First Baptist Church
October 28, 2001
James 5:1-6
A man was a regular diner at a restaurant. The owner always did his best to please him. One day he complained that he only received one piece of bread with his meal, so the waiter promptly brought him four slices.
The man said, "That’s good, but not good enough. I love bread!" So, the next night he was given six slices with supper. He said, "Good! But aren’t you still being a bit frugal?" Even a basketful the next day didn’t stop the complaints. Finally, the owner decided to end this for good. The next night he had a colossal loaf of bread baked. It was six feet long, three feet wide. It took the manager and two waiters to carry it to the complainer’s table. When they laid it on the table the huge loaf took up five place settings. They stood there and smiled, waiting for the man’s reaction. The man looked at the gigantic loaf of bread and said, "So, we’re back to ONE piece again?"
Have you ever had a problem with collecting too much stuff? Why is it that another word for too much stuff, is junk? If you took an honest tour of your home, would you say you have more, I mean way more than you need? I believe that most of us would be guilty of that. Of course, I don’t want you to think that having stuff, or having wealth is wrong. Nowhere does the Bible ever condemn people who are wealthy, and neither does James.
It is amazing that for ten weeks we have been deep into the book of James. As you can see, James is the most practical book of the New Testament. Today, James leads us to focus on the issue of wealth and our attitude towards it. Again, if we seek to become authentic Christians, we must look at these difficult and convicting, yet hopeful words from James.
Throughout this book, James has been getting us to think about our attitude to the things of the world. We have looked at worldly wisdom, at accumulating things, at planning for tomorrow - when there is no tomorrow — and now James leads us to consider the hardship that comes into our lives when our sole purpose is the pursuit of things that show we are wealthy. You know the saying, ‘the one who has the most toys wins.’ That is not true. They may have the most toys, but they may not have their salvation.
James looked at the 3 greatest ways people in his day demonstrated they were wealthy. They showed their wealth through — grain, clothing and jewels. James says all of them will decay. The grain will become rotten, the clothes will be eaten by moths (they didn’t have moth balls in those days) and most importantly, James says their gold and silver will rust. Until I did a little looking, I found out that gold and silver do not rust, so what is James point about these jewels?
His point is that whatever you are banking on will not last, even our most precious and indestructible things are doomed to decay. This rust is proof of impermanence and ultimate valuelessness of all worldly things. It is also a warning, James then goes on to say that our desire for such riches will eventually eat away into our body and soul. James uses extremely vivid imagery to bring that point home when he says "the corrosion of the jewels will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire."
We’ve heard of people like that. People who hoard every penny they have, but never have the joy of spending it or giving it away. There is the story of John G. Wendel and his sisters. Even though they had received a huge inheritance from their parents, they were some of the most miserly people of all time, they spent very little of it and did all they could to keep their wealth for themselves.
John was able to influence five of his six sisters never to marry, and they lived in the same house in New York City for 50 years. When the last sister died in 1931, her estate was valued at more than $100 million. Yet, her only dress was one that she had made herself, and had worn for 25 years.
The Wendels had such a compulsion to hold on to their possessions that they lived like paupers. Even worse, they were like the kind of person Jesus referred to "who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:21). Daily Walk, June 2, 1993.
Or take Bertha Adams. She died in 1976 at the age of 71, on Easter Sunday in Palm Beach, FL. Coroner’s report ... she died of malnutrition, weighing 50 pounds.
Begged for food. Her home was a "pigpen .. big mess!"
They thought she died penniless. Two keys found ... 2 safety deposit boxes
One had over 700 shares of AT&T & $200,000 cash. 2nd had only cash, $600,000.
Her great wealth did her no good. James views this type of hoarding as obscene because it corrupts and corrodes life.
Have you heard the stories of people who have won the lottery? So many of them eventually file bankruptcy or squander their money, they no longer talk to family members, and life has become joyless. Why? Because they valued their wealth more so than a relationship with Jesus Christ. When the Rich Young Ruler came to Jesus, Jesus told him he needed to do only one thing to inherit the kingdom and have treasure in heaven, ‘give away all your possessions to the poor and follow me.’ That rich young man, turned around and walked away sad (Matthew 19:22).
In the final three verses, James points out 3 things the wealthy are doing which is wrong. I want to briefly mention them and then discuss the proper attitude.
1. The rich have gained their wealth by injustice. It is repeated over and over in the Bible that a person was to receive their pay at the end of the days work, not at the end of the week or at the end of the month, but that day. E.g., Deuteronomy 24:14- 15 is similar - "You shall not oppress a hired servant . . . you shall give him his wages on the day he earns it, before the sun goes down, lest he cry against you to the Lord, and it be a sin upon you." Lev. 19:13, Pro. 3:27-8, Jeremiah 22:13, Malachi 3:5.
2. In verse 5 James says the people have used their money selfishly. Again this is not an indictment against wealth, it is an indictment on how much power money has over us. Remember the 2nd of the 10 commandments, we shall not worship idols. Is money or the accumulation of money what you worship? If it is, then money is your idol. There is nothing wrong with investing your money or planning for college or retirement or vacations, but James is pointing out when we are consumed by wealth, then we have gone over the edge.
3. They rich are fattening themselves expecting others to be brought to the slaughter, however, they will be the ones brought to the slaughter. They lived for their wealth, rather than for God. They sought one pleasure after another. And there are not many pleasures that money cannot buy. But these pleasures do not last.
4. And finally, they condemned and murdered people so that they could continue to accumulate their wealth.
Now this may not seem like you and I, but the word of James is still relevant to us today. Because I know of many people who seek to hold onto every penny they have, irregardless if they know someone has a need. It occurs in church with our time, when we say, we don’t have to help or we won’t help. It occurs when we say, I’m not going to give my money to the church. I don’t like what they are doing with their money, or someone else will give. You know, I’ve said it before, if you don’t give of your time and money, it will not effect me, it will ultimately effect you and your relationship with God, because it is a spiritual situation. Your not giving to build God’s kingdom is a spiritual issue that will be settled between you and God.
Now, I want to take a final look at what we are to be doing. I want to give you an example of a man who forfeited millions of dollars to do what he beleived was right in the sight of God.
Charles Colson told the following story in an address at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi:
Colson said, in 1985 I was on the Bill Buckley television program, talking about restitution and criminal justice. A few days later I got a call from Jack Eckerd, a businessman from Florida, the founder of the Eckerd Drug chain, the second largest drug chain in America. He saw me on television and asked me to come to Florida. He agreed Florida had a criminal justice crisis, would I come down and do something about it? And we did. We went around the State of Florida advocating criminal justice reforms, and everywhere we would go Jack Eckerd would introduce me to the crowds and say, "This is Chuck Colson, I met him on Bill Buckley’s television program. He’s born again, I’m not. I wish I were." Then he’d sit down.
About a year went by and I kept pestering Jack Eckerd about faith in Jesus. Eventually one day he read some things including the story of Watergate and the Resurrection out of my book, Loving God, and decided that Jesus was, in fact, resurrected from the dead. He called me up to tell me he believed. When he got through telling me what he believed I said, "You’re born again!"
He said, "Marvelous!" The first thing he did was to walk into one of his drugstores and walked down through the book shelves and he saw Playboy and Penthouse. He’d seen it there many times before, but it never bothered him before. Now he saw them with new eyes. He’d become a Christian.
He went back to his office. He called in his president. He said, "Take Playboy and Penthouse out of my stores. The president said, "You can’t mean that, Mr. Eckerd. We make $3M a year on them." Eckerd said, "Take them out of my stores." And in 1,700 stores across America, those magazines were removed from the shelves, because a man had given his life to Christ.
Colson called Jack Eckerd and asked "Did you do that because of your commitment to Christ?" He said, "Why else would I give away $3 M? The Lord wouldn’t let me off the hook." Isn’t that marvelous? God wouldn’t let me off the hook.
And what happened after that is a wonderful sequel and a wonderful demonstration of what happens in our culture today. Jack Eckerd wrote a letter to all the other drugstore operators, all the other chains, and he said, "I’ve taken them out of my store, why don’t you take them out of yours?" Nobody answered him. So he wrote them more letters. Then Eckerd’s Drugs began to get floods of people coming in to buy things because they’d taken Playboy and Penthouse out.
And so People’s Drug Store, and then Dart Drugs, and then Revco removed them from their shelves. While the pornography commission in Washington was debating what to do about pornography, across America, one by one, stores were removing them. And the 7-11 chairman, who sits on Jack Eckerd’s board, finally gave in, and 5,000 7-11 stores removed them. In 12 months, 11,000 retail outlets in America removed Playboy and Penthouse, not because somebody passed a law, but because God wouldn’t let one of His men off the hook. That’s what brings change. — James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988) pp. 46-48.
Isn’t that an amazing story. Jack Eckerd risked losing $3M per year. That’s a great testimony about our faith in Christ and what we are compelled to do.
In our lives we are to find our riches in a life with God. We are to be transformed more and more into the image of Christ. It is a daily event. It takes a great deal of discipline. Our wealth will ultimately come out of our relationship with God. When we have that intimacy, then we would not trade that for all the money in the world, because intimacy and communion with God is priceless. That is why the greatest comment that can be made to us is the one Jesus will tell us when we join Him in heaven, "Well done good and faithful servant."
Finally, we need to learn a little more to let loose of our grip on our possessions, and let God take over. Corrie Ten Boom once said, "I have learned not to hold on to things in this life too tightly because it hurts when God pries my fingers loose from them." How true that is.
As Jesus said in Matthew 10:8b "... Freely you have received, freely give." Again, God is not against us making money and spending it. He simply wants us to give Him control over everything, even our wealth. Would you pray about being transformed into His image, this morning.
