James meassgae 10
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James
James
1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.
4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.
6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
Intro: James is a very practical book and tends to hit us right where we live. Some will hear the opening words of warning in chapter five directed to the rich. We may be tempted to think, “At last something that does not apply to me!”
But don’t be too fast to come to that conclusion because in the face of what most of the world lives on, you are rich. (Korea) (Mexico)
“Don’t be too quick to ignore the first six verses of chapter five as if they only apply to people with huge fortunes.” James is writing to people he describes as rich, yet they probably did not have a standard of living higher than the majority of Americans today.
The principles that James shares are important today. James says, in order to use money properly whether it is a little or a lot, you must take God into account.
God is not nearly so concerned with what you do with the millions of dollars you do not have, as he is how you use the ten dollars you do have. Are you spending your money on the things that are really important to you? The answer is probably yes.
But the real question we should be asking is; “Are you spending your money on the things that should be important to you?”
1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.
The Bible never condemns wealth, only the abuse of wealth. It is not a sin to have riches, but it is a sin to hoard riches.
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13 There is a severe evil which I have seen under the sun: Riches kept for their owner to his hurt.
The Bible does not discourage the acquiring of wealth, nor does it say that there is anything sinful about saving.
There are many notable examples in the Bible of godly wealthy people – Abraham, Job, Nicodemus, , Joseph of Armiathea
Abraham was a rich man and yet he is noted as a man of faith and character. However, when Lot became rich it ruined his character and ultimately his family.
5 Will you set your eyes on that which is not? For riches certainly make themselves wings; They fly away like an eagle toward heaven.
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal;
20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
The money market fluctuates from hour to hour and so does the stock market. Add to this the fact that life is brief and we cannot take our wealth with us and see how foolish it is to live for the things of this world.
Not more than ten years after James wrote this letter, Jerusalem fell to the Romans, and all this accumulated wealth was taken.
It is greed that makes you hoard things.
15 And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”
But God never intended for money to be a goal in itself. We are to use our money, not hoard it.
There are people who have died with a large savings account, lives wearing rags, old house, old car, never spent any or ever little money, they just hung on to it.
Secondly, Don’t Withhold It Deceitfully – Earn it Honestly 5:4
4 Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
The tense of the verb “kept back” in the original Greek indicates that the laborers “will never get their salaries.”
“The day laborer in Palestine lived on the very verge of starvation. His wage was small: it was impossible for him to save anything; and if the wage was withheld from him, even for a day, he and his family simply could not eat.
14 “You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether one of your brethren or one of the aliens who is in your land within your gates.
15 Each day you shall give him his wages, and not let the sun go down on it, for he is poor and has set his heart on it; lest he cry out against you to the Lord, and it be sin to you.
You see the picture. Here are starving families, men weak with hunger, but one day a landowner calls them over: "Work in my field all day and I will give you such a wage." It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
So all day under the hot sun he labored longing for the evening to come when he’d take his wage home to his wife and children and buy some food that they might live.
But at the end of the day the landowner turned up with some of his bully boys and said he didn’t have the money right now, and "come back tomorrow." But tomorrow was too late for your baby, and your cries in heartache over your dead child and over the evil of that man with so much money who made those great promises but failed to keep them - those cries of yours and your wife’s have reached the throne of the universe
James reminds his friends that the Lord hears the cries of those who have been cheated. In fact he uses a special name for the Lord, “Lord of the Sabaoth,” which is the Hebrew word for “host.” “
The Lord of the Host” is one of the majestic names for God and portrays Him as the commander of the heavenly armies. This conveys the idea that the abuse of the poor gets the attention of the supreme commander of the Universe.
As a Christian it is embarrassing when unsaved men tell me about a Christian who owes them money and apparently have no intention of paying.
Don’t Spend It Selfishly – Share It Generously. 5-6
5 You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.
6 You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you.
God will bless you as you give. The well-worn cliché is true, "You can’t out give God.
24 There is one who scatters, yet increases more; And there is one who withholds more than is right, But it leads to poverty.
25 The generous soul will be made rich, And he who waters will also be watered himself.
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal;
20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Jesus did not say that where our heart is we would put our treasure. He said the opposite. Where we put our treasure is where our heart will be.
Conclusion
God’s concern is not with actual wealth, but with our attitude toward wealth.
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Noticed what Timothy says and does not say here. Let’s look first at what he does not say. He does not say that money is evil. He does not say that money is a root of evil. Rather, he says that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.