An appropriate passage perhaps at the end of the week that has seen Britain’s first million pound quiz winner. It was the 122nd episode of ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?’ last Monday when Chris Tarrant handed Judith Keppel her cheque. The show has achieved top ratings and 80 other countries have bought the rights to their own versions (with some local colouring, apparently: in Russia I gather the audiences, when consulted, habitually foil the contestants by supplying them with the wrong answers – old habits die hard!).
We are obsessed with the prospect of instant, unearned, enormous wealth. The National Lottery has met with huge success, and over half the population indulges in a regular flutter. You may have heard of the couple who did not usually do the Lottery, but the wife secretly recorded it one week when there was a rollover Jackpot. She said to her husband during the following week, “Let’s try the Lottery this week!” and she entered the winning numbers from the previous week. On the Saturday night she mentioned casually that perhaps they should watch the Lottery results, but instead of BBC1, she actually switched on the video recording from the previous week and went out to make a cup of tea, leaving her husband with what was apparently the winning ticket in his hand, to watch himself become, as he thought, a multi-millionaire. Later, he was to say, “It was not actually very funny at the time.” In fact, it was to put a severe strain on their marriage. And we can well believe it, can’t we?
In a society which enjoys wealth and prosperity that would have been unimaginable to the people to whom James wrote this letter, we lust for more with acquisitive greed. How we would all like to get our hands on a little more money – or a lot more! – and we see no harm in it. If we found our children watching the Playboy channel on Sky TV, we’d hurry to switch it off. But the thought never occurs to us if they are watching The Weakest Link or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? or the National Lottery Results on a Saturday night. Did the Tenth Commandment (Thou shalt not covet) never make it into our Western Bibles? Or is its application somehow different from the Seventh Commandment (Thou shalt not commit adultery)?
Perhaps we need to read our Bibles a little more carefully, and especially this letter of James.
1. Time is for us to do good (4:13-17)
The trouble with the proud, full diary of v.13 (‘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.”’) is that its owner is refusing to acknowledge that all our time only comes to us as a gift from God, and it is all for fulfilling God’s purpose for us…which is that we do good (‘Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.’ – v.17). The person with the busy, boastful diary makes the mistake of thinking his time is his own, and that person will tend to leave God out of his or her planning, and so won’t have time to do the good he or she ought to do.
How many of us (for example) fail to pray and to read our Bibles because we are too busy? “Life is just such a rush at the moment. I can’t find a quiet moment.”
How many steer clear of any greater involvement in Christian fellowship because we are over-committed? “Oh, no, I couldn’t be part of a Bible study. I don’t have a free evening,” or, “I’d love to help out next week, but I’m afraid I’ll be in Brussels.”
How many neglect their spouses and their children for the sake of career goals? “If I can just win this contract or pass this exam, I’ll get that qualification or promotion, so I’ve got to stay late again tonight.”
Over-commitment that stops me doing good is sin (v.17). Think about your diary. Presumptuously planning my life to be full of my own affairs. The right use of time is for doing good. It’s God’s gift to us, for doing His will for us. And so are riches.
2. Use it or lose it (5:1-6)
I’ve called this after a newish rule for the rugby manual – when in possession of the ball, a side may not just hang on to it and slow the game up, but must recycle it and keep the game flowing. In a rather different sense, James might have used the same slogan as a title for this next paragraph of his letter.
(a) What God thinks of riches.
It is not at all clear whom James had in mind by “you rich people” in v.1. His tirade against them is so strident, it is hard to believe they were Christians. But deciding exactly who they are is much less important for us than deciding what we learn from these verses about God’s attitude to wealth. (Remember the Bible is first and foremost a book about God and not about us, and we must learn to read it in a God-centred way. Asking, “What does this tell me about God?” before we ask, “What must I do because of this passage?”).
And I do not think we would be over-stating it if we were to say that God’s attitude to wealth is rather different from ours. Not that it is wealth per se that He condemns. It is the uses to which we humans put wealth.
(b) How to misuse money.
James mentions 3 ways:-
i) Accumulate (verses 2-3). ‘Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 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.’ There were three main sources of wealth in the ancient world. There was farm produce, which is the sort of wealth that rots, and there were garments, clothing, and such wealth is eaten by moths (v.2). And then thirdly (v.3), there was gold and silver which corrode. “Hang on,” you say, “Surely the whole point of such precious metals is that they don’t rust?” Well no, not in earth’s atmosphere, that’s true, but James’ point is that in the atmosphere of heaven they corrode into rust, and that corrosion will attack their owner also. Isn’t that a horrible picture in v.3, ‘Their corrosion…will…eat your flesh like fire’? So it is not a literal rust James is speaking of, but a spiritual decay and corruption. Like a splinter in human flesh, hoarded wealth causes spiritual septicemia. Notice it is not that these people have initially used wealth particularly selfishly. No, it is just that they have not used it at all. They have just accumulated it (‘You have hoarded wealth in the last days’). And wealth is not for hoarding. It is for using.
I wonder how many of us here (even the students among us) are poorer today than we were twelve months ago? And were we less well-off then than we were twelve months before that? We accumulate in quantity and in quality, and in so doing we miss the point of wealth. It is designed to pass away. That is what it is for, for rotting, for rusting, for falling to pieces. Hoarding, preserving and holding on, directly contradict Christ’s commands to us. We call it good stewardship, don’t we? But often I fear it is hoarding wealth in the last days. Money is for using: possessions are for use and for decay. Those are the two things it is for. They have a sell-by-date stamped on them, every one of them.
ii) Cheat (verse 4). ‘Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.’ This is James’ second misuse of money. The wealthy are prone to exploit the poor. In a subsistence economy the failure to pay workers promptly could jeopardize life itself. But the consequences of the way we all use our money reach God’s ears. Today we should be grateful to God for third-world aid agencies which open our eyes to the consequences of our lifestyle. Affluence opens the door to commercial carelessness and insensitivity to what is both due and needful to others. We may not want to know how what we do affects the other inhabitants of the global village. We may not want to ask, “Where did it come from?” or, “What are the effects of me living in this way?”. But as the first-class passengers on space ship Earth, there are some questions we have to ask. Exploitation is always kept out of sight by men, but it is never hidden from God – ‘The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.’
iii) Self-indulge (verse 5). ‘You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.’ We do not mean to harm anyone, we spoilt western children of the planet earth, but the comfortable and luxurious lives we live are described as ‘fattening our hearts for the day of slaughter.’ It is a picture of an animal, the ox or the cow, feeding itself placidly, chewing the cud, taking another mouthful, while the humane killer is being prepared just outside its stall. I am reminded of a cartoon of a large, plump calf looking decidedly alarmed, while a voice in the house behind is shouting out, “Hey, the prodigal son’s back! This calls for a celebration!” Of course, the fattened calf can do nothing to avert its fate, but we can. We choose our life-style and we cannot pretend to be ignorant of its consequences.
Then James brings this passage to a surprising conclusion with verse 6, ‘You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.’ I do not think this is a further misuse of wealth. I think this is James’ summary of the consequences of the three misuses of wealth he has already listed:-
(c) The poor and the rich.
If we think verse 6 cannot possibly apply to us, we need first to check our own use of money – are we accumulating it? Are we hoarding – getting a little richer all the time? Are we cheating – are we aware of the social and economic consequences of our lifestyle? Are we self-indulgent? James’ point is that when the rich live selfishly, they do so at the poor’s expense – indeed, at the expense of the poor’s very lives: ‘You have condemned and murdered innocent men’. We live in a world where there is more than enough to feed us all, but over-consumption by the wealthy and our refusal to re-distribute resources, mean millions starve.
There is nothing here against the ownership of wealth, nothing here to deter us from making money. James is not against a capitalist economy. But he would warn us stridently that wealth must be used for God’s purposes. Like time, it is for doing good with, while we have the chance.
Those who know the trading game, Pit, will know there are two special cards: the Bear card; and the Bull card. The Bear you always want to get rid of. He’s just a liability. But the Bull can be very useful, so long as you get rid of him before someone corners the market and the game ends. Wealth is not the Bear for the Christian. It is the Bull. Use it or lose it, says James, and perhaps even lose your soul.
The question they ask at a wealthy person’s death is, “How much did they leave?” And the answer is always the same, isn’t it? “Everything – he left the lot.” Everyone leaves everything. The Spanish say, “A shroud has no pockets.”
But in the meantime you and I answer to God for what we do with what He has given us.
Notice the last few words of verse 6 – ‘You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.’ People disagree about exactly what James meant by those words (and my own view has changed since I last preached on this passage). I now wonder if he is drawing our attention to the contrasting attitudes of the rich and the poor to each other. The rich, with no reason to do so at all, actually act as if the poor were their enemy – by their acquisitive, luxurious, self-indulgent, greedy lifestyle, they condemn the poor to starvation and to death. While the poor, who have (let’s face it) good reason to hate the rich, do not oppose them.
Now the Marxist solution to the social and economic inequality of human society is to teach the poor to hate the rich. “Let the ruling classes tremble them,” says the Communist Manifesto. “The workers have nothing to lose but their chains.” But the Bible has a different solution – it would teach the rich to love, to use their wealth for God’s good purposes to alleviate suffering and to spread the knowledge of Him all around His world.
And it would teach us all, rich and poor alike, to get a different perspective, God’s perspective on human life.
So finally just a tiny glance at verses 7-9:-
3. Get God’s Perspective (5:7-9)
The Bible is always calling us to look further back and to look further forward. If we are going to handle our time and our possessions aright we need to do just that.
We need to look back and realize they come from God (gifts of His grace to us). And we need to look forward and realize that we are going to God. Or rather that He is coming to us. ‘Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming… You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near… The Judge is standing at the door!’
James has already written of ‘the last days’ (v. 3) and ‘the day of slaughter’ (v. 5). With the coming of Jesus Christ and by His death and resurrection, God has displayed His grace in a way that brings both salvation and judgement. You and I can go on behaving as if our time and our possessions belong to us, but we will be judging ourselves if we do, and Christ’s return will make that judgement complete. There is to be an end of this life. And it does not belong to you or me. It is His. And it is not so much that riches will fade. (As we know, there are some families that manage to pass wealth successfully not just down the generations but even through the centuries.) No, it is not so much that they will fade, as that He will come. And then they will appear in their true colours.
In 1888, the wealthy young aristocrat, CJ Studd, gave away his inherited fortune before leaving for missionary work in China. He wrote to General Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, “Henceforth our bank is in heaven. You see we are rather afraid – notwithstanding the great earthly security of Messrs. Coutts & Co. and the Bank of England – we are, I say, rather afraid that they may both break on the Judgement Day.” If you and I kept our eyes on that day, we too would treat our possessions rather differently.