Books of James & Jude - Condemnation of materialism - James 5:1-6
James 5:1-6 · JD McCulley · Sep 1, 2013
James & Jude, No. 34
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492640123131

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Alright, so we're starting chapter five. And five begins with some condemnation. James had yet another area that he believed the Jewish believers needed some exhortation in. And this is titled Condemnation of Materialism, and we're going to cover six verses today. So we're not going to get real deep into the words in the same way that we might have in other classes just because of the length of verses that we need to cover, providing a little bit more of a commentary perspective of what's going on. But we will attack some of the more challenging words and make sure that we have some clarity on that. I'll go ahead and read the first six verses here.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. It is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure. Behold, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields and which has been withheld by you cries out against you, and the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and put to death the righteous man. He does not resist you. So quite a bit going on here. A lot of Old Testament imagery that we need to sift through, get some clarity on.

I wanted to just provide a little bit of an outline of these first six verses and give us a little bit of a structure in terms of how we're going to deal with them. This comes from the same outline that I've used as we've gone through studies that I've led. But we're calling this the Condemnation of Materialism, and it's going to cover the first six verses of this chapter. The first verse, we talk about the coming judgment. So we're looking at the first six verses of chapter five, and we're titling it Condemnation of Materialism. So the first verse, we're going to talk about the coming judgment.

The second through the sixth verse covers a section called the existing crimes that were present in the Jewish believers' lives. And so we'll talk about whether that was the Jewish believers or whether it was the Jews themselves, but we'll look at that, the existing crimes that James talks about.

And then verses two through three, the wealth was not put to profitable use. Verse four, it is obtained dishonestly. Verse five, it is used for self-indulgence. And verse six, it is obtained ruthlessly. So that's how we're gonna structure the title of the slides moving forward and just break down these six verses. So it starts off with you rich. And so the question is, who is you rich?

We've seen Paul and James and others refer to you and that you could be a different audience that he's focusing on at any given point in time. It's the context that really determines the you that he's talking to. Is this the you brethren? Or is this you, as in Jewish believers, who are guilty of such? And so the context really has to determine that. In studying Ephesians, especially in chapter 1, you can get real wrapped up on who the you, the we's, and they's are if you're really looking at things from a very flat perspective. But if you take the context, you can see that Paul talks about several different groups, and it's the context that determines that. What I've done is I've chosen the perspective that the rich here is unbelievers for two reasons.

First of all, they are not numbered among the righteous in verse 6. So if you read verse 6, what does it say? Someone got verse 6. God condemned and put to death the righteous man. That's right. So they're guilty of having done something to the righteous man. And so the context would potentially suggest that this is a different you that he's talking to. And then second of all, the address to the brethren resumes in verse 7. So read verse 7, Al, if you don't mind. Oh, that's OK. Anyone that has it up on the... Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandmen waited for the precious fruit of the earth and hath long patience for it until he receive the early and latter rain.

So what we've got here is we've got a switch in terms of audience. And it makes sense contextually based on verses 6 and verses 7. In addition to that, the Old Testament imagery that James is pulling on is very clear in terms of who that focus is in the Old Testament and the prophets. It's focused on the wicked and the rich, and those are synonymous in a lot of ways. And I mention that in the next bullet point here on this first slide. However, the lessons concerning material wealth are for all, the picture in chapter 5, 1-6 is of a money mad world, and this is a Jewish tradition tended to associate the rich with the wicked. And so we're guilty, I should say guilty, we are also dealing with the same type of world that these Jewish believers were dealing with. Money madness has not changed whatsoever. And so the application of what's being said here by James is still appropriate. However, I think the context focuses it on a specific issue. Go ahead. Well, there's a little bit of a dichotomy on that.

You say a Jewish tradition tended to associate the rich with the wicked. And yet when the disciples were told about the difficulty of the rich entering heaven, they said, well, if the rich can't, who can? And richness was associated with God's blessing. So I don't mean to be argumentative, but I think there was a dichotomy that the rich as behaving in verses one through six here, yes, they were the wicked rich, but I think In normal life, if a person was working and gained wealth, it was taken as a sign of God's blessing.

Let's look at Proverbs 10, 15-16. And someone else grabbed 1420. We'll just kind of get a clear picture on some of the Old Testament imagery. I just happened to hit 1022 in Proverbs as I was looking at what you asked for, and 1022 caught my eye. The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and he adds no sorrow with it. So we always have to ask, what is a blessing of riches? Is it material wealth? However, let's go back to Proverbs 10, 15 through 16. The rich man's wealth is his strong city. The destruction of the poor is their poverty. The labor of the righteous leads to life. The wages of the wicked to sin.

Sorry, I've got a glitch going on. It's trying to connect back to a server that I have connected at work and it can't find it. It stops my PowerPoint every time. I apologize. We might be dealing with back and forth on the screen today. Okay, and then Proverbs 14 20.

The poor is hated even of his own neighbor, but the rich have many friends. So there is a clear distinction between blessing associated with the poor and even the earthly advantages of being rich, but also not the favor of the Lord for that. So God doesn't look at the material wealth of a man and provide blessing or favor based on the amount of money in their account, right? It's very clear that the world does view it that way. And so we've got a human viewpoint of wealth, and then we've got a divine viewpoint of wealth.

And when we're talking about blessing in the Old Testament, that's not something that we can translate to the New Testament, right? So whether God blessed the Israel nation with certain land-based... Blessing in the Old Testament is always in the land. It's always based on land-based blessing. It's an earthly blessing, and it's all it's good for. And it's purposeful, because the Lord set it up that way.

But we can't translate blessing and riches from the perspective of the way the Lord provided to Israel based on their trust of Him, and just take that full, whole stock, lock, and barrel and apply it to ourselves. Because blessing in the New Testament, in terms of wealth and so forth, we don't see it as being an earthly thing. Ephesians 1 talks about the heavenly blessing that we have. And so that's the location of our blessings. And so the richness that we have is in Christ. It's not a wealth-based blessing. It relates to citizenship, doesn't it? That's right. The citizenship for Israel is a land-based, earth-based nation, and their blessings reside there.

And so we have to be careful not to necessarily look at the book of Proverbs and say, okay, this is how one gets blessed. I'm guilty of having done that in past times before I understood this. If I find myself in favor with the Lord, then blessing is sure to occur to me, and that could happen in the sense of very earthly-based blessings if I'm looking at the things that Israel received, or was promised to receive at some future point. But that's not me, and that's what I have to recognize as we get a clearer picture of the law versus grace perspective, and we really dive into Paul's perspective on blessing, we recognize that the riches of the Old Testament, and those, especially the riches outside of Israel, so any non-Israelite that had an extreme amount of wealth, had a certain amount of wickedness associated with them because of the way that they used their wealth. That's right, it was a very earthly perspective on how wealth was utilized. And so the Jewish believers that James is speaking to had seen wealth misused in a number of ways, and were potentially guilty of utilizing it that way themselves. Israel struggles with how to utilize funds, and we see in several instances where even in the book of Acts, where money was improperly communicated to one of the disciples, and it resulted in an instantaneous death.

So we have those kinds of experiences where we need to differentiate, first of all, between the blessing of the Old Testament and to the Israel community, and that of the New Testament blessing that we just talked about.

Does that make sense, Al, a little bit? And I think that what you're talking about, where they ask about how can a rich man enter the Kingdom of God, In that same way, I mean, this is still Old Testament time. It's still law, right? So you have those perspectives.

Alright, so we talked about Eurich. So again, for those two reasons, I'm viewing Eurich as not being the Jewish believers because of verses 6 and 7. So that second part of Jewish tradition tended to associate, I like the term tended because not always. Not always. And to Al's point, you're right.

Within a Jewish believing system where fellow Jews saw another Jew that had wealth, And honestly, that's what the rabbis achieved, was not only did they achieve power, but they also achieved wealth and a certain amount of just physical blessing because of the position that they held.

And so there was definitely not a across-the-board perspective on all wealth or all riches equal wickedness. However, there was a tendency to think of it that way, that with wealth comes wickedness. And the reason is because there's so much Old Testament imagery that we're going to get in today that talks about the destruction of those who have wealth and misuse it. And so they were clear on that, those pictures, those stories were embedded in their mind. We'll talk about the day of the Lord and how all through the prophets this raining down of judgment was on, let's see, here we go again, on the rich and those who misused the wealth that they had.

Yes. In today's none but the hungry heart. a point that ties in with this pretty well, is that when your eyes are focused on the visible things of this world, the material goods and the rest, then it hinders your thinking about, your condition of thinking about your position in Christ. So the general application of the principle, the more you're focused on the stuff of this world, the more it draws you away from what you have in Christ.

For those of you that didn't know, The Hungry Heart is now online. I don't know if you've been able to utilize that. Well, it was for a while and then it was taken off. So we've got a new one. Oh really? Yeah. Can you send me the website? You bet. We just launched it last month. Did you guys launch it? Yeah. Wonderful. That's great. Yeah, it's under AbideAbove.com. So everything with regard to Mal's work will be found there. So just a small plug, sorry about that. No, we're happy about it. We knew that it was on. A lot of time in the making and so I thought I'd plug that in real quick. That's terrific. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, that's great. So who's part of that? You and Randy? Just myself and Mike. Just you and Mike? Yeah. Terrific. At this point. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, you bet. So good distinction there.

I think the dichotomy is maybe a bit of a strong term, but I think there's a distinction between riches and wickedness and riches and blessings. So the context always determines it, right? Context, context, context is what we say. Well, and even today, you know, as you talk about the money mad world, you know, we have certainly plenty of really good Jewish friends. And they still look at it that way. If they have achieved wealth and all of that, in their mind, their Jewish mind, they've been blessed. That's right.

Well, interesting here, we don't have to get lost in what James intended. And that's what's great about this verse is that it's very clear that these Jewish or those that had obtained riches did not utilize it and it was not seen as a blessing. We'll see why because there's words like weep and howl. Why in the world would James use that for those that have been blessed? So this is an instance of where the richness of a Jewish person had utilized, or it could be an unbeliever for that matter too. Now there's plenty of instances in the Old Testament where we see that taking place as well, but there is a judgment coming for the use of their riches in this passage that is unmistakable. So we have this word weep and how, and these phrases occur frequently in the prophets to depict the reaction of the wicked people when they are faced with the judgment of the day of the Lord. So let's look at two particular passages.

Maybe, Pat, if you could grab Isaiah 13.6 and less, Amos 8.3.

So we have this weeping and howling. Why is it that James wants you rich folks to weep and howl for your miseries which are coming upon you? Why would anyone want to see themselves in that boat? It's pretty strong language. Very strong language. Some of the strongest in James, I think. These are judgment passages.

Interesting that Mohammed in his early life was exposed to Christian teaching, but not in the way that we would look at it. And he really picked up on that weep and howl. I read the Quran just to see what was in there for myself. English translation, obviously. And Weep and Howl shows up a lot about the judgment of those who don't follow God's way. It's very interesting. It was interesting. Yeah. So, Isaiah passage, Pat? 13.6? Yes, please.

Whale, for the day of the Lord, is at hand. It will come as destruction from the Almighty. And the name is? The songs of the palace will turn to wailing in that day, declares the Lord God. Many will be the corpses. In every place they will cast them forth in silence.

So I think there's two senses going on here. There's the visual weeping that a person is going through and then there's the audio howl and wailing that a person experiences when the miseries that come upon them take place. And so we've got some questions. We need to identify misery. We also need to start identifying, you know, when is this coming? What's the point? Things like that. So we'll do that.

But the misery that is coming to the rich, therefore, it's not an earthly disaster, but it's a divine judgment. I should have said it's not only an earthly disaster, because it surely is. But it's even more than that, in that it's a divine judgment, which is why the reaction of the weeping and the howling takes place. So the Bible nowhere condemns the rich for being rich, and I think this is an important New Testament perspective.

In 1 Timothy 6.10, again, we're going to be looking up a lot of different verses because there's New Testament caveats that we need to take note of, but there's also this whole Old Testament picture that we've got to familiarize ourselves with.

So 1 Timothy 6.10, if someone has that. The Bible nowhere condemns the rich for being rich.

Money in and of itself is not evil. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. So it's not the money itself that is the root of all evil, it's the love, the avarice, the love of money.

And so it's this love of money that causes a person to face a judgment such as this. And while the judgment for a believer who loves money is not the same as an unbeliever who loves money, because our judgment is not the day of the Lord, as I'll bring up in a moment. However, it's still a very significant loss of reward when a love for money takes place in a believer's life. And that's what Timothy is referring to there. is that the love of money causes loss of reward and an experiential place of not walking with the Lord and receiving all that Christ is.

You don't experience it. It doesn't mean that it's not present, positionally speaking. You are in Christ 100%. We never see the reversal of that placement, of us being in Christ as New Testament believers. So we're never going to find ourselves outside of Christ.

Experientially though, we can live as unbelievers do and fall into the love of money and find ourselves not partaking in all that we obtain in our citizenship in heaven. And so it's a loss of reward positionally or in future time. We have a loss of reward for that love, but it's not the day of the Lord.

It's not the judgment that we see here in James as those who are using it for the purposes of evil, as we're going to talk about in a moment. Does that make sense? So distinction there. Our judgment is the judgment seat of Christ for believers, right? That is a picture and a future point in time that's a real event, but the picture is that of a giving of rewards and a loss of reward. I don't look at that judgment seat of Christ in any way from a negative perspective. It's not a negative. You receive or you don't receive, but salvation is never at the seat. That was handled at the cross. Okay. So we've got this picture of riches having rotted and your garments having been moth-eaten. So kind of going back again, I spent a lot of time in Old Testament imagery here.

What is James talking about and how in the world does that relate to us? So, go ahead. So Jim, just a question then. Maybe I just came in where you were addressing this, but the issue is the the application goes beyond the Jew to whom he's speaking here, to the entire body?

Yeah, there's definitely a reason that this condemnation for this use of riches was brought up. In the same way that the Jewish believers were wrestling with a lot of the other issues that we see in the book of James that we studied beforehand, this is yet another one where they were tending to slide into the same perspectives of. And so they needed to be reminded that this is what's going to happen to those that you're looking at and maybe admiring or even starting to find yourself wanting in the same way. If you're after riches for these purposes, don't forget, this is what happens to those that utilize riches in this way.

And it's a very, very condemnating picture. So he's not telling the Jews. In fact, in verse seven, he picks up with brethren, and he moves on, and we'll talk about that next week. So we'll talk about where he takes it from here. But this is a very significant reminder for Jewish believers about the condemnation that occurs for those that utilize wealth in such a way. But the judgment itself is not for Jewish believers, it is for the unbelieving Jew. Those were the roots, and they would have known them so well. The moment he starts talking about judgment and he points to verbiage that comes from the context in Isaiah of the Day of the Lord, they would have thought, oh, we by no means want to find ourselves in that situation.

Because the Day of the Lord was a massive theme throughout the Old Testament, and it covers a significant amount of scripture. I've got a slide I'll share with you at the end if we have some time. It's a little bit of a chart that shows the judgments in the day of the Lord and how that might lay out in a visual. So there were three basic forms of wealth in the ancient world. This comes from Macaulay, I think it's insightful. First there was...

No, it's because I started using this machine for work and it's now trying to connect to the server constantly. Yeah. We'll get it fixed for next time. So first, you've got the handout. What do you need a PowerPoint for anyway? We can just turn it off.

So first there was the possession of oil and corn and those kinds of goods in that way. And the verb rotted would apply to them. The corn and oil would rot because of extended non-use. And so you've got this aspect. And second, there was the possession of garments. And the verb, have become moth-eaten, would have applied to them. Once again, extended non-uses in view.

And so you have this idea of, with money, you were able to fill your vats, but you didn't use them. You were able to buy garments, but you didn't use them. In fact, you wanted to obtain it for the purposes of obtaining it, rather than utilizing it. Now we're going to see here in a moment that they not only didn't use it, they stole from those who had earned it just to store it up for themselves.

And again, the result, rotted. Garments, moth-eaten. And then the second part of this verse, your gold and your silver have rusted and their rust will be a witness against you and will consume your flesh like fire. So the utilization of their wealth, what was the purpose of their gaining of wealth? completely self-indulgent. They utilized it for themselves alone, and they gained wealth for the purpose of gaining wealth. And all three aspects of the oil and corn and the garments, and now we have money being rusted, gold and silver, and that's the third perspective of wealth in the Old Testament, was that it was in the form of gold and silver, and this have rusted applies to this form of wealth.

So none of these three forms of wealth was used as intended, and that is the welfare of man and the glory of God. So man was not able to sustain himself, especially those who were in need of it. Those that were rich did not necessarily employ the poor, and when they did employ the poor there was a result, or there was an action that they took against them.

We'll talk about that in a minute. They didn't use it for the welfare of man and they didn't use it to the glory of God. They used it for their own self-sufficient purposes or self-satisfying purposes. I would say the Catholic Church has used the guilt of this effectively.

Okay, so that's kind of a flip this around and look at it from a different perspective. Yep, well, there's definitely a case for that without the New Testament perspective in there. You bring in the idea of tithing, and then you bring in the Old Testament view of wealth, and then you start looking at the judgment of those who have riches and you misuse them, and you can really scare some people into parting with their hard-earned cash, can't you?

And everything else. And it's not just the Catholic Church, is it? No. But they've done a very effective job. They've done an effective job of that. Take a little tour through Europe and you start going through all the cathedrals. Yeah, you really see the murderers and the leaders, the people who had wealth, and boy, did they give to the Catholic Church. I mean, big time.

So what's being presupposed here? All of these conditions of wealth are happening because of one thing. Namely that it wasn't utilized. It was stored in such a way that it was even criminally abused. But it wasn't utilized for anything that God had intentions for money. And so again, the idea of saving and the idea of earning money are not wrong in and of themselves. But when the Lord gives you an opportunity to help the welfare of man, and gives you an opportunity to glorify Him with the wealth that He's provided to you, that's really where the issue is, right?

You think of places in Scripture, both Old and New Testament, where the use of what you have is compared to cisterns or springs of living water, and the storing up for yourself and not using it broken cisterns comes to mind and other terminology. And Jesus says, if you would come to me, out of you will be springs of living water. You have the idea of freshness and life and newness and usefulness. The picture is both in Old and New Testament of this type of thing, that we are to be channels and stewards.

That's right. I think that if we were to stop here with this passage, we might not see the escalating condemnation that James was building here. We might say, hey, well that could easily be just us and us not utilizing the wealth of words given us for his glory and for the welfare of man.

But it moves on, and it talks about the fact that this moth-eaten garments and the rot and the rust having a result. And what does that do? So what happens as a result of that? There's this witness that comes as a result of that, and the witness is It's against the person who stored it up and allowed the decay, and what is the result? It consumes their flesh like fire.

So this is big judgment imagery. The decayed condition of the wealth will someday testify against its possessors. In other words, money talks. And especially in the instance that money talks in this way. And it testifies to a man's greed and selfishness. The term consume your flesh like fire is a graphic way of saying their greed will result in their destruction. Isn't that what we're talking about here is a greed? And we know that the Jews dealt with this issue quite a lot. And remember, the background of James is that these guys were on the very edge of the church. None of the New Testament books had been written. James did not have the perspective of Paul, John, Timothy, Titus. He didn't have this stuff.

He is taking a group of Jewish believers, brand new to the faith, and he is communicating Old Testament imagery, not as a law to them, but as a warning of what happens. So here we have the principles, right? These are not the laws that we see in the Old Testament. These are the principles being reapplied to the New Testament believer. So these are not laws that are hanging over these Jewish believers. They are principles that they are to take heed in.

You could still have a believer today who experiences greed and may experience the destruction of their own empire, but they will not be present at the judgment that's being communicated here. And that's a clear distinction that we're trying to make as we move forward here. Because here we talk about, in this next section, it is in the last days that you have stored up your treasure. So probably this is reflecting back to Jesus' warning on the Sermon on the Mount. We saw that there's a ton of parallel with James in the Sermon on the Mount. But it's not an exact repeat.

What James does is he puts it in a new New Testament context. He puts it in a grace-based context. James was the beginning of a grace-based perspective. Remember, he was the beginning. And James' focus was on the doing. And Paul's focus was on the how that gets done, right? And so without Paul, we couldn't make a whole lot of sense of James in the fullness of the New Testament. We have to see all scripture working together. I've had the example shared with me in the past.

You know, you've got the B-52s flying in formation. They were taught to stay in formation in all instances, to stay together, because the moment they got outside of that formation, they got shot down. And James is like a B-52 that is often flying out of formation. Teachers run into that book. Even Martin Luther had the problem of running into it.

This is a right straw epistle, he said. Well, the reason he saw it that way is because he allowed it to get out of formation with the rest of Scripture. Right? And the Lord knew the order of the New Testament books. That's right. He sure did. It's not the order that you actually see in your Bible, which is an interesting thing as well, but nonetheless, James was at the very forefront, right? He was right there Communicating to Jewish believers that had been berated largely persecuted, right? Largely persecuted. Yeah, well, I was just saying that because it's confusing to a new believer and a new student of the Word that the New Testament is not organized in the order that it was actually revealed. Because James would be at the first, right? But it is organized in a way that makes the believer well-founded in Pauline truth. That's right. It is. I like that. Okay.

So this is, I was just mentioning the Sermon on the Mount in parallel. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus would have, or he did talk about storing up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust decay. And so these people ignore that, that and now, that they're paying the price. Let me rephrase that, or re-read that so it's read properly. These people ignored that, and now they're paying the price. So they were ignoring Jesus' communication there in the Sermon on the Mount, and the result became the decay, the rust that Jesus even talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. And they stored up treasures on earth, but then it was destroyed.

And the words, last days, affirm our interpretation that this is tribulational. And they are words, and you can see that the Greek, the Greek there, the eschatos hemera. From the word eschatos, we get the word eschatology, which is the study of end times, which is, or in things, end time events, and that's what James is concerned with. And so I think that what we've got to recognize is that there's an imagery of the Old Testament, but there's also this reaffirming principle and this reaffirming historical reality of the last days that James communicates. And so there is a time when that witness that cries out, that wealth that had been greedily stored up will cry out, and it will cry out to a particular end. And that end is the last days that James talks about. Jesus talked about it, Old Testament prophets talked about it, John talked about it in Revelation.

So we've got a lot to potentially bring in there with six verses. I won't go into that today in great depth, but I do want to come back to it in a minute. Let's get the full context of these verses in mind. Here he uses the word behold in verse four. So this is a big word. It's an emphasis word. Listen. Come here. Focus. Really. Behold.

We see this in 1 Corinthians 3.18, beholding the Lord Jesus. Well, here's He saying, behold what I'm about to tell you. I want you to really focus in and not lose sight of this.

It's a warning against a very exploitative method of getting rich. So, stealing from the poor because we can never get enough. They became wealthy unjustly, as James says, the pay of the laborers who mowed your fields and which has been withheld by you." So he says, behold, these laborers that do the work that you've hired them to do, and you withhold it.

That very withholding of financial earning cries out against you. So again, you have this audio crying out. We see that in scripture constantly, the misuse and the way sin affects the world. Even the nature itself cries out. Here we see the picture of this misused greed-obtained wealth and this stealing from laborers who have earned is withheld and it cries out. This is a clear violation of the principle that the laborer is worthy of his wages.

So 1 Timothy 5.18 talks about that. that a laborer is worthy of their wages. And when they don't receive those wages, those wages cry out in that way against the one who withheld it greedily. So the principle that the laborer is worthy of his wages is also rooted in the Old Testament.

Let's look up Deuteronomy 24.15. Forgive me for putting in 14 to get its context. 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. Each day you shall give him his wages, and not let the sun go down on him, 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."

So here we have the perspective of law, right? We're in Deuteronomy. the second giving of the law, and we have this clear understanding that the way an employer was to pay his employee is fair. And James brings this back up, Timothy brings it back up, and gives further clarification on the principle. Again, not law for us, but principle, is still that a wage earned should go in full to the one who earned it.

And so again, the Old Testament imagery, what do you think James' audience might have been dealing with? Do you think they might have been on the receiving end of this deal, where they were not getting what they were paid? Do you think that there was the potential of them not paying their laborers the way that the Lord outlined in Deuteronomy? But here James brings it up in a principle way and he also brings very clear perspective of what the result is for those Jewish unbelievers that do this.

I think you might be a little bit shocked, right? You know, maybe your attention was just drawn to the reality of something that you had kind of just swept under the rug in the past, and now you're saying, you're revisiting this reality, and James is really trying to clarify what a walk with the Lord in grace means, and it doesn't have anything to do with this greed factor. It's not greedy in principle. Let's look at the crying out.

So I mentioned there's a lot of Old Testament imagery of this crying out, but even in Genesis 4.10, we're reminded of Cain's blood crying out to the Lord. Injustice cries out to the Lord. And it's not only that there's the crying, but there's the hearing that we want to think about as well. Who hears it and how do they hear it?

But definitely injustice, I mean that's what we're talking about here. If you want to get big doctrinal perspective, we're talking about the justice of God, aren't we? I mean, that might be the doctrine that's really in view here is how God handles the injustices of money not being utilized properly and also being criminally withheld. God is not one who allows things to be swept under the rug. He's a just God. And all of those instances, no matter where they happen in time, are all in view of God and they cry out to Him as injustice. So we could go back and look at all the aspects of God's justice and that would give us even a clearer picture on some of the things that James is talking about here. Let's read Deuteronomy 24, 14-15.

I've got it on the slide if you want to read with me. It's a long one. We just read that. I'm sorry. So we shouldn't have read it, we should have waited. And I did include 14. So I forgive you. Did you ask for that? And we don't have that on our team. You know, I wouldn't be surprised. Do you want to read it? Well, we just read it. Yeah, it's the same verse. I meant to read it here instead of previously, but this particular passage gives us that background that we were talking about earlier. Okay, so let's look at the second part of verse four.

And the outcry of those who did the harvesting has reached the ears of the Lord Sabaoth. So here's what's important, I think, in this passage, is that there's not just the crying out of injustice, but there is the just hearing it. And James uses the term Lord of Sabaoth, and he talks about the ears of the Lord.

So, not only do the wages cry out, but also the workers who have harvested. So, it's not just the injustice of the immaterial things crying out, and we see that analogy there, but we also see that the workers are crying out to the Lord. They need help. They've been unjustly treated, but they cry out to a specific person. And James calls him the Lord of Sabaoth.

The verb has reached is a perfect voice, which means they reached him with the effect that they remain with him. He won't forget. Divine justice is perfect justice, so that the more they do this, the more they are storing up wrath for themselves and accumulating judgment. So this first word, does that make sense? This has reached being in the perfect tense. is an important distinction, is that it is something that will not be forgotten. It is something that reached its intended audience. It achieved its goal, this crying out. But who was the crying out to?

So the word Lord is the Greek word Kyrios, and so anytime we find this word in reference to the divine person, it is the equivalent of saying the Hebrew Yahweh. So we've got Yahweh of Sabaoth. So it's a divine title. Does it matter which person of the Trinity here? No, I don't think it does either. So I wouldn't go into that great of depth. It's the fact that the entire person of God heard this. And Sabaoth, it's a Hebrew word for, it's carried over into the Greek and it means armies.

So Jesus Christ is the Lord of armies, namely the angelic armies, sometimes called the Lord of hosts. So virtually every context this title is used in is in a war context. What war are we talking about? In the Old Testament, it constantly falls under the Day of the Lord passages.

And so we've got to think about that and the fact that this is a future judgment. This is dealing with aspects of prophecy in terms of the Day of the Lord actually being a historical event and depending upon how you view eschatology, For example, if you're all millennial, this has already happened, right? But for those of us that don't view it that way, this is something that is yet future. The second return of the Lord has not taken place, and at the second return of the Lord, these instances of the crying out of injustice will be handled and dealt with. Both earthly and divine judgment will be executed at that point in time.

Verse 5. Here's what they did with it. You've lived luxuriously on the earth and led a life of wanton pleasure. So not only are they stored up and it rotted and rusted and moth-eaten, they also lived luxuriously with it and led a life of wanton pleasure. So the rich are often soft and self-indulgent. So let's look at Luke 16, 19-31. That's a long passage. But let's read it. I think it'll be insightful. Now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day.

And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with thorns, and longing to be fed, but the crones were for falling from the rich man's table. Besides, even the dogs were coming in, licking his thorns. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died and was buried. In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus. Lazarus in his bosom.

And he cried out and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send Lazarus so that you may dip the tongue of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame. But Abraham said, Child, remember that during your life you received your good things and likewise Lazarus bad things, but now he is being comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able to, and that none may cross over from there to us. And he said, Then I beg you, Father, that you send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, in order that he may warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.

But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. But he said, No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent. But he said to them, to him rather, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.

A lot of really impactful content there. But it gives a real clear perspective on what these Jewish believers would have in the background in terms of those that had wanton pleasure and the result of it, and their wish to go back and reverse the scenario.

And they wouldn't wish that on anyone else. And in addition to that, they had the testimony of Moses and the prophets. So they had what they needed to avoid the wanton pleasure. However, they didn't listen. And even if a man was raised from the dead, it wouldn't have changed their perspective.

That's an interesting thought as well. But nonetheless, when one gets caught in the greed and the need to live luxuriously and lead a life of wanton pleasure, even if they saw a man rise from the dead, it would be difficult for them to change their mind.

They're so embedded in that sinful lifestyle. And so the idea of wanton pleasure implies extravagance and waste, and in their greedy acquisitiveness, the rich fatten themselves figuratively, and sometimes literally. They fatten themselves with all that they obtain, not realizing that they are preparing themselves for slaughter. And that word slaughter there, as we look at, as we see, is a word for judgment. like so many sacrificial animals that were fed to the point of fatness and then used for sacrificial purposes. So the warning should challenge believers to avoid extravagance and self-indulgence when purchasing goods.

And this applies. It's a principle for us. James brought it back up. But the judgment and the result of it is different in the sense that our judgments are not the same. And finally, on verse 6, you have condemned and put to death a righteous man. He does not resist you.

So, a better word for condemned is pronounced guilty. A legal word implies some judicial procedure in which they pronounce the righteous man guilty and then put him to death, or better, murder or hate. We talked about murder and hate in previous verses. This could be figuratively or actually in true murder. The oppression of the rich extends to putting to death those who stand in their way, even though these people resist the rich righteously.

So as in 4.2, and I mentioned that, James may have been using put to death. I struggle with that word. Many Christians have experienced persecution from people who are trying to guard their own financial security. sliding into the path of giving that.

But in both angles, there are principles that now apply in these Jewish believers' mind that are going to be built on by Timothy and Paul and more clearly defined throughout the New Testament. So let's do read Acts 18, 19 through 24 and talk about what happened. What was the judgment that happened in this instance of New Testament church time?

He came to Ephesus and left them there, but he himself entered into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. When they desired him to tarry longer with them, time with them, he consented not, but bade them farewell, saying, I must by all means keep this feast that cometh from Jerusalem, but I will return again unto you if God will, and he sailed from Ephesus. And when he had landed at Caesarean, he had gone up and saluted the church, and he went down to Antioch. And after he had spent some time there, he departed and went over all the country of Galatia and Phageria in order, strengthening all the disciples. And a certain Jew named Apollos, born in Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. I got the wrong passage. That was the wrong passage?

I did, I think. Oh. I'm sorry. No, it's my fault. I should have recognized it. That wasn't... Well, it's hard when you're asked to read something that's wrong. It's my fault. We've all done it, Jason. No worries. I can't tell you. Time's up sight but wrong. I'll look that up here in a minute and get it back.

Was it perhaps chapter 8 we're talking about Simon and he saw the disciples laying on hands and he said he offered them money saying give me the power also that on anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him your money perish with you because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money and so on. Could it have been those verses? Anyway, that talks about wrong and right.

Yeah, thanks for clarifying. I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, so let's look at the conclusion here and then maybe talk about some... I've got two minutes. I'm going to read this and then I'm going to tell you about some resources. So these are strong words of warning in verses 1 through 6. James, huh? Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the time that we've had together this morning and through all the distractions, Lord, I just trust that What James was communicating finds its purpose in our own heart as we think about how money and how the principle of supporting the welfare of man and glorifying you with it has not changed and how there is a very stark and horrible picture in terms of the way that it cries out to you and you hear and you judge. But Lord, we thank you that we don't find ourselves in that, but that we can respond to these words and heed them in terms of our own use of money and desire for it. but that we can find ourselves ultimately resting in you and not fearing any judgment whatsoever on the day of the Lord. And I thank you that we find ourselves with you, rather, in heaven, positionally and historically, in a future point in time where we will return with you as we watch our Lord and Savior execute the injustice and the judgment against all that has happened in history past. I thank you that we will be standing alongside you finding ourselves in you fully. And I thank you for that truth. Amen.