Life Hacks (Part 11): Handling Your Wealth

Good morning, welcome.

It's great to be together this morning.

Uh, just before we continue our study of the book of James, I want to just mention a few things.

If you are not aware, there's an election coming up uh this next Tuesday, and we don't try to presume to tell anybody how to vote here, but one thing we do like to encourage you to do is to vote.

Elections do matter, they do have consequences, and so I hope that you'll take the opportunity to exercise the privilege to let your voice be heard, to research the candidates, to try to understand issues that are substantial and vote accordingly this next week.

I also just wanted to highlight again this event on November 11th, the Dream Big Event.

If you're newer to Orchard Hill, we have kind of an annual party.

Uh we do it in different venues.

This year it's at the Science Center, and it's a party where we look back at what God has done in the last year.

We celebrate, we have fun together, and then we talk a little bit about where we're headed the next year.

And this is this year on November 11th, and so we'd love, if this is your church home, for you to participate in that.

Uh please go online and register.

That'll help uh the logistics of the evening uh go much smoother if you would do that.

And then finally, I just want to take uh one more moment and just highlight something about security once again.

Uh, we talked a little bit about this last weekend after the incident in Squirrel Hill.

And uh, you know, as as I uh mentioned some things about it last week, I realized that it's an issue that produces some um angst within us, just to even talk about it.

But there's a verse in Nehemiah chapter 4, verse 9, that I think is instructive in some ways to this.

Nehemiah 4:9

The people were under a threat as they were rebuilding the walls, that some people would come and attack them.

And here's what they say.

It says, But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat.

Now, certainly we don't have an imminent threat that we're aware of, and we have a relationship with the Franklin Park Police Department who uh just does a wonderful job being here weekend after weekend, and so there are some things we've done, but but the word and is instructive to me there.

And and the reason I say that that's instructive is some people will approach security with uh we need to do everything we can.

And there are things that we can do, there are things we can do better.

We don't mean when we say that we've done some things, we've addressed some things to say we've thought of every eventuality.

And then there are some people who will, on the other side, say, we just need to pray and trust God.

We don't need to take any measures at all.

And I think both miss the point.

That's why and is instructive, because what it is saying is that it's prudent to say, what can we do?

And again, we know that there are some things we can do better.

But if you're concerned about this, can I just encourage you to pray?

Pray for Orchard Hill, Orchard Hill Strip District, Orchard Hill Butler County, pray for other houses of worship, schools, sporting events, restaurants in our community that God would be at work because there's a human element, but there's a divine element as well.

And as a church, we want to do what we can, but also say we trust in our God to work as well.

And so let's uh let's just take a moment and pray and we'll jump into James.

Father, uh, we ask very simply today that you would meet each of us here, wherever we're coming from.

Lord, let my words reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

A few weeks ago, there was the Mega Millions Lottery Jackpot.

I don't know if you saw this, but it hit what for them was a record number,$1.6 billion.

And so several people got excited about it, and and as my news feed, some of the feeds that I read, some of the stuff online, came and told about this, I got drawn in to want to read a little more about it.

So I clicked on a couple of the links, and one of them that I clicked on told about people who had won lotteries in the past and how it had impacted their lives negatively.

And as I started to read just about this, it it was interesting to me because the people whose lives had been impacted negatively had not prepared for that kind of wealth.

They had gone from ordinary wealth to incredible wealth.

And this article talking about uh having a$1.6 billion windfall said, if you were the person to win, here are some of the things you would need to think about that maybe you have not thought about.

Security for yourself, because you probably don't think about yourself as a target of kidnapping.

You'd need to think about how to utilize the tax codes and lawyers and accountants and investment specialists to help manage your money well in a way that maybe you haven't.

And then they talked about all of the people who would come asking for donations, all of the charities, and said if you don't think this stuff through, it'll swamp your life, it'll overwhelm your life.

Now, I didn't play the lottery, I think I've said I, you know, one to three hundred million odds aren't my odds that I like to play.

But but I did have a thought when I read that, and and they were warning about all the dangers of this kind of sudden windfall.

And here was my thought.

I'd like to try.

And my guess is you would too.

I mean, when you hear about that, you think, you know what, I I think I could manage that, and it would be some problems that would be worth having.

But you know, that article says something that's actually very close to what James says in James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

We've been working our way through the book of James.

We're at James chapter 5, verses 1 through 6, and we've called this series life hacks because it gives us wisdom about how to handle certain things.

James 5:1–6

And here's what James says very simply in chapter 5, verse 1.

He says, Now listen, you rich people.

Weep and wail because of the misery that's coming on you.

Do you know what James says?

He says that wealth has dangers, that riches can be damaging in your life.

But probably like me with the lottery, what most of us say is, but I'd like to try.

I'd prefer trying to not trying.

And it's easy at this point to try to dismiss rich people.

And the phrase rich people.

And what I mean by that is here's what most of us do when it comes to identifying with wealth.

We say there's a line, and somewhere below the line, that's where I am, and anybody who's wealthy is above the line, but I'm clearly not one of the really wealthy people.

Now, some of you, some of us might say, well, okay, I'm really one of the wealthy people, but but most of us probably would say, you know what, I'm somewhere below that line.

Like, like the people with real wealth, they have more than me.

Even if you would be able to identify and say, I have a lot, you'd still say, They're really wealthy people, they're more than me.

Or we go digging in the text for a theological reason to dismiss it.

And what a lot of people have done when they come to this text is they say, because of the Old Testament imagery that's used here of weeping and wailing, they're images of judgment, and this is judgment for the unbelieving rich.

So this isn't for a Christian person to worry about.

This is just for a non-Christian person to worry about.

But I think if you look at the book of James and you see the way that it's addressed to people of faith, this is saying, even if you have faith, even if you don't see yourself as wealthy, you need to be aware that wealth has certain dangers in your life.

That's what James is driving at.

And by the way, I know I don't need to tell you this, but the fact that you live in the era of history in which you live, and you live in the United States of America, makes you one of the wealthiest people who's ever lived.

So even if, comparatively speaking, you say, everybody I know has more than me, you are still a wealthy person by definition.

And so James says, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to be aware, to weep and wail, to mourn because there's a misery that comes with being wealthy.

Now, what is he talking about when he says this?

And why does he say it so starkly?

Well, I believe that what he does in this text is he challenges our beliefs and our behaviors.

And so he takes on some of our thoughts around wealth and then some of our behaviors around wealth.

So the first challenge is to our beliefs about wealth, and we see this in verses one through the first part of verse three.

And he does this by basically telling us that we often attach to wealth our status and our security, because we believe often that wealth brings status.

Here's why I say this, verse two.

He says, Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes.

Now, if you've been here throughout this series, you have heard us talk about clothes and wealth.

And one of the ways that it's helpful to understand and interpret the Bible is to say when a phrase is used in one place, how is that phrase used by the same author in the same book?

And in this instance, the idea of clothes were used for wealth by James in James 2, because when when he was giving the analogy about people coming into religious assemblies dressed well to show off their status, he alluded to their clothes as a status symbol.

And so what I think James is doing here is yes, he's talking about our clothes, but even more than that, he's saying, here's what some of us do, and that is we assume that money and the things that money buy can bring us status.

Therefore, we end up prioritizing that status.

But what he's doing by saying the moths will eat your clothes is he's saying even that status will not last.

It's not something that you can be guaranteed of over time.

Now, maybe for you, clothes isn't the thing.

Maybe it's more cars, houses, vacations, experiences.

Maybe you say, I don't care about any of that, but but I like knowing that I can have certain things that feel good to me.

But all James is doing here is he's saying, you see, your your status, your use of stuff to feel good about yourself in any way is a temporary fix.

It's uh something that maybe you've experienced.

I uh some time ago was on a couple of flights in a couple of days.

And on one of the flights, I was dressed pretty nicely, and at least for me, whatever that means, and uh and I ended up getting bumped into first class.

And as I sat in my nice clothes in first class, I had that experience of like as people would kind of stream by, being like, Yeah, you're right, I'm sitting in first class.

And yes, I have on nice clothes, and and I just felt kind of good.

Like, like I'm, you know, I'm I'm here.

At a later flight, I for a variety of reasons was not dressed very well.

I did not get bumped to first class.

And as I sat there, there was just a little sense of I don't feel like I'm successful.

Now, does anything change between flight A and flight B other than the way I was dressed and where I sat?

No, but but sometimes we use resources to feel good about ourselves.

And James is just simply saying, I want you to understand, here's why you need to weep and howl, is because whatever you buy to make yourself feel good, whatever you use your money for, to help yourself feel better about yourself, it will not last.

And then he drives harder into this and he addresses the issue of security.

And we see this in the start of verse three, because our belief is often that our wealth will bring us status.

It's also also that our wealth will bring us security.

Verse three, your gold and silver are corroded.

Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire.

So what does he say?

He says, Your gold, your silver, this is what people would amass with hopes that their resources would last, that it would give them security.

And he says, they've corroded.

In other words, it's lost its value.

In other words, all the stuff that you're trying to use to accumulate or to or to secure your future is not something that will automatically last.

You see, here's what our belief is.

Our belief is that my stuff is enough, either for status or security.

And what James is doing is he's saying, what you amass, it will never last.

The stuff that you amass won't last.

Here's how C.S.

Lewis wrote about this.

He said, the settled happiness and security, which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world.

But joy, pleasure, and merriment, he has scattered broadcast.

We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun and some ecstasy.

The security that we crave in the world teaches us to rest our hearts in this world.

But after moments of happiness and love, a landscape, a beautiful landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bath or a football match, we have no such tendency.

Our Father refreshes on us the journey with some pleasant ends, but he encourages us to never mistake them for a home.

See, what happens with our wealth, whatever level of wealth we have, is we think this will give me status, this will give me security.

And what James is doing is he's saying, I want you to understand that the reason you need to weep and howl is because whatever you think you're getting from that is not something that will give you as much of it as you think that it will.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about with your kids?

But then as they get older, they actually start playing games that are really fun because they're games that that they're like smarter than you at a certain point and more competitive than you, and so all of a sudden the games are fun.

So in our family, as our kids have aged, the games have changed.

And we have a family favorite, at least for some of us, um, called the Resistance.

Uh, awesome game, but it always ends up with somebody mad at somebody.

So my wife doesn't like when we play that.

There's a more uh friendly game that we played.

Some friends put us on to a few years ago, and it's a good game because it it plays older and younger, kind of all at the same time.

It's called Ticket to Ride.

And Ticket to Ride is this game where you basically build a train network across the country, and by the end of the game, you can kind of see who might win, but you actually have to count to know because there's some things that aren't known.

But but here's the thing I'm pretty good at Ticket to Ride.

So, like, I win almost every time that we play.

Uh, and my family has gotten annoyed with this uh ability of me to win this game, and so they said something, somebody said something the last time we played, and I was winning, and they said, you know what happens when this game is done?

And this is a line that we've used a few times in different ways.

They said it'll all go back in the box.

And you know what they were saying?

They were saying, you can gloat now, you can be happy now, but this isn't going to matter one bit in five minutes.

Do you know what James is saying?

He's saying some of us are living our lives like Kurt plays ticket to ride.

Okay, he's not exactly saying that, that's a paraphrase.

But but here's what he's doing: he's saying, I want you to understand that everything you have, in terms of your status and security that you think you're getting from your wealth, understand that one day it's all going to go back in a box.

It won't give you what you think it will give you.

And he's helping us to have a realistic perception of what wealth will do for us because our tendency is to think, if I could just get a little bit more.

So somebody reminded me last night after the message, they said uh it was Rockefeller who was asked, How much do you need?

You know, the Rockefeller, Rockefeller Center, all the money that he had, and he said, just a little bit more.

We tend to think, if I just had a little bit more, then my status and my security would be enough.

And James is just driving right at that belief system and saying, you need to check that belief.

But he doesn't just do that, he also addresses behavior.

He challenges our beliefs and our idea that money will bring or wealth will bring status or wealth will bring security, but he also challenges our behaviors around wealth.

There was a church father who named Ambrose who put it this way He said, Riches are the instrument of all vices because they render us capable of putting even our worst desires into execution.

Now, the Bible, throughout its pages, is not down on the idea of money.

Certainly having money in Proverbs and in different places is better than not having money.

And it's a mistake to say that the Bible somehow is against the idea of accumulating stuff.

But here's what the Bible does say.

It says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and sometimes the way that we know that we have a wrong belief system around money is the things that we're willing to do around the issues of money.

And here James gives us a list of four of them, and they all have a similar starting point by basically saying you have, in one place, it's implied in the NIV here.

The first is in verse 3.

He says, You've hoarded wealth in these last days.

So what does he say?

He says, Hoarding is one of the behaviors that we have.

And to hoard, uh, some translations will say, you've laid up treasure for yourself.

And this doesn't mean somebody who has an excessive desire to hoard or to keep.

It's just saying that when you continually lay up stuff for yourself and you're unwilling to use what you have for any other purpose than just the accumulation of stuff that you have a distorted view of what money does for you, what wealth does for you, you think that it gives you more security than it does.

And so he's saying, be careful because when you start to keep stuff at a level that is just laying up more and more and more, he says, I want you to know that that that's one of these indicators that maybe your beliefs are are out of skew.

And what's behind this often is a mindset that says, I won't have enough.

It's a scarcity mindset that says, the world is a zero-sum game, and I must get, even at the expense of somebody else, rather than believing that there is enough.

But he doesn't stop there.

Verse 4, he says, This look, the wages you have failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you.

So what does he say?

He says, Some of you have embraced the idea of cheating.

In other words, you're willing to cut corners, you're willing to do things, say things in order to keep or to gain more wealth.

And he says, if that's you, he says, I want you to understand that you've come to have a misunderstanding of what it means.

Now, many of us will say, Well, I don't have any workers in the field.

But what this is referring to is really any kind of activity that you and I are willing to let slide in order to get just a little bit more.

For some of us, this may be not giving an honest day's work for the pay that we receive.

Maybe it has to do with not paying somebody for the services rendered.

Maybe it has to do with taxes.

I'm all for, by the way, every legal means of paying as little tax as possible.

But some of us may go past legal means.

In order to just say, you know what, I don't want to have to pay that.

And what James is doing is he's saying, if you find yourself hoarding, if you find yourself cheating, then there's an indication that you have made wealth too important.

And he doesn't stop there.

Verse 5.

He says, You've lived on in on earth in luxury and self-indulgence.

So here he's talking about indulging.

Do you know what the Greek words for luxury and self-indulgence are?

Luxury and self-indulgence.

I mean, there's no shade of meaning here.

What he's saying is when you or I take on luxury and we indulge ourselves, that what we're doing is we're showing an allegiance to stuff.

Now, again, realistically, what happens for us is we say, well, real luxury and real self-indulgence is somebody else.

It's somebody who has more than me.

But I have to be honest and say I'd be a little embarrassed if everybody saw my closet.

I have more clothes than probably any man should have.

And the truth is, I justify it because I'm like, well, I'm in front of people.

I need to have nice clothes.

You know, I have reasons.

But what we do is we're always saying, Well, I have a reason for it.

And what James is saying.

I want you to look, and I want you to understand that whether it's status or security or what it is, that you are doing something to try to gain something from it.

And then he moves one more further, and this is in verse six.

He says, You have condemned and murdered the innocent one.

Do you see the repetition?

You've indulged, you've withheld wages, you've lived in luxury, and you've condemned and murdered the innocent one.

Now this one's a little harder to interpret because some would look and say, well, maybe this is about Jesus, he's the innocent one, or maybe this is about James, because his name means the just.

But most commentators, when they come to this, finally come to the place where what they do is they say, you know what?

What this is really about is this is about somebody through their actions discriminating against somebody and keeping them from having opportunities so that they can keep more for themselves.

This is injustice, is what this is.

This is participating in a system that allows you to stay in an advantaged position.

And what James, I think, is driving at here is sometimes it may not even be the kind of thing where we actively cheat, but where we just simply allow ourselves to participate in something that lets us gain an advantage.

I heard somebody tell this story to try to illustrate this.

What they said was when you talk about kind of systems and past things that may contribute to present realities, you can say, I'm not culpable for anything that happened in the past.

That's not my responsibility.

I'm only responsible for what I do.

And I realize that there's a debate in the broader church today around this, that some people are all about what has been and what needs to be, and other people say, no, it's just current responsibility.

But but this person said, and I think this is a helpful story, they said, if you were given a car by your parents when you turned 16, and you knew that your parents stole the car, but you took the car and you used the car to go to a job, to go to school, to better yourself and to establish your life, in doing that, you are somehow culpable in the taking of the car from the person it was taken from.

Now, you may say, Oh, come on.

And I understand that.

But here's the point, and that is if you and I become aware of some way in which we are benefiting from injustice, James is saying that shows that you have overprioritized status and security or wealth rather than something else in your life.

In recent years, we've become more and more aware of the atrocities that take place in the diamond industry.

Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have a diamond or give a diamond.

That's a culturally kind of relevant thing to do when you go to get married.

But what it means is that there should at least be some thought, some question about is the place that I'm getting this diamond from doing their best to ensure that they are not participating in or contributing to an industry where people's lives are being taken in order to perpetuate this system.

You see what James is doing here is he's saying we have both beliefs and we have behaviors, and these two things together contribute to the way that we live.

And so let me just talk about beliefs and behavior for a moment.

Here's a slide.

So we have beliefs and we have behaviors.

And here's what happens for most of us around our beliefs, around our behaviors, and that is we believe something and it leads to behavior, but here's where we often don't understand ourselves very well.

Our behaviors also lead to beliefs.

And the reason I say this is because what most of us think is if I can change my thinking, then I can change my behavior.

And that's certainly true, but it's also possible to change our behavior and therefore change our thinking.

Because what we often do is we we we behave in a way that makes sense to us, that feels good to us, and then we shape our beliefs to match what it is that we've done.

And so what I want to simply say is that there are two ways to address our wealth here, and that is through our beliefs or through our behaviors.

And both can be effective.

What would be most effective is to do both simultaneously.

But but James here is basically saying in verses one through three, listen, your beliefs around wealth are skewed and you need to change them.

And then he's saying, and here are some behaviors that come out of this, and if you can change your behaviors, maybe you can change your beliefs.

If you can change your beliefs, maybe you can change your behaviors.

Now, some of us right now are sitting here and we're saying, well, okay, you know, I don't really use wealth for status or security.

I just want freedom.

I just want choices.

I just want to be able to handle stuff the way I want to handle it.

And I understand that.

And the truth is, all of us probably want that in some form or another, but but what James is is really driving at is he's saying, don't you see that that that pursuit can blind you?

It can keep you from where you want to go.

So how do we address the belief?

Well, the way that I would suggest that we address the belief is to understand that what it is that we are seeking, usually through wealth, is really only provided through Jesus Christ.

And here's where, whether you're a person of faith or not, whether you're a longtime church person or not, you may bulk at this a little bit, but but understand what you often want most from wealth is to say, I want some status, I want some security, but where is your real status found?

Where is your real security found?

And I would say that it is ultimately not found in things that are temporary, things that won't last, but it's found in what Jesus Christ has declared about his children.

Here's 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9.

2 Corinthians 8:9

It says, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich.

Now, certainly, this is not talking about immediate riches here and now.

What this is talking about is ultimate riches.

Well, what he's saying is Jesus gave up his place, his position, his wealth, so to speak, and became poor so that those who would understand and come to him as their substitute, as their savior, could become rich in the things that matter most.

You see, if I can live in a place where I worship and understand what God has done on my behalf, then I'm able to say the real status I have is not if I sit first class, dress nicely on an airplane, or I have a certain number of things, or my security isn't in how big my account has gotten, or how much I own.

But my real status is in what God has declared about me through Jesus Christ, that I'm his love child, regardless of anything in this world, and that my security is based on his statements and promises about the future.

Now, that doesn't mean that we won't still use money for things that are important to us, even for status and security.

But what it means is we won't be devastated when those things are short-lived.

You know, some of us here will be able to navigate our lives in such a way that we'll have security all the way through our earthly lives, we'll be able to have status from the stuff.

But but what James and what what Paul is talking about here in 2 Corinthians is he's saying, there will come a day.

There will come a day when all of that'll be over.

And will you have real wealth?

Will you have real security?

Will you have real riches?

And if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you can say, I do, and that's so much greater than what I can have in this world.

And what that'll do is it'll change our beliefs, but we can also address our behaviors.

For some of us, what this means is that we stop hoarding, stop saying my security comes in getting more, and we start acting in ways that are biblical, meaning that we start to take our first 10% and we say, I'm going to use this for kingdom purposes rather than just for my personal ends.

For some of us, it means that we'll stop some of the practices where we have shaded meaning, where we've told little lies in our estimation in order to gain an economic advantage.

For some of us, it means that we will think twice before we buy more clothes, more items, more stuff that could add to our luxurious living.

Maybe we'll just put a moratorium on some purchasing for a while.

And for some of us, it means that we'll not look the other way.

When we're benefiting from something that's holding down others.

And you see, what happens is when you take some of those steps, then it begins to change your belief system.

And so you can address your behaviors or your beliefs, but either way, what you're doing is you're saying, I am not going to let wealth be my master.

And you see what Jesus said in Matthew.

Because he said, No one can serve two masters.

He was referring to money.

He said, No one can serve two masters.

You'll either love the one and hate the other, or you'll hate the one and love the other.

In other words, you and I, and there's a reason Jesus said this about money.

You and I will either end up saying money is what matters, or God matters.

And our culture is so strong about how much money matters, that it's a constant battle.

I think that's why Jesus, going all the way back to his day, why the New Testament speaks of this, said, understand that this is a competing love.

And if you love money, you will weep and howl because of the misery that's coming on you, because one day the status and security that you thought that would give you will be lost.

And only if you're rich in the things of God will you experience genuine status, genuine security.

And you see, when when we as a group of people believe that and live that way in this world, then we are not just people living with the same values as everybody else, but saying, and we have an eternal hope, but we're living with different values as a community, as people.

But it's so easy to be blinded to it.

Marketers spend billions of dollars to convince you to convince me that that our security and status is just one more purchase away.

And the truth is, about me, probably about many of us here, is we get blinded to it and we need to come back over and over again and say, this is not, this this resource thing, this wealth thing, is not what will bring me satisfaction or security.

But it'll only be found in Jesus Christ.

Father, I ask today very simply that you would help each one of us who's gathered at Orchard Hill to understand the danger that wealth can have in our lives.

It's a danger of just believing that it gives us something that it can't deliver.

And Father, instead of just simply acknowledging that, I pray that we would go a step further and run to you.

For some, maybe for the first time, just saying, I do want a savior.

I want to understand what it means to be rich in the things of God, to have real status, to have real security.

And for some that might mean just acknowledging that they've let money be their God.

And that's been their sin.

But that you have sent your son to die on our behalf.

Father, for others, maybe there's been a long-standing understanding of who you are and belief and salvation, but maybe just as we've talked today, there's been a realization that slowly but surely the real object of worship, the real master of their life has been more.

And I pray that you would help us to name that and to be free from that because you are worth more of our allegiance than our money is worth our allegiance.

I pray that that would be a joyful realization and a freeing realization for each one of us.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Thanks for being here.

Have a great weekend.