James - James 5:1-6

Yes money talks. It's crying out to God and money's going to talk tomorrow when the judge shows up and when the budget book and the bank book and the checkbook are put on the witness stand, money is going to talk. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. 

And now let's pray together. We pray that we might have the kind of leadership and the kind of law and the kind of government that will enable us to lead quiet and peaceable lives, that we might be able to share the gospel. Thank you for the freedom that we have. And we pray, O God, that you'll guide us now as we study the word. Say to us that which we need to hear. This is our prayer in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

People who accuse the Bible of being a book that is impractical and otherworldly should read James 5:1-6. He's talking here about the sins of the economy. "Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you."

I don't think that James is writing here to wealthy people who are saved, because you'll notice in verse 7, "Therefore be patient, brethren." You see, he picks up that word brethren. Verse 9, "Do not grumble against one another, brethren." Verse 10, "my brethren, take the prophets as an example." So apparently in verses 1 through 6, James is addressing wealthy people who are not saved. Now, they did come to these assemblies. In James 2:2, James tells us, "if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings and fine apparel, and there should come also in a poor man in filthy clothes." So the assemblies had a mixture of people when it came to the rich and the poor. So there would have been, there could well have been some wealthy unsaved people sitting there in the congregation. 

Now he has already had a word to say to the wealthy believers. James 1:9, "Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation, but the rich in his humiliation." Then he goes on to say how the rich ought to rejoice when God reminds them their riches are going to fade away. These are rich unbelievers, and James wrote these words to encourage the poor believers. He wants to encourage the brethren to be patient and not to fight back and not to get discouraged because of the economic oppression. 

Now, I think that you and I should do all we can to bring about economic justice in the world. However, there are some things we're just not going to be able to do. You can't change people's motives. You can't legislate that people suddenly be generous. You can't make people honest. Unfortunately, the heart of man is wicked, and when a person gets into a place of wealth and authority, that wickedness has a way of expanding. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And wealth corrupts, and when you have a great deal of wealth, you just better be careful you're liable to think you can rule the world. 

Now, James is talking about the wrong use of money, and he's telling us that money talks. And he wants us to listen carefully to four different voices in James 5:1-6. First, there is the voice of the wealthy who are sinning. That's in verse 1. These people are howling. "Come now, you rich, weep." Now that word weep means to be weeping for the dead. "And howl," that means to howl in despair. For what? "For your miseries that are coming upon you." Now in verses 5 and 6, he goes on to speak to them further. Here is the voice of the wealthy who are sinning. 

Now what are their sins? That's important. Well, there are at least five of them, possibly more. Number one, they were hoarding their wealth. "Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days." Now, in that day, wealth was found in grain and gold and silver and garments, and all of them are mentioned here. They had grain, they'd heaped up their treasure, and he talks about the garments, and he talks about the gold and the silver. Now they were hoarding wealth. They were hoarding it just simply to have it. You see, wealth of itself does not satisfy. If it does, there's something wrong with your heart. Money is simply a medium of exchange. You can't eat money. Money will not make you well. Money will not automatically take you from Lincoln, Nebraska to New York City. You have to exchange it. So if you're hungry, you buy food. If you're sick, you buy medicine. If you want to go to New York City, you buy a plane ticket or a train ticket. Therefore, says James, in hoarding all of this, they were revealing a second sin: covetousness. Money was their god. They were hoarding just to have. Sort of like the stories of the dragons we used to read about in our childhood storybooks where these dragons would steal all of this wealth and take it to their cave. Now what good did it do them? They weren't enjoying spending it. They couldn't eat it. It didn't talk to them and give them companionship. Ah, but they had it. 

You know, we are great collectors. We are great at collecting things. Every once in a while there has to be a garage sale to get rid of some of the things that we have collected. In fact, collecting things is such a big enterprise these days that a whole new industry has developed, namely renting space to store things. People who have big houses have to rent space to store things. We are great collectors, hoarders. Now they were hoarding their wealth, they were covetous, and they were living in luxury. Verse 5, "You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury." That word luxury in verse 5 means indulgence. They have lived for themselves. 

Now, there's nothing wrong with enjoying the things God has given to you, but you can carry that to excess. 1 Timothy 6:17, Paul tells us that God "gives to us richly all things to enjoy." It isn't wrong to save. Nothing wrong with saving, providing we aren't hoarding. In 1 Timothy 5:8, Timothy is told by Paul, "But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." So if we don't do some saving and providing for the future, we are denying the faith. Nothing wrong with saving, but don't hoard. Nothing wrong with enjoying the blessings of life to the glory of God. If we eat, we eat to the glory of God. But let's be careful about luxury. Let's be careful about going too far because it's possible that we might find ourselves living just like the unbelievers out there in the world. 

Now, worse than all of this—it’s bad enough to hoard and be covetous and live in luxury—but to do this at the expense of honest people, that’s quite something else. Verse 4 tells us they were holding back the wages of their laborers, and therefore this is what gave them their money. They owed money to other people, but instead of paying their bills and being honest, they were indulging in their own pleasures. And by the way, there are a lot of people who live like that. I heard about a man who said, "My wife is going to have plastic surgery, I'm taking all of her credit cards away from her." Well, it isn't just the woman in the house; the man in the house may be just as guilty. The only difference between men and boys is that men buy more expensive toys. And so we go out and we just waste money in a world that is in need of food, in need of the gospel, in need of help; we just go out and waste money on expensive adult toys and adult enterprises. 

Now not only were they stealing money from other people, but they were using the courts to get legal protection. That's an amazing thing. Verse 6, "You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you." Now they were not literally murdering people, of course. He's using that language to tell us what was happening in the courts. He said, "You've killed their future. You've killed their hopes." These rich people who could afford to go to court were bribing the judges and doing other things so that they came out with their hands clean. Legal oppression was being used against the poor people in an illegal way. Leviticus 19:15 says, "You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty, but in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor." 

So they were guilty of six sins: hoarding their wealth, covetousness, luxurious, wasteful, indulgent living, stealing wages that belonged to other people, and then using the courts in legal oppression that turned out to be illegal. Now says James, "You better start howling, you wealthy who are wasting your wealth and using it wrongly, because a threefold judgment is coming upon you." Right now your wealth is decaying. "Your riches are corrupted," they've rotted. That's the garments, are now rotten. "And your gold and silver are corroding." Now these metals do not corrode, we know that. What he’s saying is their value is going to go down. You think you’re so rich, but they won’t be there. Their value is going down. Your wealth is decaying, and you yourself are going down in character. Your character is decaying. You’re like animals. "You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury," says verse 5, "you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter." He compares them to cattle. Amos did this, didn’t he, in Amos 4:1? He called the wealthy women in Samaria who were getting their drink and all of their entertainment from husbands who were crushing the poor—he called them the "cows of Bashan." If a pastor did that today, he’d be fired. He says to them, "You’re just like fat cows. Oh, you look so sleek and so fat, but you are going to lose everything. A day of slaughter is coming." By the way, about 10 years after James wrote this letter, Jerusalem was destroyed. A lot of garments went up in smoke, a lot of gold and silver was stolen, a lot of grain was ruined. 

So their wealth is decaying, they are decaying, they’re living like animals. They think it’s a great joy, great delight. They think they’re really living, and James says, on the other hand, stop and think, you’re being fattened up for slaughter. And of course, there is the future fire—the miseries that will come upon you. Your money is going to eat your flesh like fire. The judge is at the door, verse 9. Well, the wealthy who are sinning—that’s the first voice. They’re howling. 

Then, secondly, there's the wealth that is spoiling. Notice what he says in verse 3, that "your gold and silver will be a witness against you." Money talks. The garments that are rotting and being ruined, the gold and silver that's rusting, the grain that's rotting—in the future all of this wealth is going to be a witness against you. I understand that there are over a hundred million individual income tax forms filed in the United States every year. Last year only 1% were audited. I have a feeling that’s going to get higher. God audits all accounts. Oh, you say it’s my money, I earned it, I can spend it and use it anyway I please. No you can’t. Because God audits the books, and one of these days money that was hoarded, covetous money, illegal money, money that was robbed from other people is going to witness against people at the judgment. 

Well, there are the wealthy who are sinning—they’re howling—and there's the wealth that is spoiling—it speaks. But verse 4 tells us the wages that were stolen is also speaking. "Indeed the wages of the laborers... cry out." This money is crying out to God. Now, God had a law that the laborer should be paid every day. Leviticus 19:13, "You shall not defraud your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night until morning." He repeats this in Deuteronomy 24:14-15, "You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy... Each day you shall give him his wages, and not let the sun go down on it, for he is poor and has set his heart on it; lest he cry out against you to the Lord, and it be sin to you." Deuteronomy 24:14 and 15. The wages were crying out. 

Christian people who owe money to people and don't pay it, that money is crying out to God, and it's crying out in witness against us. Now, sometimes we cannot pay, but at least we ought to try. We should go to those people and say, "Look, I'm having a rough time, I want you to be patient with me, please." But here were these poor people whose wages were being kept back. They were not being paid properly and honestly, and the wages were crying out to God. I wonder today what kind of crying God is hearing from wages that have been held back. We better examine our own hearts and find out if we are honestly dealing with those who are looking to us. 

There's a fourth voice here. We've seen three voices: the wealthy are crying out, they're howling; and their wealth that's spoiling is witnessing against them; and the wages that they have stolen, those wages are crying out to God and saying, "God, do something." But in verse 4 we also read that the workers who are suffering, they’re also crying out. Verse 4, "the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." Now these people were just too poor to fight back. They couldn’t resist these people in the courts. Verse 6, "You have condemned, you have murdered the just." That makes me think about Naboth and his vineyard. "He does not resist you." And of course, the Lord Jesus Christ taught his people not to fight back in things like this. Matthew 5:39, "But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also." And so these rich people were taking advantage of the meekness and the obedience of the poor Christians. And the Christians were crying out to the Lord. 

Now, James gives us a wonderful name for the Lord: the Lord of Sabaoth, which means the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the armies. This is the militant name of our God, the Lord of the armies. And because He is the Lord of the armies, one day He's going to come and there is going to be a judgment. Well, nobody's going to get away with anything. We're not owners, we are stewards. If God has given you wealth, thank Him for it and be frightened. Wealth can corrupt, wealth can pollute, wealth can destroy. If God has given you wealth, remember you are a steward, not an owner. God owns it, He wants you to manage it. Now, enjoy what God has given you. That's 1 Timothy 6:17, "God gives to us richly all things to enjoy." But also employ what you have for the glory of God. It's not necessary to live in luxury. Let's find at what level of life God wants us to live and stay there, and if anything more comes in that we don't need, let's give it away. Let's share with others. Let's not be guilty of the sins that these people were guilty of. Yes, money talks. Money talks today, it's crying out to God, and money's going to talk tomorrow when the judge shows up and when the budget book and the bank book and the checkbook are put on the witness stand, money is going to talk. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

[Interview:]
You're listening to Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe here on Back to the Bible. And now, let's join Warren in the studio with Arnie Cole, CEO of Back to the Bible International.

Warren, why is it so important for Christ followers to put their faith into action?

Because that's the only faith we really have. I have a great deal stored up in my head, so do you. I thank God for my professors who were so knowledgeable, but if we don't practice it, what good is it? The Bible was written that we might become Bibles ourselves. We get the word of God in our heart. And I remember Cedric Sears, I don't know if you knew him or not, he was in Youth for Christ, he was called "the walking Bible." Name a topic, he'll quote you 10 verses. He's in heaven now, I'm sure he's enjoying it. But if we don't practice the Bible, it gets into our heads but not into our hearts. Obedience is what puts the word of God in your heart, and the Bible doesn't say, "your word have I memorized in my head," no, no, it says "your word have I hidden in my heart." So the only Bible I really possess, no matter how much I know, is that which I practice. And that's convicting.