Self-indulgence and death
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David Foster Wallace once told a story about some fish it goes like this:
David Foster Wallace once told a story about some fish it goes like this:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the heck is water?”
He goes on to say about this that: “The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.”
This is what we face this morning. We have become so use to the water that we swim in every day seems so normal like such a given reality it becomes almost impossible to see. What is it? Well in our passage it is called luxury and self-indulgence. It was an issue then and it is even more of an issue for us today.
The power of advertisements, adn
This is the water we swim in, and for the most part we are inoculated to it.
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way,
And our self centereness we cannot hear the cry of the poor
It is so easy to live in luxury and self-indulgence and no know it. But our passage shows us the problem and the solution to luxury and self-indulgence. This morning we will see that
Our passage talks about the rich. That is those people with many material possessions and social privileged.
who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?”
Proposition:
Because self-indulgence brings death we should serve God with our possessions
Because self-indulgence brings death we should serve God with our possessions
Self-indulgence is deadly. It brings death to ourselves and to the poor among us. So first
Self-indulgence brings death to ourselves
Self-indulgence brings death to ourselves
Self-indulgence brings death to our future self
Look with me at verse 1-3
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 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.
and then in verse 5 we see the lifestyle of the rich
You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
What we see here are those who live for themselves, whose ultimate treasure is in things and what stuff can give them are building a case against themselves, so that when they stand before God in the last day and give an account for their life, and God says how did you use the things I gave the only answer they will have is I used them to try and make myself happy. And so as all the material things decay and die so does the eternal soul of the person who made his treasure in those things.
That being the case it is also true that those who as Calvin says “abound in wealth seldom keep within the bounds of moderation.”
But self indulgence does not only bring death to our future self it also brings a death to our present self. Look with me at first timothy 5:6
But it is is equally true that those who as Calvin says “abound in wealth seldom keep within the bounds of moderation.”
but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.
If you have a lot of money or possessions it is hard to not be self-indulgent.
lifehas given you everything you have and what did you use it for? To try and have an easy life and things?
When we use the things God has given to indulge ourselves, to try to make us happy we look alive, but are really dead. The living dead. Self-indulgence creates Zombies.
Illustration:
I think one way we can see how self indulgence creates a kind of living dead is in drug addiction. Someone addicted to drugs, however they got there, are seeking refuge from the pain of life. So they indulge themselves and find a kind of relief, but it is more of a short term escape making one dead to the world around you and ultimately will kill you in the end. And as AA and NA will say the real problem lies not so much in the substance, but in the highly self-indulgent way of thinking. Your best thinking got you here, is what you will often hear in recovery circles. That is the rationalization of self-indulgent behavior.
We don’t think advertisers have any influence over us
Illustration:
Application:
It is easy to see self-indulgent drug addiction creates a kind of zombies. But what is harder to see is how self-indulgent materialism creates zombies. But it is actually the same dynamic. We buy things or experiences to feel good. And we do feel good for a short time, but we then buy more and more things and experiences to try and feel good again. And the money and stuff God gave us to bless others with we use to make ourselves happy. I want this or that become I need this. I need this new technology. I need to spend my time binge watching Netflix. What ever it is if we are ultimately try to live to make our self happy we become black holes of consumption, always eating but never full, always buying but never satisfied.
So
Living for our self, this is the water in our culture. You can’t watch a movie or tv show without seeing this, that the unpardonable sin in our culture is not being true to your own desires. And only the individual self can determine what is right and wrong.
Now first, possessions and money are not the problem. But the wrong use of them are a problem. The Bible clearly teaches that if you work hard you will likely make more money.
So what do we do about this? Well first
We must not see possessions and money as the problem. The wrong use of them is the problem our passage is addressing. The Bible clearly teaches that if you work hard you will likely make more money.
So first: possessions and money are not the problem being addressed. But the wrong use of them are the problem.
The Bible clearly teaches that if you work hard you will likely make more money.
But the possession that we do have we must see them as belonging to God, and to be used for his kingdom. God does not just tax his people a 10% tithe, the tithe is a reminder that all of it belongs to him and all our money and possessions is to be used for his kingdom.
Recently I heard someone said to a first time home buyer in our church: So how are you going to use God’s house? Hmm? What do you mean the new church building? No God’s house, the house you just purchased.
If you are rich, and because we live in America most of us are rich. We eat better food, have better health care, and have more comfort and leisure, and entertainment than any king would have had hundreds of years ago.
So if you own anything and have to make decisions with how you spend money we have to be
That is key. If we don't want to become self-indulgent zombies we must see all our possessions our money as a calling. Having money or possessions is a calling from God. Not to be used to indulge ourselves, but in services of his kingdom.
Specifically this means, that everything we own belongs to God and is to be used for his kingdom. Our house, car, boat,dinner table, living room, education, money, and “free time” is his.
And this is vastly different than pop-culture. You can’t watch a movie or tv show without seeing this, that the unpardonable sin in our culture is not being true to your own selfs desires. And only the individual self can determine what is right and wrong.
Living for our self, this is the water in our culture. You can’t watch a movie or tv show without seeing this, that the unpardonable sin in our culture is not being true to your own desires. And only the individual self can determine what is right and wrong.
Oh but if I live like everything is his I will lose myself. I would die. Yes, you would die, but a different kind of death. One that births resurrection one where you find that you are truly alive. No longer walking around half dead zombie, but fully alive in Christ.
But a Christian
And if we use these gifts to serve our self it will only bring an insatiable death in this life and in the life to come.
Because self-indulgence brings death to our self, and
Self-indulgence brings death to the poor
Self-indulgence brings death to the poor
Look with me at 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.
and then in verse 6
You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
What is being described is the rich withholding payment to these harvesters or day laborers who live day to day, and then the rich indulge themselves with that money. And by withholding payment the harvester or righteous person is essentially starved to death, and they were not able to resist because they had no ability to prevent it. So what James is saying is that to take away a neighbors living wage is essentially murder him.
Illustration:
Being scammed is a terrible feeling. When Sara Frances and I were engage we hired someone we thought was a photographer to take pictures. Well it turns out they were not. And the money we put on deposit was lost. And there was not much we could do about it. Because hiring a lawyer and going through this long drawn out process would not have been worth it. So we were left feeling angry and embarrassed.
That scam is minor to the scam that is being described in this passage. The harvester needs payment after they work so they can buy food. And to work all day and leave with nothing to show for it but empty hands was disastrous because they may not have what they need to get food. And they had no one they could call on to resit.
Application:
Self indulgence not only involves a death of the person who is self indulgent it hurts the poor. We may think, well I am not murdering anyone, but if we use our resources to fill our lives with things, and experiences, and activities what happens is that noise of our busy lives will drown out the cries of the poor.
Not because we are actively seeking to harm someone, because of the culture we we live in where personal peace and affluence is such a dominate force it is the water we swim in we don’t even recognize when we are doing it.
but the Bible says if we have money we can so fill our lives with things, and experiences, and activities that the noise of our busy lives drowns out the cries of the poor. Not because we are actively seeking to harm someone, but because personal peace and affluence is such a dominate force in our culture it is the water we swim in we don’t even recognize when we are doing it.
.
Or, lets say we actually want help the economically poor. And what we do doesn't seem to help. This is where I was, until we started the Mercy Team here. And as we did the mercy team training I learned or it hit me in a new way I was trying to help the poor with our cultures view of poverty.
The death of the poor in this passage also shows us that is not primarily economic, but relational. The poor harvester we saw in verse 6 was unable to resist. He did not have someone to call and say hey this ain’t right. He did not have any relational capital to resit being taken advantage of.
Well first it means if we have employees we need to pay them fairly and on time, and give them what they are due. But this passage also has more broader meaning than that. It means we are to care for the poor. Those who like this harvester live hand to mouth.
Central to the message of James
Our culture views poverty as a lack of material possessions. And the answer to poverty is to give material possessions.
I was acting as if the answer is in stuff, things, or experiences, if the economically poor only they had more stuff or money then things would get better.
But that is not the case. Because if you every have been engaed with the economically poor it is a whole lot more complicated than that. Ultimately poverty about stuff and things and cash, it is about relationships.
for us today it takes on
And so we give things and stuff, but nothing seems to change. And that is because poverty is not about stuff and things and cash, it is about relationships.
Poverty is not about stuff and things and cash, it is about relationships. In verse 6 the poor harvester could not resist because he had no one he could call on. No one could hear him. If he had been heard he would not have died. So as we seek to come along side the economically poor around us the solution is not found in things or money, but in relationship. If we want to serve the poor we must give our self in relationships.
In verse 6 the poor harvester in our passage could not resist because he had no one he could call on. No one would hear him. If he had been heard he would not have died.
And so as we at Christ the Redeemer seek to come along side the economically poor around us the solution is not found in things or money, but in relationship. If we want to serve the poor it cannot be done from a distance. We must give ourselves.
Conclusion:
Because this is exactly what Jesus did for us.
If we seek to live self indulgent lives we will only experience death. But we can have and give life to others if we receive the self giving love of Jesus.
You see this passage is all about Jesus. You see God’s people from the very beginning were always choosing self-indulgent ways. Trying to find satisfaction in the gifts of things, stuff, and money instead of in the giver. Always buying but never satisfied, not realizing what they most needed was free.
So Jesus who had all the riches of heaven, gave it up to become poor. He came and lived among us to restore our impoverished selves to God.
Jesus who had all the riches of heaven, gave it up to become poor. He did not remain
He did not remain
You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
Jesus is the righteous person who did not resist. He was scamed. He deserved a crown, but was given thorns, he was rejected by all with no one to speak up for him. And when he had been given over to be murdered and all had abandoned him, he cried out my God my God why have you forsaken me. And his cry was not heard.
Today we know that God h
The only time God did not hear the cry of the poor was when he refused to listen to the cry of his son on the cross.
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.
The rich have murderer the righteous person, or righteous one. It is actually quite an odd sentence. Because harvesters is pluraAs in other places of scripture Jesus so identifies with the poor that to serve the poor is to serve him, to harm the poor is to harm him.
If we look at we can see what James is getting at.
But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,
But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.
As in other places of scripture Jesus so identifies with the poor that to serve the poor is to serve him, to harm the poor is to harm him.
Jesus is the righteous person our passage is talking about.
As in other places of scripture Jesus so identifies with the poor that to serve the poor is to serve him, to harm the poor is to harm him.
And now we know we will always have the ear of God because he turned a deaf ear on Jesus instead of us.
Because God hears the cry of the poor we should
God hears the cry of the poor
And God hears the Cry of the poor because he hears the cry of his son advocating on their behalf, “you did not hear my cry so you can hear theirs.”
For Jesus is our advocate
The remedy for self-indulgence is to be captivated by the self giving love of Jesus who though he was rich became poor for our sake so that we might become rich in God.
Jesus became poor, he was scammed, taken advantage of, and murdered. He became poor giving it all up so that we might become rich. Not rich with stuff and things, but rich in God.
Poverty is not about money, poverty is not about things, poverty is not about materiel goods, poverty is about relationships.
And without Jesus our relationship with God is empoverished,
The only way to hear the cry of the poor is to realize our own poverty and see the welath we have in Christ
And this is how WE can hear the cry of the poor, because we know our own poverty. And that we did not pull our selves up through hard work determination and grit, but that Jesus came down and did the work on our behalf.
The remedy for self-indulgence is through worship, is to be captivated by the self giving love of Jesus who though he was rich became poor for our sake so that we might become rich in God.
PRAY
PRAY
Now as we think about our poverty and God’s call on our life enter into the life of our poor neighbors, let us listen, and or sing as Jenna sings about how our God’s heart and how hears the cry of the poor.
Self indulgent are dead even though they live
Now I want us to sit, and listen, and or sing as Jenna sings about how our God hears the cry of the poor.
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the heck is water?”
He goes on to say about this that: “The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.”
This is what we face this morning.
We have become so use to the water that we swim in every day seems so normal like such a given reality it becomes almost impossible to see.
What is it? Well in our passage it is called luxury and self-indulgence.
It was an issue then and it is even more of an issue for us today. It is one of the greatest challenges facing the church in America.
This is the water we swim in, and for the most part I think we are inoculated to it.
It is so easy to live in luxury and self-indulgence and no know it.
But our passage this morning shows us the problem and the solution to luxury and self-indulgence.
Because self-indulgence brings death we should serve our self-giving God.
Self-indulgence is deadly. It brings death to ourselves and to the poor among us.
So first
Self-indulgence brings death to ourselves
Self-indulgence brings death to our future self
Look with me at verse 1-3
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 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.
and then in verse 5 we see the lifestyle of the rich
You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
What we see here are those who live for themselves, those for whom their ultimate treasure is in things and what stuff can give them,
they are building a case against themselves, so that when they stand before God in the last day
and give an account for their life, and God says how did you use the things I gave
the only answer they will have is I used them to try and make myself happy.
And so as all the material things decay and die so does the eternal soul of the person who made his treasure in those things.
But self indulgence does not only bring death to our future self it also brings a death to our present self. Look with me at first timothy 5:6
but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.
When we use the things God has given to indulge ourselves, to try to make us happy we look alive, but are really dead.
Living but dead. And you thought the Bible did not talk about Zombies.
Illustration:
I think one way we can see how self indulgence creates zombies, a kind of living dead is in drug addiction.
Someone addicted to drugs, however they got there, are seeking refuge from the pain of life.
So they indulge themselves and find a kind of relief,
but it is more of a short term escape making one dead to the world around you and ultimately will kill you in the end.
And as AA and NA will say the real problem lies not so much in the substance,
but in the highly self-indulgent way of thinking.
Your best thinking got you here, is what you will often hear in recovery circles.
That is the rationalization of self-indulgent behavior.
It is easy to see self-indulgent drug addiction creates a kind of zombies.
But what is harder to see is how self-indulgent materialism creates zombies.
But it is actually the same dynamic. We buy things or experiences to feel good.
And we do feel good for a short time, but we then buy more and more things and experiences to try and feel good again.
And the money and stuff God gave us to bless others with we use to try and make ourselves happy.
I want this or that become I need this.
I need this new technology.
I need to spend my time binge watching Netflix.
Whatever it is if we ultimately try to live to make our self happy we become black holes of consumption,
always eating but never full, always buying but never satisfied.
So what do we do about this? Well first
We must not see possessions and money as the problem.
The wrong use of them is the problem our passage is addressing.
The Bible clearly teaches that if you work hard you generally make more money, but Christians should not seek to get rich. But only that which is needed.
And the possession that we do have we must see them as belonging to God, and to be used for his kingdom.
God does not just tax his people a 10% tithe,
the tithe is a reminder that all of it belongs to him and all our money and possessions is to be used for his kingdom.
Recently I heard someone said to a first time home buyer:
So how are you going to use God’s house? Hmm? What do you mean the new church building?
No God’s house, the house you just purchased. It is his house you know.
That is key. If we don't want to become self-indulgent zombies we must see all our possessions our money as a calling.
Having money or possessions is a calling from God.
Not to be used to indulge ourselves, but in services of his kingdom.
Specifically this means, that everything we own belongs to God and is to be used for his kingdom.
Our house, car, boat,dinner table, living room, education, money, and “free time” is his.
Oh but if I live like everything is his I will lose myself. I would die.
Yes, you would die, but a different kind of death.
One that births resurrection one where you find that you are truly alive.
No longer walking around half dead zombie, but fully alive in Christ.
Self-indulgence brings death to our self, but also it brings death to the poor
Look with me at 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.
and then in verse 6
You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
What is being described is the rich withholding payment to these harvesters or day laborers who live day to day, hand to mouth,
And then with that money the rich indulge themselves.
And by withholding payment the harvester or righteous person is essentially starved to death,
and they were not able to resist because they had no ability to prevent it.
So what James is saying is that to take away a neighbors living wage is essentially murder him.
Being scammed is a terrible feeling. When Sara Frances and I were engage we hired someone we thought was a photographer to take pictures.
Well it turns out they were not. And the money we put on deposit was lost.
And there was not much we could do about it. Because hiring a lawyer and going through this long drawn out process would not have been worth it.
So we were left feeling angry and embarrassed.
That scam is minor to the scam that is being described in this passage.
The harvester needs payment after they work so they can buy food.
And to work all day and leave with nothing to show for it but empty hands was disastrous because they may not have what they need to get food and shelter.
And they had no one they could call on to resist.
Self indulgence not only involves a death of the self indulgent, it hurts the poor.
We may think, well I am not murdering anyone.
But if we use our resources to fill our lives with things, and experiences, and activities
what happens is that noise of our busy lives will drown out the cries of the poor.
Not because we are actively seeking to harm someone, but passively so.
Because of the culture we live in where personal peace and affluence is such a dominate force it is the water we swim in
it is hard to recognize even when we are doing it.
Now, lets say we actually want help the economically poor.
And what we do doesn't seem to help.
This is where I was, until we started the Mercy Team here.
And as we did the mercy team training I learned or it hit me in a new way that I was trying to help the poor with our cultures view of poverty.
Our culture views poverty as a lack of material possessions.
And the answer to poverty is to give material possessions.
I was acting as if the answer is in stuff, things, or experiences,
if the economically poor only they had more stuff or money then things would get better.
But that is not the case.
Because if you every have been engaged with the economically poor it is a whole lot more complicated than that.
Ultimately poverty is not about stuff and things and cash, it is about relationships.
In verse 6 the poor harvester in our passage could not resist because he lacked relationships, had no one he could call on.
No one would hear him. If he had been heard he would not have died.
And so as we at Christ the Redeemer seek to come along side the economically poor around us
the solution is not found in things or money, but in relationship.
If we want to serve the poor it cannot be done from a distance.
We must give ourselves.
Because this is exactly what Jesus did for us.
You see this passage is all about Jesus.
You see God’s people from the very beginning were always choosing self-indulgent ways.
Trying to find satisfaction in the gifts of things, stuff, and money instead of in the giver.
Always buying but never satisfied, not realizing what they most needed was free.
So Jesus who had all the riches of heaven, gave it up to become poor.
He came and lived among us to restore our impoverished selves to God.
Jesus is the righteous person in our passage who did not resist.
He was scamed. He deserved a crown, but was given thorns, he was rejected by all with no one to speak up for him.
And when he had been given over to be murdered and all had abandoned him,
he cried out my God my God why have you forsaken me. And his cry was not heard.
The only time God did not hear the cry of the poor was when he refused to listen to the cry of his son on the cross.
And now we know we will always have the ear of God because he turned a deaf ear on Jesus instead of us.
And God hears the Cry of the poor because he hears the cry of his son advocating on their behalf, “you did not hear my cry so you can hear theirs.”
And this is how WE can hear the cry of the poor, because we know our own poverty.
We did not pull our selves up through hard work determination and grit,
but Jesus came down and did the work on our behalf.
The remedy for self-indulgence is through serving someone who is greater than ourselves,
To be captivated by the self giving love of Jesus who though he was rich became poor for our sake so that we might become rich in God.
PRAY
Now as we think about our poverty and God’s call on our church to enter into the life of our poor neighbors,
let us listen, and or sing as Jenna sings about God’s heart and how He hears the cry of the poor.