11: How to Think About Money

Today's reading is from the letter of James, chapter five, verses one through six.

It says, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

Your riches have rotted, your garments are moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.

You have laid up treasure in the last days.

Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you.

And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence.

You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathrin.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And we are in the midst of our series on James.

We started this at the beginning of the summer, and we are moving through up until September, and September 13th, the day after Labor Day, we're going to begin our fall series, which will take us through the first four chapters of the Gospel according to Mark.

So we're on kind of a long-term diet of scriptural intake here at Redemption Church.

We uh began this year in Genesis, and then in the spring, and then in the fall, we're going to Mark, and then next spring, we're going back into Genesis for the next 10 chapters.

The next fall, going back through Mark.

So if you continue with us, this is basically the way we do things.

We move and preach through books of the Bible because ultimately we want our church to be founded on the Word of God.

I've got some good ideas, but I get maybe like two or three a year.

The best thing for our church is not for me to come back into my office on Monday and think, all right, what do I gotta cook up again?

Instead, we just want to be planted on the Word of God so that we understand what the truth is, that we're formed by it and shaped by it, and our hearts are attuned to the truth of Scripture.

And so that's what we do, week in, week out.

We attune our hearts to the truth of Scripture.

And today we are learning from the letter of James how to think about money.

Uh but before we do that, uh we'll pray and have a quick announcement/slash invitation.

Where you register for church on Sunday mornings, which is in our app, uh you can download our app in any app store.

Just type in Redemption Church Denver, and we're the one with the red RC logo.

And you can, we're also the only Redemption Church Denver, so it's another way to know.

But you'll be uh um just tap registrations, and right where you register for church on Sundays, you're also able to register for a sign-up to hang door hangers just all over the neighborhood.

We've only been in the area, we've actually only had one service in this building before COVID.

And then we weren't able to meet for a long time, and then in the middle of June, we were able to start meeting again in our limited capacity and streaming online.

Hello, everyone online.

And uh we want to introduce ourselves to the neighborhood.

There's uh if you're looking for a church in the area that we're here, we'd love for you to check us out and get to know you and uh start moving through this same scripture with us week in, week out that we are.

So uh if you would like to hang door hangers, it's pretty uh, you know, you can turn on a podcast and walk and just hang door hangers door to door.

Um the uh uh I was gonna make a post office joke about like funding or something, but that seems inappropriate.

Seems inappropriate even to bring up.

Shouldn't even bring it up.

Uh but uh instead of using the post office, we'll be doing it ourselves uh as a way of just extending ourselves into the community.

The hope is that you hang a door hanger and somebody walks up and they're like, hey, why'd you hang a door hanger?

And you're like, because we're a new church in the area.

And they said, you know, I have a question.

Could you explain to me uh how I could go to heaven?

And then you could say, Well, I've got great news.

Jesus Christ uh died for your sins.

It's it in fact I call it good news, is what you could share.

So we could pray for something like that.

August 30th, that's the date.

It's a Saturday, and we'll be going out and uh um canvassing the neighborhood.

So if you'd like to be a part of that, it'll be a fun way to also get to know some folks in the church uh as a part of our introduction to the neighborhood.

There's also something else that my wife and I might have going on around that time.

Uh, that's our due date.

Our due date.

I'm not gonna do anything.

Um okay.

So let's pray, and then we'll get into our text about how to think about money.

Holy Father, we pray that you would open our hearts in this area.

Lord, each of us comes to this morning with our own financial story and our own way of relating to money.

Lord, I pray that you would be able to layer those lay those bare in truth and that you would be able to bring your word to speak to exactly what those stories and intuitions are that we carry about money.

Lord, uh, might we see you as the highest purpose of our life and our finances dethroned from that role.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So money means a lot.

This is not a uh controversial statement.

Money it means to ourselves how how much we're making can reflect what we think our true value is.

Our debt can reflect a character about ourselves that we then live in terms of.

Uh, the way that we relate to money has almost nothing to do, or at least very little to do, with the actual exchange of goods between two parties.

You know, with just a carrying of value in the marketplace.

Money is deeply emotional, deeply spiritual, and we use it to communicate all sorts of things about ourselves.

So when we're talking about money, we're talking about something that's deeply spiritual.

It's connected to your core identity.

Even if you say, I just reject all money and that has nothing to do with me, even that is part of money speaking into your identity.

There's no escaping it.

But oftentimes we don't have eyes to interpret what money is actually saying about us.

And instead, we buy into, pun intended, I guess, the narratives of our culture that describe to us what this money or this wealth or this fashion or this car or this career, whatever it may be, that's related to our finances, is actually saying about our character and who we are, and what our hope is and where our what our trust is in.

We'll buy into these other narratives of value.

We won't create, we won't, we won't consider our success in terms of the people that we've loved or those whom we've sacrificed for and cared for.

We'll consider our success.

Those would just be nice extracurriculars, but our success will just measure on the metric of money in whatever terms the culture that we live in happens to provide for us.

You know, the car and then the house, and then the bigger house, and then the bigger house, and then the retirement, and that's what a successful life means.

But that's not a biblical narrative necessarily.

So, James in this letter this morning, he gives a warning to the rich.

Now, he is talking specifically this morning to the rich.

And if you heard if you know, when you're standing and listening to the text this morning, you're reading it, and it's like, man, this is a harsh passage this morning.

But we see a warning to the rich, and then we see what riches actually communicate, what it is that our wealth is actually communicating, and then we learn how do we respond to our wealth.

Okay, so let's go ahead and begin.

This is a warning to the rich, but in parentheses in my notes I put and the poor.

So we'll see why.

James begins in uh James 5, verse 1.

James 5:1

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

We've heard him use this expression, come now before.

He gathers particular audiences when he's speaking.

And so right now he says, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

So we see that he's talking to this particular audience, and he's talked to rich Christians before in this very letter.

In chapter one, we heard him call the lowly brother to boast in his exaltation, and the rich brother to boast in his humiliation.

And he called those rich Christians brothers.

So at the beginning of the letter, he was speaking particularly to rich Christians, those Christians that have affluence and power and wealth and all those things.

But in this section, he's not talking to Christians.

And we can tell just in the language and the structure that he's using.

He's saying, Come now, you rich, and then he says, to weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

This is Old Testament prophetic judgment language.

This is not a call to repentance for the rich, for these rich that he's talking to in this section.

This is these are not the rich Christian brothers.

He's talking to rich oppressors that the main audience of his letter would have been deeply familiar with and being held down by because of the economic position that they found themselves in.

So he is pronouncing a woe.

That word howl is only used in prophetic language to never call to repentance, but just to say, God is going to judge you.

And those miseries, they're coming upon you right now.

So that's the audience that James is speaking to.

So the question is, why is James speaking to that audience?

He's writing a letter to this relatively small group of Jewish uh people who have converted to Christianity, the earliest converts of Christianity, this is the earliest epistle that we have.

Nobody, none of the rich oppressors that are uh oppressing these Jewish Christians are picking up this letter and being like, yeah, let's see what James has to say today.

Let's see if there's a word of the Lord for me.

He's not, the people that he's addressing are not in the room.

So that means he's doing something.

He's doing something else than just calling the rich to listen.

He's talking to the rich, right?

That's the object of who he's talking to, but he's doing it in front of the poor.

The poor is the true listening audience of this uh section of the letter.

It's the Jewish Christians that he's writing to who were an oppressed people, who didn't have the economic opportunity to rise as well as a Gentile Roman at this time, as an occupied people.

And so he's talking to the rich, so we can see that there are things to glean from this about the rich themselves, about the rich oppressor.

But there's also the audience that he's also speaking to are the poor who are being oppressed.

So we need to listen to what he says with these two categories in mind.

So why is James talking to these, uh why is James talking to the rich but in front of the poor?

Why is the audience of this letter, the Jewish Christian poor?

It's because when they looked out at the lives of the rich in their community, who they had to go to work for, and they looked at their lives and they saw it looks like everything's going well, it looks like they have everything together, it looks like all of life came with ease and abundance.

And that causes them to think, God isn't with us, God is obviously with them.

God if God is really for us and has blessed us in any way, or if he really has our good in mind, then it look at then he's obviously with these, he's obviously with these rich who take advantage of us and just get away with it.

And so because of that stumbling of heart, James pronounces this woe against this group that is really acting as like captors to the Jewish people at the time.

So James isn't uh, just as we showed earlier, James particularly isn't talking to rich Christians here.

Uh he did that earlier in the letter.

He's talking to rich non-Christians.

But he's not just talking generally to anybody who has money.

He's talking to a particular group who operates in one of these two ways that he describes later, but I'll explain now.

The first way is that they acquired their money by fraud or oppression.

That's who he's talking to and pronouncing this woe against.

People who acquired their money by fraud or oppression.

Or secondly, people who live in such exorbitant luxury that it demonstrates that the only value that they have in their life is to get more money and create a fuller, wealthier, more luxurious life for themselves.

Now, the reason that James is pronouncing a woe against those two groups of people, the one who gets their money fraudulently and the one who lives as though money is all there is, is because those are the two most deceptive types of riches when we're looking up at people who have that type of money.

Because the first one who gets their wealth fraudulently, it deceives us, it deceives our hearts into thinking God does not enact his justice in the world.

How could of that, how could that person have gotten their wealth by so much betrayal and by taking advantage of so many people?

And look what happens to them.

Nothing.

In fact, they're positioned where they're able to get away with anything.

Hens, roosters?

Nobody's coming home to roost, whatever that expression means.

You know, they never get their come-uppance.

Uh and so it deceives our hearts when we see someone who's able to live that way in constant fraud, and yet they just keep getting away with it.

And their money becomes a greater boundary around them, of resilience around them.

And we think there is no real justice.

You know what?

You know how the world really works?

You take what you can get, and it doesn't matter who you take it from, and you'll never actually experience any consequences.

See, that's a real deception that can take place in our hearts, because it can make us start to think in those very same terms.

You know what?

I'm here trying to do the right thing and trying to honor a contract or trying to, you know, not take advantage of my neighbor or whatever it may be.

But you know what I should do?

You know what I'd really do if I got how the world worked?

I'd just take what was mine because nothing, no harm ever seems to come from it.

See the deception?

And then the next group of people are those who view the world as though luxury is the ultimate end of life.

Uh, and that creating a life of comfortable circumstances for yourself is the highest good.

Now that's particularly deceptive as well, because it teaches our hearts that true life is found in avoiding sacrifice, and instead, true life is found in just acquiring more and more for yourself, which means that your real satisfaction, your real fulfillment is just a couple steps away.

It's just a couple more rungs up the ladder.

You know, partially, this is what like I think Instagram was designed for.

It's for when you think you were having a good day, and then you look at some pictures, and it's like, man, that is like I if I were on a yacht like that, I'd be happy constantly.

And look at how thriving these people are.

Like, if I could just surround myself with that.

For for in Denver, I don't think it's as much just like wealth in general, but our culture has this really ingrained thing of like the freedom to adventure.

You know, if my life was, if if my life were structured in a way where I had that type of freedom where on my Monday I was uh, you know, I don't know, the things we like to do, mountain biking, camping, van life, living in vans, the things that we all try and do.

And the uh what that teaches us is that true fulfillment lies in attaining more to be spent on ourselves.

And that the reason we aren't truly fulfilled is because it's just over that next hill, it's just at that next income bracket, it's just at this new layer of freedom that I put into my life, it's just at this one responsibility that I could shed.

You see, those are deceptive because that's not where true fulfillment lies.

It doesn't exist in those things.

My wife is really good at Instagram.

You're great at Instagram, babe.

And sometimes we'll go on like a weekend trip, and I'll look back at, and I can be a very anxious person.

And so I'll I'll have days like sad, like we'll go on a weekend trip, and I'll spend like the whole day, like, oh man, just stressed and doubled over and turned over.

And then I'll look at the pictures of like our weekend, and I'm like, I wish I had that day.

And I did have that day.

That was exactly the day that I had.

You know, there that's just to point out the thinness of what we're deceived by, the the image, the empty bag that we're so often deceived by.

But that's why James is declaring these woes against these types of rich, the fraudulent and the one who shows that luxury is all there is, in front of people who don't have those things.

Because he's getting rid of the deception.

You see?

He's trying to shine light on the deception.

Okay, so here's what we think riches say, what we think that Van Life says is freedom, what we think riches say is luxury and self-fulfillment and being able to get away with whatever you want.

And it looks from the outside, looking in as like, man, that's a fulfilling life.

What am I doing trying to live according to this moral code that God has called us to?

Well, James shows us here what riches actually testify to, what ill-gotten and luxury testifies to.

Here's what he says in verses two through three Your riches have rotted, and your garments are moth-eaten.

Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you, and will eat your flesh like fire.

You have laid up treasure in the last days.

Now, James lays out three things here.

He shows the riches, the garments, and gold and silver.

Now, riches is uh it's just a word for like crops.

It's an abundant harvest.

And so they've rotted.

You've gathered up so much of your harvest, and you've just held it for yourself that nobody's gotten to eat it.

You won't even get to eat it, and they just rot there in your abundance.

Your garments, you know, those things that you wear to declare your wealth to others, to declare your luxury to others.

Those garments are rotting in the, or excuse me, they're moth-eaten.

They're just being devoured.

You don't get to enjoy them, and nobody else gets to enjoy them.

And the gold and silver is corroding.

And the corrosion is evidence against you.

Now it's a particular evidence against you because you know what gold and silver don't do?

Corrode.

Yeah.

Gold and silver don't corrode.

That's not a thing that gold and silver do.

And so their corrosion, what James is saying is look, this is evidence that God's wrath himself is turning against you.

Because these ill-gotten gains, they'll vanish in your hands.

They'll turn to ash in your mouth.

They will go away.

And that is so all of a sudden, this stockpile of gold and silver, which from the outside looking in, is like, oh my gosh, God obviously loves them.

He obviously cares for them more.

He's obviously on their side in this whole thing and has abandoned us, neglected us to this suffering and this despair.

James is pointing out clearly look, that don't be deceived.

It is not evidence of God's blessing.

It is evidence of his coming wrath.

You, by remaining in Christ, although you're poor in this, you are remaining in his blessing.

So James is just correcting their way of viewing things.

So there's two bad parts about what they are, about what's being demonstrated in the riches, the garments, and the gold and silver.

One, he's saying to the rich, you won't even get to use this.

You've stored up treasure for yourselves in the last days.

And you know what the last days means?

It means you're gonna die soon.

And so you aren't even going to get to use this.

It will amount to nothing.

And you've linked the value of your life and your joy to something that can just vanish.

And so you, like it, will just vanish.

So that's the first thing.

Not even the rich get to use it.

It's foolish to link your life and the value of your life to something as fleeting as money, or as a good crop, or as nice clothes, or as whatever freedom you're able to bring into your life.

To link your life to those things is just foolish.

They're fleeting.

But secondly, we see in the gluttony and the hoarding of the rich, it's not just that they don't get to use these things.

It's that no one does.

God did not make crops so that they would rot.

God made crops so that humanity would eat.

God did not make garments so that they would sit and become moth-eaten.

God made garments so that we might be dressed and dressed beautifully and be comfortable and mark occasions.

You know, we do all of those things with our garments.

But instead, they're just moth-eaten and devoured.

God did not make gold and silver for corrosion, for it to vanish and for it to, hello, fly.

You guys probably can't see it.

There's a fly up here, I'm not just insane.

Yeah.

The uh um I guess just because there's a fly up here doesn't mean I'm not insane.

Um so we see these things are designed by God as a grace and a goodness for mankind.

They're designed for them to be used and enjoyed.

And what we see here is the very opposite happening.

They're destroyed, no one enjoys them, they go to no end.

Money that ought to be multiplied, like we see in the parable of the talents, instead vanishes in your hand.

You know, I mean, sometimes if you ever go down on Laramer Street, like uh on a weekend, and uh, if you drive a Lamborghini, I love you, you're welcome to be here, we're happy you're here.

But somebody will like drive up and park in front of a restaurant and they'll park in a Lamborghini.

And I always think to myself, man, I just feel like I know how this story ends.

Like it's fun for a time.

I get that it's fun for a time, but I just feel like I have a sense of like, man, I I hope you don't hope in that thing too much.

I hope it doesn't mean too much to your heart, because you know what?

It's gonna, it's gonna start to creak and crack, and it's just another car, man.

It's just another car.

James is unveiling that here.

Now, it's not just that the rich ultimately don't even get to use them, nor is it that everybody else doesn't get to use them.

It's the evidence.

This is evidence against you.

It's not wealth, it's not a it's not a demonstration.

These ill-gotten gains are not a demonstration of God's grace towards you, it's a heaping up of wrath.

So James brings us to see this this other side, the the cost, who bore the cost of this ill-gotten gain.

And in this, he shows us that it is not wealth that should be the pursuit of our lives, but it is justice.

There's something higher.

This is what James says in verse 4.

Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

Here we get the clear description.

This is where James, although still addressing the rich, he might as well be talking directly to his audience.

His audience is the these Jewish people, and if you look back at just sort of the demographic of this time, in this air, the to the people that he's writing to, it's a very small amount of landowners, a small group of land-owning families.

And everybody else worked for them tending their land.

And so these Jewish people would have been the ones who worked their land.

And so, what that put these landowners in the position to do is to use their position of power to take advantage of the poor, to take advantage of these Jewish Christians.

And that's precisely in James says exactly the way that it was happening.

Says, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, you kept back by fraud.

And then he says, those wages, the ones that you kept back, that they never got to see, that are stored in your storehouses, they're crying out to God right now.

And they've reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.

You thought you got away with it.

You thought that you're fraud and you're taking advantage of those who were in a position to be taken advantage of.

You thought that that would make it easier to get away with.

But no, those wages cry out and they've reached the ear of the Lord of hosts.

Why does he say Lord of hosts there?

That means he has an army.

It means he's worth fearing.

There are so many things that we see in this.

First, is this obviously a calling back to Cain and Abel.

When Cain kills Abel, Abel's blood cries out for justice from the ground.

Although Abel was already dead, God says, I hear the blood of your brother crying out to me from the ground.

In the same way that justice was violated in murder, so too justice is violated when we defraud one another.

The area of finances is an area of justice.

Now, is it obvious this is precisely what a wage should be?

Or this is exactly what those workers deserve to be paid.

You know, I don't know how to come to those numbers.

I think that there's a negotiation and some common sense and some uh generosity that needs to factor into arriving at exactly what those numbers are.

But something that we can know for certain from Scripture is that there is a place where it is unjust to pay someone so little for doing a job.

There is a place where God looks at it and he sees the labor that's given, and then he sees what's being paid out for it, and he says, This is a matter of my justice, and it does exist in the world.

When people are being defrauded, God does hear the missed wages do cry out, the justice does come.

And that's what James is just reiterating to his people that so desperately need to hear this because they have this fear.

Look at all the wealth that's being accumulated on our backs.

Doesn't that mean that God is actually with them?

And so James needs to clarify: no, God is against them.

They may be accumulating this for a time, but they're just storing up wrath for themselves.

And then thinking, well, does it mean that there's no justice that will ever be demonstrated, that the world is just as it seems, and you just take what you can get, and there nobody, nothing comes home to roost?

That's the expression now.

And he, James is saying clearly, no, there is a point of justice in the world.

So, how does this mean when we would when we were to understand or when we were to enter into a negotiation with somebody, or if you're a business person and you have to structure deals all the time, it means what are you aiming at as a Christian?

You're aiming at a just deal.

If you aim at whatever I can get, the most that I can pull out of somebody, if that becomes your aim, then you are then whatever extra you get beyond what is just, you store it up as wrath for yourself.

It will cry out as an injustice.

So as a Christian who's working a deal, what are you aiming at?

You're not aiming at being taken advantage of, but you're not aiming at taking advantage of somebody else.

You're aiming at justice.

Do you see how there's this third metric?

Because it really exists in the world.

Okay, so it cries out like Abel's blood.

Those who are most invisible, most powerless, those who could not bring their appeals to court because they would be trounced, uh, those who could not rise up against the landowners because they'd have nothing left for them, God hears, uniquely hears their cry.

And so why is James pronouncing this woe?

Because he needs to remind this church of people who are in a really hard place, that God has not forgotten them, and that although it feels like all that's happening is they're just being defrauded and they're not able to resist it because of their faith, that all that's happening is they're being taken advantage of, but they're not, well, excuse me, they are, but God is hearing and he will make the final appeal.

So then James describes to his listeners how do we respond to the rich.

Now it's it's little in here, and it's just the last part.

First, he's gonna say some more bad stuff about the rich.

In verses five through six, he says, You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence.

You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

You have condemned and murdered the righteous person.

He does not resist you.

So he says, You've you've condemned, you've murdered, you know, they they owned the power of the courts so that they could bring condemnation.

They're able, he even frames it here as murder.

Now, I don't know that I don't think it doesn't seem that, it seems as though he's using that metaphorically, but you've got to understand the harshness of what it looks like to God when poor people are taken advantage of because they're poor.

I've used this example before, but I don't know many worlds other than the church world and the car business and and college and high school.

So if you have, I can talk to you about four things.

And so one of the ways that this is so evident in the car business is at like a buy here, pay here store.

So that means that you couldn't buy a car at a normal dealership because you don't have the credit.

And so instead of it being, instead of the car being financed through a bank, they say you just buy the car here and we'll also handle the financing.

And it's a perfect opportunity to take advantage of the poor.

Because the poor, for being poor, are forced to pay these exorbitant interest rates.

Interest rates that are so far beyond anything that is imaginable as just 20%, 25% interest on the money.

But there's no option.

You know you need a car, nobody else is gonna finance you.

And so because you're poor and weak, I'm gonna take advantage of your position.

And you're nobody else is gonna finance a$3,000,$4,000 car, but I will at 25%.

It's so expensive to be poor.

Do you see that in in that circumstance?

That it is it's it's taking advantage of someone who is being poor.

And I'm sure there are loads of examples of institutions like that that um uh where where uh uh poverty is is exploited because of its weakness.

But do you see how different an aim uh at justice would be in that negotiation?

But instead it's uh I see your weakness and I can take advantage of it.

Now look here, this final clause.

He does not resist you.

You've murdered the righteous person, but the righteous person does not resist you.

This is where James, he's talking to the rich, right?

But in front of the audience of the poor.

And so this is really an exhortation.

He's saying, but remember, remember, church, he says to his, you know, relatively small church.

He says, remember, but you didn't resist them, did you?

They took advantage of you, but you didn't seek retribution, did you?

They took advantage of you, but you didn't seek to take advantage of them in return.

You knew that they would be fraudulent in what they paid you, but you showed up and you put in the hours that you said you'd show up, that that you said you would put in, didn't you?

You didn't resist them.

Now this is this is this dynamic in Christianity of justice belonging to God, and it's what he's calling his people to rest their hearts in.

Why were you able to remain upright?

Why were you able to not villainize or try and take advantage of in return this rich person to try and get what was yours because they were trying to get what was theirs?

How instead could you live as not resisting, live peaceably, to put in the work, live generously and kindly, even to these your oppressors?

Well, one of the ways is because you knew that God held the justice, that God's justice would be accomplished, and he would accomplish it perfectly, and on behalf of any abuse that you had seen or experienced, he would be the one who doled it out.

And what did that mean?

You were not to.

You were not to take justice into your own hands.

A lot of times we think in these blanket terms, which is that we think, well, we should just do whatever God does.

But that's not the way we should think about ourselves.

We should think we should do whatever God whatever whatever God has called us to do.

And uh God should do what he claims is his own.

God has claimed his justice, and he has called us to trust him with it.

And so you would think in reading something like this, woe upon the rich, woe upon you who have taken advantage of these people.

It's like James is uh call, like he's riling up these people because he's like ready to start a class war.

Like, this is the proletariat uprising.

Everybody get on board, liberty, equality, fraternity, let's roll.

You know, that's the French Revolution things.

It's the last proletariat uprising we had.

And there's uh uh in that type of language, we think, okay, there's a class war starting here.

There's the oppressed and there's the oppressor.

And James, by demonstrating the wrath of God, what's going on?

The wrath of God towards the oppressor is trying to stir up by showing, look at the wrath of God towards them.

But he's not stirring up.

He's saying this is a real injustice, and by knowing that God has it, he's drawing his church to remain steadfastly in peace.

See how different that is?

Because they trust in God's justice, they were able to continue living in peace.

They did not resist.

And we have an incredible example of this in our in the church history of our nation from Martin Luther King Jr.

And I wanted to read this quote.

Um, this has been a pretty good book.

It's called The Power of Unearned Suffering by Micah Edmondson.

And it's about Martin Luther King's theodicy, which means Martin Luther King's answer to the problem of evil.

How did he understand the problem of evil in the world?

Now, this is an excerpt that's quoted in this book uh from uh Martin Luther King's memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

And he ends it by saying this.

He says, and I'm quoting Martin Luther King here, he says, This is a great hour for the Negro.

The challenge is here to become instruments of a great idea, nonviolent resistance, is a privilege that history gives only occasionally.

The spiritual power that the Negro can radiate to the world comes from love, understanding, goodwill, and nonviolence.

It may even be possible for the Negro, through adherence to nonviolence, so to challenge the nations of the world that they will seriously seek an alternative to war and destruction.

The Negro may be God's appeal to this age, an age drifting rapidly to its doom.

Where do you think he got an idea like that?

An oppressed people so clearly taken advantage of.

And he says, nonviolence.

As James says in this, he does not resist you.

It's the same thing that James in the first century, right when Christianity gets started, calls his church to, calls his people to.

And he says, yes, this oppression is real and it's terrible, but there is a real justice in the world and God will really accomplish his justice.

And so what is our call now?

Goodwill, love, living peaceably, being nonviolent.

And we trust God to make his appeal to the world through actions such as that, because we know that there is a higher justice than just whatever we can get and whatever we can dole out and whatever we can distribute.

What a faith legacy we have in our country to stand on.

That's just so grounded in this principle.

And why did James see it so clearly?

Why was he able to see it so clearly at that point, speaking to a Jewish populace who just within the past generation had seen zealous uprisings of trying to overthrow their, violently overthrow these oppressors that they had faced?

Because who is at the heart of their faith that didn't resist?

What is the picture of justice being realized for humanity?

It is not just that a rich person became poor in their generosity.

It is that our God made himself a man and took on the deaths of our own sin.

Upon himself.

He subjected himself to our sinful oppression.

So that when we turned on him and killed him, and you know what he was accomplishing while he was doing that?

He was bearing the just punishment for our sin, the sins of his enemies and his oppressors, that we might be saved.

But God's justice was not thwarted.

Three days later, God raised him from the dead.

Because God's justice wins the day.

And in Christ, we are given the strength to view oppression and the oppressed in that way, to identify with the oppressed, not to not to conquer and uh seek our own retribution against the oppressors, but to identify with the oppressed even on behalf of those who are doing the oppressing.

Because it is God's justice that we trust in.

I want to finish by reading a psalm, and this is a long text.

So this is one of those risky things that I'll do, and then I'll be like, I'm not gonna do that again.

It was too long.

I started to see people zone out.

So please try and track with me, okay?

This is this is so directly relevant to what James is doing.

This is Psalm 73, and I want you to listen to this psalmist, how their heart moves through this trajectory of I can't uh trust in God because it seems to be going too well with the oppressors.

But then he goes to church and he's reminded of their end, and his heart changes.

Okay?

Listen to this, listen to this.

Psalm 73, a psalm of Asaph.

Truly, God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped, for I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

They have no pangs until death.

Their bodies are fat and sleek, they're not in trouble as others are, they're not stricken like the rest of mankind.

Therefore, pride is their necklace.

Violence covers them like a garment, their eyes swell out through fatness, their hearts overflow with follies, they scoff and speak with malice loftily, they threaten oppression, they set their mouths against the heavens and their tongue struts through the earth.

Therefore, his people turn back to them and find no fault in them.

And they say, How can God know?

Is there knowledge in the Most High?

Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease, they increase in riches.

All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.

For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

If I had said, I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task.

Until I went into the sanctuary of God, then I discerned their end.

Truly, you set them in slippery places.

You make them fall to ruin.

How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors, like a dream when one awakes.

Oh Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.

When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant, I was like a beast toward you.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you.

You hold my right hand, you guide me with your counsel.

Afterward you will receive me to glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you?

And listen to how his heart is changed.

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish.

You put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you.

But for me, it is good to be near God.

I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.

Rich oppressors that are in here, I'm glad you're here.

Heed this warning.

Consider, are you are you working things towards injustice?

Are you taking advantage of somebody?

Are you using your money just for yourself and for your own luxury?

Is it the only end that you can consider in your life?

Turn from that.

You're in a slippery place.

For those that are oppressed, remember if you have God, you have it.

What would you rather have?

And both of you, both of us, in the United States, we're often a little bit of both.

Remember that we come to Christ.

We rest in his grace towards us on both sides.

That he protects us and cares for us and gives us our daily bread each day.

That he forgives us and receives us back into his glory as we confess and repent of when we've taken advantage of others, when they've been in positions of weakness.

We can both rest in Christ together.

So let's pray.

Father, we pray that the way that we think about money might show that money is not our highest value, but you are.

And it might show that our confidence and our rest is in you, and that that might allow us to treat even those who we feel like are taking direct advantage of us with love and with peace and with patience, with kindness and with joy.

Lord, if we sense in our hearts that we are taking advantage of others, that we're living just for luxury, Lord, would you change that in our hearts and call us towards repentance in the never ending flow of grace that we receive from Christ?

Lord, might we see things as though you are the true guide in history and that we are heading towards your ends.

And give us wisdom to live like that.

Father, lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.