Warnings About Wealth And Power

Having Christ is everything. We should live like it. We shouldn't treasure our little things that are gonna dissolve—partially because it's not gonna save us, also because there's a real good chance that our hearts are gonna use it to oppress other people. But finally, because there's something deeper here.

Jesus offered up everything so that he could stand in our place and be sacrificed. He was the one who embodied this perfectly. He gave up everything, way more than any of us have. The things that we struggle to let go of, compare that to the glories of heaven. That's what Jesus gave up in order to come and live perfectly, sacrificed throughout his life, and then die as the final sacrifice on our behalf.

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CTK Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh.

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Good morning. Glad we're all here. It is good to gather and worship the Lord. Today we are looking at the book of James. For those of you who've been coming, you know that we've been oscillating back and forth depending on who's preaching between sermon series. Jeff is in Judges, but I'm still in James. So this morning is James on James.

I want to remind you of a couple of things before we get into our text this morning. First of all, James, the author of this book, is the brother of Jesus. We looked at that very early on in the series. He was a skeptic and a mocker of Christ until he saw him risen. That changed everything for James, just like it changed everything for those of us who are in Christ. When we encounter the resurrected Christ, it changes our perspective on everything, and it certainly did that for James, the brother of Jesus.

He became the leader of the church at Jerusalem, and that church at the time of the writing of this book—which is arguably the first book of the New Testament to be written—was experiencing heavy persecution. People were killing them in order to suppress them. That's an environment that we only know a little bit about here in America. But that context is incredibly important for the passage I'm about to read.

I want you to remember that James is writing to a group of people who are being heavily persecuted by powerful people both in Judea and in Rome, and that people are getting killed. That'll help put this into context.

The Text: James 5:1-6

Alright. Let's look at the word of God from James 5:1-6:

Come now, you rich people. Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming to you. Your wealth has rotted and your clothes 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've stored up treasure in the last days. Look, the pay that you have withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out. And the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of armies. You have lived luxuriously on the earth and have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned. You have murdered the righteous who does not resist you. — James 5:1-6

This is God's word. I get it, right? You're all like, "Oh, thank goodness we're not in Judges. We're in the New Testament. It's gonna be nice and light," and then you get this.

Well, let's go to God in prayer and ask him to help us interpret this. Lord, we know all of your word is useful for teaching, rebuking, for training in righteousness. And Lord, some passages are harder than others. This is a hard one for us to hear in one of the wealthiest countries of all time. Lord, help us to interpret it. Help us to apply it rightly in ways that bring us closer to you, that remind us of your gospel, and allow us to live as you've called us to live. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Understanding the Prophetic Warning

So what we have here in James is he's channeling two existing literary styles. You might not recognize this, but the book of Amos in the Old Testament is full of language like this, as is Isaiah. This is a prophetic warning and a call. Your clue was "weep and mourn"—"weep and wail." Those are common prophetic constructions toward those who are facing God's judgment, calling them to repentance. And that's what James is doing here. He is calling those who are wealthy and who are abusing their wealth.

And that's what I want you to see: he is really concerned with the unjust use of wealth more so than he is concerned with wealth itself.

I really want you to see that because everyone in this room by the metrics that James would have had is wealthy. Okay? Just by owning what you own and by having the money that you have, you are not sinning in James' view. However, James wants to warn those who interact with wealth, those who have it, that it is incredibly tempting, and that it reveals the unjust character of our hearts and that's what he's really after. James is always after our hearts just like Jesus was always after our hearts.

To help us see that with this passage as I move through the points that I'm gonna go through, I'm gonna pair them with some of Jesus' teachings because that's the other literary style that James is channeling here. Does any of this sound familiar? Right?

Your wealth has rotten and your clothes are moth eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded and their corrosion will be a witness against you — James 5:2-3

Doesn't that sound a little bit like Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount?

Don't store up treasures for yourself here where moth and rust can destroy but instead store up your treasure in heaven — Matthew 6:19-20

That is what James is kind of echoing. He's repeating his brother and his teachings on the Sermon on the Mount. But how do we know that Jesus and subsequently James are not saying that wealth in and of itself is sinful? There's three reasons that I want you to see and keep in mind as we go through this.

One is the broader scriptural context. If you look at the Bible's teaching on money everywhere, it says money itself is not evil. It's the love of money that is evil. It's our heart's attachment to it. It's what our heart does with it. It's the way in which our hearts cling to it and won't let go. That Jesus and the rest of the Bible are concerned with and that's subsequently here what James is concerned about.

And the context of James, the book of James overall. Remember back in chapter 2, he's concerned with wealth and the abuse of wealth. He talked about that specifically and in this section right, he starts with wealth but then immediately moves to the application and unjust application of it. And that's how we know that's what he's concerned about.

And then finally, the other thing to keep in mind is that historical context that I referenced in my introduction. We have no idea what injustice looks like compared to what they were experiencing in Judea, the early church that was an illegal religion, persecuted, punishable by death. They were feeding them to lions, people. They were tossing them off buildings. Why? In order to maintain their power and their wealth. That is what James is railing against.

Now are our hearts guilty of that? Absolutely. So we are not exempt from conviction from this passage, but I do want you to see the difference between us and them even as you see the similarities between us and them. Okay? Makes sense?

Three Warnings About Wealth

So to that end, what I wanna do is I wanna start talking about the three ways in which James is highlighting for us that wealth is dangerous and three ways that he's warning those who are unjust in their use of wealth against.

First of all, he's warning them against misplaced security. Secondly, he's warning them against putting their money above other people, valuing it more than people. And then finally, he's warning them of a coming sacrifice. Okay? So those are our three points: hoarding wealth is misplaced security; hoarding wealth and misuse of wealth leads you to place money over people; and there is a coming sacrifice.

Misplaced Security

So first, misplaced security. Alright. Again, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said the same thing.

Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy but store up for yourselves treasure in heaven — Matthew 6:19

What is James saying here overall? Let's look at it again. Just the first three verses.

Come now, you rich people. Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming to you. Your wealth is rotted. Your clothes are moth eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be witnessed against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You've stored up treasure in the last days. — James 5:1-3

The end of that is really important. When is it that they're storing up treasure? What does he say? Say it. The last days. Now, were they in the last days? Are we in the last days? What does he mean by last days?

I think often times, in fact, liberal scholars kind of think that the early church just thought Jesus was gonna come back tomorrow and maybe some of them did. Right? But what do they mean by last days? I don't think it's so much a statement about the context of when exactly Christ is coming chronologically in terms of how we think about time. I think it's in terms of redemptive history. In other words, there is and always has been a plan since we fell from the garden and there were several things that were going to happen along the way in that plan.

One of the last things to happen is Jesus coming and dying for our sins and giving us the hope of salvation. The last thing to happen is him returning in judgement. We are in the last days. All we're waiting on is that. That's it. There's nothing left to happen in the terms of redemptive history. Now, lots of things are happening and lots of time has passed since James wrote this to now and those things are important and I'm not dismissing them. God is at work in all of that and yet, in terms of redemptive history, the next big event is Christ returning and that's what James means.

So that's my question to you. First of all, are we living like this is the last days? Because context is very important. And here's where I think some of the similarities exist between us and these people. We have a tendency to find our security in our wealth, don't we? We like to store up for ourselves treasure here on Earth. We're good at that. As Americans, we're really good at that. We read a lot about it. We think about it a lot. We plan a lot. But in the context of the world, that makes sense, right? You've gotta save to take care of your kids, to take care of things at your house, to make sure that everything is okay. And in this context, in the world's context, money can get you a lot, can't it? It's a good thing to have. It's nice to have money. We want our kids to go to good schools. We want our houses to be nice. We want to be able to move about freely. We want all of these things and money is able to provide us for those things. Even the Bible talks about the wisdom of saving and there is wisdom in that. James is not denying that. He's not saying, "Hey, you should not take care of your earthly needs. You should not think about that." But what he is saying is consider the context that you're in. Taking care of your physical needs is secondary compared to what you believe is coming and it will not help you for what is coming.

We have a perception, rightly or wrongly, in this world that money can save us from various different things, right? You get in trouble with the law. Hire a really good lawyer and whether it's true or not, we have this perception that maybe you can get around it. Let me tell you something. When the judge of all the universe comes, money is not gonna help you get around him. He sees everything and the foundation of his throne are justice and righteousness. Money will not help you with that. Money cannot save you. The money that you've stored up to provide for your future, it will not give you a future. There's only one thing that can.

And so that's what James is saying here. He's saying, weep and wail because you put your hope in the wrong thing. You misjudged the time. You thought it was a time to save and to enjoy and to fatten yourself up, but it's a coming judgment. Beware.

It's like this. If you think about it, you're in the marketplace and I walk up to you and I say, "Hey, I have a chest full of gold. Would you like it?" What would you say? Yes, thank you. There's lots of things that I can buy with that chest of gold. But if you are endurance swimming, right, in some kind of triathlon or something—you're trying to get to the end of the race and you're swimming for a long distance in water—and I come up to you and I say, "Here is a chest of gold. Would you like it?" No. I'm trying to win the prize. I'm trying to survive. That'll kill me. I'll drown.

That's the picture James is creating of wealth. He's saying, "Hey, listen. If you understand the times, you understand you're swimming, you're not in the marketplace. This is not a time for you to shop around and get the things that you want. That's coming. But right now, we're in the end times. You don't want this stuff. You are a steward who's been given this and you should give it away instead of hoarding it and storing up for it."

You know, the classic picture of this is Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, right? He comes like James in this passage to warn Ebenezer Scrooge. And what does he have connected to him? All the money he'd earned in his life. All the money that he'd earned at the sacrifice of others in his life as a chain. James is saying, if you're so connected to wealth, you can't let go of it. You've got to because the coming judgment—we're in the last days, man. Let go of that stuff and head towards your reward. Look for that instead of what has saved you in this world because it won't.

So that's the first thing. James is really pointing out the misplaced security that our wealth gives.

The Injustice of Withheld Wages

Secondly, there's a principle here. The injustice foundationally that James talks about is found in verse four. He says:

Look, the pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of armies. — James 5:4

I'll unpack that for just a minute, exegetically. There's a systematic injustice that James is going after here. He's saying, you are hoarding onto your money. People are working for you and you're not paying them. They're subsequently suffering. You are unfairly withholding your money. You're hoarding it. You're not taking care of others. You're valuing it more than other people. And then he says, the outcry of the harvesters and the pay that you withheld are both crying out to the Lord. Did you notice that? There's two things crying out to the Lord—the money and the people.

Now, in the Bible, there's lots of things that cry out to the Lord. Can you think of any? Right at the very beginning of our experience in the fallen world, we have an example of something crying out to the Lord about injustice. It's the blood of Abel, right? Blood cries out to the Lord. In Exodus, we see that the people who are being unjustly treated in this exact same way are crying out to God and God hears it and he comes and delivers them. There are lots of things in this world where injustice exists in whatever form. It cries out to God because God cannot stand injustice. He has to respond to that because he is so just.

So here are two principles from this. Number one, God sees. You might think that what you're doing with your money or the ways in which your heart is attached to it in wrong ways that are hurting other people is not seen. God sees it all. Any injustice cries out to God and he hears it and he cares.

Now, for some of you that may be incredibly sobering. For some of you, and in fact I think for the original audience, that was incredibly encouraging because some of us have experienced real injustice, haven't we? And isn't it encouraging to know that God cares and he's not just going to be like, "Who cares? You'll be fine." That's not his attitude. He acts and responds to injustice. And that's why Jesus is coming as a judge because God can't let us go on like this forever. He's coming as a judge to glorify those of us who are in him so that we might actually be righteous—not just declared righteous but be righteous.

I don't want a heaven that doesn't perfect me. I don't want to live for eternity hurting people the way that my sin does. I want him to come and judge me and change me, because that's the only option I have. The other option is the result of this warning. And so that's what he's saying. He's saying, God sees you rightly or wrongly—whether you've experienced injustice or you are unjust. He sees you and he's coming to fix it and you should be encouraged. Even this very hard passage is full of that encouragement. God cares.

Jesus' Teachings on Wealth and Hearts

There's a couple ways that we see this in Jesus' teachings that I'd like you to think about. First of all, is the widow's mite. Remember that story? There's a widow and she's giving and there's a rich man who's giving. Rich man gives tons of money but it's a small percentage of his wealth, right? Then the widow gives these two little pennies but it's everything she had. Jesus praises her. Why? Because he doesn't care about the money. He cares about the hearts. Do you see? Jesus came to reclaim people.

How do I know that? Here's another story. Do you remember the story of Jesus and his enemies trying to trap him and they say, "Hey, we got this coin that has Caesar's picture on it. It's blasphemous and idolatrous to use this coin and we're supposed to pay taxes with it, Jesus. Should we pay taxes with it?" Jesus says, "Give me the coin" and he holds it up and he looks. On one side of that coin, the coin that was in circulation at the time was the emperor Tiberius. I have one if you want to see it. I have it with me. I'll show it to you. Right? On one side, it has a picture of Tiberius Caesar and it says, "Augustus Caesar, son of the divine Caesar." In essence, God, son of God. On the other side, it's a picture of Tiberius sitting on a throne. It says, "Pontifex Maximus, high priest." The titles are all Jesus's. It's total plagiarism and blasphemy.

And so that's why the Jews were upset with this. But they were in cahoots with the Romans trying to trap Jesus. They thought they'd kill him so they could keep more of those little coins. But Jesus is brilliant. He takes it. He says, "Whose image is this?" And they say, "Caesar's." He says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what's God's."

Most people think that's a passage about taxes and whether you should pay. You should pay your taxes by the way, but that's not what that passage is about. Not primarily. Primarily, Jesus is saying, "I don't care about Caesar's little coin. Each and every one of you are made in God's image. That's what I came to collect. That's my tribute. That's what the Lord is owed. Give him you. Who cares about the coins?" Jesus doesn't care about money. He cares about people. He cares about souls.

He cares about our souls. He wants us to shift our view on money to be similar to his. Money is something that we steward on behalf of God's image instead of hoarding for our own benefit. You see, when we actually become good stewards, just like Jeff was describing in his introduction to our offering, we not only get the joy of giving and seeing the impact of that, we also draw ourselves closer to Christ. In some sense, if we are leveraging our money for the good of others and for the kingdom, we may be spending our money to bring other people to heaven to save souls. God may be using our money for that.

Just like the widow's two little coins. He's like, that's a good use of money. Give it. Give it away. That's something that the church can use. You think about that widow. We're still talking about that widow thousands of years later. She had two little pennies. People have probably come to Christ because of that passage. God has used her gift in more ways than we can imagine and he will use your money if you give it. And simultaneously, when you give it, your heart will go closer to him. It will move closer to him. You'll be letting go of a little bit of the thing that's actually dragging you down while you're swimming in this race, and you'll experience the joy of being a part of the family business, which is giving money away, not keeping it for ourselves.

You think about Jesus himself. He gave up everything so that we might be saved. It is the pattern of Christ to give and to be good stewards. James is crying out against those who are not doing that. John Wesley gives a good example of how to embody this attitude. When he was later in his life, he said this: "If I leave behind me ten, bear witness that I lived and died a thief."

Our thought on money should be that it's God's, that he has given it to us to steward for his kingdom and for his purposes, to care for others—the thing he cares about: his image, not Caesar's image, not George Washington's image, or Ben Franklin, or whoever your choice president is or non-president on our currency. He wants us to care about people and he wants us to do that because he wants us. That should be our heart, CTK.

The Day of Slaughter

Alright. Let's look at our last point. James 5:5-6. He says this:

You have lived luxuriously on the earth and you have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned. You have murdered the righteous who does not resist you. — James 5:5-6

Let's unpack this. This is my point on the sacrifice. This is strong language. What this is saying is: hey, if you spend your money on yourself just consistently and consistently and consistently, what you're doing is you're fattening yourself up for a day of sacrifice. That's strong, right? That is strong. When you spend your money on yourself, you're just fattening yourself up for a day of sacrifice, for the judgment of the Lord, for you to be killed on the altar. That's sobering. That's strong. That's Amos-like. Amos gets that strong in the Old Testament.

By the way, a lot of people say the God of the Old Testament and God of the New Testament are two different people. No. It's the same person, same heart, right? Same intensity and intense love for people, his image, whom he designs to save. All through the Old Testament, you see it. All through the New Testament, you see it. The intensity with which he cares about that is what you see in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. There's just a lot more of it in the Old Testament because it's bigger.

Back to the point. So he's got this image: hey, if you're spending your money on yourself, you're fattening yourself up for the day of slaughter. And then he says, "You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous." Now, in James' day, he might actually have in mind people that consciously did that. Some of the people that are persecuting the Jewish church in the time that James is writing this are the same people that killed Jesus. So he could very well have in mind, when he talks about the righteous who does not resist you, he may very well have in mind Jesus. But he also has in mind the church. He's saying: look, you don't care about the righteous. You want to condemn and murder them so that you can have little coins. You want that so you can have money consciously. That was the situation.

Now, it may be that we do that consciously too. Jesus talked about murder—the sin of murder—as being represented by more than just the actual physical act of killing people. So the application for us, whether you're doing this consciously or unconsciously, this is a sin that God cannot abide because it's unjust.

You're condemning and you're murdering the righteous when you hoard money, when you are all concerned about you and your family and your wealth and your well-being and you do nothing for the poor, when you don't engage with them, when you're so far removed from them, you don't even think about them to the point where your use of your money isn't conscious murder because you've distanced yourself so far from them that you never see them die, you're not excused. You're not excused. That's unjust and the righteous don't resist you. It's not like they're coming and attacking you and Jesus certainly didn't do that.

So James is saying, look, you have all the power. They can't stop you. You have all the power. You've hoarded it and now you're using it to kill them. And they can do nothing but take it. It's horrible.

Brothers and sisters, that's our sin and that's more than anything. I think one thing that I hope you take away from this: your money isn't sin, but what you will do with your money reveals the sin of your hearts. And so I hope you walk away from this morning and take a look at that—not just a passing glance, but you'll dig. You'll look for those people that are being marginalized because of how you're spending your money. You will look for that because I will tell you, there are people who will leverage your money for that. And there are probably ways that you're using money that are hurting other people. Look for it. Not because you have to save yourself, but because you want to be like Christ.

The Treasure That Matters

I want to end with this: You will never use money perfectly righteously. You'll never wield it perfectly, not in this life. But you ought to try because the hurt and damage that we cause with it is terrible, and Christ has given us a way to do more. We ought to be different than the rest of the world. People ought to see us differently. And you know why we ought to be different? Not because our hearts are better, but because we have been given something so much more than money. Nobody believes that about us because we don't do anything with the physical money any differently than they do. We don't act like we value something more than that many times.

And what James is saying is reject that and grab hold of the thing that actually matters. Another one of Christ's parables—the pearl of great price, you can find it in Matthew 13—is a picture of a man who finds out that there's a treasure buried in this field. He sells everything so that he can buy the property. Why? So he can have the treasure in the coming days. Which is again what James has in view in this section: Having Christ is worth everything. Currently, because of how great he is, having Christ is everything. We should live like it. We shouldn't treasure our little things that are going to dissolve partly because it's not going to save us, also because there's a real good chance that our hearts are going to use it to oppress other people, but finally because there's something so much better: Jesus himself.

We all have blood money and we all deserve to be the fattened sacrifice that James is talking about here. But Jesus offered up everything so that he could stand in our place and be sacrificed. He was the one who embodied this perfectly. He gave up everything way more than any of us have. The things that we struggle to let go of—compare that to the glories of heaven. That's what Jesus gave up in order to come and live perfectly, sacrificed throughout his life, and then die as the fattened sacrifice on our behalf. Do you believe that? If you believe that, then that ought to change everything just like it did for James.

It's worth noting that James was killed by a powerful man. There are two historical recountings of James' death: one, he was pushed off the temple and then stoned just to make sure he was dead, and another that he was stoned. But in both cases, it was done by the high priest at the time—a powerful man who benefited from the sale of goods at the temple. All of that money went to him.

Now think about the gospels. How often do you see Jesus angry? Not a ton, but when he was in the temple and he starts turning over tables, he was angry. He was hot.

This is supposed to be a house of prayer, but you've turned it into a den of thieves.

James is wanting us to see that we do that when we misuse our money in any way because we have been given the pearl of great price. We have the treasure that is in heaven. We have what the high priest had, but all he cared about was money to the point where they killed Jesus for it and then they killed James for it. James is like, don't do that. Be like me. Give it all up. Accept death. That's fine. I have Jesus. He will save me.

We should be different, brothers and sisters, and I hope that we will going forward. I pray that this passage will give you time to think and meditate on how money reveals your own heart and how hopefully that will lead you in a cycle to repent and to believe in Jesus, take you to Christ, not feel shame, not feel guilt, not feel debt, not feel self hatred or self loathing, but instead feel great joy at what you've been given and allow that to slowly release your grasp on the material possessions that have you ensnared.

James isn't just saying money can't save you. He's saying it might ensnare you. Let it go. Instead, grab hold of the thing that will save you.

Generosity in the Church

And brothers and sisters, my prayer for our church is that people will see us in radical ways be generous. I tell our deacons all the time, you know, budgeting works one way for your household. Do you think, okay, I gotta set a budget for how much I'm gonna spend on this to make sure that I have enough for the things that are important to me? In the church, we budget money to give to the poor. And sometimes we get into the church and we think, okay, well, we have a budget this much to give to the poor. So we're only gonna give that much. We gotta be real careful not to give away too much or we might be giving away too much. No. That's not how church budgeting works.

If I tell our deacons all the time, I'm like, listen. If we don't give that money away, like that total amount and maybe more, then you make a liar out of me to the congregation. Me and Jeff, we get up every morning, every Sunday morning and we introduce an offering. If all that just goes to church expenses and we failed, we should see money as something that we pass through to give to the world in a generous way so that the world can see the value of Christ. That's what stewardship is in the economy of the kingdom of God.

They did it well in the early church, so well in fact that Julian the apostate, an emperor who was not a Christian, said this: "These impious Galileans, meaning the Christians, not only feed their own poor but ours also, welcoming them into our feasts."

Let's get creative with how we let go of money. Let's get creative and beautiful about how we can let go of money. Jesus is telling us, do it freely because it's not valuable. Be like me in the Caesar coin or the widow in her two mites. Be reckless in your generosity. Love others and you will not only be a part of the work of the family business of redeeming and saving those who are lost, but you will also feel your own soul grow closer to Christ. What a joyous gift. What a wonderful blessing. Let's pray that Christ would give it to us so that we as a church might embody his great generosity.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, as we come to the lord's table, Lord, would you actually allow us the hearts of faith to see the feast that we're taking place in? Lord, would you give us the great joy of walking away from this place knowing that we have everything in Christ, that the feast that we've just had is filling and it will be here every week all the way into eternity. That we are well cared for. We are provided for because in Christ, we have everything.

And Lord, from that, allow us to have a posture, a visible presence within our community of one who really does embody that generosity that came from Christ because we know we have everything. We know we have everything in him and so therefore, giving is easy. In fact, it's a joy. Lord, as we come to the supper, would you impress that upon us? Would you change our hearts? Would you make us more like Christ? We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to our CTK Raleigh sermons podcast. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh. If you have questions about our sermon content or about our church in general, please visit our website at ctkraleigh.org.