The Sentencing Of Snobs - James 5:1-6 Series

James 5:1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you. 7 Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the Lord’s coming.

Introduction

Don’t Fret

Think back to the last time you were in a situation where you or someone you love had to suffer an injustice – something really unfair and wrong, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it. How did that make you feel? If you haven’t ever gone through that, it’s hard to explain the feelings it causes. It is a special kind of anxiety. It’s a mix of anger, distress, fear, indignation, outrage, self-pity, urgency, and a host of other painful emotions mixed together in such a way that dominates your thinking. It is one of the most distracting emotions you will ever feel. In a case of real extreme injustice, it will jump into the front of your thinking every few seconds all day long. You can try to push those thoughts away, but they come right back. There is a word for that feeling. That mix of anger, distress, fear, urgency, and all the rest – there’s a word that the Bible uses to describe that whole complex of emotions. It is the word fretting, and Scripture tells us not to do that.

Psalm 37:1 Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong; 2 for like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.

That whole psalm is all about how to solve the problem of fretting. So if you have a problem with that, you are definitely going to want to spend some time in Psalm 37. But you might also spend time in James 5, because that is exactly what James is talking about here. Instead of fretting, James is going to teach us how to be patient until the Lord’s return. And one of the keys to overcoming fretting, is understanding the judgment that is going to come on the wicked. That is why James has all this harsh language about judgment. He is going to talk to us about how to persevere in suffering, and so he begins by telling us that God is going to deal with those people who are causing our suffering. That is an important principle when it comes to handling suffering that he didn’t really touch on in chapter 1.

The book of James is a suffering sandwich. Chapters 1 and 5 are both about persevering through suffering. Those are the pieces of bread, and in between is the meat of the book, which is all about true religion – being a doer of the word by showing love to one another, controlling the tongue, and avoiding worldliness. Love in chapter 2, the tongue in chapter 3, and worldliness in chapter 4.

Four Purposes of 5:1-6

So that is the structure of the book. We are just beginning the second piece of bread about hanging in there during suffering. Now, at this point some of you might be thinking, “Are you looking at the same passage that I’m looking at? Did you just hear the Scripture reading? Because what I heard didn’t sound like encouragement at all. It sounded like a harsh rebuke. He is saying things like, “Weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you, judgment is coming and it is going to eat your flesh like fire – all these indictments and judgments.” That’s true. I can’t deny the fact that those people in verses one through six are being threatened with severe judgment. In fact, it sounds to me like those people are going to hell. And there is not even a call to repentance. He doesn’t tell them to weep in repentance like he did in chapter 4. This is crying and wailing in the agony of punishment. The word wail has to do with volume. It refers to the shrieking and screaming that comes when someone is in intense agony. James is saying, “If you knew the punishment you are about to face – if you knew what Jesus Christ is going to do to you on Judgment Day, you would be screaming right now.” So how is that encouraging?