fact, one zealous minister in Virginia, Samuel Harris, had refused to take a man to court for money owed to him, money which he desperately needed. Harris’s explanation was that he “didn’t want to lose time in a lawsuit he could spend preaching saving souls.” For some church leaders the new opportunity to seek material goals served as an anesthetic on the spiritual life.
Some zealous ministers showed a preference for political power rather than for spiritual power. James Garrard, a preacher who had moved to Kentucky, left his preaching in 1796 to become governor of the state. Historian Robert Semple sorrowfully wrote, “For the honours of men he resigned the office of God. He relinquished the clerical robe for the more splendid mantle of human power.” Semple also spoke of another talented minister from the Roanoke Association in Virginia who, “misled by ambition,” set himself up as a candidate for Congress. These words do not suggest that involvement in politics signifies automatic spiritual declension. Semple’s words suggest that in the above instances a love for political power had replaced a pursuit for spiritual power.
Would abandon their entire family (25%)
A quest for wealth and power can consume all our energies. Those who have wealth and power face the additional temptations of pride, greed, and an attitude of self-sufficiency. The wealthy can also take advantage of their condition to practice injustice and dishonesty toward the poor and needy.
Would abandon their church (25%)
Would become prostitutes for a week or more (23%)
Would give up their American citizenship (16%)
James saw wealthy people who were facing these temptations and yielding to them. He warned both the rich and poor—the majority of his Christian readers—of the numbing effects of wealth and the pursuit of power.
Would leave their spouses (16%)
Would withhold testimony and let a murderer go free (10%)
Would kill a stranger (7%)
Would put their children up for adoption (3%)
James Patterson and Peter Kim, The Day America Told the Truth, 1991
James notes four sins that bring judgement:
James notes four sins that precipitate the severe judgment pronounced on the wicked rich. They are condemned because their wealth was uselessly hoarded, unjustly gained, self-indulgently spent, and ruthlessly acquired.
II. Their Wealth Was Uselessly Hoarded (5:2-3)
II. Their Wealth Was Uselessly Hoarded (5:2-3)
2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days.
Hoarding is one of the most widespread sins of our day and time.
God entrusts believers with material goods so they can use them for His glory.
James: The MacArthur New Testament Commentary Their Wealth Was Uselessly Hoarded
God entrusts believers with material goods so they may use them for His glory. Obviously, Christians are to provide for their families (1 Tim. 5:8). But beyond that, Christians’ resources are to be used to advance God’s kingdom
Obviously, Christians are to provide for their families (). But beyond that, Christians’ resources are to be used to advance God’s kingdom.
6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
American Picker’s
There were 3 ways that James describes how wealth was valued in his day (apart from land and houses).
Food items: When hoarded these will rot and decay away.
Garments: When hoarded these will become moth-eaten.
Gold & Silver: When hoarded these will become “rusted” or corroded. (The idea is that they become useless.)
James has an audience of “brothers” who were hoarding wealth but the worthlessness of it served as a testimony of their lack of devotion to God.
In the judgment, their hoarded, rotted, moth-eaten, corroded treasures will give graphic testimony to the unregenerate state of their hearts. Their covetous, selfish, compassionless, earthbound approach to life will provoke their condemnation. John McArthur
III. Their Wealth Was Unjustly Gained (5:4)
III. Their Wealth Was Unjustly Gained (5:4)
4 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.
James 5:
The wicked rich were not only guilty of sinfully hoarding their wealth; they had also sinfully acquired it.
This was far from being generous to the poor as Scripture commands (; ; ), they exploited them.
2 “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
9 Take care lest there be an unworthy thought in your heart and you say, ‘The seventh year, the year of release is near,’ and your eye look grudgingly on your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry to the Lord against you, and you be guilty of sin. 10 You shall give to him freely, and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. 11 For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’
10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
Specifically, they had withheld the pay of the laborers who mowed their fields—a practice so shocking that James introduced the statement with the word behold.
The perfect tense of the verb translated withheld suggests that the wicked rich completely withheld at least part of their laborers’ pay; they did not merely delay payment.
James personified the withheld wages. These unpaid wages cried out to God against the wealthy. Although the rich landowners might not hear the pleas of the poor, God would hear their prayers.
Although the rich landowners might not hear the pleas of the poor, God would hear their prayers.
One of the most majestic Old Testament names describes the God who hears prayers. He is termed the Lord Almighty or the Lord of Hosts. This pictures God as the head of Israel’s armies (see ) and heaven’s angels (see ). It presents a powerful picture of God’s mighty resources available for his people.
IV. Their Wealth Was Self-Indulgently Spent (5:5)
IV. Their Wealth Was Self-Indulgently Spent (5:5)
James 5:
5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
Having increased their wealth by robbery/stealing/swindling and hoarding, the wicked rich added to their sin by using their wealth for their own selfish indulgence.
James described their self-indulgence with 3 verbs in greek...by saying “lived luxuriously”. This terminology only appears here in the New Testament.
The related noun truphē has the basic meaning of “softness.”
James condemned the wicked rich for living in soft, extravagant luxury at the expense of others.
Far from being first-century Robin Hoods, stealing to give to others, they stole to line their own pockets.
Ironically, one of the wealthiest and wisest men who ever lived provides an illustration of the futility of such self-indulgence. reveals that Solomon left no stone unturned in his frantic pursuit of pleasure:
4 I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. 5 I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. 6 I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees. 7 I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. 8 I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers, both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.
9 So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. 10 And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.
Ecc 2:4-10
V. Their Wealth Was Ruthlessly Acquired (5:6)
V. Their Wealth Was Ruthlessly Acquired (5:6)
James 5:
6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
This is the final progression in the downward spiral followed by the rich people James rebuked.
Having unjustly hoarded the money they robbed from their poor day laborers and spent it on their self-indulgent desires, they went even further and condemned and put to death the righteous man.
They would literally kill to maintain their opulent lifestyle.
God established courts to fairly, impartially dispense justice (). Judges were not to be greedy (), show partiality (), tolerate perjury (), or take bribes (; ).
But even in Israel there was terrible corruption. Amos denounced the perversion of justice taking place in the courts of his day:
12 For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins— you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate.
12 For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins— you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. 13 Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time.
12 For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins— you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. 13 Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. 14 Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. 15 Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
Then “perhaps the Lord God of hosts may be gracious to the remnant of Joseph” (v. 15). In James’s day, too, the wicked rich sought to pervert the justice system and use it against the poor (cf. ).
Wealth may be a blessing, a gift from God bringing the opportunity to do good. But that can only be true of those who are also “rich in faith” () and “rich toward God” ().
If wealth is to be a source of blessing and not condemnation, it must not be uselessly hoarded, unjustly gained, self-indulgently spent, or ruthlessly acquired.
Paul’s charge to Timothy shows how God expects the wealthy to use their riches. It forms a fitting contrast to the abuse of wealth James condemned.
17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.