The Test Of Riches

Let’s begin with our Scripture reading this morning. In the book of James, chapter 4, the word of the Lord says, beginning in verse 13:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

James 4:13–17

And then in James chapter 5, it continues into our text this morning in verses 1 through 6, where James continues to say:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 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. 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. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

James 5:1–6

This is the word of the Lord.

Would you pray with me and for me again as we continue to look at the word of the Lord? Father, we ask again that you would humble us. We ask that you would give grace and wisdom to us, for you promise to give wisdom to those who ask of it. You tell us that you love the humble and hate the proud. And so, Father, it is only by your grace through your Spirit that we can even come close to living a humble life. And we only do so imperfectly. But by the shed blood of Jesus, we know that our humility is seen as his humility. So we praise you for that.

Nevertheless, help us to live humble lives. Help us to approach this text, a difficult text, a text that is not on the top list of how to win friends and influence people, that is for sure. But we know, God, that this is your word, not my words. And so we must heed what it says. Help your Spirit to illuminate the areas of our lives that we are blind to, that we do not notice. And help us then, Lord, to use this text not just for ourselves and for our obedience, but as a motivation to spur us on to reach those around us in a dying and lost world. We’ll praise you for it. We pray these things in Christ’s name. Amen.

It was 1922, just four years after the end of World War I, which was a gruesome and brutal war that ended with the deaths of over 20 million people. This was the war to end all wars, but as we know, spoiler alert here, it wasn’t. There was a sequel, and it was a whole lot worse. This horrifying war ended with the Allies winning and defeating the Central Powers, which yet again—or once again, or began with, actually—was Germany. And after this war, they instituted strict reparations upon Germany as punishment. Because the thing about war is not only does it take a lot of lives, it costs a lot of money. It devastates economies, especially severe ones like this that take so many lives.

And so they instituted reparations upon Germany as punishment. And it worked okay for a while. However, by the end of 1922, Germany’s once thriving economy was suffering greatly, and they couldn’t pay these reparations anymore. So what did the Allies do? Well, they did something that wasn’t very wise, and it actually laid the foundations for what would become World War II. What did they do? Well, they sent their armies into Germany’s most productive industrial regions to shape things up, get the workers back in there, and make money like they should for them. Needless to say, this obviously didn’t go very well. The workers got upset. They didn’t like their money going off to other countries, and so they went on strike. And this happened to send the struggling German economy into a nosedive.

So what brilliant response did the German government come up with to this? They started printing money, a lot of it, to pay their workers and to pay for the reparations. Must be the only government in all of history that’s ever done this, right? And surprise, surprise, it didn’t work. The result was hyperinflation to the point that the German currency became absolutely worthless. So worthless, by the end of December of 1923, the exchange rate between the German currency and the U.S. dollar was, get this, 4.2 trillion to one. And just in case you’re like me and you’re super bad with numbers, that means if you were a German living at the time, your money now had a new purpose. It served as kindling for your fireplace. It was worthless.

Now, can you imagine this? Now, some of you are like, yeah, I can, that sounds great. There goes my debt. Perfect. But can you imagine being a wealthy German living at this time where pretty much overnight your money was just gone, evaporated, went up into thin air? All that hard work that you had put into earning it, into saving it, was vain. It was pointless. I’m sure you’d be frustrated. I’m sure you would be furious like these Germans were.

Now think about this. Let me ask you another question. If you were a German living at this time and somehow you knew for sure that within five years that that was going to happen, in fact, you knew five years from that date exactly what would happen with the currency, would you live your life any differently? Would you still save up all your money and try to be rich and save it all and put it in your bank, knowing that in five years you’d be burning it in your fires? Would you do that? Of course not, preacher. That’d be stupid. Why would I spend those five years building up my bank account when I know for certain it’s going to be wiped out? All right, well, good point. I’m glad you’re thinking logically about this. So what would you do instead? Well, I’d invest it in gold because gold always has value. Yeah, it goes up and down, but you never burn gold. You try to burn that in a fireplace, that doesn’t work. Okay, that’s wise. Gold seems like a good, valuable alternative.

But now, let me ask you another question: What if it was 10 years? Would you invest in gold? Or would you still spend all your time and your efforts accumulating a currency that was about to burn up? Well, maybe you would do gold. But think about this: Have you ever gone into like a pizza place, say Rafferty’s, and tried to pay for pizza with gold nuggets? It’s not a very readily exchangeable currency, is it not? It’s not. It has value, but you can’t just access it immediately. So, would you still do it? Would you invest in that gold knowing it would affect your life and the way you could live now, but because of that, you would have riches in the long term?

What if it was 20 years? What if it was 30 years? Would you invest your life’s work in a currency that was going to burn up, or would you put it into a currency that you know would last forever? One more question: What if it was a lifetime? And at the end of that life, whatever earthly currency you saved up would burn up, leaving you broke and destitute forever. Would it be worth it then? Or would you rather invest in a currency that never rots, that never corrodes, that never rusts, or never fades away? In Matthew chapter 6, here’s what Jesus says you should do. In verses 19 through 21, he says:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19–21

And so, this is the thinking behind James chapter 5. Remember, James is the half-brother of Jesus. He thinks very much the same way Jesus did. He was around Jesus. And so he’s pulling from Jesus’ teachings quite regularly throughout his letter here. And so in our passage this morning, James warns us of how foolish it is to spend your life accumulating a currency that is going to be valueless in just a short period of time. Here’s what James says:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your garments are moth-eaten. 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. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

James 5:1–5

It’s probably one of the most severest in-your-face passages in all of the Bible. It’s up there with the Old Testament prophets. And actually, what James is saying here echoes the Old Testament prophets and the tone they had. And so in our text this morning, James continues his thought from chapter 4, which we read in the Scripture reading, which is all about money.

Church, does God care how we use our money? Better believe he does. In fact, how we use our money, James tells us, is an indicator of the type of faith we have. It tells us whether or not we are a child of God. Serious stuff. In fact, it’s an indicator of whether or not our eternal destiny is heaven or hell. Okay, wait a minute, preacher. You’re getting a little bit legalistic here on me. Better put that law down and get back on that grace train, right? Well, we are on the grace train this morning, but our conductor is the Apostle James. And remember what James said a few chapters back about faith. Faith without works is what? Dead, worthless, not on life support, not kind of kicking around, not going around in a wheelchair. No, faith without works is completely dead and useless. It will not save.

As Christians, we are completely and entirely justified before God by his grace through faith in the shed blood of Jesus. We know this, okay? And so, when God looks at the children of faith, those who trust in Jesus by faith, he no longer sees the life of sin that they lived. Whose life does he see? Christ’s life, Christ’s perfect life, who lived the perfect life we never could and who died the death that we deserved. And all of this is by grace, it comes freely to us as a gift. We can’t earn it. And the moment we confess our sins and turn to Christ as our Savior, we are completely and entirely 100 percent forgiven. And our eternal destiny is guaranteed. And we know this.

And while we know this, we must not forget that James knows this as well. He’s well aware of salvation by grace through faith alone, not of works, so that no one will boast. But at the same time, James also knows that we are saved not by a faith that remains alone. See, faith is not of works, but faith always produces works. We are saved by faith alone, but never by a faith that remains alone. This faith spurs us on to good works. It makes us do good works. Just like if you plant a seed, give it sunlight, and water it, what’s it going to do? It’s going to grow. And so, realizing this, James writes to us so that we might know whether or not we have real saving faith or counterfeit unsaving faith. From chapter 2, beginning in verse 18, James writes, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Great, show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one. Okay, you do well. But even the demons believe, and they tremble, they shudder.”

And so, this morning we continue our Real Faith series through the book of James by turning to the next test: the test of riches. For how we use our money is an indicator of whether or not we are a child of God or a child of the devil. It’s an indicator of whether or not our eternal destiny is heaven or hell.

Now, when we open up the Bible, it doesn’t come to us like an Ikea instruction manual set, all right? It’s not written to people of all places and all times in a direct specific sense, right? It is applicable to all people at all times, but we have to remember that with the books of the Bible, they were written for a purpose. They were written to real people in a real place and time by a real person to address real issues. So, who is James addressing here? Well, he’s addressing the church in Jerusalem. And beginning in chapter 5 of verse 1, if you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn there this morning. Look at how James writes to this church. I’ll give you a moment to turn in your Bibles there. James chapter 5, beginning in verse 1:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

James 5:1

Anybody ever get a Christmas card that started that way? Needless to say, you know you’re on Santa’s bad list that year, right? This is some pretty direct in-your-face language. Why is James writing this way? Well, without a doubt, he’s writing this way because he’s trying to get their attention. And whose attention is James trying to get? Is he speaking to true, real-faith Christians or someone else? There’s no doubt, the commentators are pretty much unanimous on this one. James isn’t addressing true Christians directly with this language in this passage. He can’t be. It would make no sense.

Which means that James, and don’t miss this point because this is huge, it means that James is writing to Christians about the non-Christian rich people. He’s writing to Christians about the ungodly rich. Okay, well, why is James doing that? Why doesn’t he just go talk to the ungodly rich? Is he like the old grumpy grandpa guy who’s sitting there yelling at his grandkids about how terrible their generation is and how bad they’ve made the world? Your generation’s the worst. Yes, grandpa, we know you’re the best generation. No, that’s not what James is doing. James is writing to Christians to address the ungodly rich, and he’s doing this for three reasons. He’s doing this so that the Christians don’t envy the rich. He’s doing this so that the Christians have hope. And he’s doing it so the Christians are careful.

First off, don’t envy. Why? James is reminding the poor, suffering Christians that they shouldn’t envy the rich because, in fact, these rich are about to be as poor as possible. Their currency is about to be worthless in about five minutes when Jesus comes back. But they who are poor, who have invested not in worldly things, but in the eternal riches of God, in the gold, the eternal gold that lasts forever, even though their currency isn’t usable right now, it’s going to be very shortly from now.

He also tells them to have hope. He tells them, these Christians, to have hope in the absolute sovereign God of the universe, who at the end of time is going to avenge all of the wrongs that they have suffered at the hands of the rich. Remember, just a few passages, a few chapters ago, James talked about what the rich were doing to them. They were dragging them into courts. They were abusing them. And so James tells them to have hope because they will not have the last word.

He also, third, tells them to be careful. James reminds the church of the deadly danger of the love of riches. So while he is writing to the ungodly rich, make no mistake, there is massive implications for us as a church in this passage, is there not? Lots. And plus, think about this. In every single church, when they meet locally on a Sunday, is that always going to be made up of real faith believers? No. We know this. Many of us grew up in churches and didn’t realize until many years later that I never had it. I never was understanding the gospel. It wasn’t until now the light bulb went off and I get it and now I truly am born again.

And so with this in mind, with this purpose in mind, let’s turn to our text this morning where we are going to see how real faith passes the test of riches. Real faith passes the test of riches because of four things. It doesn’t hoard, it doesn’t steal, it doesn’t indulge, and it doesn’t murder. In verse 1:

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

James 5:1–3

You know, when I was done prepping for this sermon, there’s so much in this text. I probably had about six sermons’ worth of stuff that we just can’t cram in here. There’s a lot going on in this text. So we’re going to try to get the big ideas from this. But James’ first critique of the ungodly rich is what? They’re hoarders. They’re like the klepto who’s just grabbing everything, pulling it close and holding on to it. You know, I might need that newspaper. I know it’s from five years ago, but there might be something in there I want to keep, and they got stacks of it in their house. It’s pointless.

Well, what’s wrong with hoarding? Several things. For one, hoarding is wasteful. It’s mismanagement. It’s idolatry. And it’s faithless. Has anybody here ever bought more fruit than you needed before? And before you had time to use it, it went bad? Maybe I should have asked it this way: Have you ever actually used up all the fruit in your fridge before it went bad? Two people. You should wear capes. That’s remarkable. Isn’t it hard to strike that balance between running out of fruit after a day and throwing half of it out because you thought you needed more? Especially if you have young kids. You’ll understand this. They’re very fickle. One day they’ll love strawberries and blueberries. The next day they’re like rotten broccoli to them.

And if you don’t think this is hard, you’ve never bought avocados before. Because if you have, you realize that these things have about a 45-minute edible window where they go from rock hard to mush, right? And so you better buy like two of those and just roll the dice and hope they turn out. Now, with this thinking in mind, what would you say to a person who bought an entire refrigerator full of avocados for a family of three? And they plan to keep them in the fridge? You’d say that’s pretty foolish. Why? Because it’s quite wasteful. There’s no way you’re going to be able to use all that up before it goes bad.

That’s exactly what James is telling us here. He’s telling us that those who hoard their wealth are wasting it because eventually that wealth is going to become rotten. They’re not going to be able to use it. It’s going to go bad. It’s going to start stinking. It’s going to become corroded. It will rot away just like too many avocados in your fridge. And so instead of hoarding your wealth, James says, use it up. Use it. Don’t hold on to it. And use it for God’s glory and our good. How? How do we do that? Well, there’s several ways that actually the Bible commands us to use our wealth. Do you realize that? There’s commands in the Bible for how we are to use our wealth.

For one, we are commanded to take care of our families, to take care of ourselves so that we’re not a burden to others, and then to take care of our families. And in fact, in 1 Timothy 5:8, Paul says that if you don’t take care of your family, you’re worse than an unbeliever. You’ve denied the faith, he says. Secondly, we are to use our money to help fulfill the Great Commission by going and making disciples of all nations. There’s a whole bunch of ways we do this, right? One of those is our church. One of those is missionaries. We support missionaries who go around the world, who go places that we can’t. And so we use our money to support those various ministries.

There’s other ways that we can do this. You can use your money to take care of the needy, to care for those who look for opportunities in your community to help the poor, the downtrodden. Somebody who has a bill that they can’t cover. You come along as a Christian by grace and extend the grace you’ve been given to them. You say, I got your bill. And that actually opens up all kinds of windows for sharing the gospel, does it not? Not only that, by giving to those who do not have, we greatly please God. Proverbs 19:17 says, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord,” and who? To the Lord. You’re lending to the Lord, “and he will repay him for his deed.”

We can use our money for the gospel by supporting different ministries in our church, but also by caring for the poor. It’s a great way to do it. And it pleases God greatly. And in fact, we don’t have time to look at many of the smaller prophets in the Old Testament, but one of the big criticisms God has for Israel in those small prophetic books is they neglected the poor. In fact, he says, you know, I don’t want your offerings anymore. I don’t want your sacrifices. They reek. You have offended me. You have trodden on the poor. You have not taken care of them. You have abused them. And so it’s very serious stuff.

Another thing we can use our money for in spreading the gospel is by supporting those who minister the gospel. We just talked about missionaries. That’s one example. Another way, in fact, this is a biblical command, it comes to those elders in the church, your pastors. 1 Timothy 5:17–18 says, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.” Why? Verse 18: “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’” In the Bible, elders, pastors, bishops, presbyters, it’s all the same office for pastor. That’s what that is. It’s emphasizing different aspects of the pastoral office. And so this is a command. And you, as a church, do that.

Not only is hoarding our money wasteful, but it’s also mismanagement. Why is it mismanagement? I mean, it’s my money, you know. I go to my bank account, it’s got my name on it. How is that mismanagement? Well, Psalm 24:1 has something to say about that. “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” All of that’s the Lord’s. Your money might be in your bank account with your name on it, but it’s not yours. It’s God’s. And he has delegated it to you to use it. And so we’re not supposed to be like the unfaithful servant who took his talent, took his money from his master and buried it in the ground. No, we’re supposed to go out and use it to produce eternal riches, for that will last for eternity. And so we must use God’s possessions rightly and not mismanage them, for he has loaned them to us. And if we do mismanage his resources, there’s another name for that. It’s called sin, and it very much displeases God.

Not only is hoarding wasteful and mismanagement, but hoarding is idolatry. Now, pause for a second. Maybe you’re thinking, Pastor, this is great and all, you know, and I know some people this applies to, but I’m not rich. I’m really not. I can show you my bank. I’ve got some credit card debt. I’m not rich, so I guess I’ll see you next week. Okay, are you sure? Are you sure you’re not rich? Let me ask you: do you have any discretionary spending? What that means? Discretionary spending? Like anything that’s not vital for keeping yourself alive, for keeping yourself warm and your children and family warm. Do you have any of that? Well, I think we have to say we do. You have a Netflix account, you do. If you have internet at home, you do. And so, as Americans, we have to recognize we’re not the poor. We’re the rich.

You see, in biblical culture, they didn’t have this thing called the middle class. There was the poor, and there were various degrees of the poor, and there was the rich. Okay? And we, looking on this passage with our 20/20 spectacles—that works two ways—with our 2020 spectacles from our current time and day, we have to remember that. The answer is clearly yes, for we are the rich. We have to understand this in order to understand that this applies to us. Unlike many of the poor in James’s day, our problem today isn’t finding our next meal, right? The poor had that problem. They struggled to know where their next meal comes. But for us, we don’t struggle with that. In fact, our struggle is finding ways to get motivation to skip the next meal.

We’re not poor. We are rich. The truth is, if you have any discretionary spending, that means you have choices to make how you use that money. Will you use it for yourself? Will you use it to live in luxury, as we’re going to get to in a moment? Will you hoard it? What are you going to do with it? And so, for us rich people, how does hoarding show our idolatry? As Jesus says, and we read earlier, “Where your treasure is, there your heart lies also.” And now, this is a very scary thing because what this means is that you can pull up your bank statement, your credit card history, and God can look at that and he can determine where your heart is. This is serious stuff.

What you live for, things, money, you name it, if that’s the true source of meaning in your life, the Bible tells us that’s your God. And so, a hoarding heart is an idolatrous heart, for it finds its true satisfaction not in God, but in the things of this world. Not in the Creator, but his creation. And that is sin, that is idolatry. The Lord your God is one. You shall have no other gods before you. In 1 Timothy 6:17, it says, “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” what? “On God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” Money’s not bad, riches aren’t bad, things aren’t bad, but loving those things more than God is bad.

Fourthly, hoarding is faithless. When the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, do you remember what they ate? What did they eat in the wilderness? Manna. What was manna? Well, manna was bread from heaven. And think about this. This was food sent by God that showed up every morning on the ground. And all they had to do was walk out and pick it up and eat it. But what did God tell them not to do? Don’t hoard it. And in fact, if they did hoard it, it spoiled. It went bad. What a powerful picture there of what our riches will one day do. If we hoard it, they’re going to go bad. And so God commanded us not to do that. Why? Why did God command them not to do that? The Israelites not to hoard the manna? He was teaching them to trust and rely on him and not to be faithless hoarders.

Help me out here now. How does the Lord’s Prayer go? Does it go like this? Come, give us this day our yearly bread. Is that right? Is it, give us this day our weekly bread? No. It’s give us this day our daily bread. Does this mean that Dave Ramsey’s got bad ideas? We shouldn’t listen to him. No. This is not to say that Christians shouldn’t have pension plans. This is not to say that Christians shouldn’t save for the future. For as we just discussed, to some degree we have to. We have to be able to take care of ourselves and our immediate family, because if we don’t, we’re worse than an unbeliever, Paul tells us in 1 Timothy. And also, we need to be wise stewards of what God has given us so that we can support the ministries of our local area, of our church. The point is not to hoard, for hoarding is wasteful, it’s mismanagement, hoarding is idolatry, and hoarding is faithless.

And for those godless hoarders, James offers a severe warning. In verse 3, he describes how not only will their riches and garments waste away, but their corrosion will speak out against them on the day of judgment and will consume them like fire. Their riches are going to talk. Imagine that? He’s personifying their riches. He’s saying these things are going to start having mouths and start talking, and they’re going to demonstrate your life and how you lived it. Yes, we are saved by grace through faith. Period, full stop. But the way we use our riches speaks out against us, revealing the kind of faith that we have within us. And it’s going to do that on the day of judgment.

And for these godless rich, their stored-up riches that were not used how they ought to have been will forever consume their flesh like fire, which is a picture of hell itself. Think about rust. Rust is a slow thing that moves through metal slowly, right? And that’s what it’s saying the riches do. But on the day of judgment, that rust is going to morph into what? What’s the text say? Fire. Is fire a slow-consuming thing? It’s fast, burns things up quickly. And on the day of judgment, we know we are going to be given, as believers, new bodies to experience the riches of God forever. And unbelievers are going to be given new bodies to experience the riches they laid up forever. And those riches will consume them for all of eternity like fire.

Ironically, the treasure here that was stored up wrongly rots away and stores up everlasting damning treasure of judgment for the ungodly rich for all of eternity. And so James warns us against hoarding our money because hell is for hoarders. Ever thought about that before? Hell is for hoarders. It’s for people who did not love God and lived for eternal riches and who said, you know what, I’m going to live for this world. This is the world I want. And so hell is for hoarders. Real faith does not hoard.

But secondly, real faith does not steal. “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.” In James’s day, the way this would often work is that the rich would hire laborers to come and work their fields for a long day. At the end of the day, they’d pay them. But the ungodly rich, you know what they’d do? They’d forget about it. They wouldn’t pay them. Or they’d say, you know, I’ll pay you next week. And then sometimes maybe they would, and sometimes they never would. But these laborers needed that payment. They were poor. They were depending on that payment to go home and feed their families. And so often when that wouldn’t happen, when the ungodly rich wouldn’t pay the laborers, their family would go hungry. It’s not a fun thing to go hungry. And sometimes, as James gets to here on our fourth point, the result would be death. Those who could not feed themselves, because they invested in laboring for this ungodly rich person and they were never paid.

We don’t have time to look at all the verses this morning, but let’s look at what Deuteronomy 24:14–15 says about what God thinks about this kind of behavior. He says in verse 14, “You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in your land.” That’s a foreigner. “You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for he is poor and counts on it, lest he cry against you to the Lord, and you be guilty of sin.” Not only does God hate this kind of oppression, but what does it say? He hears it. He hears the cries that come out. And there’s many verses that we could look at that we don’t have time to this morning, but he hears the cries of the poor. And then one day he will respond to all injustice with the full force of his divine judgment upon these ungodly rich who abuse the poor.

But, Pastor, I don’t do this, I don’t ever abuse any laborers. Are you sure? What about benefiting from those who do? Potentially spending money on companies that run sweatshops. Does that count? Does profiting off of that for ourselves count? Yikes, right? What about internet piracy? Downloading a song you didn’t pay for. I know it sounds so silly, but is that robbing a laborer of their wages? How about this one? Anyone here ever hired a contractor before who finished the job, but you found an excuse not to pay him or to delay your payment to him? You promised you’d pay him upon the completion of the job, but, well, you know what? Things got a little tight, and you told him it’s going to be a month before I can do it. What does God say about that?

How about hospital bills? Running up a whole bunch of hospital bills that you know you can’t pay. How many pastors have heard from people in their communities about their church members who ripped them off, who refused to pay them what was owed to them? What does that do to that church’s gospel light in that community? Covers it, hides it, puts a stain upon that church. And the wages cry out, and God surely has promised to answer. There’s so much more we could say here on this, but we got to move on.

Real faith doesn’t hoard. Real faith doesn’t steal, and third, it doesn’t indulge. Anybody heard the expression, “Money is the root of all evil”? Anybody ever found that verse in the Bible? Not in there, is it? That’s right. 1 Timothy 6:10 says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Very different. God doesn’t condemn money. He doesn’t condemn riches. Okay, if he did that, explain to me what he did with Job. He gave him the riches and then allowed Satan to come in and devastate his life and take him. And then did he leave him that way because riches were bad? No. He made him even more rich at the end of his life than he was at the start of it. How about Abraham, the father of the faithful? Was he poor or was he rich? He was rich.

It isn’t money that God condemns. It is the godless and idolatrous misuse of money that God condemns, which is why the Bible is chock full of warnings against the love of money. Psalm 62:10, for example. It says, “If riches increase, set not your heart on them.” Why? It’s idolatry. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and so we must be ever so careful. And Luke 12:15 tells us just that. “And he said to them, ‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness.’” Hey, there’s one of the Ten Commandments. “‘For one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’” The purpose of your life, the purpose of my life, is not self-indulging, luxurious pleasure.

That’s what it means to indulge. It means to live in luxury. It means to do so at the expense of using your money for those around you and for the glory of God and for the kingdom of God. And that’s pointless, James tells us. For that currency is rotting up, it’s passing away. So why not invest in a currency that’s going to last forever, an everlasting currency? If the goal of your life is to live a pampered life, to accumulate wealth without much care for eternity, James says to you, watch out. And we talked about this two weeks ago. We don’t have time to look at it, but you remember what Jesus said to the man who got his money and said, I’m going to tear down my barns and build bigger ones? What did he say? What did God say to that person? “You fool, for on this night your soul will be required of you.” Was it wrong for that man to be rich? No, not at all. It was wrong for him to say, you know what, I’m going to hoard it all. I’m going to tear down my barns, which I can’t eat through all that, but I want bigger barns. That gives me comfort. That’s idolatry. And so James says, if that’s you, watch out.

In 1 Timothy 5:6, it says, “But she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.” That’s a hard text. That’s an in-your-face passage, is it not? Every year, turkeys around the country become extremely self-indulgent and live a very luxurious life. And this happens around early November. And if you walk by a turkey farm and you look in the fence, you’re going to see a whole bunch of really fat, happy, jolly turkeys, right? They’re going to be gorging themselves without a care in the world, feeding upon what the farmer has given them freely, as much as they can. But if you come back in early December, they’re all gone. Why? Because of this little old American holiday called Thanksgiving Day. And what happens to those turkeys? The butcher comes. They are fattened for the slaughter.

And this is the idea that James is pointing us to when he says in verse 5, “You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter.” Make no mistake, there is a coming day of judgment. Revelation makes this absolutely clear. And we looked at this several months ago, where Christ will come back, and the godless who have lived in luxury will realize that all they’ve done with their corroding, fading away riches is used it to fatten themselves for the day of slaughter. And so James tells us just a few verses later, which we’ll see next week and look at more closely: “Behold, the judge is standing at the door.” What did James say a few verses earlier? He called it what? The last days. We live in the last days, church. The last days is the period between Christ’s death and resurrection and his coming, which is five minutes from now, Lord willing.

And in that period of time, James is saying, You’ve done this in the last days. Christ has already appeared. Messiah has come, and yet you still do this? You know he’s coming back, right? Are you ready for that? We live in the last days, and when Christ returns, the godless rich will face God’s full wrath and fury for the corroded treasure that they have laid up. In 2 Corinthians 5:9–10, it says, “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.” Why? Look at verse 10: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.”

Riches are fading. Grain will rot. Garments will become moth-eaten. I have a pair of pants that I absolutely love, and it’s getting a hole in it, and it makes me sad. But that’s where everything is going. And so all of these things are fading away, and we know this. It’s not going to last. The currency of this world will not last. And so, for those of us with real faith, we realize this, and instead we invest in a better currency that we know is going to last forever. We put our money in the gold. We say, forget this German currency, forget this American currency. I’m putting my riches in heaven’s riches, and that’s what I’m storing up.

Real faith doesn’t hoard, real faith doesn’t steal, real faith doesn’t indulge, and lastly, real faith does not murder. When James says that the rich have killed the righteous man, what’s he talking about? Is this literal or metaphor? Well, maybe both. Perhaps James is referring to the outcome of the rich’s failure to pay these poor laborers their wages, which resulted in them not being able to buy food for their family and maybe led to a death. Or maybe James is referring to what he mentioned back in chapter 2 of how the ungodly rich would drag Christians into court to be murdered unjustly. We just talked about that. And we know that happened. The New Testament’s full of examples of that. We think of the early Christians who were fed alive to lions, who were used as human tiki torches. We think of Stephen who was stoned to death because of his real faith. In fact, James, the half-brother of Jesus here, he was condemned and murdered for his faith not many years after he wrote this letter.

Now, why were they considered righteous in God’s eyes? Because of that? Because of their martyrdom? Because of the way they used their riches? Did that make them righteous? No. Absolutely not. But it demonstrated their righteousness. The reason these unrighteous sinners became righteous in God’s eyes was because, and this verse alludes to it, doesn’t it? Because the one and only righteous man was condemned and murdered for them. “You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.” Jesus is that righteous man. He’s the ultimate righteous man who was condemned and murdered and who did not resist, though he could have. He had all the power. He was the sovereign, almighty God of the universe. Yet, as Isaiah tells us, he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, he did not open his mouth.

Christ was born to die so that us unrighteous people might become the righteous. And his death was a death upon a cross where his blood was poured out for our sin so that by grace through faith in him, we might become the righteous too. He did not resist, even though he could have. And he did this out of his great love for us. Church, do you see why we don’t cling to our riches? Not to make us moral, not to make God accept us. We do it because God has already accepted us because of Christ. We do not cling to the riches of this world because we have a better treasure, for Christ is our treasure.

Is Christ your treasure? That’s the question here for us this morning. Because if Christ is your treasure, the way you handle these other vastly inferior treasures will be reflected by that. So is he your treasure? Is it evidenced in your life by a changed heart that does not love the things of this world, but sees them as a fading currency to be traded for an eternal currency? I trust and pray that it is.

Father, you don’t tell us how many shoes to buy or how many cars are too many. You don’t even tell us how much of our money that we need to give away. And so we ask you to give us the wisdom to know how to use everything we have, which we recognize is completely yours. It’s been loaned to us to use for your glory. So, Father, we ask that we would enjoy these things that you gave us rightly without sin, without them becoming idols of the heart. And so, Lord, help us to look at the riches of this world as a fading currency that is about to pass away. Help us not to store them up, but help us to use the short time, this vapor, as we talked about two weeks ago that James pointed us to, this short time to store up treasures in heaven.

Help us to be generous givers. Help us to love the poor. Help us to support our local ministries, to love the lost, and not look around and expect everybody else in the church to do it. Think, I don’t have to do this. God doesn’t care what I do with my checkbook, because there’s others who have it. Father, we miss it if that’s the way we think. We miss out on the joy of living for Christ, the ultimate treasure, who laid down his treasures for us so that we might be treasured by God for all eternity. So we ask, Lord, that through your Spirit you would help us to do this. And we thank you for Jesus, who became poor for us when we were so lost, so that we might become rich, eternally rich. We thank you for your grace that you pour out upon us, which you give out unmeasured, grace unmeasured. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.