James: Attitudes and Wealth (Part 5)

The Most Important Book We Forgot

May 24, 2015
By John Partridge

Scripture: James 4:13- 5:6

Have you ever worked for minimum wage? More than that, have you ever tried to live on minimum wage?
Have you ever had to figure out how you could afford to pay your employees, your lawn service, the high
school kid who shovels your snow, or even how much you ought to tip your waitress?
Nearly all of us have had to do at least one of those things.
If we open a newspaper or turn on the television today, we will almost certainly find a story about WalMart, the city of San Francisco, Wall Street, and the United States minimum wage.
This week, as we continue with our study of the book of James, we will consider all of these things, and
how our thinking on these issues, as well as our behavior, can be shaped by Gods teaching.
Our lesson today comes in two sections. The first seems to be written primarily to believers in Jesus Christ
who are merchants. They are not extraordinarily wealthy, but they have some money. The second section
seems to be directed toward very wealthy landowners who are not believers but whose actions had an
impact on Christians and on the church.
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Now listen, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on
business and make money. 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life?
You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, If it is the
Lords will, we will live and do this or that. 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such
boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesnt do it, it is sin for them.
In a time when many people struggled to find food to eat, these wealthy Christians have enough money to
travel, purchase goods in quantity, transport those goods, and resell them at a profit. James does not curse
their wealth, nor does he chastise them for having wealth, but emphasizes to them that they are falling short
of the life to which God had called them. They were making money, and that was okay, but they were
failing to do the good that they could do, and the good that they knew that they should do.
James criticizes these Christian merchants because their self-confidence has crossed a line into arrogance.
This was a time when many Jews had moved and settled abroad in order to do business and make money,
but in doing business, they had begun to focus only on this world and forget God. Their planning makes no
mention of God nor does it give God any consideration. Their entire plan is based on the assumption that
they are completely in control but James says that such confidence is foolishness.
Perhaps he has in mind the words of Proverbs 27:2 Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know
what a day may bring. But James insists that the followers of Jesus must recognize Gods sovereignty and
remember that God is in control. It was common, even among unbelieving Greeks to make plans saying,
If God wills, or if the gods will. James wasnt trying to get believers to say these things as a sort of
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magical incantation or simply as a formula of speech, but simply as a reminder that it is arrogance to leave
God out of your planning.
The last verse in that passage is as damaging to us as it was to the original readers. James teaches that if
you know what is good, but do not do it, then you sin. In this address to businessmen, its easy to see what
they should be doing. They should be using their profits to do good. They should be remembering God
and should be using their money to help the poor and to uphold the ministries of their church. But
remember that most of us, even those of us of who are far from wealthy, have more money than those
merchants ever did. And so as we think of things that they could have done, we are looking squarely in the
mirror at ourselves. What good could we be doing? If we know that we should be doing, then we must
be doing it, or, according to James, we sin.
This is the sin of omission. It is the sin of things not done. The sin of omission means that simply not
doing wrong is not enough. If we say:
I knew what was right,
But did nothing.
We are guilty.
If we say:
I was there
I knew what was right.
I did no wrong,
but I did nothing to prevent wrong.
We are still guilty.
James isnt alone. In Luke 19 Jesus tells the parable of the servants, in which one servant buried his gift.
Because he knew what was right, but did nothing, he was guilty. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of
the sheep and the goats in which he says:
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For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

Conviction comes, not because of what was done, but because of what wasnt done. They knew what was
right and didnt do it.
And as hard as that is, in the next passage James unloads both barrels.
5:1

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

As comfortable as their lives have been because of their wealth, the pendulum will swing the other way and
turn their pleasure into misery and torment. Still it is important to note that the rich are not condemned
simply because they are rich (but in this case, James comes close), but because of three things that we can
discern that they have done wrong. First, they have pursued pleasure. Pleasure isnt wrong, but pleasure
has become the entire pursuit of their life. Second, they have abused the poor, and third, they have misused
their wealth. James is calling out those that he might have called the unrighteous rich1 and, although
they were unbelievers, there is ample warming here for us because as commentator Douglas Moo put it,
Wealth can be a significant obstacle to Christian discipleship. This simply means that the more money
we have, the easier it is for our money to cloud our relationship with Jesus.
In that world there were three kinds of wealth: Food, clothing (or material possessions), and precious
metals. James says that all of these are about to be lost. Crops will rot, clothes will deteriorate or be eaten
by moths, and even gold and silver will rust. James knew that gold doesnt rust, but he uses the word
figuratively to say that even gold will deteriorate and be lost to inflation, thieves and the passage of time.
Even today if you read the articles that appear from time to time which tell us about the richest people in
the world, you will notice that very few people stay on that list from year to year. Wealth simply has a way
of being lost over time.
In particular, James criticizes these people because they live (as we do) in a time that is the end of days.
The messiah and savior came to earth and returned to heaven, and so we know that the end of time could
come at any moment. But in this environment, these wealthy unbelievers accumulate wealth only for
themselves. James wants them to know (or at least he wants us to know) that they should be much more
concerned about the coming judgement.
I want to pause here to explain what I mean, and most likely what James means, by saying that these folk
are enormously wealthy. At that time, because it was largely and agricultural society, many people were
farmers. But due to the relative poverty of many people, each cycle of drought, or economic fluctuation,
left more farmers in a position where they could not afford to buy seed, or in some other way lacked the
financial means to weather the storm and continue farming. And so, over time, most farmers found
themselves selling their land and being hired by the buyer to farm the land that they had once owned. By
the time of James, a handful of extremely wealthy families owned most of the land. Even worse, these
same families, because of their wealth and influence, were the judges that judges disputes and so the poor
had little or no recourse against the rich and the rich often trumped up legal charges against the poor simply
to abuse them, strip them of their lands, and further enrich themselves.
In that world, the people in the fields were literally so poor that they needed to be paid their wages at the
end of each day so that they could afford to buy food. The failure of an employer to pay their wages at the
end of the day, which was required by law, could mean literally starving them because they could not afford
their daily bread.
This is the same crime and abuse that is called out in Deuteronomy 24:14-15 and in Malachi 3:5. In all of
these cases, God sees what is happening and promises to bring justice to the abusers.
And as we return to the twenty-first century, we can still see many of these same characters and we need to
think about what that means to us as followers of Jesus Christ.
When we figure out how to pay our employees, or lawn service, the high school kid who shovels your
snow, or even how much you ought to tip your waitress, we are the rich. At that point, we are the ones who
have the resources to hire others to do our labor for us. We have the responsibility to do what is right, and
for care for the poor. When we know that servers in a restaurant make much less than the minimum wage
and depend on tips for their income, we cannot deny them a good tip and say that we did nothing wrong.
Knowing what is right and failing to do it, is still wrong.
1 Douglas Moo, p. 203, James, Tyndale New Testament Commentary, InterVarsity Press, 2015.
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And when we hear the stories about Wal-Mart, McDonalds, San Francisco, Wall Street, and the minimum
wage, how do we hear them? If the owners and stockholders of Wal-Mart and other major corporations are
making record profits and living in unimaginable luxury, what is a fair and just wage for their employees?
Aside from the politics, James reminds us that business should never just be about business. The owners of
any business must also be concerned about the sovereignty of God, their responsibility to the poor, justice,
and the day of judgement.
Im not saying that there are any easy answers, but as we think about these issues we must remember that
we have responsibilities. We will be judged by what we knew, what we did, and even by what we did not
do.
Business is not just about business and life is not just about living.
Not doing wrong is not enough.
The message of James is that we must keep God in the center of what we do.
Whether we have much or little, we must use what we have to do good.

 You have been reading a message presented at Trinity United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first
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