Strengthen Your Heart • James 5:1-8
27:16 Teaching begins
Notes
James isn’t impressed by the rich and powerful. And they aren’t impressed with him, either.
We have a real problem in evaluating things today because we have such different points of view. The rich and powerful and maybe even some Christians would say that James is crazy. He’s got his values all mixed up.
So who is right? And how do we know who is right? It depends on your point of view. A point of view is a position or a perspective from which you consider and evaluate things and understand them.
James commands us to wait and suffer patiently because he sees Jesus’ coming. He wants us to have the same point of view.
I’m reading in James 5.
1. Let’s define the rich: they are those who abuse the gifts God gives them.
A. It’s not a sin to be wealthy.
1. Wealth is a gift of God. He gives the power to make wealth. Deuteronomy 8:11-14 “Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” And a little further on Moses says, “Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.” Deuteronomy 8:17-18
2. It is a fact that many of God’s saints were wealthy: Job, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David, Solomon. God blessed them.
3. Wealth is a gift of God and God’s gifts are good. Everything that God makes and gives is good because God is good.
B. It’s what people do with the gifts of God that is wrong. They use the gifts of God, not as God intended, but badly. They actually use the gifts of God in a way that curses them instead of blessing them.
2. James shows how the rich abuse the good gifts of God.
A. The rich put their trust in wealth rather than God.
1. Paul tells Timothy the right use of riches in 1 Timothy 6:17-19: Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
2. The abuse of wealth is to trust in it like it was God. God is eternal, He doesn’t change, He is worthy of trust. Riches are uncertain because they, like everything else in this life, are subject to sudden and unexpected change. One minute there, the next minute, gone. Trusting in wealth is the wrong use of money and abuses a good gift of God.
B. The rich abuse the power that wealth brings.
1. We’ve seen this already in James 2:6-7 Is it not the rich who oppress you and personally drag you into court? Do they not blaspheme the fair name by which you have been called?
2. Here James notices that the rich abuse their power to oppress and defraud and take advantage of their workers who made them wealthy in the first place. Why would you be stingy and unfair to your workers? Trust in God produces confidence. Trust in wealth produces greed, which produces fear, not confidence. The rich fear losing their wealth, so that makes everyone else an adversary. Blows up relationships. Employers are against workers, so workers unite against the employers. Trust in wealth brings fear, not confidence.
C. The rich abuse the gift of wealth by indulging in luxury.
1. When you indulge you are submitting yourself completely to another, to let that thing control you. 2 Peter 2:19 By what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. Romans 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
2. A slave of luxury indulges to the point of death. When you are addicted to alcohol or drugs, you die. When you are addicted to sex, you die. Indulgence leads to death because that thing you hand yourself over to is not God and it can’t bring life, it only takes life.
D. The rich abuse the gift of God by silencing the righteous.
1. The rich persecute the one who speaks of Jesus and kill them because the gospel will undo their prosperity. Jesus said, you cannot serve God and wealth. And God will remove wealth from being the ultimate authority. Jesus said if anyone wants to come after Me you must deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Me. So it’s farewell to luxury.
2. So when wealth is the master, wealth fears the messenger, says Jesus has got to go, kills the messenger.
D. Every gift of God is either a good servant that gives life, or a bad master that takes life.
3. Notice that James is trying to warn the rich of what will most surely happen: the judgment of God.
A. He says to the rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.
1. That’s unthinkable now. Everything is great for the rich: power, pleasure, security, fun.
2. But all those blessings are temporary. They can’t last.
3. Those miseries that are coming are eternal and permanent. And nothing can stop them from coming.
B. Riches are going to rot, clothing will be moth-eaten. Everything decays with time. Even gold will become worthless.
1. Isaiah 2:19-21 Men will go into caves of the rocks and into holes of the ground before the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble. In that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, in order to go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs before the terror of the LORD and the splendor of His majesty, when He arises to make the earth tremble.
2. We see this very thing happen in Revelation 6:12- 17 I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they *said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”
3. Proverbs 11:4 Riches do not profit in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.
C. That rust James speaks of is evidence against you that you trusted in your riches and were not rich towards God in righteousness.
D. These are the last days before judgment. God will judge the earth in righteousness, and His standard is Jesus Christ. You have to measure up to His standard and have the perfect righteousness of God Himself, or you will not stand in the judgment. The wages of sin is eternal punishment away from the presence of God and His holy angels.
E. James says, you rich are actually preparing yourselves for judgment. You are like unthinking animals that eat and eat and eat, and they don’t have a clue that they are going to be slaughtered.
F. And it’s crazy, because the rich aren’t listening to James warning them!
1. They don’t pick up a Bible and it just happens to fall open to this, and they read James’ warning, and say, oh no! That’s me! They wouldn’t go near a Bible, or a church. What for? How could that be fun? The rich need to hear this, and they aren’t listening!
2. That’s why Jesus said it’s really hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Not many noble people get saved, says, Paul, not many wise, not many mighty. Some do, but not many.
4. If the rich aren’t listening to James why is he warning them? He’s warning for the sake of those who are listening: you and me. He wants us to have his point of view, to see things his way.
A. The point of view of the rich is this life is all there is. That means, get it all here and now. That’s how you succeed and prosper: get wealth, protect wealth, get more wealth. Forget others, indulge in pleasure. This is all there is.
B. James point of view is Jesus.
1. He grew up with Jesus as his older brother.
2. He did not believe Jesus when He taught that He was the Messiah. Really? My brother? Really?!!
3. James saw Jesus dying on the cross. Jesus died and was buried.
4. James saw Jesus after He was raised from the dead. He saw Jesus ascend into heaven. James was there when the Holy Spirit was given to the church. James saw it all with his own eyes.
5. Jesus, crucified and raised from the dead is permanently James’ point of view, through which he considers and evaluates and understands everything.
C. That’s why James can look at the rich and powerful and famous and not envy them or be manipulated into following them. From his point of view they are less than dust on the scales. They are a drop in the bucket. From his point of view he can look at them and say, “Your poor guys,” and really mean it! “You are going to lose your wealth in which you trust, you are going to lose your very soul.” What does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul?
5. When you see things from James’ point of view, his commands make perfect sense.
A. He says, therefore, be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.
1. The coming of Jesus in glory and power to judge the earth is part of the gospel. It is the whole reason Jesus came the first time, to lay the foundation for His return. He is still working and building His church. But His return is the big thing, the whole point of His coming and working. He will return, He will save the Jews from death, He will destroy all evil, He will judge, He will rule and reign forever.
2. It’s like the harvest for the farmer. He has to plow and sow and weed and all, but the whole reason he works and waits and waits and waits is for the finale, the big ending, the harvest! It’s going to happen because it has to! You plant it, and it grows. It’s just a matter of time, and the harvest will come.
3. Now we are suffering, because God is disciplining us to share His holiness. Without holiness no one will see God. So in all our suffering God is going to make everything work together for good! He is humbling us. Our jobs get blown up. We aren’t making that much money. We are looking to God to feed us and pay our bills.
4. Some people look at us and say, you are crazy to expect God to just take care of you in a pandemic. We might look at those who are rich and envy them. They despise us and call us dopes because we don’t run with them in their excess and riot and indulge ourselves in wanton pleasure. We might say, “Wow, I’m missing out.” I picked up a magazine in an NHS waiting room and the guy was writing a letter to his younger self. Make sure you get all the sex you can, he says. I should have gotten a lot more sex than I did. You’re not getting sex, he says? You dope. This is all there is, pal. Do we really have to submit to discipline? Is holiness worth it? Are we losing perspective? Are we adopting someone else’s point of view who doesn’t see Jesus?
5. James says, “Don’t be envious of those pitiful rich guys. Be patient. Continue suffering calmly, enduring, until the coming of the Lord.”
B. James’ second command is, strengthen your hearts because Jesus is coming.
1. It means to establish your heart, make your hearts steadfast, unswerving on purpose.
2. Our hearts are just as changeable and unpredictable as money. We can be blown in a lot of different directions. Faithful to Jesus one minute, unfaithful in the next. Trusting in Jesus, then trusting in money.
3. How you strengthen your heart is you strengthen your grasp on Jesus’ return. Jesus came the first time as it is written. Where He would be born, when He would be born, what He would do, how He would die for the sin of the world, and that He would rise from the dead. His return is also carefully documented in both Old and New Testaments.
4. If you write these Scriptures on your heart and meditate on them you will grasp them. They will be your point of view. Your heart will be strong to say, no thanks, I don’t want to ruin my eternity. I’ll set all my hope on the grace to come at the revelation of Jesus in glory. All hope in this present life will fail. Hope in Jesus will never fail.
C. Because His coming is near.
1. With the wrong point of view you could say, really? 2000 years? Near?
2. That’s the wrong point of view because, the Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9 We wouldn’t be having this conversation if Jesus came back like some people think. He wants to extend His salvation to more people than you. That’s what’s going on right now! Not slowness! Salvation!
3. But His coming is always nearer than when we first believed. We look forward to the rapture, and we will all be raptured, but some of us will die first. But we do not anticipate our death, we anticipate our going to be with Him. 2 Corinthians 5:6 To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Grasp that Scripture and you will strengthen your heart! The government will never save you from death! No vaccine can save you from death! Only Jesus saves you from death!
6. So what?
A. Don’t envy the wicked. We envy them because we are not satisfied. We are not satisfied because we have a weak grasp of our salvation.
B. Get the right point of view. Read and meditate in the word of God. Establish your hearts in the truth. Then you will be satisfied by God.
C. The coming of the Lord is near. That’s what we’re waiting for, and it has to happen because He promised, and He cannot lie.
Let’s pray.