02: When to Boast

Good morning, everyone.

Uh thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor of Redemption Church Denver.

Thank you for tuning in.

I know some folks are gathered together in each other's homes this morning, watching uh the stream together.

So uh that sounds like a fun thing to be able to do.

Uh uh speaking of getting back together, uh we are now uh uh permitted, basically, to gather together again as a church.

So we've been opened up to have a gathering in our building up to 50 people.

So that means that a week from today, next Sunday, we'll be able to come together as a church, sing together, worship together in the physical presence of one another, um, and be the the assembled body.

So of course, our gathering together will not be just like it was when uh before the COVID pandemic.

Uh instead, there are uh particular precautions that we'll be taking and regulations.

First of all, it will it will be limited to 50 people, which means that we'll be registering for church.

Our intention is if we go beyond 50 people, then we'll open up to perhaps an overflow room or into a uh second service.

So we're going to open up a registration, which will be available in the early part of uh this next week, and uh there'll be descriptions of what it will be like to attend.

There'll be things like um masks available, communion will be different than communion has been in the past.

We will be uh entering in one door and all exiting out another door.

We have our pews spaced six feet apart.

Um, and I will preach uh facing the back wall away from you.

That's that one's not true.

Um, but we will uh be able to be gathered together, hear each other's voices sing, praise the Lord, we're so thankful for this opportunity.

Uh likewise, uh with this uh ability to come back together, although in ways that will likely feel strange, with probably most importantly, we're not gonna have coffee.

So you're gonna have to bring your own coffee, which is really important.

Um, but you're also gonna have to wear a face mask the whole time, so maybe a straw or something.

Either way, uh you're gonna need to show up caffeinated, which is which is very important.

And we will um uh well, it kind of slipped my mind what else there was to say.

Um but be gather we'll we'll be able to gather.

Oh, here it is.

So if you're thinking gathering together, that's insane.

This is way too soon.

Uh we don't have a vaccine or whatever it may be, or or I can't gather together.

I don't feel safe to be in that type of proximity at this point because of a um pre-existing medical condition or or something of that nature.

Um, we will continue live streaming.

So don't worry, the live stream is not going anywhere.

There is no pressure to attend.

Uh, we we really want to create a lot of freedom in our church about how you choose to participate with us, uh, especially through the remainder of the summer while we're this is uh still such a fresh time.

So that said, uh we're thrilled to announce that we'll be coming back together next Sunday and hope that you'll be able to join us either online or in person singing together.

Uh praise the Lord, we're getting back together.

Also, we're excited to show you how the new space looks.

We've only gotten to meet here once before, and uh it's changed a bit since then, and I think it'll be a great time to celebrate uh together.

As Zach was saying, this is uh uh a time of such uh difficulty in terms of looking, looking and seeing injustices that are so difficult to understand in the culture that we're a part of.

Um and they're difficult to uh provide clear language around.

I'll have this sort of experience where I'll read one article online and I'll think, wow, you know, that was a pretty good point.

Uh I hadn't thought about it like that.

And then I'll I'll click down below something else that someone else posted, and I'll read it, and I'll think, well, you know what, that was a pretty good point too.

And now I just feel very confused and kind of tossed around.

Um and I heard another person talking about this same sort of experience, and they had said, you know, I think maybe I'm just an empathetic reader.

Uh, and that may be the case, and that's not a bad thing.

But we can feel so tossed around by different opinions that are circulating out there, and different opinions held by respectable uh Christians that uh uh are drawing from scripture and offering insights and things that are really helpful to receive.

But I I wanted to speak to this uh type of moment because my fear is that amidst all the confusion and amidst all the uh uh sort of combative language, it can be tempting for us as a church and us as individuals to say, you know what, this cultural moment, I'm just gonna sit this one out.

It's too confusing, it's too strange.

Uh, I feel like the language is being twisted, and uh I don't feel like I this is something that I don't necessarily know how I could participate with it.

I read in a book recently uh this this excellent quote that I love so deeply, and just immediately it became a part of my life.

Uh it's this pastor who was writing, and he said, I had fallen prey to the 11th commandment of evangelicalism.

He says, the 11th commandment of evangelicalism is thou shalt not do at all what others do poorly.

So that means we might look out and say, Well, those protests, I don't like the way that those are going.

So I I don't want to participate at all in the purposes of racial reconciliation in our country.

Uh or it in churches, it's it's typical all the time.

I think this is why many of us don't do any evangelism or don't bring up Christ with any of our friends.

Because we say, well, yeah, let's not do at all something that other evangelicals, other Christians do poorly.

And what that means is that our lives are being more dictated by someone else's position, by someone else's perhaps louder shouting, than they are being dictated by the word of God.

And that's a danger that needs to be repented of.

This moment certainly is complicated.

You know, there are things that are being espoused where it's like, look, we don't want to call bad things good.

Uh I was on the phone with a person in our church earlier this week, and they were like, so you support looting.

It's like, look, we don't want to, we don't want to call bad things good, but discussing the reasons for events is not calling bad things good.

This is a complicated moment, of course.

I think we can all agree on that.

But I don't think that the complexity uh is perhaps as as great as we might let ourselves on to think.

If we consider that we are a part of a nation with a real history and a real context, and we understand that history has a bearing on the present.

We also understand that we grow up in cultures, and the cultures that we grow up in can be the most difficult to discern.

In fact, we typically need insight from people outside of our culture in order to just understand where we are, like a fish discovering the water that it lives in.

Now, an event like this, where the whole nation is filled with this fervor towards justice, and at the same time we see yes, but sometimes it's expressed in these ways that I just couldn't support, even in language that doesn't seem to be grounded in biblical ideas so much as it seems to be grounded in postmodern values.

Yeah, that's true.

I think that that's certainly the case.

But how clear is Scripture towards reconciliation between oppressed and oppressors, between races.

How close to the gospel is that very language?

It's uh a clear piece of what we hope for the gospel movement to do in our culture.

And certainly the way that it gets expressed in culture, in language outside of biblical language, in views that are uh grounded in pictures of the world that are inaccurate and sometimes sinful.

Of course, that's going to be the case with uh with any type of movement in culture.

There are going to be good aspects of it and bad aspects of it.

And so it will require discernment to be able to participate in.

But let us not say we can't participate because it's too gray and too complex.

If we say that, where else where could we possibly participate?

Where can we possibly seek to become agents of reconciliation, of justice, of uh, of hope in the world through the gospel if we don't become the types of people who are able to be steady enough in Scripture to be able to actually learn from people outside of our own culture.

Even things about our culture that are critical, perhaps especially those things.

It's complicated.

But as real disciples that are meant to function in the world, we have to be able to work in complicated areas without losing our footing and without losing our grounding in scripture.

This is an important time to listen.

And I know you've heard that before, and you've probably heard it all week.

You know, part of the weird things about being a pastor at this time is it's like there all I read is this is an important time to listen, this is an important time to listen, and it's my job to talk.

So the here we are.

Uh, but this is an important time to listen, and I know that there can be this stopgap in our minds of like, look, I'm not gonna listen to this because I can, and I've read these positions.

Look, I'm not gonna listen to this because this this isn't a biblical view of redemption.

This is postmodernism, this is Marxism.

You know, this is coming from just an atheistic perspective.

So I've got nothing to gain from this or nothing to learn from this and understanding.

And look, I I empathize with that view, and I and I and I understand the depth of care for the truth that that is often coming from.

But I want to encourage us as a church that it is biblical and right to cultivate a posture of listening in a time like this.

Let me just give you an example of how difficult it can be, even in the world of theology, to discover blind spots that we have without the ability to listen to people outside of our own experience.

Uh so uh here's here's the example in it, and it's directly related to uh race in the United States.

Uh, this example.

So one of my favorite theologians is a man named Abraham Kuyper.

And he wrote in the 1890s, he's from the Netherlands.

Uh uh, or what the Netherlands.

Yeah.

Holland.

Holland.

What is the they speak Dutch.

That's right.

Okay, so already you can tell he's kind of mixed up.

But the uh uh so Abraham Kuyper, it he he develops this beautiful picture of how Christians should be engaged with the culture.

And he he shows us this vision of progress of the kingdom of heaven that creates this opportunity to uh uh uh increase in the the presence of the kingdom on the world in such areas as our work and our labor.

Um and he breaks down the sacred secular divide so well as he describes this march of cultures that are improving and becoming more and more Christ-like as cultures.

Now that's a beautiful image.

And it's one that I hope for our church.

I hope that we can be salt and light in the world such that our culture becomes more and more Christ-like.

Now, here's the blind spot.

Abraham Kuyper, in tracing the genealogy of this increase of uh Christ-likeness of cultures, he traces it along the lines of the Western European expansion, such that he shows that, you know, uh the culture that's been most permeated by this is really Western European culture, white culture.

And where is it expanding and developing?

Well, it's as we move west into the United States.

And where is the lack of knowledge coming from?

Well, it's coming from the places that haven't been influenced by this culture.

It's coming from Africa and it's coming from Asia.

And so he says these explicitly derogatory things about African cultures and about Asian cultures.

So here's what this means.

This means that in a theol in one of my key theological influences, I have developed a vision for the world of an increase in the gospel's presence in culture.

But what's been invisible to me is how it's mapped onto Western white enlightenment values.

Now, those are different from biblical values, but to me, theologically, they've been the same.

So my vision of the way the gospel moves forward subtly becomes a sort of imperialistic type of vision.

Uh and that's an important thing to recognize.

Now, I want to consider it sort of as a correlative experience, correlative de Ville.

That's my correlative joke.

As a correlative experience, a picture of the gospel that takes place in the African-American church in the United States, which is one not of progress uh uh and and a sort of like imperialist vision of the kingdom.

And I'm trying to use that word neutrally, because the expansion of the kingdom is something we all hope for.

But it's not one just of progress, but it's also one of God makes a way out of nothing.

You know, what is the uh what did the the African American church see in their liberation theology that the white church didn't see?

It's that it God is able to make a way when there is no way.

Not that he just incrementally brings a steady change, but when things seem hopeless, we're able to still hope for the reconciliation that God will bring, for the justice that God will bring, when everything seems stacked against you, uh that that the gospel of hope still remains.

And uh there's a true message of liberation out of hopelessness.

See, that's a value in listening that gives us a more complete vision of the gospel than we otherwise would have had, than I otherwise would have had, without recognizing explicitly racially biased tendencies in my own theological approach.

And what does it do?

It deflates the gospel.

So I I want you to hear this as an encouragement towards listening.

How else can we possibly come in contact with the culture that we are most deeply in?

How else will we be able to see the uh dynamic glory of the gospel take place?

Leslie Nubigan is another one of my favorite theologians, and he was a missionary in India for his career.

And he moved back to Scotland after his entire adult life.

Well, not his entire adult life, right, because he moved back to Scotland.

But the uh uh when he moved back, he realized, you know, the culture that I left in Scotland has really transformed since I've been gone.

And it's moved from a modern culture to a postmodern culture.

And he realized I'm going to have to learn to approach my own culture in the same way that I had to learn to approach Indian culture where he had lived.

And so he comes back with these excellent insights, and and he's probably the best listener of any theologian that I've read.

He's my favorite theologian, just in as much in depending on how recently I've read him.

Like if I'm in the middle of reading him, he's my favorite theologian.

If it's been a couple of days, then I may think of someone else or whatever.

But if I'm recently reading him, then it's like, yeah, he's my favorite again.

And I think it's because he's such a good listener.

So anyway, I wanna I want to read this quote from Nubigan.

Uh it's not directly related to race in the United States.

It's more of a global perspective, but I hope that the analogy holds.

He says, Asian and African, excuse me, Asian and African Christians who received the gospel from European and American missionaries and therefore were invited to see Jesus as our culture saw him, now struggle through their own study of Scripture and their own obedience in their own time and place to articulate a form of Christian believing and behaving in terms of their own cultures.

So do you hear what he said?

He said, uh Amer uh, you know, the the history of the spread of Christianity is that uh American and European missionaries went to such places as Africa and Asia and give the this vision of the gospel, but it's one that's couched in our own cultures.

And so now the work transitions for Asian Christians and African Christians to do their theological study and see what the gospel affirm and critique in their cultures so that we can get this more developed vision.

Now he says, we need their witness to correct ours, as indeed they need ours to correct theirs.

Here's a critical point.

At this moment, our need is greater, for they have been far more aware of the dangers of syncretism.

That means of merging your culture with the gospel.

They have been far more aware of the dangers of syncretism, of an illegitimate alliance with false elements in their culture than we have been.

But whether it is we or they, we imperatively need one another if we are to be the faithful witnesses of Christ in our many different cultures.

As white culture in the United States, and maybe particularly in the theological world, we haven't been aware of our own syncretism.

We haven't been aware that we're not just talking about the gospel, we're also often really talking about the Enlightenment.

We're often really talking about modernism, we're talking about uh particularly uh white ideologies while we're talking about the gospel.

And unless we're willing to listen, as we proclaim the gospel, then we're going to be shortchanging the true expression of the gospel across all nations, tongues, tribes, and peoples.

And so at this point, uh I just uh commend to you that there's a request to listen, and I just want you to hear that that is good.

And this is not a call to listen uncritically, as though we we set the Bible on the shelf and say, well, I can't learn anything from that anymore.

I need to just listen to the culture.

No, of course not.

You've been given the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

This is the very Word of God for us, and it is attuned to us, but it is attuned to us as finite people that take place in cultures.

We need to recognize that we need each other.

And perhaps.

As a culture that thinks we just have the pure thing untainted by our own culture.

I think we need to do the listening the most.

Seems to make sense.

Alright, that's my riff on uh where we are now.

I I hope it's help I hope it's helpful.

Um now let's get into today's text.

I haven't even started preaching yet, which means I'm gonna have to move real quick.

We're gonna get into today's text.

And the analogies in today's text are going to be, I think, pretty clear and really helpful.

Uh we're going to continue in James.

Let me read the scripture for today, and then I'll pray.

James 1, 9 through 11 says, Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation.

Because like a flower of the grass he will pass away.

For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes.

So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

Holy Father, I pray that you would give us ri wisdom from your word, that you would give us humility as we recognize we are parts of your church and of your global purposes of redemption, and that as parts of those things that we might have humility to grow and benefit from the other parts of your same body, Lord.

Father, would you help us to develop a fuller picture of you by having hearts that listen wisely?

You call us to both proclaim and listen.

Holy Father, would you give us hearts that proclaim out of humility to your commands, and that that same humility might allow us to wisely listen and be hopeful to voices that we might have otherwise shut out.

Father, I lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, time to hustle.

So this week, James shifts with no segue from the uh discussion that we had uh last week about steadfastness and trials, and then all of a sudden he's just talking about rich people and poor people.

And he's not just talking about rich people and poor people, but he's talking about uh what it is that we place our identity in, what we boast in.

Now, we wouldn't use the word boasting in our times, but we will certainly use the word identity.

And when he uses the word identity here, he is saying that this is where you find your security, your comfort, your sense of safety.

And uh he says that this is different for rich people and poor people.

Now, later on in this text, uh James will speak specifically to the rich.

Uh and he'll call out the ways that the rich are uh being oppressors.

In James 5, it'll be such things as hoarding their wealth, withholding wages that are due to their workers, living in undue luxury and self-indulgence, even using their power to condemn and murder righteous people.

Now, the rich that the primary focus of James's letter are to poor Jewish Christians.

The uh Jewish people at this time, uh occupied by Rome, find themselves in a place of uh a lesser citizenship and a uh presence of pretty constant poverty.

In fact, during this letter, they're experiencing a famine.

So the poverty has been heightened and the delta between the rich and the poor has been expanded.

Now, the background norm of the relationship between the rich and the poor is this one of hoarding of wealth, of oppression, of living in undue luxury, and of condemning and murdering the poor.

That is the norm in the relationship between the rich and the poor that James is describing.

So, into this background, into this type of cultural tension, James is now talking to rich and poor brothers.

That means they're both Christians now in the same church.

So all of a sudden, this group of people that have this normal experience of animosity towards one another have to find a way to call each other brothers.

And this is kind of the space that James lives in as the type of apostle that he was in Jerusalem, where they're discovering, look, Gentiles are coming into the gospel.

And James is like, yeah, they are.

Hey, Jews and Gentiles, we need to eat together.

And so he's constantly trying to pool these two disparate people together under the same banner of Christ.

And so James gives a particular command to the poor, and he gives a particular command to the rich, both under the same gospel.

So we're going to look at just those, the poor command of the poor, the command of the rich.

This is James 1.9 for the poor.

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation.

That's the command.

The lowly brother among you should boast.

Boast means find their identity in.

You know, this is the thing I'm going to talk about.

This is the most true of me.

Should boast in their exaltation.

That's what the lowly brother is called to do.

So who are the lowly?

What is their exaltation?

Why should they boast in it?

Who are the lowly that James is talking to?

Where the Greek, well, the Greek word that James is using here is the word tapinos, uh, which is translated lowly, and it's used throughout the Greek New Testament in order to, and it's translated in multiple ways throughout the Greek New Testament.

So here's what I want to do.

We're just going to take a survey of ways that this word is used lowly throughout the Greek New Testament.

Excuse me, Greek Old Testament.

Greek New Testament, that's like redundant.

It's like saying ATM machine machine.

So, whoa, that's triple redundance.

All right.

We all make mistakes.

The Greek Old Testament, uh, the Septuagint, and see where this word, lowly, also occurs.

In seeing where the word lowly occurs, it will become apparent why James calls the lowly to boast in their exaltation.

This is Psalm 10, verses 17 through 18.

Psalms 10:17–18

O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted, you will strengthen their heart, you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed.

Oppressed is Tapinos.

So that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.

Listen closely to these, okay?

Psalm 34, 18.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Topinos, crushed in spirit.

Psalm 102, 17, he regards the prayer of the destitute, to Pinos, and does not despise their prayer.

Isaiah 11, 4, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, Tapinos, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Amos should be two, six through seven.

I have four in my notes, accidentally.

The lowly.

The lowly.

What this causes us to do is when we're talking, when James is talking about rich people and poor people, you know, we don't want to we don't want to tease these categories too far apart.

In poverty, there is also an experience of oppression and of vulnerability and of an ability to be taken advantage of.

And that's been true in all cultures at all times, and it's true in ours now.

That i i there's here's one example that I'll put forward.

So I used to sell cars, and in the car business, the most expensive type of car that there is is a cheap car bought by a poor person.

There's no more expensive car.

A cheap car being purchased by a poor person is just evidence of how expensive it is to be poor.

And the reason is the car is too cheap to be counted as any legitimate collateral by the bank.

So you get no benefit for loaning against the car.

Instead, they're just loaning against the perceived trustworthiness of the person.

And in doing so, a poor person likely has a worse credit score than a worse person and has a worse credit score than a rich person.

And therefore, the rates that they're given are just terrible.

17% interest rates for a car payment, even up to 25% interest rates for a car payment.

That's theft.

And why can that happen?

Because the poor are taken advantage of.

There's no question of it.

It's in the numbers.

It's brutally expensive to be poor.

But then what is the exaltation of the poor?

Well, if you look back over those verses, it should be so clear.

God hears their desire, strengthens their heart, does justice to the poor.

He is near to the lowly.

He regards the prayer of the oppressed.

He judges with equity.

He punishes the oppressors, which means he moves in and accomplishes justice on behalf of the lowly and the poor.

It is simply undeniable that God has a particular disposition of love towards the lowly, a unique disposition of love towards the lowly.

A survey of Scripture makes that fact completely undeniable.

It is as evident as the substitutionary atonement of Christ is evident.

That God has a particular heart towards the lowly and the oppressed.

How could this be better illustrated than in the person of Christ Himself?

God becomes poor.

He identifies in the clearest identification the incarnation with the poor.

And he makes his dwelling with the lowly and the contrite in spirit.

This is our God.

So why does James call the lowly to boast in their exaltation?

Because what is a higher exaltation in all of existence?

What could possibly be higher than the God of the universe identifying, advocating for, blessing, rescuing, having his ear tuned particularly towards your prayer?

What higher exaltation could there be?

What office could you possibly be elected to?

That from once you were there, you would say, you know what?

Now that I'm elected to this office, God will always hear my prayer.

I'll always have an audience with the God of the universe.

The poor in Christ can say that.

So James calls the poor to consider.

When you consider yourself, what is most fundamental about your identity is not that you live in a world that most easily takes advantage of you and therefore does, but that the God of the universe advocates for you, identifies with you, exalts you.

So James says, Poor Christian, boast in your exaltation.

Know where your identity really is.

Next, James talks to the rich.

In James 1, 9 through 10, he says, Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation.

Because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.

So James completes the couplet, and we know that he's talking about Christians in both regards because they are brothers.

They're both referred to as brothers.

So they're under the same gospel, but in the same gospel, they're required to have a different response because of the conditions of life that they find themselves in.

So same gospel, but different response for us.

We often like to collapse things and say it's the same gospel.

We're all humans, so there's one response.

But James is more comfortable with nuance than many of us are.

So, in order for us to obey and understand the commands that James is laying out here, for the lowly brother to boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation, we have to have a certain concept of where we fit into this world.

If we are required to reflect on our current position in order to live in a way of obedience that Scripture calls us to, then we must be honest with where we fit.

Are we lowly or are we rich?

Because if you're lowly, then you should be boasting in your exaltation.

And if you're rich, then you should be mostly considering your humiliation.

So who are the rich?

What is their humiliation?

In the United States, we are masters of wealth deflection.

And I think there are a couple of reasons that probably drive that.

One of them is that we're Christianity is the folk religion of the West.

And that means that we have some type of background thought that if we did identify as wealthy, then there would be responsibilities that we would take on for our brothers and sisters in the world just by that identification.

Because it's so clearly taught throughout all of Scripture.

And so that's one incentive to deny being a part of a wealthy class or considering yourself as actually wealthy.

But I think that there's another reason that just sort of develops in the pattern of our unchecked lives, which is we tend to develop friends that are at the same socioeconomic level as us as us or a bit higher.

And so that means wealthy people in the United States never feel wealthy because they're always around people that are richer.

And uh they never they likewise never feel wealthy because they never see the poor.

We're never around people that are considerably poorer than us.

And so that allows us to live in a place of delusion, which says that we're not actually wealthy when the reality is such that we are.

So if the word poor was so loaded with this meaning, then it's it's safe to assume that the word rich is likewise loaded with this meaning, and it is in the way that James expounds it throughout the rest of the book, as we saw earlier in James 5.

This means you have the ability to oppress, you have the ability to take advantage of.

You know, this is the person who can say, Yeah, I can loan you that money for 25% interest.

The money is there, which generates the power, and then it allows someone to be in a position to take advantage of somebody else.

Riches can so easily corrupt the hearts of those who have them.

And I think especially when those that have them act like they don't and act like they're not rich, and therefore the gospel would require no different type of action or response on their behalf than it would require on behalf of the poor.

So, why should the rich boast in their humiliation?

What is their humiliation?

Well, in order to describe it, James draws on a text of Isaiah, which paints this clear picture.

And he says, the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away.

And he continues this.

He just expands the image for our minds.

He says in James 1.11, for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls, and its beauty perishes.

So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

What ought the rich to consider?

The rich to consider this is fleeting, this is momentary, it can go away in an instant.

I promise you, wealth can vanish in an instant for all the security that it might feel like it provides.

It is not there.

Scripture is so clear on this, story after story is so clear on this, and yet we allow ourselves to continue being deceived, as though there is real safety and security in money, and there just isn't.

And it all goes away.

You know, you can't take any of it with you.

That's true.

It all just goes away.

There's no real security in it for any of the things that actually matter in life.

It can't buy you back your family, it can't buy you back your friendships.

It can accomplish none of those things.

How foolish.

You know, my my uh wife and and I we like tulips because we're Calvinists.

And so every uh, I'm sorry, I know that's a word a lot of people don't like.

I just happen to really like it.

So we're uh anyway, we're we're we're uh uh we plant tulips, the bulbs, you know, uh in the fall.

And then in the spring, they come up.

And this spring our tulips came up like so early.

They were beautiful.

Uh and it was like a month, and they were gone.

That's the picture.

The rich man who boasts in his wealth.

It's like me having everyone over and saying, like, look at these tulips.

This is what we're like.

This is the type of beauty that we're accustomed to.

And you walk by a month later and it's like there's nothing there.

That's the wealth of the rich person.

So the rich person, in knowing that their riches are fleeting, has to guard their heart against the temptation to put their trust in their riches.

And that means bringing their heart in line with reality, which says, These things go away, and what have I received that I have not been given by the Lord?

Those two realities are so important for the rich to be able to recognize.

So in this passage, we've been given two warnings under the same gospel, two different types of people, lowly and the rich, real categories that require real different responses to the gospel.

The lowly are warned against despair.

You must not despair if you are poor.

In Christ, you must boast in your exaltation, you must most completely identify with these glorious promises that God has given uniquely to the poor and to the rich.

The response is humility.

The response is humility, you know, humiliation.

An understanding of, yes, I have this, but it's as though I have nothing.

And I can act as though it's not mine, and I can even be incredibly generous with this.

Now, what type of culture does this create in this new type of church that James is seeing form by the Holy Spirit?

Where it's no longer a conversation of there's the poor people over here and we're the oppressed, and there's the rich people over there, and they're the oppressors, and we're mortal enemies until the end, until the final proletariat uprising.

Whatever your eschatology describes.

Instead, James has to imagine a world where he says, you guys have to call each other brothers.

And that doesn't mean that you respond to the gospel the same, but it does mean that you respond to the same gospel.

And in order to do that, you have to call each other brothers.

The lowly calls the rich brother, the rich calls the lowly brother, the one boasts in his exaltation, the other in his humiliation.

And what type of a culture does that create?

It creates one where the rich is able to listen even to the poor, creates one where the poor is able to listen even to the rich.

Well, right about there is where the power cut out on Sunday, which makes us all the more grateful that this next week we're going to be able to gather together in person, not just on a live stream, although the live stream will still be available.

So I wanted to insert just a little clip to bring to a close where I was headed to close the sermon.

I was talking about how the it's evident, and we can easily imagine, why the poor would need the rich in the church.

It's because the rich, when they're living according to what God has called them to, will be living with hearts of generosity towards the poor, so that the poor would be able to tangibly benefit from their presence.

But what James is painting a picture of is a church in which the rich likewise need the poor.

Because it's in service to the poor and hearing the exalted voices of the poor that we're able to see in a tangible way God's ability to truly provide, that our security really does rest in the Lord, that our boast is in Christ alone.

And so when the rich are serving the poor, when the poor are demonstrating the glory of Christ in their exaltation, then in both cases, Christ is glorified.

And we are able to receive our unity together that transcends all the categories of the world that we would normally distance ourselves into in Christ and the reconciliation that He accomplished, were brought together as brothers and sisters.

And so with this glorious unity, we see the Lordship of Christ demonstrated.

That's the purpose of the church.

So with that, uh let's pray that we would be able to walk in this reconciliation that Jesus has accomplished on the cross.

Holy Father, I pray that for the rich you would give hearts of humility.

For the poor, you would give a boast in the exaltation that you've accomplished in Christ.

And Father, I pray that the reconciliation that you have accomplished between us might be realized in our hearts as individuals, recognizing where we fit in this framework and how to respond to your gospel because of it.

And that that might be experienced as a unity of the church that shows the ultimate lordship of Christ over all things in the world.

Father, I lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, thanks for finishing this out with us, and we will see you hopefully in person or at least continued over the live stream this next Sunday.

Thanks.