Living with Wealth

1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 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. 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. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

Pray

We Must Not Put Our Trust in Wealth

The Agony of the Future

James 5:1 ESV

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

Biblical concept of the rich is more than economic

“Rich” in Scripture often tied to wickedness (they oppress the poor, sometimes use dishonest scales/exorbitant prices to make profits, etc.)

James understands the rich ones to whom he speaks in this way (see v. 4-6 for details)

The weeping is characterized with howling

Rienecker and Rogers call it a “violent grief” (739, referencing Mayer).

TDNT refers to this weeping and howling as indicative of how the rich will see their treasures brought to nothing, and how that realization will bring the dread and horror of impending judgment

ILL: Jenga - even a game gives us a “terror” at the impending failure of the tower; imagine the horror if that tower was everything to you

ILL: Parent who lost their Marine son in Kabul terror attack this week

EXP: The rich are called to weep because they have made their wealth their god, and it will fail them. We must not put our trust in our wealth!

James 1:9–11 ESV

9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 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.

There is nothing but a future of agony for the man who trusts in his possessions - who puts his confidence in his wealth. But you don’t have to wait for the future to see the agony. Consider

The Decay of the Present

James 5:2–3 ESV

2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 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.

The verbs here for rotted, moth-eaten, and corroded are all perfect tense. The perfect describes a state of being completed with ongoing effects. All these things that these rich ones put their trust in - every single one - will not last. They are all temporal. In fact, James puts on the prophet hat and declares like Isaiah or Amos or Micah before him, “They are already decayed!” Just as the prophet looks into the future with certainty and speaks of that future as though it has already come about, so also James sees the end result and describes it as present reality. It is only a matter of time before we see it happen, too.

In fact, not only does the wealth they trust in fail them, it also testifies against them! Verse 3 says that their corrosion will be evidence against them. The Greek literally says that it will witness against them - the corrosion serves as proof that they trusted their stuff.

Not only did they acquire it (as we’ll see shortly in wicked ways), but they hoard it - it just sits there wasting away. Those clothes in the back of their closets are just getting eaten by moths - it doesn’t matter that they haven’t fit in years and are way out of style. That gold and silver are tarnishing and corroding - that’s how long they’ve been there! They could have easily used them for God’s purposes. They could help the needy, deal honestly in the marketplace, and pay worker’s wages promptly. But they don’t. They hoard it for themselves. This isn’t capitalism: it’s pure greed.

Why do they hoard their wealth? Because they count on the temporal - they need the temporal things. You don’t have to be extremely wealthy to fall into this trap - anyone with anything (or nothing) can begin to view things as so important that they become the objects of our trust and affection. And when that happens, we miss out on what really is important:

By Trusting in the Temporal, We Ignore the Eternal

Matthew 6:19–21 ESV

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Their treasure is their god, and their heart is right there too. But how did it get to this point? Well, to find the root cause, we have to go back a little bit further. There, we’ll find:

The Abuses of the Past

The Withheld Wages

James 5:4 ESV

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.

The blood of Abel cried out when Cain spilt it in Genesis 4. The Israelites cried out to God down in Egypt in Exodus 1. Throughout the book of Judges, Israel gets oppressed, then cries out to God. When people are crying out to God, things are bad. But when your sin starts crying out to God, you know you’re in trouble. This withholding is so bad, James says, that the wages are crying to God for help as though they are oppressed themselves. And these cries, both from the withheld wages and the hungry harvesters, are heard by God.

There are two things to note here. First, these rich ones have robbed the workers of their just wages. They earned those wages through honest work, and these guys have swindled them. This isn’t a case of “well, I can’t afford to pay you until I get paid.” This is a case of not paying someone with no intention of ever paying them. This is fraudulent employment, and it’s stealing. And it’s not just taking away payment - it’s withholding the livelihood of these men and their families. Most laborers where so poor that they could not afford to miss a single day of pay - the Torah commanded that laborers be paid that same day so that no Israelite would miss out on their daily bread. By withholding paychecks, these men were causing serious harm on the poor laborers and their families.

Second, God hears those cries for justice. Though it seems to be for naught, your cries to God for justice in the midst of your suffering are heard and will be answered. Take comfort if you’re crying out to God - he hears and will respond.

The Indulged Pleasures

James 5:5 ESV

5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

This isn’t just living well because they’ve earned it. This is living in luxury off the backs of those guys they didn’t pay. While the laborers struggle to find food for their families, these rich are feasting and indulging in delicacies.

But notice James’ assessment: they are like animals who gorge themselves and make themselves fat for the slaughter. They think they are “living the high life,” but in the end they are doomed for destruction (hence the agony of the future is not just about their lost treasures, but their lost souls).

The Condemned Righteous

James 5:6 ESV

6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

In the end, the rich persons don’t just mistreat others - they oppose righteousness. And that means they also oppose the righteous ones. But more than that, they oppose the Righteous One. Jesus was right when he said:

Matthew 6:24 ESV

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

That’s true of all wealth, not just dollars and cents. You can’t serve money and serve God at the same time. You will end up only serving one. When you trust in wealth (whether you have a lot of it or not), you set up an idol. God will not allow that to continue.

So how should we live with our wealth?

We Must Put Our Trust in God

When we put our trust in God, we will deal appropriately with wealth. Wealth is simply a tool for God’s glory. When we see it as belonging to him anyway and as merely a tool to use for his purposes, we are liberated from the oppressive tyranny of the god of wealth. Instead, we trust in God and he shows us how to live with wealth. Paul gave this counsel to Timothy, a young pastor in Ephesus:

1 Timothy 6:17–19 ESV

17 As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. 18 They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, 19 thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.