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Mark Wheeler
James 5:1-6
07/02/2023
“Preach Practicing: Scratching the Itches of Riches”
Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church
Welcome to worship, friends! Spokane Summer has returned, with a vengeance, this weekend, and we don’t have our new A/C yet – but we’re getting closer. So, if you need a fan, let us know and we’ll get one for you. (I’ve been living in my “collar cooler” all week long, because Caitlin, my “favorite daughter” loves me!)
A man was a regular diner at a restaurant. The owner always did his best to please him. One day this man complained that he only received 1 piece of bread with his meal, so the waiter promptly brought him 4 slices.
The man said, “That’s good, but not good enough. I love bread!” So, the next night he was given 6 slices with supper. He said, “Good! But aren’t you still being a bit stingy?” Even a basketful the next day didn’t stop the complaints. Finally, the owner decided to end this for good. The next night he had a colossal loaf of bread baked. It was 6 feet long, 3 feet wide. It took the manager and two waiters to carry it to the complainer’s table. When they laid it on the table the huge loaf took up 5 place settings. They stood there and smiled, waiting for the man’s reaction.
The man looked at the gigantic loaf of bread and said, “So, we’re back to ONE piece again?”
Have you ever had a problem with collecting too much stuff? Why is it that another word for too-much-stuff is “junk”? If you took an honest tour of your home, would you say you have more, I mean way more, than you need? I believe that most of us would be guilty of that.
This is the theme of today’s passage in James – Let’s listen to James, to God’s Word, together:
2-3 Join in as Pastor Kathy leads us in our Call to Worship – from Psalm 100
4 And our Prelude of Praise and Worship –– … We Bring the Sacrifice of Praise – what do we offer to our God?
5 Good morning Friends! Welcome to worship at Lidgerwood!! Shalom Aleichem!
Welcome, friends, from around the world, to this worshipping community!
Let’s take a second to welcome each other, those in the room and across the globe, to a moment of Sabbath in God’s presence and peace, and with others whom we love and with whom we grow together. Friends, may “The Peace of Christ be with you – and also in you!!”
Welcome to this “gathering” in God’s name. We are assembled in NorthEast Spokane, WA, along with people from all over the world. We are very glad you are “here” with us.
Be filled with God’s Holy Spirit presence and power, in your homes, through your phones and computers, in this building here, and in your lives. Pray with us … and hear and be transformed by God’s Word.
6 Our Summer Special Music today comes from some pretty new Church Family siblings – Bless you, Destiny and Nick, for braving this service with your Christmas-themed song – “Mary, Did You Know?”
7 Thank You, Lord, for Destiny’s and Nick’s voices and the courage and the wonder of the lyrics in this song. Bless them, and hold them close and safe. Amen.
8 Pastor Kathy opens our Prayer time in Confession and Thanksgiving
9 Gloria Patri
10-13 Mark receives the praises, thanksgivings, adorations, concerns and Kathy prays
[The Lord’s Prayer]
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15-18 Please stand as you are able as we sing ourSong of Devotion and Preparation to receive God’s Word – #2 – Holy, Holy, Holy –.
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The Promise and the Power of Your vision for us, O God, is brought to Life as we recognize Your resurrection! Challenge us to make the changes Your vision requires. Call us to Your passion for living lives that are full and abundant! Christ the Lord is risen today! Praise God. Amen.
I read recently that there are Three Stages of Life: in our Youth we Want Stuff; in our Adulthood we Get Stuff; and in our Senior Years we Get Rid of Stuff.
I don’t want anyone to think that having stuff, or even having wealth, is wrong. No where does the Bible ever condemn people just for being wealthy, and neither does the book of James.
We have been studying the book of James for over two months. And we can all see, James is the most practical book of the New Testament. Today, James leads us to focus on the issue of wealth and our attitude towards it. Again, if we seek to become authentic Christians, we need to look at these difficult and convicting, yet hopeful words from James.
Throughout this book, James has been getting us to think about our attitude toward the things of the world. We have looked at wisdom, at accumulating things, at planning for tomorrow, and now James leads us to consider the hardship that comes into our lives when our sole purpose is the pursuit of things that show we are wealthy.
You know the bumper sticker: “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” That is simply not true. They may have the most toys, but they may not have their salvation.
Let’s look together at James 5:1-6…. —-
20 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.
21 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.
In the last chapter, the last few verses we read last week, James was writing to Christian business people on how they should plan their future. Now James looks at the three greatest ways people in his day demonstrated they were wealthy. They showed their wealth through — (1) grain, (2) clothing and (3) precious metals. James says all of them will decay. The grain will become rotten (we’ve all seen that), the clothes will be eaten by moths (they didn’t have moth balls in those days) and most importantly, James says, even their gold and silver will corrode. I don’t think that really happens, so what is James’ point about the gold and silver?
I think his point is that whatever we are banking on will not last, even our most precious and indestructible things are doomed to decay. This “corrosion” is proof of impermanence and ultimate valuelessness of all worldly things. It is also a warning: James goes on to say that our desire for such riches will eventually eat away into our body and soul. James uses extremely vivid imagery to bring that point home when he says “this corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire.”
We certainly know people like that. Their wealth – whether it’s a little or a lot – is all they ever think about – ulcers, cramps, heart attacks. And when we hoard what we’ve been given responsibility to care for, we get sick and die AND the money, so far, has been sitting idle, wasted.
You’ve heard the stories of people who have won the lottery? So many of them eventually file bankruptcy or squander their money, they no longer talk to family members, and life has become joyless. Why? Because they valued their wealth more so than a relationship with Jesus Christ. When the “Rich Young Ruler” came to Jesus (in Matthew 19), Jesus told him he needed to do only one thing to inherit the kingdom of heaven, “give away all your possessions to the poor and follow me.” That rich young man, turned around and walked away sad (Matthew 19:22).
Do you remember the TV show from almost 20 years ago, My Name Is Earl. Earl Hickey is not a Christian, and his life philosophy is a bit off, but when he wins the lottery he uses it to help all the people he has hurt in his lifetime. This fictitious non-religious follower of Eastern philosophy has something to teach us Christians about good stewardship and generosity!
In these final 2 verses, James points out three things the wealthy are doing which is wrong. I want to briefly mention them and then discuss the proper attitude.
1. In verse 5 James says the people have used their money selfishly. This is not an indictment against wealth; it is an indictment on how much power money has over us. Remember the 2nd of the 10 commandments: we shall not worship idols. Is money or the accumulation of money what we worship? If it is, then money is our idol. There is nothing wrong with investing our money or planning for college or retirement or vacations, but James is pointing out when we are consumed by wealth, then we have gone over the edge.
2. The rich are fattening themselves expecting others to be brought to the slaughter, however, they will be the ones brought to the slaughter. They lived for their wealth, rather than for God. They sought one pleasure after another. And there are not many pleasures that money cannot buy. But these pleasures do not last.
3. And finally, they condemned and murdered people so that they could continue to accumulate their wealth.
What does this have to do with you and me? It can teach us about the dangers of money – whether we have it or just desire it. It teaches us how God views our use of money and the riches we have as a nation. It teaches us how God deals with the sins of the rich.
We need to remember that the words here do not apply to all of those who are rich. Some of the godliest of people in the Bible were rich – Job, Abraham, David, Solomon, Philemon. But there are times when God is angry at the rich and James tells us when this takes place.
I know that nobody here would claim that money, or the desire for more money, is our idol. “We don’t ‘worship’ money.” I know we think that. But James challenges us to test our thinking. Some of us could claim that we have never unfairly taken advantage of someone financially – in business or with tips at a restaurant. But James challenges us to consider our everyday actions more deeply. And I’m pretty sure that there are very few of us here who have ever committed murder for financial gain – (however, notice that we are missing some of our regular members today). But we live in the richest nation on the planet, and James challenges us to wonder if we in North America and our government do not condemn those in poorer countries. We help them only when it is beneficial to our own interests. We use our power to influence decisions and buy votes at United Nations, etc.
James teaches us, who in many ways are also rich, that we are to be careful how we obtain our wealth and how we use it. May it be according to God’s will, for His glory and with a charitable heart to those with less.
Chuck Colson (from the Watergate scandal) told the following story in an address at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi:
Colson said, “In 1985 I was on the Bill Buckley television program, talking about restitution and criminal justice. A few days later I got a call from Jack Eckerd, a businessman from Florida, the founder of the Eckerd Drug chain, the 2nd largest drug chain in America. He saw me on television and asked me to come to Florida. He agreed Florida had a criminal justice crisis, would I come down and do something about it? And we did. We went around the State of Florida advocating criminal justice reforms, and everywhere we would go Jack Eckerd would introduce me to the crowds and say, ‘This is Chuck Colson, I met him on Bill Buckley’s television program. He’s born again; I’m not. I wish I were.’ Then he’d sit down.
“About a year went by and I kept pestering Jack Eckerd about faith in Jesus. Eventually one day he read some things including the story of Watergate and the Resurrection out of my book, Loving God, and decided that Jesus was, in fact, resurrected from the dead. He called me up to tell me he believed. When he got through telling me what he believed I said, ‘You’re born again!’
“He said, ‘Marvelous!’ The 1st thing he did was to walk into one of his drugstores and walked down through the book shelves and he saw Playboy and Penthouse. He’d seen it there many times before, but it never bothered him before. Now he saw them with new eyes. He’d become a Christian.
“He went back to his office. He called in his president. He said, ‘Take Playboy and Penthouse out of my stores.’ The president said, ‘You can’t mean that, Mr. Eckerd. We make $3M a year on them.’ Eckerd said, ‘Take them out of my stores.’ And in 1,700 stores across America, those magazines were removed from the shelves, because a man had given his life to Christ.
Colson called Jack Eckerd and asked, “Did you do that because of your commitment to Christ?” He said, “Why else would I give away $3M? The Lord wouldn’t let me off the hook. Isn’t that marvelous? God wouldn’t let me off the hook.”
“And what happened after that is a wonderful sequel and a wonderful demonstration of what happens in our culture today. Jack Eckerd wrote a letter to all the other drugstore operators, all the other chains, and he said, ‘I’ve taken them out of my store, why don’t you take them out of yours?’ Nobody answered him. So he wrote them more letters. Then Eckerd’s Drugs began to get floods of people coming in to buy things because they’d taken Playboy and Penthouse out.
“And so People’s Drug Store, and then Dart Drugs, and then Revco removed them from their shelves. While the pornography commission in Washington was debating what to do about pornography, across America, one by one, stores were removing them. And the 7-11 chairman, who sits on Jack Eckerd’s board, finally gave in, and 5,000 7-11 stores removed them. In 12 months, 11,000 retail outlets in America removed Playboy and Penthouse, not because somebody passed a law, but because God wouldn’t let one of His men off the hook. That’s what brings change.”
In our lives we are to find our riches in a life with God. We are to be transformed more and more into the image of Christ. It is a daily event. It takes a great deal of discipline.
Our wealth will ultimately come out of our relationship with God. When we have that intimacy, we would not trade that for all the money in the world. Get rid of Playboy and Penthouse? $3M. Intimacy and communion with God? – as that old commercial says – priceless. That is why the greatest comment that can be made to us is the one Jesus will tell us when we join Him in heaven, “Well done good and faithful servant.”
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Finally, we need to learn a little more to let loose of our grip on our possessions, and let God take over. Corrie Ten Boom once said, “I have learned not to hold on to things in this life too tightly because it hurts when God pries my fingers loose from them.” How true that is.
As Jesus said in Matthew 10:8,“. Freely you have received, freely give...” Again, God is not against us making money and spending it. He simply wants us to give Him authority over everything, including our wealth.
Let’s submit ourselves to God, and give testimony to His greatness in everything we say and do!
… Now is the time of God’s favor! Today is the day of salvation! Amen!
23 Receive our tithes and offerings as symbols of our very lives and livelihood, given as response to Your life given for us! Bless it, and by it bless the world around us. In Christ’s name, Amen.
– Offering (4449 N Nevada St, Spokane, 99207 ; or click HERE, or text 833-976-1333, code “Lidgerwood”)
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As our Communion Servers, bring the Communion elements to you, we invite you to take one piece of bread from the center tray, and one cup from the outer rings – or just one self-contained COVID-friendly cup – the wafer is under the cellophane wrap, and the grapejuice is under the foil wrap – then hold your broken bread and poured cup of the fruit of the vine until Pastor Kathy leads to eat and drink.
25-27 Communion Hymn #770 – As We Gather around the Table – if this is new for you, listen to verse one, and join in on verse 2.
28 Sacrament of Holy Communion
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30-33 Expedition Song #5 – Come, Thou Almighty King!
34 Benediction: May we Grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Be filled with God’s Holy Spirit. And give glory to God, today, and forever! Amen.
“May the Lord bless you and protect you; may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.”
35 Announcements
- Furnace Fundraiser
- Garden o’ Feedin’ – Thursday afternoons – or whenever!
Resources:
Deutsch, Michael; Rusted Wealth; sermon preached at First Baptist Church, Dearborn, MI; 10/28/2001.
Hewett, James S.; Illustrations Unlimited; Wheaton, IL; Tyndale House Publishers, Inc; 1988; Pp. 46-48.
Jacson, Dan; Be Patient! Stand Firm!; sermon preached.
Wheeler, Mark; “How to Scratch the Itch of Riches”; Lidgerwood Presbyterian Church; 06/11/2006.
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