Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – James 5:1-7a

Uh, thank you so much, Joseph, for teaching us this new version of a psalm. It’s very germane to what we’ve been looking at in James in the last couple of weeks and to what I’ll be talking about today. It’s so easy, given the eyes of modern man, to walk about the earth and to see what’s happening and just ascribe it all to some sort of natural forces. And so a psalm like this that we can sing that reminds us that what we’re watching is God in action is quite significant.

I don’t know if you’ve thought about this when you’ve sung it, but this line—”to bear his vengeance of his love. Swift has thought their armies move to bear his vengeance of his love.” That’s a wonderful line too. And it reminds us that the wrath of God serves the love of God toward his people. And again today in the sermon text, this has significance to what we’ll be talking about. I have good news. I don’t think today’s text will make anybody feel guilty.

We’re going to talk about the dangers of wealth. And most of you don’t—I don’t think any of you have it. So, but who knows, right? We’ll talk in a little bit about the purpose of this text, but this is the next section of James, and so we’re going to be preaching on James 5:1 through the very first part of verse 7. It’s not part of the unit, but I think it explains a little bit why this section is here.

So, please stand for the reading of God’s word: James 5:1-7a.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth eaten. 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. 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.

You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury. You have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned. You have murdered the just. He does not resist you. Therefore, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures and we pray, Lord God, that your Spirit would do his work. Open our minds, our hearts, our very souls to receive your engrafted word to be transformed by it so that we can understand what we’re doing here in this world and specifically more about our work. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So why work? This section kind of builds on the last section of James 4 where we looked at inserting God or making sure we don’t leave God out of our plans for work—you know, making plans to go here or there. He says, “Say if the Lord wills.” Which means, by way of the part for the whole, bring God into your business plans, into what, how you serve God at work. Today’s text sort of moves on to the goal of our work.

What’s the purpose of it? What are our rewards for it? So why do we work? Some of you don’t go to work. Some of you are taking care of children at home, so you don’t actually have a vocational calling in that sense at this point in your lives, but it’s not unusual for people that do that, whether men or women, to have vocation both before and after the children are in the home. So most of us will work, we’ll have jobs.

And even those that may not, we’re reminded that with Adam and Eve, Eve is given as a helper suitable and fit for Adam’s work. So really, her and Adam are working together. And in a very real sense, stay-at-home moms or wives are really supporting the work or vocation of the husband, and it’s really their joint vocation in a very real sense according to the scriptures. And so, why do it? Why go off to work?

You know, last week we talked about God in the workplace and making plans. And I mentioned this list of issues or ways to bring God into our workplace that Tim Keller talks about in his book, *Every Good Endeavor*. His question is a little different than mine. Mine is why work. His is how do we serve God at work? And let me just read you the list of possible answers.

He says, “The way to serve God at work first is to further social justice in the world.” Now, before you scoff at that, we’ll actually—our text that we just read actually addresses this issue to a certain extent. So we’ll talk about that in a couple minutes. The way to serve—and you know, if you don’t have a knee-jerk reaction against the term social justice, which I know had its origins in liberalism and continues to be used by people that want the state to be God on earth, blah blah—just don’t have that kind of reaction and certainly God seeks justice in the context of our society. It’s one of the great things that cities are supposed to provide and work is related to that. So okay, so further social justice.

Secondly, he says the way to serve God at work is to be personally honest and evangelize your colleagues. Third, the way to serve God at work is just to do skillful, excellent work.

So these are different ways of saying how do we serve God at work? Number four, the way to serve God at work is to create beauty. Let me mention something there. It’s interesting to me that if you were here for the church in Oregon City worship service last Sunday evening, that you know justice, defense, the training of children, the elements of a city with its high towers are all set in beauty. So beauty seems to permeate whatever work we do and there may be some directly involved in production of beauty but it is so—another way to serve God at work is to create beauty.

Another issue, another answer: the way to serve God at work is to work from a Christian motivation to glorify God, seeking to engage and influence culture to that end. So you work to change the culture and glorify God. Seven, the way to serve God at work is to work with a grateful, joyful, gospel-changed heart through all the ups and downs. Eight, the way to serve God at work is to do whatever gives you the greatest joy and passion.

Nine, the way to serve God at work is to make as much money as you can so that you can be as generous as you can.

And so Keller’s point is, well, there’s lots of different ways to serve God at work. And he says, the problem we typically get into is when we take any one of those ways and say if we put the main way to serve God at work is X, we usually get into trouble. God has called us to do a multiple number of things in serving him at work and all of the ones we just mentioned.

We’ll go over these in more detail in a month or two when we begin our series on vocation and Howard may have gone over some of them in detail in his Sunday school class. But those are ways to serve God at work that you can resonate with or not and may be inspiring to you this week. My question is a little broader, however. My question is, why work at all? What do you go to work for? Why do you do it?

Well, you could say, well, I need to do something with my life. I need to be busy and active. That’s true. And in that way, you’re sort of reflecting God, right? Because God’s a worker. God does things. We just sang a song about him doing all kinds of things perpetually in his providence, taking care of his created order. We’re made in the image of God. God isn’t slothful. We shouldn’t be slothful. And so we want to do something.

So maybe we just go to work to be busy. Another answer would be that we go to work to support myself and my family. This is a little bit circular because your family is given to you in the context of Genesis to support your work and your wife is a co-worker in that vocation with you to a certain extent. And so if your work is to support the family and the family’s work is to support your work, it kind of gets a little circular.

So I’m not sure that works real well as a singular reason why you go to work. Although obviously you do have to support your family or yourself and so it’s important to use that as a consideration for getting up and going to work tomorrow, but it can’t be the only one. That doesn’t seem to make any sense.

Another would be to feel the pleasure of God on me. Maybe it’s you’re like Eric Liddell, right? He runs because he feels the pleasure of God on him. And when you go to work and do your accounting work or, you know, logistics and figuring out where to place a warehouse in the world like Howard does, there’s a pleasure of God that comes upon you because he’s built you for that kind of work, right? That’s another reason to go to work, right? To be able to give money to the church and the poor, to evangelize—getting into some of the same things that Keller talked about—to engage our pastor.

There’s lots of reasons to go to work, but the text today seems to focus on people that the deal for them, the main deal, maybe the only deal is money. Money, money, money, money. And so if you’re going to—and you know, it always troubles me when I ask somebody, “How’s your job going?” “Well, it’s a job.” You know, as Christians, it’s got to be a lot more than just a job to us. And it has to be a lot more than just a way to make money.

So today’s text is a howling indictment against the very wealthy and a particular kind of very wealthy people that we’ll examine here in a couple of minutes. But that’s what it’s about. It’s people that work just to make money, okay? And maybe enjoy the pleasures that money brings and that’s it. It’s almost like hedonism, right? So hedonism is just engaging your passions. That’s it. So that’s what we’ll be talking about today.

Now, why is this text even in here? You know, and the big question for commentaries and maybe for you to think about as you’re—if you’ve ever read through James, I trust a lot of you have a number of times—when you got to this section, you’re thinking, well, who’s he talking to? Is he talking to us, the church? Seems like he’s addressing non-Christians. He doesn’t call them brothers here. And frequently throughout the epistle, he does. They’re not brothers. And they seem to be so bad that it’s hard to believe he’s addressing Christians. And for evidence that he’s not addressing Christians, that’s why I read into verse 7: “Be patient.”

Therefore, I think my view is that the text is kind of directly relating to others and specifically maybe to the Sadducees. The text kind of culminates in the killing of the just one and when we get there I’ll give you a couple of verses why it may well be Jesus himself that’s being described there. So I kind of think it’s really not necessarily addressing particular people within the series of churches that James is writing to.

But why so—why is it there? Well, he goes on to say, “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the day of the Lord.” And he just told the rich, “You’re storing up, you know, judgment for yourself ultimately. You’re in the last days. These are the days of slaughter.” Be a nice song, the days of slaughter. But that’s what he says here. These are the days of slaughter. And so you’ve made a horrific mistake.

He tells the wealthy who are singularly greedy. Greed is good. Who said that? A gecko said that—a reptile said that right in the movie *Wall Street*. Greed is good. And so these people are obviously very greedy. And as a result of their greed, the text has a lot to say about social oppression, stealing from people, you know, being abusive in terms of their work situation, actually killing them. And so the social consequences of greed are spelled out in the text for us.

And no doubt many remember who he’s writing to. He’s writing to persecuted Christians who had to leave Jerusalem right in the great diaspora. And so they were being chased out, you know, by various interests within Jerusalem including the Sadducees who—it can be said the Sadducees were actually responsible for a lot of blame for the crucifixion of Christ. The high priest was a Sadducee and Jesus was a threat to their luxurious business arrangements, blah blah.

So these people are being persecuted by rich people. Okay, the Sadducees are funding their persecution. And so he lays out to the Christians who are suffering persecution: Look, this is what’s going to happen to the rich. And he does it in a very dramatic way by addressing them in the first person, the rich. But I think one of the reasons this is in the text is this is a reminder to them: Look, I know your situation is dire.

Remember how James started? I picked it up in the season of Lent because he says, you know, don’t cut short trials. Trials are ultimately good for you. And so he’s telling them here, you’ve got this horrific trial. You’ve got these greedy people who in their greed are trying to gobble you up, gobble you whole, but guess what? Their riches are going to gobble them up. So it’s an encouragement to people who are the victims—we could say, the legitimate victims—of wealthy power manipulation, crony capitalism, whatever you want to call it.

And so I think that’s in the flow of the text, that’s why it’s here. Now, even though I think that’s the main reason, I still can make you feel a little guilty. I mean, I don’t want to take away from the main purpose of the text, which I think is to give you encouragement that if you have people working you in an ungodly way, you should be able to take real hope from this text, knowing that the judgments of God are right at hand.

Okay? He doesn’t always put it off. You know, David in Psalm 73, right? He says he sees the wealthy, he sees the wicked, and he almost perishes. He becomes envious of them, right? But then he goes to the temple and he sees that they’re what? He’s reminded—we don’t know how—he’s reminded of their end, that they’re being fattened for the slaughter. And so, you know, it’s an encouragement to those that are righteous and yet persecuted and poor.

It’s an encouragement to them to know that God’s judgments are in the earth, even though it doesn’t seem like it that these things are happening. So I think that’s the primary purpose of the text: to give you encouragement in whatever struggles you’re going through that can be related to this. But as I said in Psalm 73, David said he almost slipped and he almost did something bad because he was envious.

I think the second reason this is in the text is to show us how bad things get when you leave God out—and leaving God out now, not just of your plans, but what you do at the fruit of your labor, you know. So you want to have God in your plans at work. Last section of chapter 4. And you want to have God in your plans for what you do at the fruit of your labor. These are people that are marked by a complete isolation, no—a complete vacating of God from any consideration of what they’re going to do with their wealth.

And so I think that’s—now, the reason this is here is it picks up the same basic theme. And as a result of picking up that theme, it’s a cautionary tale to us as well. It reminds us of some things that are absolutely deadly that will bring horrific judgment upon us. And so God wants us, as we’re together in the temple and as we read this text, the Holy Spirit wants to minister to us a knowledge of what the end of such wickedness is—both to encourage us that we will be vindicated in time and space, but then also to warn us so that we don’t engage in likes sins.

So I hope that makes sense as to why it’s here and what we’ll be talking about. And so what I’m going to do is, you know, basically there’s an opening statement here. And as you just look at your text, if you have your Bible with you or your app, whatever it is, look at it. And it’s kind of obvious the way this is sketched out. But this is what we’re going to do.

So he begins by telling us the great dangers of wealth: “Come now you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you.” So that’s the opening statement. Bad times are coming. And then after that, he gives us four reasons why the bad times are coming. So the opening statement basically says, man, you better watch out if you’re not rich. Be careful about wanting riches because these are the dangers of riches. Okay? The danger of riches is that you could incur tremendous judgment that would cause you to howl and weep for the miseries that are coming upon you.

And then he gives us four kind of specifications, things that these wealthy—not all wealthy, but these wealthy—are guilty of. And here we can—I’ve got an acronym for you if you’re going to make your own outline. It’s GRIM. Things are grim for the rich. That’s the very first verse. And then the next four reasons really can be spelled out in the first letters of each sin, and they tie them together and it’s GRIM.

So what are they? Well to summarize before we look at the verses first there’s greed, and then secondly there’s robbery. You’re greedy. You’re hoarding things up. Secondly in that greed and in your desire for wealth, you’re robbing people and you’re robbing the very people that will cry out to me and I’m going to judge you because of it. So, R and G. And then third, he says you’re indulgent. You consume all this stuff. You eat very rich foods. You just take pleasure. That’s your end goal. Not relationship to me, but pleasure. So you’re indulgent. Indulgent. So you’re greedy. You rob people. You’re indulgent. And then finally, he says you murder people. So M. GRIM. So that’s what these verses are.

And as you look at your Bibles, you can sort of see this. Verse two: “Your riches are corrupted. Your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.” So you’ve hoarded treasure. That’s kind of what’s going on here. And you’ve hoarded stuff and it’s really silly that you do because everything perishes. It’s all perishable. So that’s the G. You’re greedy. You hoard up treasures. But you know what? It’s the last days of the old world and the new world is taking over the old world and people like you that live in the old world of fallen man are going to be destroyed.

Then secondly, he says: “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.” That’s verse four. And that’s the R part. You robbed people and the people you’ve robbed—there are specific commandments which we’ll look at in a couple of minutes—that says don’t rob these people specifically. Don’t do this. You’ve done it anyway. And they’ve cried out just like Deuteronomy says they would. And the Lord of Sabaoth is going to answer.

What’s Sabaoth? Sabaoth is a transliteration of an Old Testament word. It means hosts. The Lord of hosts. And it emphasizes the power and the omnipotence of God. The hosts are the angelic—the myriad numbers of angelic beings that do God’s bidding. That’s in its literal designation of a host. But a host can be a large army, for instance. And when the armies of Israel went out, the Lord of Sabaoth, the Lord of the angelic hosts, would go with them and they would be victorious. So it’s a marshal term. It’s a military term. The Lord of Sabaoth—they’ve cried out to him and the Lord of Sabaoth is sending forth judgment, angelic judgments, human judgments upon you because you’ve robbed people.

So that’s verse four. Verse five is the I: “You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury. You have fattened your hearts as in the day of slaughter.” So you’ve been indulgent. All you care about is yourself and your appetites, your desires. And because of that, you have—you’re now living in the day of slaughter. God’s minister tells you that you’re going to be slaughtered and in fact it’s already coming to pass.

Now, literally this would happen in AD 70. The rich Jews who had, you know, not responded in repentance to Christ and had persecuted the church, many of these Sadducees that I’ve been talking about—they were literally slaughtered according to Josephus. But it’s always true that when we reject God and just live for ourselves, and don’t give him praise and glory and see our wealth in relationship to him—when we leave God out of the goal of our work, what we do at the paycheck—we prepare ourselves for a day of slaughter. So that’s I—indulgent.

And then M: “You have condemned, you have murdered the just, he does not resist you.” So this is the M and that’s the end of the indictment against the rich. It culminates in murder. Now, as I said, I think that ultimately this is probably a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay.

So let’s go through these four elements. We’ve talked a little bit about the purpose of the text being where it is here. So its purpose is first of all encouragement to those suffering—that God is bringing judgment upon those that have persecuted you. The purpose is secondarily a cautionary tale to us—that we don’t fall into the temptations we have to be rich. You know, being rich in the way that’s described here, I don’t think it’s difficult—well, it’s hard to get rich, but to fall into an idolatry of material blessings, that’s not hard. You know, it’s like falling into the idolatry of sex, for instance, for young people, right? These are not hard idolatries to fall into.

It’s an odd thing to say, I suppose, but I see that because what God gives us—great food, beautiful clothes, gold and silver, things made out of gold and silver, beautiful glass, whatever it is—there’s a tremendous beauty to these things, right? And physical sexuality is a tremendously beautiful and rewarding thing. So, I mean, the amazing thing is not that people would be tempted into idolatry of these things. The amazing thing is the Spirit of God holds us back from idolatry.

The reason why I think they’re so appealing is because—the very reason why when we fall into idolatry—the very thing we’re forgetting is what also makes him so attractive and that is that they reflect God. And God is a beautiful God, you know, and he creates a world and he creates a world that has tremendous beauty in it. I mean, look around you today. Even in this place, you know, even in an architectural style that may or may not have been—I mean, it reflects a particular kind of beauty. But everything around us—I mean, the communion table, it’s just beautiful, isn’t it? The bread and wine, the simplicity, the profundity of it.

The world is filled with beauty. And it’s very difficult, I think, not to fall into the sin of saying, “Man, wine is a great thing. I really like it, and I’m going to start drinking too much of it.” You see, that’s easy to happen, right? And so the only cure to it is seeing what we’ve been talking about last week and this week—that what we have to do is not end up with the signposts instead of what they’re directing us to, which is God, right?

I mean, so you’re on your way to Las Vegas and you see a sign, “Las Vegas, this way,” and somehow it’s a God kind of sign—a sign where it sort of has some of Las Vegas in it, right? And it’s beautiful and you just forget to go to Las Vegas because the sign is so beautiful you stop with the sign, right? Well, that’s what all this is. It’s all reflections of the beauty, the glory, the majesty of the triune God.

And idolatry happens when we stop short, when we don’t make it to Las Vegas. When we’re content with the sign, and stop there. So a purpose of this text—the secondary purpose—is to warn us about this because it is something that’s quite easy to fall into with or without money, right? With or without money, you can fall into this kind of idolatry. Okay, so let’s go over the four elements a little bit slower.

And we’ll start with the G, which I’ve already kind of started to talk about: greed and gluttony focusing on wealth itself. Okay. So the first—the G—the greed is that the love of money—it’s dangerous. It can produce a grim reality for us because it puts us in a path of great judgment. And the reason for that judgment is that first of all it lures us. The great wealth can lure us to stop with the signpost and not move on to the thing that is behind the signpost, the reality of God himself.

So greed or idolatry here is how the Bible also talks about covetousness. This is related to the fact that we like the things that are provided to us and we really don’t relate them ultimately to God. So this is—you know, there’s a couple of different stories in the gospel that Jesus—well, there’s a lot of them—but a couple I wanted to mention today about wealth. And one of the stories that Jesus warns us about wealth is the man who gets great rewards for his work and he puts them in barns and he wants to build more barns and he stores them up right for the future.

And God says, “You’re a fool. Your life is going to be required of you tonight.” He doesn’t actually enjoy any of it. He just hoards it and saves it. Because why does he save it? Why does he do this? Because he doesn’t trust God. He doesn’t see that the pointers of his wealth point him to a God who is able to take care of him when his wealth cannot. So there is this idea that hoarding is a failure to relate our material possession to the source of those possessions, which is God himself.

Jesus tells us not to lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But what are we to do? We’re to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. Now, it’s interesting because in this verse that describes the greed aspect of the text, what he tells them is he says, “Your riches are corrupted.” Well, that’s general. It’s a generalized term for wealth.

But many commentators think this could be really an articulation of what Jesus had talked about in terms of food and clothing. And so corruption—this word rotting away—is a word that applies to food specifically. So instead of riches, this could be “your food is corrupted,” which happens, right? You store food and it gets corrupted. Your garments are moth eaten. This happens, too. So the idea is somebody who gets a lot of food—he’s not going to eat most of it. He just stores it up, but what good does it do them? Because the food rots. And you’ve got a closet, you know, lots of closets. House is filled with clothes. But what good does it do? Because you don’t ever wear them. And as a result, moths get up there and in your clothes and they become moth eaten.

And then he says, “Your gold and your silver are rusted.” The word is rusted. Now, did James understand that gold and silver didn’t rust? Yeah, of course he knew that. So what’s going on here? This is a startling statement, is it not? “Your gold and your silver have become rusted.” James, they can’t rust. Well, gold and silver—what are they here? You know, part of the reason why we get into trouble with material objects is we forget that while they’re very real, they’re also a pointer to something else, some aspect or attribute or character of God.

Right? They’re signposts. What are gold and silver signposts of? Well, they’re signposts of stability, security—secure wealth because they don’t rust. Nothing can happen to them. Even if they get in a fire, they get better, right? Worst kind of thing can happen to them. So gold and silver are pictures of the ultimate financial security, right? The best we can do to secure ourselves against whatever may happen in the future.

The best thing to hoard, to be greedy and gather together is gold because nothing can happen to gold. You could have people break in, but assuming you’ve got that taken care of. But what James tells them is he doesn’t say they stole your gold. He says the gold is rusted. What he’s saying is no matter what you might think of to store value in—leaving God out of the equation—God will destroy. God will destroy. Okay?

So it’s a startling statement and its purpose is to tell us that no matter what we’re greedy for, no matter how we plan for our security, if we plan to use the wealth that’s produced by our work apart from God, it’s completely unstable. It rusts even though it’s gold. And worse than that, not only does it rust, it says this rust will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. “You have reaped treasure in the last days.”

So we’re in the days of judgment. He says, and because of that, be very careful what you do with money. Obviously, what he’s telling us is, you know, just as I read from Matthew 6, you’ve put your treasure in the wrong place. You stopped at the signpost instead of looking at what the true treasure of God is. What is the treasure? Well, it’s the true treasure of God is God, right?

And Jesus tells us that over and over again that we’re to put our ultimate valuation on the person of God and specifically our relationship to who we are and to the kingdom. The kingdom and Jesus has a series of parables. “The kingdom of heaven is like a man that finds a great treasure in a field and he takes it and keeps it.” The greatest value is the kingdom of heaven. He says, “The kingdom of heaven is like finding a pearl of great price, right?” And so the kingdom is this ultimate value.

Now, the kingdom has a couple of things. A kingdom has a king and a kingdom has people, right? And what he’s telling us is, I think, that the ultimate value that we want to see everything pointing to, of course, is the person of Jesus himself. In Jesus, the texts of the New Testament tell us are hidden all the riches of wisdom, right? And who Jesus is and in what he does for us—there is no greater wealth than the person of Jesus.

And so when we take things that reflect the glory of God—gold, right—or the sustaining power of God, food, or the imputed righteousness of Jesus, clothes, right? We take any of those things and don’t see them as pointers to the ultimate value which is found in Jesus, we become idolaters. And this is why Colossians 3 says that covetousness is idolatry. It’s idolatry because you’re taking a thing that is a reflected image of Christ and of the triune God and you’re making that your ultimate value.

And when we do that, there’s a grim end coming for us who are greedy in that particular way. But there’s one other aspect of this and this is why I think the text goes on now to talk about social implications. I mean, I think that at first it looks like just idolatry, but you know, right away he starts talking about social implications. Why is that? Because God says that the treasure, the great treasure is the kingdom. He doesn’t say it’s just the king. It’s not just about you and Jesus. It’s about you and the kingdom.

Which means the great treasure you have includes relationship to other people. So the signposts that we see are reflectors of the person of God. But then he tells us immediately that what we’re supposed to do as we reflect on God is to reflect on the people of God. It’s the kingdom in which is the ultimate value and that means people—that means God’s image-bearers, right? God’s image-bearers in the context of our world are to be seen as the great value of the reflection of God.

So you know you’ve got God, image-bearing people, image-bearing world, and what we’re supposed to do is see the image-bearing world in relationship to the kingdom which is God and his people. And what idolatry does—what we’re to be warned against and we can do it whether we’re poor or rich ultimately—is seeing these things as having ultimate value. In other words, it’s like when Jesus says, you know, if I give you talents and you bury them in the ground and I come back and you say, “Well, here’s what I’ve got. I kept it safe for you.” He says, “No good. Not good. In fact, I’m going to assign you a place. There’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Because you know what we’re supposed to use our wealth for is relationship. It’s kingdom building activities. It’s improving the world in which the Lord God has placed us.

And that’s where he goes to next. So moving from the G—seeking ultimate value in the pointers of things instead of the ultimate value, God’s word, his covenant word—that’s the third thing a kingdom has is the law that establishes it and maintains it. And you know what is the word of God? “It’s more valuable than fine gold.” Yeah. “Than much fine gold. Sweeter also than the honeycomb.” So ultimately these things—the gold is great, but it points us to the word of God reflecting the image of God himself in the context of the kingdom with relationships.

So this is true wealth. The true wealth that God calls us to embrace rather than the signpost that we end up with in an idolatrous fashion. Okay.

The third element is he says the love of wealth tempts us to commodify and cheat other image-bearers. This is verse four: “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.”

So, you know, it’s a grim future if you’re greedy and see ultimate value in the things that reflect the ultimate value of the kingdom. And it’s a grim reality if you rob image-bearers. And this is an obvious implication of the kingdom, right? You can’t think of a more kingdom-denying activity than in order to get yourself more—greed, more money, more things to hoard and use for your own indulgent passions—you cheat people.

What you’re doing is, you know, to rob people of their wages is to see them as ultimate commodities, right? They talk about these days the commodification of people. So we see other people for the benefit—the cost-benefit analysis we do: “This guy’s goofy. This person’s good. This will be a better business contact for me.” And so without God at the center of our culture, when we leave God out, people are more and more seen just as furthering our desire for things, for wealth, and so we commodify them. All we think of them in terms of is there benefit to me, right? Is there benefit to me?

And ultimately that means, of course, that we’re going to start ripping them off. And he says, “This is what you’ve done.” And this is literally true. Leviticus 19:13 says, “You shall not cheat your neighbor or rob him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night until morning.” So what he’s saying there is not that we all have to be day laborers, but what he’s saying is there’s a contract that’s established.

Day laborers—it’s really important they get their money at the end of the day. But what he’s saying is be faithful in paying according to the contractual obligations you have with people that work for you. Okay? And this is what greed causes us not to do. That’s why that’s why it brings these tremendous judgments.

Deuteronomy 24:15 expands this a bit. He says, “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.” And of course, that’s exactly what James now tells them. Deuteronomy 24 is in play. And the people you have cheated have cried out to God as Deuteronomy 24 said they would. And as a result, you are cursed by God.

Jeremiah 22:13: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by injustice, who uses his neighbors service without wages and gives him nothing for his work.” I mean, the Bible has a lot to say about social injustice, about the way we treat laborers. And so, you know, we don’t want to glibly pass over references to social injustice these days or social justice.

The Bible, you know, don’t—just because some people get drunk, there’s no reason to necessarily stop drinking alcohol, right? And just because some people abuse social justice these days, we certainly do not want to get rid of the idea. The knowledge that Jesus is coming to bring is come to bring justice to victory. And part of that, a very significant part of that according to James and Jeremiah and a lot of other texts, is how we treat our people that work for us. How we treat them, the wages we give to them.

Malachi 3:5: “I will come near you in judgment. I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers.” So pretty bad group to be found in the context of. And then he says “against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans and against those who turn away an alien because they do not fear me,” says the Lord of hosts. So this is a major sin according to the scriptures—injustice to workers.

And so riches tempt us to commodify people and then to exploit people and actually in the case of James’s crowd that he’s talking to, actually rob—to rob them outright. So what has happened here is they haven’t used their wealth for charity and they haven’t used their wealth for justice. Okay, to pay a labor a decent wage or to pay him at all.

And so the two twin towers of what God is exhorting us all to—even while he’s telling us that this brings great judgment upon the wealthy and that’s a good thing—what he’s telling us to do is to be very careful to be charitable and to be just in our dealings and they weren’t that. Okay.

Next, the love of wealth can be addictive, tempting us to inordinate luxury and indulgence. “So, you have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury. You have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter.”

There’s kind of an ABAB structure to this. So he says, you know, you’ve hoarded up a bunch of stuff and you’ve ripped off your fellow man. Then he says, you’ve been inordinately luxurious and indulgent of yourself and then you’re actually kill the just man. So it’s a back and forth between what they’re doing in relationship to the stuff that God gives them apart from him and what they do then to their fellow man in relationship to that.

And the thing that links up their hoarding and their inordinate luxury are the judgment statements. “You’ve hoarded up treasure for yourself in the last days.” And here, “You’ve been inordinately luxurious enjoying your pleasure. You’ve fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter that’s coming upon you now.”

And if we—as I said—I think there’s lots to suggest that what’s being talked about here is the kind of luxurious lifestyle—the sort of attire and luxury that the Sadducees would characterize. Sadducees, and when Jesus tells the story for instance of Lazarus and Dives—the rich man dressed in fine purple and great garments and all this stuff and enjoying himself.

Most contemporaries—it seems scholars tell us—would have understood that Dives was a Sadducee, a rich Sadducee. So remember I’ve said that James’s epistle is a warning against zealotry and now it’s a warning against the kind of inordinate luxury that the Sadducees existed in the context of.

And then finally, love of wealth tempts us to slander and murder the just. “You have condemned. You have murdered the just. He doesn’t resist you.” And so this is a stunning statement. I mean, I don’t know many people that would do this, but this is how he concludes it. And I think it takes us at the conclusion here in a little different direction.

So, you know, there’s grim outcomes for those who are not rightly related to wealth, seeing God at the center of what we do. Why do you go to work? You go to work to accomplish things for the kingdom. That’s the great treasure. Part of that is getting a paycheck. And part of getting the paycheck is using your money for the kingdom and not getting hung up by the signpost, but rather going to where the signpost tells you to go in ultimate valuation.

And they’re grim times for those that don’t do that because, you know, greed, robbery, indulgence, and now murder are condemned by God. And these are things that tempt the wealthy particularly. So we understand all of that. But now he takes us I think in a little bit different direction which can change the application for us.

We can add one more reason or at least application in terms of what this text is. Now he refers to the just one. He doesn’t say you kill just people or the just ones. He—this is a singular term. You kill the just, right? Well, in Acts 3:14-15 we read: “You have denied the holy one and the just and asked for a murderer to be released to you.”

In Acts 7:52: “Which of the prophets does your fathers—did your fathers not persecute and they killed those who foretold the coming of the just one of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers?” It seems like here at the end, Jesus comes full center to the middle of this picture. The great horror of idolatry and covetousness as idolatry is that it leads us to kill the very holy one himself.

And indeed, as I’ve said, the Sadducees were the ones who were largely responsible for the execution of our Savior. They did that. And so this points us in a little different direction.

Now we can take all of this and this story and think about it a little broader in terms of the responsibilities of the Sadducees and the whole Jewish nation. They were the rich ones. How were they rich? Well, they had the treasures of the kingdom. They had the word of God. Tremendous treasure. They had an understanding of the world. Did they earn this understanding? No. Been graciously given to them by God. They were tremendously gifted.

And many of the parables that our Savior tells of the rich, he’s talking about the Jews. He’s not talking about rich and poor necessarily. A lot of them, he’s talking about the Jewish nation—the rich nation that had the presence of God with them, the scriptures of God, the oracles of God, the whole nine yards. What were they supposed to do with all that wealth? Well, the laborers who worked for them, the Gentiles they would hire, they were supposed to give it to them.

They were supposed to take the wealth of the kingdom, the great source of value reflecting God and his people, and they were supposed to minister that to the nations. What did they do? They hoarded it for themselves. They kept it to themselves. And to get more of that, they would not actually treat the Gentiles properly, right? They’d keep the Gentiles at arm’s length for no biblically given reason. They wouldn’t minister to them and they sort of actually shut them out, right? And they would rob from the Gentiles. They’d take their stuff, but they wouldn’t bring them into the kingdom. Okay?

And they were indulgent and fat and sassy living there with the wealth of God and the context of who they are. They had the physical wealth of the temple, for instance. Incredible. I told you a couple of weeks ago, I think that the lampstand was, you know, worth a million bucks today just in gold weight alone. They had tremendous wealth. And they didn’t use that wealth to minister it as kingdom wealth to the other nations. Okay?

And not only do they not do that, when Jesus comes to tell them that’s what you’re supposed to do and to bring judgment upon him for not—they kill him. They kill the witness of God, Jesus, who’s a reminder that, hey, I came to save the world, not for you guys to take my check that I gave you, cash it, and keep it all in your house. I called you to minister that to the world.

And now we can think of one last application for us because we’re like the Jews. We have the riches of the kingdom. We have an understanding of the world given to us based on the scriptures. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We’ve got the one whose precious blood brought us into this relationship with the King, right? Jesus is the great and precious thing at the center of all our lives or must be. We’ve been given tremendous wealth with a knowledge of the Savior and entrance into the kingdom.

What are we going to do with it? You know what we’ve tried to do with the community groups in the last year and a half? One thing is just get intentional about giving it away. It only lives if you give it away. Old Bruce Cockburn song. We’ve got the knowledge of the kingdom. Got the great grace of God. We’ve got the pearl of great price, right? Are we ministering it to other people or are we becoming like the rich merchants who just—this is a great thing, this is lovely here, but we don’t want to minister it to other people?

I think that by way of application of the text, the conclusion here is a reminder to us to minister these riches one to the other, to gift each other, but mostly to serve as an application to us in terms of evangelism. The broader issue going on that we can identify through the murder of the just one is a condemnation of the Jewish nation. And the condemnation of the Jewish nation is a condemnation based upon them hoarding the riches of the kingdom rather than ministering them to people that weren’t like them.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the tremendous blessing that you’ve given to us—the great, inestimable riches of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and life in the kingdom. Bless us, Father, as we attempt to minister those blessings to others. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.