Where Is Your Heart?

Will Butterfield

The Gathering Place West

James: True Faith • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

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Good Morning!

I want to start today by publically thanking Carey for preaching last week.

If you were not here, go back and listen to the message.

He did a great job of letting the HS speak through him.

I’d also add that it is such a blessing for me personally to be able to count Carey as a friend and a coworker.

It is not easy for a pastor to share his pulpit, but that is not the case with Carey.

Last week Carey finished up Chapter 4 in James with the following “preachery points.”

What we say matters.

How we plan matters.

How we respond matters.

He also gave a really good summary of much we have covered in this study so far.

Much of which concerns how we respond to what God is doing in our lives.

We want our faith to grow,, and that happens as we hear God speak and then do what He says.

True Faith, the kind we all want, never stops growing and it reveals itself to the world.

As we have discussed before and as James is going to address again today, the inverse of that is true as well.

Some of my commentaries stated that the first part of James 5 is addressed to unbelievers, but I don’t know how they have come to that conclusion.

It may be that the actions that James is speaking against would give evidence that they could not have been.

Maybe, but I also know that all of us are sinners and are learning more every day about what it means to love others.

These may have just been new believers.

We can’t really know.

Let’s dive in and see what God has for us today.

James 5:1–6 CSB

1 Come now, you rich people, weep and wail over the miseries that are coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days. 4 Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Armies. 5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous, who does not resist you.

We need to be reminded of something before we really dig into this today.

For all of the new testament writers, there was a sense of urgency that we do not live with today.

For the writers and to the early church, there was a common understanding that Jesus’s return to the earth was imminent.

It was their belief at the time that when Jesus said he was coming back, it could be at any moment.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t live with that same urgency; in fact, it would do us good to have a little of that.

But it is important that we understand this as we unpack these verses and some others that we are going to look at today.

I don’t know about you, but for me, the biggest source of urgency is trying to get the kids either in bed or out the door to go somewhere.

However, even though we may not feel that same urgency that the early church did, that does not make Jame’s message any less harsh or critical.

I think that discussing our sense of urgency, or lack thereof, would be good for all of us.

We should consider it and how it affects our decision-making as followers of Christ.

Today we are going to discuss three different ways that wealth can consume us and ultimately cause us to be judged harshly.

Anxiety that comes from wealth.

The temperance of wealth.

Condemnation in wealth.

Before we get into all that, I want to remind us all of what it looks like when the church has the proper grasp on wealth.

In speaking negatively to the church, he is ultimately reminding and pointing them to a way of living that we see described in other parts of the New Testament.

It is the kind of life that we were created to enjoy in the garden but was destroyed by sin.

Because Jesus has come and has begun the process of restoring his kingdom, we get a glimpse of what this new life looks like.

This is a passage that we are all familiar with, and it takes place after the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the church was born.

Acts 2:43–47 CSB

43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. 44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

I want us all to see two main things in this passage.

What is the singular focus of the people as they are described here?

They were focused on experiencing God.

Who were they taking care of, the body of believers?

Those that heard the gospel and wanted to be a part of this new work that God was doing.

Often when this passage is quoted, the intention is for people to give more.

More to the church, more to one another, more to charities.

I want to push back on that a little today and ask that as we talk about our possessions and wealth, we put the focus on experiencing God as we obey.

God wants us to know Him, and James is doing the difficult work today of revealing something that has always been a struggle for the church.

We talk often about how James references different things that he heard Jesus teach.

Today is no different.

There is no doubt in my mind that as James was writing this portion of his letter, he was thinking back to something that Jesus taught.

Matthew 6:19–21 CSB

19 “Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves don’t break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Boy, that sound familiar, doesn’t it?

This is where James is coming from.

His letter is not a plea for the rich to give more, it is to simply help them realize that they are putting their trust in something that cannot hope to give them what they need.

Look again at how James begins.

James 5:1 CSB

1 Come now, you rich people, weep and wail over the miseries that are coming on you.

Now, if we were to go and do a poll, I would be willing to bet that most people would say that having more money would make them less stressed.

We could also do another poll asking people if, when all their bills are paid, does that anxiety go away or if they then immediately begin worrying about the next one.

You see, having “enough” money isn’t the answer to our anxiety.

What we already know, but maybe haven’t fully processed, is that in God’s economy, wealth is of little value.

In fact, and we know this by experience, …

The pursuit of wealth causes great anxiety.

Paying all the bills last few weeks after helping a community member, paying for materials for church maintenance, paying Igloo Air, and buying all the supplies need while we were out of town for two weeks made me a little anxious.

God provided for everything we needed.

On the outside I may have appeared calm and not worried, but on the inside, I was nervous.

We get so so worked up over whether or not we are going to have enough.

For some in our congregation and communities, having enough money to pay the bills isn’t even really an issue.

We could move some money around or give up a luxury, and we would be fine.

But there are also some for whom that is a very real concern.

They don’t have luxuries.

They live on a fixed or very low income, and there is no money to move around.

Within our body and our community exist both ends of the economic spectrum.

My point is that it doesn’t matter how much money you have; it could be a lot or a little, and you will still be worried about it.

The problem isn’t the bills we have or how much we make.

The issue lies in where we put our trust.

And this isn’t one-sided either.

If you are the one that is worried about being able to make ends meet, you have to ask and listen to God.

Also, if you have plenty and aren’t worried, you also need to ask and listen to God to show you where He wants to use you.

If in this, you find yourself saying, “I… fill in the blank,” you need to remember what we talked about in the Acts 2.

If your concern is for yourself, you are thinking about the wrong thing.

All wealth is temporary.

Again, just like last week, we see a throwback to Ecclesiastical writings here.

Look again At verses 2 and 3.

James 5:2–3 CSB

2 Your wealth has rotted and your clothes are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up treasure in the last days.

Do you remember the Qholet In Ecclesiastes talking about how he had all the money and possessions a person could desire, and yet it was hevel?

It is fleeting.

I cannot tell you how many times, especially when I was younger, that I would be trying so hard to put a little money away for something and then a major appliance would go out.

We can worry about money, we can make plans (we talked about that last week), or we can choose to ask God and then do what he says.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t save money, and James isn’t speaking out against the idea of that either.

James is addressing having so much saved up that it never moves around to the point of becoming tarnished while there are others around that are in desperate need.

Again, this may make you uncomfortable but be reminded that God wants to use you and I to allow others to experience the new kingdom that He is establishing.

One of the ways he is going to use us is by taking care of one another.

Raise your hand if God has told you to do something financially that, on paper, didn’t make sense.

We must learn, and this only happens as we obey, that God is not restricted by our income or lack of it.

Matthew 17:24–27 CSB

When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the temple tax approached Peter and said, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?” “Yes,” he said. When he went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes? From their sons or from strangers?” “From strangers,” he said. “Then the sons are free,” Jesus told him. “But, so we won’t offend them, go to the sea, cast in a fishhook, and take the first fish that you catch. When you open its mouth you’ll find a coin. Take it and give it to them for me and you.”

Jesus made money appear in a fish's mouth!

We get worked up over having enough, and Jesus is just pulling money out of fish over here.

God has the ability to provide for any need we have.

He can do that through something miraculous or, and most often, He will do it through another believer.

Let me give you two examples:

High tunnel story…

We made a decision to obey God and had no idea that the amounts were different.

IAtn that moment, we had a crisis of belief.

That is where you have to decide if you really believe what you say you believe.

I had a conversation with God, told him I trusted Him, and I was going to wait for Him to do what He said He was going to do.

Had I panicked and started scrambling to figure out how to come up with the money on my own, I would have missed what God was trying to do.

The church cooking for us during Chemo…

During that time, I was calculating how much our out-of-pocket expenses were going to be, and I could not see how we were going to make it financially.

The church was cooking and delivering meals to us so frequently that our monthly grocery expenditures dropped dramatically.

I can almost guarantee you that when you guys were cooking for us, you weren’t thinking about our bills.

You were trying to take the burden of cooking off of my plate, which it did, but it also took a financial burden off of us.

When we make money the main focus of our attention, it takes the place that God is supposed to be.

God has the desire and ability to take care of us, but He can’t when we won’t let Him.

An obsession over wealth will cause us to miss God.

As James unfolds this last bit, he takes things to a place that many of us may never see, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from it.

James 5:4–6 CSB

4 Look! The pay that you withheld from the workers who mowed your fields cries out, and the outcry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Armies. 5 You have lived luxuriously on the earth and have indulged yourselves. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous, who does not resist you.

James is using the specific example of someone not being paid by their employer.

Obviously, this chastisement is intended for the employer.

In this example, the employer didn’t pay his workers so that he could keep the money for himself.

By not paying his people, the employer has heaped judgment upon his own head and has severely hurt the employees.

This is what he is talking about in verse six “you have condemned, you have murdered the righteous…”

The final translation for the last few words gets a bit wonky in English, but James is asking the rhetorical question, “does God not condemn you?”

It would have been an understood yes.

While you or I may never own a business or be in a position where this could even take place, we all have opportunities to help others.

This is where we find the application for you and I.

God is going to give all of us opportunities to help people around us.

Sometimes it will seem easy, but most of the time it will be difficult and will require some sort of sacrafice in order for us to be able to do it.

God gives us those opportunities so that we can lean to trust Him.

This is where we go back to that passage in Acts 2.

The reason that it says that they all “held everything in common” is because their value was not found in what they owned, but rather in whose they were.

They found their sense of value, purpose, and belonging in God and one another, not in their possessions.

Therefore, they were more than willing to do whatever was required to take care of one another.

It was the result of God’s love overflowing out of them.

We cannot be that kind of community described in Acts 2 or know God in that way if our focus is on what we have or don’t have.

I want to end to day by finishing up that small section in Matthew 6 that we read earlier.

Matthew 6:24 CSB

24 “No one can serve two masters, since either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

When it comes to our wealth, money, or possessions, whatever you want to call it, we must decide if we own it or if it owns us.

Are we willing to part with some of our possessions for the sake of knowing God and loving others?

What you decide is the indicator of what has control over you.

I’m not saying that sacrifices are going to be easy, but we will be more than willing to make them for the sake of others.

Bethany going to see Tori Friday night.

We were all exhausted, Bethany had just got done with cheer, but the needs of this young lady superseded everything else.